Far from being a European religion, Christianity's origins were in the Mideast, a place far from Europe but just next door to Egypt and North Africa. Jesus himself was a Jew brought up in Nazareth. It wasn’t until some 15 years after Jesus' death that the Gospel first reached Europe. Long before Christianity was established in Northern Europe there were already large and important Christian communities in North Africa. Church history tells of many first-rate Christian thinkers who were Africans. At the present time there are millions of Christians all round the world who are not white men. We should therefore oppose vigorously this false impression that Christianity belongs to the Europeans.