ABSTRACT
For much of the world’s population, regardless of confession, Christianity is self-evidently a European religion. In some accounts Christ’s birth in the Middle East appears almost to be an aberration, for his Gospel was promulgated in Greek, ‘a European language’, and the formulation and development of Christian doctrine and practice was apparently the work of European – Latin-or Greek-speaking – theologians. The expansion of Christianity beyond its European heartlands is usually thought to be the consequence of European missionary activity or colonialism, or a combination of the two, and it is often presumed that this occurred in recent centuries. The agents of this expansion, the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant churches, are all portrayed as Christian denominations of European origins, and Christianity is often considered to be restricted to these groups. Thus Christians in the Middle East have become used to being told to ‘go home’ to Europe, and those in India are frequently accused of not being ‘real Indians’.
