Lineage Disrupted

And the Lord said, “Even as My servant Isaiah has walked stripped and barefoot for three years as a sign and forewarning concerning Egypt and Cush (Ethiopia), ⁴ in the same way the king of Assyria will lead away the Egyptian captives and the Cushite exiles, young and old, stripped and barefoot, even with buttocks uncovered—to the shame of Egypt.

Isaiah 20:3-4 AMP

While this scripture wasn’t talking about the Christians in Africa, it does speak to what Part III of this series will be about. As we continue the ‘Lineage of the Black Church’ series (Part I, Part II) I want us to take a look at how the lineage was disrupted. I bet y’all think I’m about to talk about colonizers and the slave trade.

Nope. It’s Islam.

Well I guess that scripture turned out to fit nicely with this post.

Anyway, last week we talked about how the Coptic church in Egypt quickly was overpowered and overshadowed in a couple of centuries. When Islam came, they came. And it pretty much dominated and has dominated North Africa since. All the Berber and other Christian scholars I talked about in week 1 homelands are now being dominated by the Islamic faith.

I went to a Methodist college for undergrad and a Christian college for grad school. At Texas Wesleyan University, we had to take religion classes. No big deal for me. I’m always interested in learning something new or different. In one of my classes, we had to present a research paper on a religion that wasn’t ours. I was given Islam. I don’t remember much about all that I wrote but I remember how similar I thought it to Christianity. How they believe in love and kindness. How they believe in God. Yet, the prophet Muhammad seems larger than life. At least to me. Personally, I feel they likened him to Jesus. Again, this is from my memory from like um……15 years ago.  

Islam first entered Africa in 6 14AD in what is now Eritrea. This video will share more on how Islam came to Africa and began to grow. For a time there was peace between the Christians and the Muslims. Like briefly in the beginning. Then the power struggle began. Christians were nice enough to give Muslims a safe place after they were being persecuted then they eventually turned. All for trade. Y’all the coins got people confused on what’s right to do and how to act. A lot you can learn about in the video below.

There are many rumors even though people have researched as to why Islam was able to overtake the Maghreb ie North Africa aka Roman Africa. I’ll share a few with you.

• The constant wars, conquests and persecutions.
• Inner fighting in the church about lacking the backbone to be monastic.
• Suffering from the aftermath of heresies such as the biggest one the Donatist heresy. Donatism believes that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid. Hmm…..sounds how we expect priests to be probably as to why they fall and rape innocent children. But I won’t get on my soapbox about how Christian leaders rape children and then the church covers it up. Not on this post. Not today. <side eye>
• The Islamic Umayyad Caliphate conquest from 647-709AD supposedly ended Christianity in North Africa.

But there’s still small populations up to 10% like in Algeria today. We know Christianity didn’t end with the conquest as there were still communities that existed, Muslims converted and they were able to establish new churches centuries after.

Most Americans when they think of Christianity they immediately think of slavery. When they think our religion was taken from us they think of Evangelicalism. However, Islam was the first disruption in the lineage of Christianity growing from East and North Africa to the rest of the continent. The Christianity that is present on the continent today may have more recent roots but we can’t deny the roots that were established in the First Century that continue to today from the early Christian churches of Carthage, Egypt, the Maghreb, Aksumite empire, the Kingdom of Cush and so many others.

I think this 3-part series is enough to wet your appetite to look more into Orthodox Christianity with African roots. Who knows what we could have been worshiping if Christianity spread without Islamic disruption and of course, the horrendous slave trade. What I found the most interesting as I researched this is how much influence the early Africans and early African churches still have on Christianity being practiced around the world no matter the denomination.