One of the great challenges missionaries from America face is the widespread misperception that Christianity is a western religion that only makes sense to people from western cultures. Many people in the majority world view Christianity as inherently linked to western imperialism and the oppressive practices that flowed from the dominance of the western European nations in the 16th-20th centuries. Differentiating the gospel from the distortions originating in western nations is a crucial challenge to any who want to see all people groups come to Jesus.

At times, Christians in the western countries still inadvertently enhance the belief that Christianity is merely a western religion by acting as if the birthplace and headquarters of the church are in the nations bordering the North Atlantic. In particular, American churches and mission agencies sometimes think and act like God has placed the American church in the lead role of global Christianity and use our money in controlling ways to impose a western form on believers everywhere. This is neither Christian nor in touch with the global reality of the church today.

While Christianity became and remained a dominant force in the western world for a long time, it is so no longer. Today the strength of the church is outside the west. Beyond the shift in numerical strength, I would argue that Christianity is not western in origin or nature.

There were a lot of people present when Jesus was born or who found their way into his birth stories, but none of them were westerners, except for possibly some of the soldiers sent by Herod to kill the babies of Bethlehem. Jesus was not born in Europe but in western Asia. The culture of Jesus’ birth was middle eastern and very ill at ease with their European (Roman) overlords, whom they viewed as oppressive, unclean outsiders. Neither Mary, Joseph, nor the shepherds or anyone else present for Jesus’ birth were western by any stretch. Even the wise men who came to worship him were from the east (today Iran). They were Persians from Asia.

Jesus’ people had African ancestry but no European ancestry. Remember, the two most powerful tribes of north Israel were Ephraim and Manasseh. They were not sons of Jacob, but sons of Joseph adopted by Jacob and elevated to the place of tribe leaders. Joseph’s wife and these boys’ mother was an African woman—an Egyptian. Two of twelve tribes had African roots. Israel had a 400-year African history. Israel was in Africa for about as long as Africans have been in North America. Israel became a nation in Africa before they possessed a land of their own in Asia.

As a baby, Jesus also went to Africa as an at-risk refugee pursued by a jealous King serving the European (Roman) empire. Jesus went to Africa, but he never went to Europe. The gospel went to Ethiopia before Greece (Africa before Europe). Africa was part of the story of God’s people from the start. Even Abraham went to Africa, but never to Europe.

As the gospel expanded, it did not just go west to Europe (as is chronicled in the Book of Acts to show how the true King Jesus would overtake the empire of Rome), but it went in every direction. The church in the east and middle east was powerful for over 1000 years. The intellectual center of Christianity in the first five centuries was in North Africa. Alexandria and Carthage were two of the five major intellectual strongholds of Christian faith, and the theology developed there profoundly shaped the entire church, especially in Europe. While Islam came along and conquered and suppressed Christianity in the east, starting 600 years after Jesus, and the western church got cut off from the eastern church in the second thousand years of church history, the eastern church continued to be dynamic for many centuries.

As products of the western church in the United States, we have forgotten the larger history of the global church, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t always been there. There are still rich insights and blessings to be found in the eastern expressions of Christian faith that are no more corrupted than the western traditions of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.

Why does this matter? Because for us to understand the fullness of the gospel and live it out well today, we need to hear God’s Word from multiple perspectives and free the church from its captivity to western culture in our nation. Muslim background believers (MBBs) read scripture from a cultural mindset which is closer to that of the early Christians than those of us from the western nations. So do most Africans and Asians. At MRN, we learn much by asking global leaders who have known Jesus for many years and MBB’s who are just coming to know him what they see and hear in Christian scriptures.

Westerners view Christian faith from a guilt-innocence cultural mindset. But the Bible was written in cultures shaped more by cultures of honor-shame and power–fear. There are vast treasures of insight and strength available to us if we are willing to rediscover our own Bibles with fresh eyes. Many of the intellectual cul-de-sacs and spiritual dead ends we experience in the western church have escape routes from eastern and southern Christian perspectives. It is time we humbled ourselves and learned from our global brothers and sisters.

This also matters because 70% of the church today is in the majority world. They contain the majority of the church’s workforce and have a dynamic quality to their faith, often missing in the decadent west. We need to learn from them, submit to the wisdom God has given them, and learn to partner with them from a servant position in God’s global mission. The western church has its treasures and its baggage. We want to keep and share the former and repent of and jettison the latter. But until we get past the idea that Christianity is a western religion and that we are the headquarters of the Kingdom of God, we will not be able to fully engage God’s mission as he desires.

In summary, there is no basis for claiming Christianity is a western or European religion today. It should never have been seen that way. We will all be better off when we treasure and utilize all the treasure of all parts of the Kingdom of God for the global expansion of God’s reign.

Interested in exploring more on this topic? Click “Recommended Reading” for a list of recommended books.

Is Christianity a Western Religion?