The History Of Christianity In Africa
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Christianity in the continent Africa started around 2,000 years ago. The Bible's New Testament says that the Africans witnessed Christ. The records of the gospel of Luke says that a person belonged to Cyrene was forced to put on the cross. Cyrene was part of North Africa.
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The records in the Book of Acts say that on the Pentecost day the Cyrenians and the Egyptians were also present in the crowd and also heard the gospel being proclaimed by the apostles in native languages. The books of acts have a record that the apostles went on a missionary journey to Cyprus. The people who were the new converts from Cyrene and Cyprus started preaching the gospel to the Antioch Greeks.
Christianity has spread rapidly and intensely all through North Africa and Egypt for the first 5 centuries even though the persecutions, martyrdom and false teachings were prevalent. It is believed that Christianity was spread in Africa from the Alexandria city. The city had a large number of Jews. The Jews of Africa in Alexandria were said to be converted into Christianity from Judaism which resulted in Jewish revolt in 115 AD.
It was North Africans who first received and embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ. The initial churches faced a lot of persecutions. The church had started catechetical schools of Alexandria.
The gospel was spread by the church in Coptic language and many churches were built in the interior parts of Egypt. Christianity has become weak later because of the doctrinal and theological controversies.
In the Middle Ages, there were lot of Islamic converts and many African Christians moved to Europe. European Protestant Church and the Roman Catholic Church have made some efforts to reclaim some parts of Africa, but Islam is still the predominant religion in Africa.
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