[Mrs. Don-o]

I did read somewhere really recently (and dang! I can't find it!) that, partly beause of the aggressive pitch of Islam-promoters, African Christians are re-asserting that their faith has indigentous African roots, -- that is, that it is not entirely a product of European missionary efforts.

The Church in Africa goes back to the earliest days. Ethiopian Catholics and Coptics, with their priests and bishops, trace their apostolic orders back to the Ethiopian eunuch, the official of the Candace (Queen), baptized by Philip. This history is recorded in the Book of Acts.

Still in the 1st century, in about the year 43, Mark the Evangelist started the Church of Alexandria. Alexandria was one of the true hubs of Christian expansion, being equal, as a patrriarchal city, to Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, and Constantinople.

At first the church in Alexandria was mainly Greek-speaking, but by the end of the 2nd century the scriptures and Liturgy had been translated into African languages as Christianity spread across north-western Africa from Egypt to Carthage and ever further west, through the area today known as the Maghreb.

I read somewhere that at one time there were 200 Dioceses in Africa.

Important Africans who influenced the early development of Christianity includes such intellectual and spiritual giants as Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, Athanasius and Augustine of Hippo. (Augustine was born in Tagaste, in present-day Algeria.) Most of them wrote in Greek, which was the "international language" of the entire Mediterranean basin.

In the middle of the 3rd century the church in Egypt suffered severely in the persecution under the Emperor Decius. Many Christians fled from the towns into the desert. This was the beginning of Christian monasticism, which over the following years spread from Africa and became a major influence in the Christian world.

Since Alexandria also gave us the Greek Septuagint (the basis for most modern translations of the Old Testament), I'd say the "African influence" was huge.

I guess we don't hear much of that perspective now, because the Islamic invasion and subjugation annihilated it (except for surviving pockets) about 1400 years ago.

[wagglebee]

I agree with everything you say; however, the article seems to at least suggest that Egypt (Alexandria) was THE center of Christendom for a thousand years. This is patently false. Alexandria was certainly ONE of the great Christian cities; however, this lasted for no more than seven centuries.