The November edition of Christianity Today’s cover story looks at the collapse of the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East because of extreme Muslim brutality. The author, Peter Jenkins, then asks if this spells the end of Christianity in the region.
Jenkins traces the repeated onslaughts both the ancient orthodox and the more recent Orthdox-background Protestant churches have had to endure in the face of a radicalized Islam whose aim is to eradicate Christianity from the region, offers some theological thoughts based on analogies from China and Japan, and points out that Christianity is growing in certain parts of the region because of the influx of foreign labour.
One important fact which the article overlooks, however, is that the heart-rending disappearance of the ancient churches also means that future missionaries will not be “distracted” from Muslim evangelism by serving churches which, it must be said, have, by and large and with some notable exceptions, not had a great appetite for reaching their Muslim neighbors with the gospel. Future missionaries to the region will be forced to reach Muslims directly.
It almost seems like the history of Turkey is repeated in the Arab Middle East: the brutal removal of orthodox Christianity by the “young Turks” in 1915 forced later generations of missionaries to work directly with Muslims–and today there is vibrant Protestant community of Muslim Background Believers of up to 5000 people worshiping publicly in churches across Turkey.
Also, the brutality of their co-religionists is already causing many Muslim to question and leave their religion (see, for instance, Thomas Friedman’s recent article in the New York Times on this subject: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/thomas-l-friedman-how-isis-drives-muslims-from-islam.html?_r=0
When, eventually, the region stabilizes and missionaries can return I believe they will find it well plowed and ready to receive the seed of the gospel.