Telling the Story of Today: Frankopan’s “The Silk Roads”
“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”—Hamilton, the musical
After Alexander Hamilton’s death by duel with Aaron Burr, his wife, Eliza, spends the next fifty years cementing his legacy. She advocated for the building of the Washington Monument and founded the first private orphanage in New York City, in memory of her orphaned husband. At the close of the contemporary monumental musical, filled with non-white actors playing the founders of our nation, the above question is asked about identifying the gatekeepers of history. “Who tells your story?” We see that question being asked more and more with the world in upheaval and the center of gravity shifting.
The past five hundred years have been dominated by a world with a European navel. But the earth seems to be groaning in resistance to a linear storyline with Europe and 
European North America as the protagonist. Like Galileo’s heliocentric shift, how do we begin to adjust to a reality in which we are not the center of the universe? This is not a new question, but perhaps one that we white European/North Americans are only now beginning to painfully touch. The controversial historian, Howard Zinn, opened floodgates by giving voice and story to women, slaves, laborers, and other marginalized people; he challenged the conventional narrative that white male Americans were foundational to America’s success and moved us to consider the wider contributors into the American story, beyond what we traditionally were taught in classrooms. [1] Likewise, Tom Oden argues that early Christian theology was developed in Africa and expanded into Europe and beyond, rather than emerging first from Europe, as we commonly and mistakenly assume.[2]
Into this paradigm of historical gatekeepers, then, enters Peter Frankopan’s The Silk Roads: A New History of the World.[3] Frankopan convincingly suggests that we need to rethink the Eurocentric narrative that has dominated our historical perspective and driven our present-day unilateralism and Western jingoism: “What has been striking throughout the events of recent decades is the west’s lack of perspective about global history—about the bigger picture, the wider themes and the larger patterns” at play, especially in the Eastern Mediterranean/Western Asia region.[4] Throughout the extensive treatise, he guides us through the history of the region known as “the Silk Roads,” concluding with his observation that this area of the world is re-emerging as the epicenter of cultural and economic dominance. Indeed, “these lands have always been of pivotal importance in global history in one way or another, linking east and west, serving as a melting-pot where ideas, customs and languages have jostled with each other from antiquity to today.”[5]
By shifting the narrative away from a western-dominated history, Frankopan at once reminds us of our trivialness—like gazing into the Milky Way—and draws us into the bigger reality of multi-directional influence and a new (though ancient) locus of power.
In juxtaposition to that, however, lies the Church, the people of God. We are wise to listen to theologians like Oden and historians like Frankopan and recognize that the Church is not Eurocentric or American dominant (contra popular American religion). We should learn stories of the early Nestorian Christians in China, Thomas Christians in India, and the ancient Ethiopian church, and need to be reminded that the “Great Century” of European and North American missions, while important, is also only a piece of the bigger picture of God’s people at work. More importantly, though, unlike Frankopan’s thesis of the navel of the world shifting, Christianity has no geographic center. In his book chronicling the five 2010 world missionary conferences, Allen Yeh writes, “Christianity is the only religion in the world that has no one majority racial or ethnic group, and no geographical center—we have no Mecca or Varanasi or Jerusalem or Salt Lake City because the temple of the Holy Spirit is God’s people.”[6] Indeed, the move of the Holy Spirit in the people of God is “polycentric and polydirectional.”[7]
How do we tell our story? How do we understand history? When we consider influence to be unidirectional, we miss the webs connecting us.[8] When we limit our history to the era of our own national dominance, we miss the ebb and flow of power. And when we see our faith as only a present reality, we miss the movement of the Holy Spirit from everywhere to everywhere.
[1] Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492-2001 (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
[2] Thomas Oden, How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2007).
[3] Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (New York: Vintage Books, 2017).
[4] Frankopan, 492.
[5] Ibid., 495.
[6] Allen Yeh, Polycentric Missiology: Twenty-first Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 2016) 215.
[7] Ibid., 216.
[8] “We do history and the human experience a disservice if we follow a linear, teleological narrative through time, imagining it to be unidirectional or neatly boxed. Across time and space we are all connected; we all rise and fall. Globalisation might be voguish, but it is not new.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/what-to-read/the-silk-roads-by-peter-frankopan-review/
About the Author
Katy Drage Lines
In God’s good Kingdom, some minister like trees, long-standing, rooted in a community. They embody words of Wendell Berry, “stay years if you would know the genius of the place.” Others, however, are called to go. Katy is one of those pilgrims. A global nomad, Katy grew up as a fifth generation Colorado native, attended college & seminary and was ordained in Tennessee, married a guy from Pennsylvania, ministered for ten years in Kenya, worked as a children’s pastor in a small church in Kentucky, and served college students in a university library in Orange County, California. She recently moved to the heart of America, Indianapolis, and has joined the Englewood Christian Church community, serving with them as Pastor of Spiritual Formation. She & her husband Kip, have two delightful boys, a college junior and high school junior.7 responses to “Telling the Story of Today: Frankopan’s “The Silk Roads””
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I agree, Katy. And let’s not forget we were just in South Africa. I don’t know how soon Christianity originally reached them but we do know that the Dutch and the British brought their influence.
How exciting it was to worship the same Father in the name of our same Jesus in the power of the same Holy Spirit with AN AFRICAN SETTING. Your Allen Yeh quotes are very pertinent. So, I resonate with Chip here too. Jesus is the true center.
I liked this summary statement: “When we limit our history to the era of our own national dominance, we miss the ebb and flow of power.” Very true. At the advance, I just kept pondering how much segregation continually exists in the church and how to invite an integrated culture where we can be enriched by each other. Any ideas?
I would defer to someone like Pablo on inviting an integrated culture into the church. While I have been and am currently in congregations that are “bi-cultural”, we have not yet been able to truly be integrated (“separate but equal” is more the reality). What I will say from listening to him is that those who come to the church need to be interested in integrating; this is often the 2nd or 3rd generation of immigrants, not their parents. (And in America, we’re also dealing– or not, usually– with centuries of baggage between white and black churches). But everyone also has to be willing to “give up” some of what makes them comfortable about their understanding of a church, as well. It’s not simply about being “enriched” by each other, but changed as well. 🙂
Well spoken/written and good advice Katy: “We are wise to listen to theologians like Oden and historians like Frankopan…” We are wise to listen to a full range of stories and historical analysis, especially at this level of study. It can only broaden our understanding of who God is and his work in the history of our world. Great post Katy!
Yes Katy there is a beautiful web that connects us. We must not have a unidirectional approach to understanding or sharing history. To only see it through human eyes, we only see in part. We miss out on being able to see the activity of the Holy Spirit in the world from the beginning of time until today.
Katy,
Your blog on faith was interesting. I was left with a little confusion could you expand on this statement a little more
“when we see our faith as only a present reality, we miss the movement of the Holy Spirit from everywhere to everywhere.”
First, as a historian, I love Zinn (love is actually not the right word, as so much of what he shares is hard to hear/read/process), but I am very appreciative and highly value what he shares.
Second, as I read your blog, and your central question of ‘who tells your story?’ I kept thinking of the phrase, ‘History is written by the victors.’
In fact, I have been thinking about that phrase a lot as we read this book and as race has again become a central talking point in our national conversations.
On the one hand, Silk Roads is trying to re-write (or maybe better, fully illuminate) the incomplete history of the victors written over the last millennium.
On the other hand, I think of the story that has been told, and largely accepted about the reasons for the civil war and the Jim Crow era after the war…. where the history, to an extremely large extent has been written by the ‘losing’ side.