Christians today are acutely aware of the secularization of the West and the rise of Christianity in the Global South. But many are not aware of a similar geographic and demographic shift which occurred at the close of the Middle Ages, resulting in the Euro-centric Christianity that we have known since then, and which now may be changing once again.
Philip Jenkins, professor of history at Baylor University, is the author of numerous books on church and global history and has a keen eye for the factors at play in global religious changes. His The Next Christendom (2002, updated 2011) and New Faces of Christianity (2008) analyze the nature and prospects for Christianity in the Global South (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). But it is worth looking retrospectively at his The Lost History of Christianity: the Thousand Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died (2008), which reviews the flourishing of the oriental Orthodox churches in the first Christian millennium, and on into the High Middle Ages, and their devastation at the close of the Middle Ages, and continuing today.
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