African Art

Christianity in Africa

Christianity arrived to Africa in the 1st century AD; as of 2024, it is the largest religion on the continent. Several North African Christians influenced the early development of Christianity and shaped its doctrines, including Tertullian, Perpetua, Felicity, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria, Cyprian, Athanasius, and Augustine of Hippo. In the 4th century, the Aksumite empire in modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea became one of the first regions in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion, followed by the Nubian kingdoms of Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia and several of the Maghreb's Christian Berber kingdoms. The Islamic conquests into North Africa brought pressure on Christians to convert to Islam due to special taxation imposed on non-Muslims, the threat of enslavement and other socioeconomic pressures under Islamic rule, although Christians were widely allowed to continue practicing their religion. The Eastern Orthodox Church of Alexandria and Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria (which separated from each other during the Chalcedonian Schism) in Egypt and the Orthodox Tewahedo Church survived Muslim invasion. Islamization of Muslim-ruled territory occurred progressively over the next few centuries, though this process is not fully understood by historians. Restrictions on church building and demolition of churches in Egypt, along with occasional persecutions such as during the reign of al-Hakim (996–1021), put additional pressure on Copts in Egypt. In the Middle Ages, the Ethiopian Empire was the only region to survive as a Christian state following the expansion of Islam. The Ethiopian church held its own distinct religious customs and a unique canon of the Bible. Therefore, the Ethiopian church community is globally unique in that it wasn't Christianised through European missionaries, but was highly independent and itself spread missionaries throughout much of sub-Saharan Africa prior to the contact of European Christians. In the late 15th century, Portuguese traders and missionaries began arriving in West Africa, first in Guinea, Mauritania, the Gambia, Ghana, and Sierra Leone, then Nigeria and later in the Kingdom of Kongo, where they would find success in converting prominent local leaders to Catholicism.

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See also

• ▸1300
• ▸Epigraphy
• ▸Curse of Ham

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Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.