A History of the North African Church

It is worthwhile to consider the history of the North African Church. Islamic leaders would have us believe that North Africa has from the beginning been Muslim. This is not true. Judaism reached North Africa well before the time of Christ. Phoenician traders were sailing the entire length of the Mediterranean Sea from at least the time of Moses. While in Kabylia, we saw Kabyle written in Phoenician characters proving cultural exchanges between the peoples of Algeria and the Holy Lands. The story of Jonah is an example of a 9th century BC Jew using a Phoenician ship to reach the western Mediterranean. There is ample archeological evidence that more successful missionaries took Judaism to the region prior to Christ’s birth.

The Roman Empire opened the region up to the Gospel. Cyrene, in Libya, is prominent in the story of Christianity. Simon of Cyrene, a North African, carried the cross. We all know the story of Peter and Cornelius. This took place in about 40AD. The Gospel, however, was not preached to Gentiles until about 43AD. According to Acts 11:19-21, Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews. Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord. The implications here are great! North Africans helped found the church at Antioch and had the vision to preach to Gentiles. A few years later, this church sent out Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and their teams to take the Gospel to Europe and by extension to America, Africa, and the rest of the world. North Africans had a major role in the spread of the Gospel.

In the early centuries of the Church, North Africans were prominent. Tertullian, who coined the terms Old Testament and New Testament and gave us a deep understanding of the Trinity (he coined this term as well) lived in Tunesia. Augustine of Hippo, one of the acknowledged pillars of the church, was an Algerian Berber. North Africa was a hotbed of Christianity.

So what happened? How could Christianity go from flourishing in the 4th century to almost unknown in the 7th century? North Africa was Vandalized! Seriously, when the Roman Empire fell to barbarians in the 5th century, the Vandals took North Africa. They brought Arianism, a heresy that denies the deity of Christ, to the region. By the 7th century, the church was all but dead. When the Arabs invaded in the late 7th century, the religious vacuum was filled by Islam.

The first real effort to take Christianity back to North Africa was made by the Spanish missionary Raymond Lull who made trips into the region between 1291 and 1315. On his last trip, the Muslims he was attempting to reach with the Gospel stoned him in the port city of Bejaia. Lull was the first European Christian to seriously attempt evangelization of the Muslim world. He founded schools to educate missionaries in Arabic and Islam. He also wrote books on Christianity for a Muslim audience. Sadly, the idea of reaching out to Muslims was abandoned after his death.

It wasn’t until the late 19th century that Protestant missions started working in North Africa.  As of today, only one ethnic group in western North Africa, the Kabyle Berber tribe, has a reproducing indigenous church.  For the first time in almost 1400 years, there is a reached people group in the region.