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    The Church in the Muslim World
    The Church in the Muslim World
    The Church in the Muslim World
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    The Church in the Muslim World

    By Glenn Myers

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    About this ebook

    Some reviews of the original 'Briefings' from which these selections are taken.

    Glenn Myers' style of writing illuminates and captivates those who want to discover the truth about specific areas of the world. This is compulsory reading for busy Christians wanting to understand what God is doing in different parts of our planet and different communities of people.
    Stanley Davies, Former Executive Director, Evangelical Missionary Alliance (now Global Connections)

    Glenn uses a vivid palette of word pictures to give one of the best and most readable presentations of the spiritual need of the world I have read for a long time.
    Patrick Johnstone, author.

    This is just what our churches need - well-researched, well-presented and well-chosen topics that present the strategic challenges to Christian mission that we cannot ignore ... Every Christian should be using this resource to inform their prayers, sharpen up their thinking, and provoke practical action.
    Jonathan Lamb, Langham Partnership

    A wonderfully readable and sympathetic introduction to a part of the world that is always likely to be in the news and should be of special concern to Christians.
    Colin Chapman, Islam scholar and author

    Understanding and coming to grips with the complicated Arab/Muslim situation may well help us to understand what is happening to OUR part of the world: economically, socially and above all spiritually ... This priceless little book can help us. Read it.
    Brother Andrew, Open Doors.

    ...lively, readable and vivid. It is an ideal first introduction to the subject for Western Christians, giving an overview of the region from the beginning of the Christian era until the present. The focus is on Islam, Christianity and the wide diversity of peoples in the region. Myers takes an upbeat line, looking at exciting contemporary development in Christian mission arising from the roots of the ancient churches of the region.
    Patrick Sookhdeo, Servants Fellowship International.

    An excellent introduction to the spiritual and physical needs of the peoples living in one of the most neglected areas of the world ... stimulates and informs prayer for these peoples, and, I trust, action too, while there is still open access to them.
    John Bendor-Samuel, Wycliffe Bible Translators.

    Glenn Myers takes us to worlds most of us will never be able to visit in person and opens them up in vivid, up-to- date, easily understood snapshots. The analysis is simple but not simplistic, broad but not shallow. These highly readable briefings will help Christians not only to gain a balanced understanding and greater sensitivity of other people's worlds, but also to shed some of their own prejudices and stereotypes in the process. Such learning is the first step in intelligent prayer and responsible mission.
    Dr Chris Wright, Langham Partnership

    Thoroughly researched and well written ... [it] gets to the heart of the key issues facing the church in the region.
    Sam Yeghnazar, Elam Ministries

    It is a powerful tool to encourage intelligent prayer.
    Ray Porter, OMF International

    ...inspires hope and expectancy. After reading it I wanted to go back and work there again!’
    Tim Morris, former International Director, World Horizons.

    The church with its message of hope and the compassion of Jesus has much to say in this situation and Glenn Myers tells us simply, directly –-almost starkly – just what that job is like.
    Ernie Addicott

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGlenn Myers
    Release dateSep 19, 2011
    ISBN9781465710390
    The Church in the Muslim World
    Author

    Glenn Myers

    Prize-winning writer and author of over a dozen non-fiction titles about the Christian movement in various minority settings.Now rather passionate about writing stuff that is funny, disruptive and about deep issues. My novel Paradise is about how we long for, and flee from, intimacy with God and people.

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      Book preview

      The Church in the Muslim World - Glenn Myers

      What they said about previous books

      Glenn Myers' style of writing illuminates and captivates those who want to discover the truth about specific areas of the world. This is compulsory reading for busy Christians wanting to understand what God is doing in different parts of our planet and different communities of people.

      Stanley Davies, Former Executive Director, Evangelical Missionary Alliance (now Global Connections)

      Glenn uses a vivid palette of word pictures to give one of the best and most readable presentations of the spiritual need of the world I have read for a long time.

      Patrick Johnstone, author.

      This is just what our churches need - well-researched, well-presented and well-chosen topics that present the strategic challenges to Christian mission that we cannot ignore ... Every Christian should be using this resource to inform their prayers, sharpen up their thinking, and provoke practical action.

      Jonathan Lamb, Langham Partnership

      A wonderfully readable and sympathetic introduction to a part of the world that is always likely to be in the news and should be of special concern to Christians.

      Colin Chapman, Islam scholar and author

      Understanding and coming to grips with the complicated Arab/Muslim situation may well help us to understand what is happening to OUR part of the world: economically, socially and above all spiritually … This priceless little book can help us. Read it.

      Brother Andrew, Open Doors.

      …lively, readable and vivid. It is an ideal first introduction to the subject for Western Christians, giving an overview of the region from the beginning of the Christian era until the present. The focus is on Islam, Christianity and the wide diversity of peoples in the region. Myers takes an upbeat line, looking at exciting contemporary development in Christian mission arising from the roots of the ancient churches of the region.

      Patrick Sookhdeo, Servants Fellowship International.

      An excellent introduction to the spiritual and physical needs of the peoples living in one of the most neglected areas of the world … stimulates and informs prayer for these peoples, and, I trust, action too, while there is still open access to them.

      John Bendor-Samuel, Wycliffe Bible Translators.

      Glenn Myers takes us to worlds most of us will never be able to visit in person and opens them up in vivid, up-to-date, easily understood snapshots. The analysis is simple but not simplistic, broad but not shallow. These highly readable briefings will help Christians not only to gain a balanced understanding and greater sensitivity of other people's worlds, but also to shed some of their own prejudices and stereotypes in the process. Such learning is the first step in intelligent prayer and responsible mission.

      Dr Chris Wright, Langham Partnership

      Thoroughly researched and well written … [it] gets to the heart of the key issues facing the church in the region.

      Sam Yeghnazar, Elam Ministries

      The Church in the Muslim World

      Glenn Myers

      Published by Fizz Books at Smashwords

      Copyright 2011 Glenn Myers

      http:\\www.fizz-books.com

      http:\\www.glennmyers.info

      Discover other titles by Glenn Myers at Smashwords.com

      Paradise - a divine comedy

      Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Author’s note

      This book is a series of popular-level glimpses into the Muslim world and the context and challenges that face the Christian Church in each place.

      Most of the material originally appeared in my Briefings series of books, published by Authentic Media between 1998 and 2006. I've taken the opportunity to update and re-write that material. Full footnotes for the original text appear in the original Briefings.

      Chapter 1: The Arab World

      If you’re from the Arab World, Christianity is in your blood.

      It’s hard to believe, but seventeen centuries ago, multitudes of Christians lived among the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East. If you had travelled around the southern Mediterranean in, say, the fourth century AD, you would have been walking through one of the great heartlands of Christianity.

      By that time the Church in North Africa and the Middle East was already:

      Ancient: the book of Acts tells us that ‘Libyans’ and ‘Arabs’ were among those who responded to the first Christian preaching on the day of Pentecost.

      Influential: Carthage in Tunisia and Alexandria in Egypt were (along with Rome) the leading cities of the Christian world. They were home to the most influential writers and theologians after the apostles themselves: Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Augustine.

      Popular: As early as the third century AD, Tertullian, writing in defence of Christianity, could declare, ‘We are a great multitude, almost a majority in each city.’

      Widespread: The gospel travelled deeper into North Africa and the Middle East than ever Roman rule did. Relics of church buildings, for example, have been found in North African villages too remote for Roman records

      The Christian faith progressed in the Gulf, into Iraq, and down the Nile far into what are now Sudan and Ethiopia.

      Brave: It was a church that had produced many martyrs – for example, a young mum named Perpetua, gored by wild animals in the persecution under Emperor Severus in 203; the bishop Cyprian, beheaded in 258. (When Cyprian was sentenced to death – to give us some idea of the spirit of that early North African Church – the Christians in the crowd shouted, ‘Let us go and be beheaded with him!’ and had to be restrained by troops.)

      ***

      Yet it fell from all this.

      Many of the problems were self-inflicted. The North African Church, which collapsed most completely, was plagued with division. (Not for nothing has the North African Church been called ‘The home of uncompromising Christianity.')

      Then came the Vandals. Burning, looting, pillaging, this Germanic tribe ravaged North Africa in the early years of the fifth century. Theoretically a Christian people, Vandals subscribed to a heresy called Arianism and brutally attacked the existing Church. Some leaders were exiled or enslaved, others tortured and killed. It was a decapitation of the Church far more effective than anything attempted by the Romans.

      A century later, the Byzantines, the successors to the Romans, regained North Africa and imposed on it their alien, Greek-speaking Eastern Christianity. They created some wonderful Christian North African architecture, but, evidently, not much else. By the seventh century, Christendom in North Africa was an unpleasant thing to behold: broken, dispirited, heresy-prone, at war with itself.

      In the Middle East, churches survived better – partly because Christian liturgy and literature were translated into local languages (this never happened in North Africa or the Gulf), and partly because churches were spared destruction at the hands of the Vandals.

      ***

      During the middle of the seventh century the Muslim armies famously burst from Arabia. Within a hundred years of the Prophet’s death, barely pausing for a few brotherly spats, Arabs had swept all over the Middle East and Africa, to the heart of Asia (one tradition says even to China), across and deep into France. That they even turned back there was probably due to disinterest, rather than military defeat.

      It was a dazzling series of military conquests, greatly helped by the divisions in the Christian world at the time. Then the Arabs followed military victory by constructing a great new civilization.

      They unified into a single empire, with a single currency, an area from Central Asia to Western Europe: the first time this had ever been done. Trade between East and West flourished. Prosperity grew and with it, fine cities. Cordoba, Fez, Tunis, Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad became the great cities of the western half of the world. Innovation and new products flowed west: Indian numerals (we call them ‘arabic’), cotton, rice, sugar-cane and citrus fruits. Our English names for fine fabrics date from the Muslim empire: muslin, damask, gauze, mohair, taffeta.

      The Muslim

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