Quote:
Originally Posted by Bredder Tukoma
Once in North Africa, Christianity spread slowly West from Alexandria and East to Ethiopia. Truth23 wrote 'Through North Africa, Christianity was embraced as the religion of dissent against the expanding Roman Empire. In the 4th century AD the Ethiopian King Ezana made Christianity the kingdom's official religion. In 312 Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.'
Actually your European sources do not accurately describe the history correctly.
Exiled Egyptians: the heart of Africa - Google Books ( read especially from page 91)
In 312 CE Christianity was made the official religion of the Roman empire. The Romans ruled Egypt at the time. A short time later the Roman empire split. Egypt became part of the Byzantine Empire from 323 CE. Constantine's declaration to make Christianity the official religion of the empire had two immediate effects on Egypt:
Firstly it allowed the church to enhance the organisation of its administrative structure and to aquire considerable wealth.
Secondly it allowed Christian fanatics to destroy the native Egyptians religious rights, properties and temples.
Here a few examples of the Christian rampage in Egypt.
During a visit to Egpyt in 385 CE Maternus Cynegius, closed the ancient Egyptian temples and forbade sacrifices to Min-Amen.
When Theophilus was made Patriarch of Alexandrai in 391CE he displayed tremondous zeal in destroying ancient Egyptian temples. A wave of destruction swept over the land of Egypt. Tombs were ravaged, walls of ancient monuments scraped, and staues toppled.
In addition to the violation of ancient Egyptian temples the fanatic christians adopted a new script called the Coptic language - basically demotic Egyptian written in Greek characters...
There was unrest and riots, short of civil war in the Delta. The Egyptian refugees at Ta-Apet (Thebes) were active against this virulent bigotry; and frequently attacked the Byzantine strongholds in western oases and Upper Egypt.
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Wherever christianity has appeared in Africa it has resulted in destruction of peoples culture/history and political autonomy.
We haven't even started to talk about King Ezana and his destruction of Meroe the last capital of Kush. The amount of ancient scientific knowledge, architecture, and human history that has been lost in Africa because of Christians /prior to European contact is a tragedy.
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My solemn point is the fact that Europeans didn't bring christianity to africa as most have adopted into their ideologies, rather the fact of the matter is that christianity has been in africa prior to european contact. Furthermore *bredder* What you have layed out here is history mostly pertaining to the *Roman empire*...Now before you could use the touch of a mouse and pen down this which you call knowledge there was a man way before your life time that saw the Might of the Roman empire...I believe his name was Daniel...his dream is found somewhere Between
"DAN 2:31 & 45"...in the dream Daniel saw the Roman empire typified as the legs and feet. But wherein the former kingdoms were typified as pure minerals (pure gold, silver and brass) this last empire was pure iron only in the legs, for when it came to the feet it was a mixture of iron and clay, and mineral and soil. The Roman Empire of iron signifyed power and great destructive force against opposition & was to be made of two main divisions. The empire split into two-East and West. Both were very powerful, crushing all before them. Rome took on a new face when Constantine joined church and state and backed the union by force. After the Nicene Council the power of political Rome to the church seemed unstoppable, the name Christian, which originally brought persecution, now became the name of the persecutors. It was this age that "Augustine Hippo (354-430) set forth that the church ought and MUST use force if necessary and that it was in Harmony with the Word of God to kill the Heretics and apostates. Many have done horrible things in The name Of God....presenting themselves as christians...just because someone says that they are something doesn't mean it is true....it's called freewill and ones own interest...