WW Chapter 10: The Worlds of Christendom

     We start off by being told the story of Yao Hong, who was cheated on early on in her marriage at approximately the age of twenty. We later on discover that she has adopted Christianity and goes on to explain how she wishes that China was more like the United States and Europe, in terms of the condition of the religion. 

     We are told that Christianity is something that millions upon millions of people have adopted in China. Surrounding areas also have significant communities where Christianity is practiced. Considering the fact that Christianity has been around for such a long time, I find it mind-blowing that China, along with the rest of Asia, has only barely adopted it as a religion.

     Arabia was the first place where Christianity first started to disintegrate. This is completely understandable since Arabia is where Islam originated from. Arabia was not the only place affected by this downward spiral that Christianity was heading down towards. Many regions in the Middle East and African churches felt the impact that was created by Islam. In fact, the effect was so severe to Christian communities, that Christianity was "virtually extinct". 

     However, Egypt was one of the rare places where Christianity was still reaching its peak by the time the Islam invasion began. As time went by, tensions grew in Egypt. In order to practice Christianity in small undercover groups, special taxes were paid to Muslim rulers.  However, during the mid-fourteenth century, things got out of hand. Churches were burned and Christians were moved out of, what people at the time regarded as, the best land. As a result of this horrific turn of events, many Christians at time converted to Islam. Coptic virtually died out and many of the newly converted Islamic peoples adopted the use of Arabic. Although many people were forced to convert from Christianity to Islam, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, Christians still accounted for ten percent of the Egyptian population.

     However, Christianity managed to make its way down towards the South of Africa through the help of Egyptian traders and missionaries - particularly in Nubia. It was during this time that the bible was translated into various different languages such as Nubian, Greek, and Arabic.

     This all leads to later in the chapter where we compare Western Civilization with the likes of Byzantium, China, India, and the entire Islamic worldwide phenomena. Europe fell behind in many different aspects of civilization such as technological advances, smaller populations and cities, as well as economies that were far too inferior to the East.