Tunisia, where I lived for three years, is full of Roman ruins. A small country in North Africa, Tunisia is home to the site of ancient Carthage. Throughout millennia, Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, and French arrived, conquered for a while, and left their imprint. One gains the impression that every stone in the country has been used many times over for the buildings of each civilization. The Roman ones, however, are especially impressive.

Many of the church fathers, Augustine among them, at one time lived in Carthage and other parts of North Africa. Augustine wrote his famous City of God while serving as bishop of Hippo in what is now Algeria, a neighbor to Tunisia. He died there as barbarian Vandals besieged his city, harbinger of yet another conqueror.

Tunisia has a long history both of Rome’s rule and early Christian communities. Drive up into the hills of northern Tunisia and you will see the ruins of both. Visit Dugga, a Roman town. You can wander on the paved streets, study mosaics still visible in villas of rich Romans, and marvel at the still magnificent walls of temples to various Roman deities. On a little hillside of the town are the ruins of an early Christian church.

Neither the Roman temples nor the Christian church have adherents today. Shepherds herd their sheep through the ruins. Wind whistles around the fallen stones of temples and church alike.

Wandering through the site, I wondered when the last Christian had worshiped in the little church. Christianity disappeared from North Africa, except for Egypt, sometime during Europe’s Middle Ages. As one author put it, the descendants of the Christians now are Muslims.

At its beginning, Christianity passed from Jerusalem to the rest of the Roman Empire, to Europe and Russia, even China, finally to North and South America and Australia and the uttermost parts of the earth. Along the way, however, it receded in some regions, including the region which birthed it.

Christendom’s long reign in Europe appears to be over. Though the great cathedrals are not yet ruins, they no longer appear centers of a vibrant faith.

In North America, Christianity has lost much of its influence. The nonreligious segment of the population appears to be the fastest growing. The center of Christianity heads southward to Africa and South America and eastward to Asia.

Over time, the cultural Christians of North Africa left the religion of their ancestors and joined the dominant Muslim religion. So, too, may the cultural Christians of North America join the dominant religion of the “nonreligious,” unless Christians create true resurrection communities. True Christians are subversives in any culture of materialism and self-aggrandizement.