Crumbs from the Table

On the day of Pentecost, among the many nations present were "Parthians and Medes and Elamites and dwellers in Mesopotamia." Eusebius traced missionary work in what was Parthia to the Apostle Thomas. Another arguably less reliably tradition is that of Addai of Edessa.  There is hard evidence of Christians in what was by then the Sasanian Empire around 233, namely the Domus Ecclesiae (house-converted-into-a-church) at Dura Europos . In second half of the third century, there was a bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon by the name of " Papa/Pappa ". During this Sasanid period (dating from 224), the Church spread throughout the Persian Empire. The churches used the Syriac language.  A representative of the church in the Sasanian Empire was present at the 325 Council of Nicea, and was called " John of Persia ". There was a 40-year persecution lasting 339 to 379 under Shapur II (309–79). One contemporary Christian whose writings record these events was the theologian ...

The Croatian people originally lived in the Carpathian region (W. Ukraine) and in the early 600s migrated to their present homeland in the Balkans on the eastern coast of the Adriatic sea. They were evangelised and baptised by priests from Rome in the 600s, and therefore became part of the Latin-speaking western Catholic church centred in Rome (as opposed to the eastern Orthodox church with its headquarters at Constantinople). The initial "conversion" of the Croats probably focused on the elite, and it was only during the course of later phases of Christianisation that the Croats were fully Christianised. Reorganisation of church jurisdictions under the Franks brought the Croatian church under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchal see of Aquileia.  Croatia became a kingdom in 925 and fought wars with Bulgaria. Croatia reached its height under king Petar Kresimir IV (1058-1074/5). In the 1102, Croatia and Hungary were ruled by the Hungarian king Coloman. Croatia was invaded by t...

Cambodia is a land-locked country in south east Asia which borders Vietnam to the East and Thailand to the West. The traditional form of religion is the Theravada branch of Buddhism.  The first recorded Christian missionary contact with Cambodia was in 1555/6 by a Portuguese Roman Catholic missionary and member of the Dominican Order called Gas par Da Cruz. He is said to have only baptised one convert who died shortly afterwards.  Later, Cambodia was under French colonial rule (1863 to 1953), but the Christian church made little impact. Those who were Catholic believers were mainly of Vietnamese heritage.   The first Protestant missionary contact came in 1923 with missionaries from the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The New Testament and later the whole Bible were translated by 1954. (The Cambodian language belongs to the Austro-Asiatic language family, the same language family as Vietnamese.)   The evangelical church saw some growth in the period ...

Since the earliest days, the church has worked to fulfil the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. The work of mission continued throughout the centuries. The western Catholic church converted the Franks, Irish, Angles and Saxons, other continental Germanic peoples (Thuringians etc.), Norsemen, Slavs and eventually the peoples of the Baltic. The last pagans in Europe were the Lithuanians who converted in 1386. Even during the 1300s, when the Western Catholic church was in disarray, there were bold missions in Central Asia (eg Azerbaijan), India, to the Mongols and in China. A leading missionary was John of Montecorvino (d. 1328). Across the Mediterranean, brave monks risked their lives to preach the gospel to Muslims in North Africa. The Eastern Orthodox church headquartered at Constantinople likewise missionised its neighbours over many centuries, including Goths, Arabs, Persians, Bulgars, Slavs, Mongols and Lithuanians. The missionary work of the non-Chalcedonia...

The Roman Empire never reached Ireland. Partly for that reason, neither did the Christian gospel, until the 5th century when first Palladius, and later Patrick were sent as missionaries to the people of Ireland, known as Gaels or Scoti .  I have told the story of Patrick elsewhere, but suffice it to say that, born in a Christian family in Britain (his father was a deacon), Patrick was taken captive by Irish pirates and spent many years held against his will before escaping and eventually ending up in what is now France, studying at Auxerre. Patrick was called by God to bring the gospel to his former captors, and the conversion of Ireland to Christianity is associated with him.  At that time, Ireland had few if any cities, and the backbone of the Irish church was the monastic movement with a network of monasteries in places such as Foyle (near Derry/Londonderry) and Bangor. In the year 563 a young monk called Columba ( Colum Cille ), left the monastery at Foyle (near Derry) and...