By Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, TGC. (photo: Ayesha Firdaus/Unsplash)
Over the past year or so, I’ve been noticing a pattern in the international stories I cover—wherever there’s a gospel-centered movement, there’s a new and growing Reformed book publisher. This is true whether the population can’t afford books, doesn’t often read, or is in a majority-Muslim culture.
“If Reformed theology is anything, it is a system,” said Joseph N., a theology professor in Egypt (he’s using a pseudonym for security purposes). “That’s why people like it—it just makes the most sense out of the Scriptures. So that takes time to think through and process. And I think books allow you to do that, more than even just hearing and then going away.”
Physical books allow you to underline, take notes, and wrestle through longer trains of thought. And studies show that students who read on paper consistently understand the material better than those who read on a screen.
“In God’s providence, there’s something about it,” said 10ofThose CEO Anthony Gosling. “Look at the library of Alexandria—what was that for? It was an effective and efficient way of passing on knowledge.”
The original library in Alexandria is known as the most famous and important in the ancient world. In Jesus’s time, it probably held more than half a million scrolls. Some of the world’s most influential scholars—think Euclid and Archimedes—learned and thought there.
Today, Alexandria is home to a small Reformed publisher called El-Soora, which has sprung up in conjunction with—you guessed it—a small but expanding movement of Reformed theology.
The Gospel Coalition talked with several church leaders who live and work with Christians in Alexandria. I asked about Christianity in Egypt, how Reformed theology began to grow there, and why anybody in Alexandria would need more books.