Africa: The Forgotten Foundation of Global Christianity
- Abir Ibrahim
- May 23
- 7 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
This video highlights the center role Africa played in Christian history.
The dominant narrative of Christianity in Africa often begins with European missionaries landing on the continent’s shores in the 19th century. But this narrative overlooks over a millennium of vibrant African Christianity that predates the Christianization of Europe. From Nubia and Egypt to Axum and Carthage, Africa was not merely a recipient of Christian doctrine, it was one of its founding pillars.
This story, long buried under the weight of colonial erasure and Eurocentric scholarship, deserves to be told in full.
In Acts 8:27–39, we meet a royal official serving the Kandake (Candace) of the “Aethiopians.” He is literate, reading the scroll of Isaiah, and undergoes baptism by Philip, making him the first Christian convert outside of Judea.
But who were the “Aethiopians”? In classical antiquity, Aethiopia did not mean modern country of Ethiopia. Greek and Roman sources such as Herodotus (Histories, Book II) and Ptolemy (Geography) used “Aethiopia” to describe the Upper Nile regions, citing cities of Meroë and Napata, in northern Sudan. The Kandake dynasty was historically documented in Meroitic inscriptions and Roman records as ruling the Kingdom of Kush.
This official was from Meroë, the Kush capital, where Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Nubian cultures intersected. His presence in the Bible isn’t about missionaries bringing the gospel into Africa. It shows Africans were already active in Jerusalem, already literate, and already engaging with scripture on their own terms.
Egypt: Birthplace of Doctrine and Monasticism
Egypt was not only home to one of the earliest Christian communities, but it also became a theological and institutional powerhouse.
Alexandria, founded by the Greeks but transformed by Copts, became the intellectual capital of early Christianity. The Catechetical School of Alexandria was the world’s oldest Christian theological academy. From it emerged giants like:
Athanasius of Alexandria, who defended the divinity of Christ at Nicaea (325 CE) and authored the Nicene Creed.
Clement of Alexandria and Origen, who pioneered biblical exegesis and Christian philosophy.
The Egyptian desert birthed the monastic movement, led by Saint Anthony the Great, who established eremitic (solitary) asceticism. This tradition spread to Palestine, Syria, Gaul, and Ireland, laying the spiritual foundations of European monasticism.
Furthermore, the Coptic Orthodox Church, founded around 42 CE, claims an unbroken tradition from Saint Mark, the gospel writer, to the present.
Carthage and the North African Latin Fathers
In Roman North Africa, Christianity flourished under Berber and Punic communities. The cities of Carthage, Hippo, and Cirta became hubs of early Christian theology and martyrdom.
Tertullian (c. 160–220 CE), often called the “Father of Latin Christianity,” coined terms like Trinity and developed the idea of original sin.
Cyprian of Carthage (d. 258 CE) was an early proponent of ecclesiastical unity and bishopric authority.
Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), born in present-day Algeria, became the most influential Christian philosopher in Western history, shaping Catholic and Protestant doctrines alike.
It is remarkable and rarely acknowledged that so much of what the Western world considers “European Christianity” was born on African soil, in African minds.
Axum: The World’s First Christian Empire?
The Kingdom of Axum, centered in modern Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, was a powerful Red Sea empire whose influence stretched into Yemen and the Arabian Peninsula.
In the 4th century, King Ezana declared Christianity the state religion, predating Constantine’s Edict of Thessalonica (380 CE). Ezana's coins were inscribed with crosses, making them the earliest Christian coinage in history.
Axumite inscriptions in Ge‘ez, Greek, and Sabaic reveal a multi-lingual, cosmopolitan state. Missionary exchanges occurred between Axum and Byzantium, and Axumite Christians sought refuge for Muhammad’s early followers during the Hijrah to Abyssinia. Axum’s basilicas and rock-hewn churches became architectural marvels, some of which like Lalibela, still stand today as active places of worship.
Christian Nubia: Africa’s Lost Kingdoms
By the 6th century, Christian Kingdoms emerged in Nubia: Nobatia, Makuria, and Alodia. They embraced Miaphysite Christianity, aligned with the Coptic Church.
Makuria, with its capital at Old Dongola, signed treaties with Muslim Egypt but maintained independence for over 600 years - longest peace treaty in medival history.
Faras Cathedral, now housed in the National Museum of Warsaw, contains frescoes of Black angels, Nubian bishops, and biblical scenes, among the oldest Christian murals in sub-Saharan Africa.
Christianity in Nubia persisted until the 14th–15th centuries, long after Europe had entered the medieval period.
These kingdoms offer a powerful counter-narrative to the idea that sub-Saharan Africa was disconnected from early Christianity. In fact, Nubian Christian theology, Old Nubian scripture, art, and liturgy flourished in local languages and regional styles.
Africa at the Heart of Biblical Geography
Long before Europe emerged in the biblical imagination, Africa specifically Cush was a recurring anchor in the sacred geography of the Hebrew Bible.
Cush (also spelled Kush) is mentioned more than 50 times across the Old and New Testaments. Biblical references include:
Genesis 2:13, Cush is one of the four rivers flowing from Eden (the Gihon “winds through the whole land of Cush”), placing it at the heart of creation itself.
Isaiah 18:1, “Woe to the land of whirring wings along the rivers of Cush,” describing a powerful and remote kingdom beyond the Nile.
Zephaniah 3:10, “From beyond the rivers of Cush my worshipers... will bring me offerings.”
Jeremiah 13:23, The famous rhetorical question, “Can the Cushite change his skin?”affirming the visibility and familiarity of African peoples to ancient Israelites.
Numbers 12:1, Moses marries a Cushite woman, a union that provokes controversy, showing the social entanglement between Israel and Africa.
This same kingdom produced figures like King Taharqa, a Nubian pharaoh of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty, who appears in 2 Kings 19:9 and Isaiah 37:9, leading a military campaign to defend Jerusalem from Assyrian invasion. His brother, King Shabaka (Sabacos), is known from Egyptian records and Greco-Roman sources (notably Strabo and Diodorus Siculus) as a Kushite king who ruled Egypt and was remembered for his justice and reforms. These rulers embody the height of African political power in the biblical era. Likewise, the Queen of Sheba, who visits Solomon in 1 Kings 10, likely ruled a wealthy incense-producing kingdom, referred in the Bible as descendent of Cush in Genesis 10:7. We also read in Antiquities 8.6.5, she is called queen of Egypt and ‘Aethiopia,’ the Greco-Roman translation for Cush.
This consistent biblical presence of Cush, its people, rivers, and rulers, underscores that Africa was not peripheral to the sacred narrative. It was embedded in its spiritual and geopolitical core. Africa is the only continent mentioned in both the Garden of Eden and in the early Christian expansion of the New Testament, a theological bookend affirming Africa’s sacred continuity.
From Jesus to “Christianity”: Different Beginning
According to leading scholars of early Christianity such as Bart D. Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, and Philip Jenkins, the earliest followers of Jesus did not describe themselves as “Christians,” nor did they practice what is now recognized as institutional Christianity. Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish teacher and reformer within the framework of Second Temple Judaism. His earliest disciples viewed him as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, not the founder of a new religion.
The term “Christian” (Greek: Christianoi) appears only three times in the New Testament (Acts 11:26; Acts 26:28; 1 Peter 4:16), and even then, it was often used by outsiders to describe the followers of “the Way.” It wasn’t until the mid-2nd century that the term gained widespread use, and not until the 4th century after Emperor Constantine’s conversion and the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) that Christianity became formalized as a state religion with creeds, hierarchies, and imperial backing.The official adoption of Christianity as state religion of the Roman Empire came later, with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 CE.
This is significant when considering Africa’s role. Early African Christians such as Copts of Egypt, the Orthodox Church of Axum, and the Nubian kingdoms, developed their expressions of faith long before the Vatican or Latin Christianity became dominant. As David W. Phillipson and Lois Farag have documented, these traditions emphasized different liturgical languages, ecclesiastical leadership, and theological emphases. For example, Coptic Christianity retained elements of ancient Egyptian spirituality, while Nubian Christianity developed a unique iconographic style distinct from both Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism.
By the time “Christianity” was coined and defined religion of empire, African communities had already helped shape its theology, monastic traditions, and moral frameworks, long before European institutions.
Colonial Erasure and the Rewriting of Origins
During the 19th Century colonial period, European missionaries arrived with the intent to “civilize” African populations often unaware that they were planting churches on the ruins of ancient Christian civilizations.
Colonial-era ethnographers dismissed indigenous Christian traditions as “heretical,” ignoring centuries of African theological development. Bible translations into African languages, done by Coptic and Ethiopian scribes centuries earlier, were disregarded in favor of new Western versions. This led to a double erasure: of both Africa’s Christian antiquity and its intellectual sovereignty. From the baptism of a Kushite official, to the doctrinal brilliance of Augustine and Athanasius, to the empires of Axum and Nubia, the Christian story is incomplete without Africa. It is time to recognize Africa as one of its earliest architects.
This article is not a comprehensive source of African Christian history. If interested to learn more, here is a reading list to get you started.
Books & Academic Works:
Jenkins, Philip. The Lost History of Christianity (HarperOne, 2008)
Binns, John. The Orthodox Church of Ethiopia: A History (I.B. Tauris, 2016)
Welsby, Derek. The Medieval Kingdoms of Nubia (British Museum Press, 2002)
Clark, Elizabeth A. The Origenist Controversy (Princeton University Press, 1992)
Phillipson, David. Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the Northern Horn (James Currey, 2012)
Ferguson, Everett. Church History: Volume One, From Christ to Pre-Reformation (Zondervan, 2013)
Shaw, Brent D. Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge University Press, 2011)
Adams, W.Y. Nubia: Corridor to Africa (Princeton University Press, 1977)
Holman, Susan R. The Hungry Are Dying: Beggars and Bishops in Roman Cappadocia (Oxford University Press, 2001) [context for North African asceticism]
Primary Sources (available in English translation):
The Confessions and City of God by Augustine
On the Incarnation by Athanasius
Apologeticus by Tertullian
Acts of the Apostles (Ch. 8)
Coinage of King Ezana (available through British Museum & National Museum of Ethiopia)
Online Academic Resources:
University of Khartoum Nubian Studies archives
Encyclopaedia Aethiopica (Hiob Ludolf Centre for Ethiopian Studies)
JSTOR articles on Coptic theology, Nubian archaeology, and Axumite epigraphy
Associates for Biblical Research (Biblical Places on Modern Maps)
Found: A Massive Medieval Cathedral From a Forgotten’ Nubian Kingdom
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