Great article. Church history is basically European Religious history.

I'm also amazed at how un-critically the global church has accepted "doctrine and dogma" from the Western Church.

Much of the early councils were merely exercises in Greek philosophy and Roman politics...and often have little, no, or opposite findings in Scripture

What a wonderful thing that the Church is waking up from its "40 years" of European wilderness bound by Greek logic and Roman culture!

Thanks again for a great article.

It seems to me that the two key issues here come down to authority and control. That goes for local congregations as well as the prevailing Western view of things.

Great thoughts David. I am currently living inside of these paragraphs that you have so aptly fingered, as we are planting a church in North Seattle. Extremely multi-ethnical and multi-thought. Much different than the upper Midwest churchy world we moved from this past summer.
We are learning, the curve is great, but God is graceously educating us and growing our community, with so much more than Casseroles and Jell-O. Yes! There is, after all, much better food to endulge in. And, oh the variety!
Continue to write.

Amen or in my lingo, right on!

Good article. The really sad part is this is so often right in front of our faces that the majority culture ignores it.

1. Look at the conferences and see who the attendees and the speakers are.

2. Look in the bookstores and who are the heavweights writing about Christian theology?

3. Look in major evangelical magazines and look at who they write about and who the writers are.

4. In those same magazines, the ads are usually either people of color needing help in another country or people of color representing a university...that has hardly any diversity.

I appreciate your article but if people can look at this stuff above and not blink, then I fear your article may simply be a passing infancy.

Though I'm still fairly fond of my mother's asparagus casserole (it makes an appearance at every potluck and major holiday), I have to say that I truly agree with you. As I once heard it put, "The West didn't create Christianity, it merely tamed it." Ironically, the early church fathers that the west typically hails, would undoubtedly be the strongest voices in favor of maintaining cultural diversity within the church. Well said!

We had a Korean congregation shar our sanctuary for a year. Awesome food!

Great to be around another type of Christian.

We found out we weren't the only ones.

Thanks!

P.S.- I'd love to find a Thai congregation of Christians!

"didn’t most of the important stuff happen to guys with vaguely European-sounding names?"

It does feel that way sometimes when I study church history, with the focus of most books and lectures being quite slanted towards euro-centricism.
I think a great example of this is how we in the West often act like the East Orthodox church either does not exist or is just a smallish odd denomination, instead of one of the longest lasting forms of the faith.

Thanks for the comments. Prophetik Soul's 4 examples resonate with my own experience. Having experienced the wider diversity of our Christian history and tradition, the seemingly ethnocentric focus of American evangelicalism is impossible to miss.

The Catholic Church does a rather good job of celebrating its African saints, esp. Saint Augustine of Hippo. Also, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe is a huge festival in the RC church, which is a major point of reference for almost all Central and South Americans

In addition, the RC Church is full of leaders who would be considered ethnic minorities in the U.S. There are a huge number of Latino, African, and Asian bishops and cardinals, which tells me that having an ethnically diverse church does not necessarily mean giving up what the author terms, "controlled worship." All of these cultures share one liturgy with local music, preaching, and dances as a part of that...isn't there any peace to be found in uniting a community with all other communities around the world in one common liturgy?

At Fuller Seminary, I studied Modern Church History with Cecil Robeck, and we were required to select one geographic region (I chose Africa) and read extensively about the spread of Christianity in that part of the world. We read hundreds of pages, had an extensive writing assignment, and had one large essay question for our final exam that dealt with our area of research. I so appreciated his very obvious commitment to our understanding of God's work and mission in a global context.

I know from my own seminary experience and what others have described that he is an exception in making a more than token commitment to teaching history/theology with the whole world in mind. I am grateful for it, and grateful for your post which brings broader attention to this frequent gap in our theological education.

Sorry, but this just stinks in so many ways. Please allow me to give a few reasons...

A 1 week class covering 2000 years of cuhrch history, and you want it to say something nice about Africans? Come on! Besides, North Africans like Augustine are ethnic Middle Easterners anyway. When you say 'Afican' why do I get the distinct impression you mean black skinned people? The beginning of the gospel in India is shrouded in uncertainty anyway, and pre- William Carey it has never had a big impact either.

In the USA, church history will acknowledge minority Christians when they make history. I will venture to say the people you worship with, who have hispanic names, are not newsworthy. If these folk ever do something worth talking about, they will be included, because someone will want to sell a book about them.

Thanks,
Chris Lee

"The church is a growing body made up of Believers"

Interesting what mere grammar will devulge about one's ecclesiology & view of history:

church/Believers vis-a-vis Church/believers

Chris, I doubt its as simple as 'If these folk ever do something worth talking about, they will be included, because someone will want to sell a book about them.' If that was the case, it would not have taken so long for people to write about the Harriet Tubmans, Martin Luther Kings, etc. Simply because they were written about does not point to their lack of importance. Racism and prejudice abounds in why some of these people arent talked about.

Of course, those of us who accepted 'diversity' years ago without giving it a second thought are still subject to these formulaic articles about "are we willing to acknowledge and celebrate the vast diversity of our history and heritage?"

Christianity is the most diverse religion on the planet, and so we find ourselves obsessing over whether our Swedish brother is sufficiently appreciative of our Korean sister's spiritual heritage.

Let's keep our eyes on the prize, not on the race behind us.

Chris:

I'm not sure who your comments were directed at, but I'll try to respond as I see fit. When I use the word "Africans," I mean just that--people whose immediate region of origin is the continent of Africa. Right now that means all sorts of people who are ethnically and culturally diverse. And as far as anyone knows, Augustine was of Berber descent.

As for Christianity "not having a big impact until William Carey," when the Portugese arrived they witnessed baptisms, liturgy, a functioning episcopate...how are these things without "impact"?

Regards,
John

David,
Great article...thanks for sharing your thoughts. I am slowly seeing more and more acknowledgement of non-Western Christianity in my classes and readings interactions. Maybe this all ties to God's call for us to die to ourselves and to serve for God's glory alone. Part of that death involves giving up our traditions or loosening our grip of how we 'do church' and worship.
Tough questions to wrestle with and hit at the heart of what may be holding back the US/Western church - fear of losing control and doing things they way we like to do them. Thanks again for a great article...

The majority of Church history texts that I have read start with a fairly broad scope but as the text advances in time it becomes more and more focused on western traditions. I find it disappointing and short sighted. I realize that to do a concurrent history of the whole church is nearly an impossible task to do and to put that into one volume would be pointless. At the same time a massive multiple volume work would tedious and unmanageable for general reading. Perhaps part of the problem is that we don't title our texts in the best fashion, or courses for that matter. Name it as western church history, the title itself will suggest that there is more.
When we don't know the full story we are impoverished because of this lack of awareness and fellowship with and of other Christians.

I thought I might recommend a resource. Martin Marty (the superhuman historian) published a book in 2007 called The Christian World: A Global History, which just came out in paperback this year. Anyway, he does the impossible--talks about the church's history from the first century to the present with an eye to the non-western world (only three of the ten chapters are dedicated to Europe and North America)--in right around 200 pages.