My sojourn in the North African nations of Algeria and Tunisia awakened an interest in Christian history. Why, I wondered, did Christianity fade from these regions where it grew so strongly in the early days of Christianity, where the church fathers once taught?

I visited ruins of ancient churches and pondered lines from a book I read: “The burden of history weighs . . . on remnant communities. What happened to their glory? Why was the good fight lost? Who were the strong of faith? Who were the weak? . . . Deserted cathedrals, abandoned monasteries, and a scattering of Christian villages in lands that were once the center of Christendom . . .” ( From an essay by Richard Bulliet in Conversion and Christianity, a collection of essays on Christian communities in early Islamic times, edited by Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi.)

The practice of Christianity for many Christians in these lands, even before the Muslim conquest, had become merely a cultural thing, a recognition of the state religion that Christianity had become. The eastern Roman empire (the one we call Byzantium) had amassed wealth and power, and these became the goals of its political and commercial leaders. Then Byzantium was vanquished by Islam, and Christianity declined in the lands which birthed it. From North Africa west of Egypt, it withered and disappeared. In Europe, however, a backwater of the world at that time, it matured.

Perhaps Christianity is always rising, falling, rising again, a picture of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.

Perhaps God cuts off his people when they move too far away from him, then gives his favor to more humble believers.