Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_005
R. Barreto
‘World Christianity’ has become a buzz word in the past few decades, contrasting Eurocentric perspectives that portray Christianity as a ‘Western’ religion.1 As a world religion, Christianity presents itself as border-crossing, finding a home equally within multiple cultures, and between them. World Christianity refers, then, to both a field of study and a movement.2 As a field of study, it explores the ‘worldwide’ nature of Christianity, paying attention to both the distinctiveness of Christian experiences in different cultural contexts and the relationships among them. Since the beginning of the twentieth century scholars noticed that the presence of Christianity in all six continents granted it the de facto status of a world religion.3 That global presence, however, should not be understood as a static phenomenon. In the past century, and more emphatically in the past fifty years, World Christianity experienced a drastic demographic shift, undergoing an astounding numeric growth in the global south, especially in Africa, in contrast with dwindling numbers and decreasing public influence in the North Atlantic, the cradle of modern Christianity (Sanneh 2005: 3–18). Scholars such as Andrew Walls (2002) and Lamin Sanneh (2003), among others, noticed that this most recent drastic demographic shift was reshaping the manifestation of Christian faith in the contemporary world, noting that the “world-Christian turn” (Kollman 2014) had sweeping cultural implications.
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Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_010
D. Pratt
Interreligious dialogue and the promotion of interfaith relations is a feature of our times. During the twentieth century, global Christianity—as represented in an ecumenical sense by the Vatican and World Council of Churches (WCC)— reached a position wherein, initially, interreligious dialogue, subsequently also ‘interfaith relations’ to reflect a broader scope and agenda, became affirmed and embraced. This has been in no small measure due to the rising influence of Asian and African Christian leadership and engagement during the 20th century in respect of both the Vatican (e.g. Cardinal Francis Arinze) and the WCC (e.g. M.M. Thomas, Paul Devanandan, Wesley Ariarajah). In recent decades the term ‘World Christianity’ has come into vogue, almost eclipsing the term ‘ecumenical Christianity’ as the referent for world-wide Christianity. Whereas ecumenism—or the ecumenical movement—arose out of early 20th century ecclesial motivations to address questions of Christian mission and unity, the relative innovation of the ‘World Christianity’ appellation tends to transcend even the inclusiveness of ecumenism, at least in terms of institutional expression. It highlights the transcendental character of catholicity—that urgrund inclusivity that is a mark of what it means to be ‘members one of another’. All Christians everywhere, together form one vast global community, at least in some ideal sense. It is more than ecclesia; it finds a parallel in the Islamic notion of Muslims forming a single ummah. Building on Henry van Dusen’s conceptualisation of World Christianity as a quest to promote Christian mission and unity (Robert 2009), this contribution considers World Christianity to indicate this consciousness of belonging to a worldwide Christian oikoumene and sees the World Council of Churches and the Vatican, being “two extensive networks that knit together Christians from various parts of the world” (Cabrita and Maxwell 2017: 31), as key institutions that promote such a consciousness. Within this Christian oikumene there has been an increasing consciousness about ‘the religious other’ and about the
宗教间对话和促进宗教间关系是我们这个时代的特征。在二十世纪，全球基督教——以梵蒂冈和世界基督教协进会(WCC)的大公主义意义为代表——达到了这样一种地位:最初，宗教间对话，随后，反映更广泛范围和议程的“宗教间关系”，得到了肯定和接受。这在很大程度上是由于20世纪亚洲和非洲基督教在梵蒂冈(如红衣主教弗朗西斯·阿里泽)和世界基督教协进会(如M.M.托马斯、保罗·德瓦南丹、韦斯利·阿里阿拉贾)方面的领导和参与的影响力不断上升。近几十年来，“世界基督教”一词开始流行起来，几乎使“普世基督教”一词黯然失色，成为全球基督教的代名词。然而，普世主义——或普世运动——起源于20世纪早期教会的动机，以解决基督教使命和团结的问题，“世界基督教”称谓的相对创新倾向于超越普世主义的包容性，至少在制度表达方面。它突出了天主教的超越性——迫切的包容性，这是“彼此的成员”的标志。世界各地的基督徒聚集在一起，形成了一个巨大的全球社区，至少在某种理想意义上是这样。它不仅仅是教会;它在伊斯兰教中发现了一个类似的概念，即穆斯林形成一个单一的乌玛。在Henry van Dusen将世界基督教概念化为促进基督教使命和团结的追求(Robert 2009)的基础上，这一贡献认为世界基督教表明了这种属于全球基督教集体的意识，并将世界教会协会和梵蒂冈视为“两个广泛的网络，将来自世界各地的基督徒联系在一起”(Cabrita and Maxwell 2017: 31)，作为促进这种意识的关键机构。在这个基督教世界中，有一种关于“宗教他者”的意识在不断增强
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Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_013
P. V. Geest
Being understood as a phenomenon, World Christianity implicitly has a long tradition. It is true: the striving for a consensus partum (or consensus quinquesaecularis), already noticeable in the Decretum Gratiani (a synthesis of canon law which consist for about thirty percent of patristic texts), shows the need for certainty and convenient arrangement where matters of faith and church discipline are concerned in the Middle Ages. Little account was taken of 1) their attention for the multicultural pluriformity of Christian communities and their agents 2) the correlations and interference between their ‘theological’ expressions and the historical and philosophical mainstreams. In this contribution I am going to expound these attention for the multicultural pluriformity in the works of Augustine particularly by interpreting his definition of ‘heresia’. As will be shown his definition offers more room for the diversity of expressions of Christian life and faith than can be deduced from the synthesis of his works by later interpreters.
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Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_015
Martha Frederiks, D. Nagy
Nemere Kerezsi’s artwork In the apiary depicted on the cover of this book encapsulates several of the features that we as editors consider distinctive for a World Christianity approach. It epitomizes simultaneity of difference and balances uniqueness and connectedness in such a way that each geometric form is both distinct and complete, and a constitutive part of a larger entity. The fluid transitions between the forms project togetherness and oneness, yet there is no apparent center. To us, In the apiary represents a conceptual design that visualizes some of the fundamental theoretical ideas of a World Christianity approach. This World Christianity approach is still very much ‘in the making’. Frederiks in this volume tentatively sketches some of the contours of such an approach from a religious studies perspective, stating that it
{"title":"Methodological Considerations: Convergences","authors":"Martha Frederiks, D. Nagy","doi":"10.1163/9789004444867_015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004444867_015","url":null,"abstract":"Nemere Kerezsi’s artwork In the apiary depicted on the cover of this book encapsulates several of the features that we as editors consider distinctive for a World Christianity approach. It epitomizes simultaneity of difference and balances uniqueness and connectedness in such a way that each geometric form is both distinct and complete, and a constitutive part of a larger entity. The fluid transitions between the forms project togetherness and oneness, yet there is no apparent center. To us, In the apiary represents a conceptual design that visualizes some of the fundamental theoretical ideas of a World Christianity approach. This World Christianity approach is still very much ‘in the making’. Frederiks in this volume tentatively sketches some of the contours of such an approach from a religious studies perspective, stating that it","PeriodicalId":40931,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85791248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_014
S. John
It is 9:00 a.m. on Friday morning, the official day of worship in many Muslim countries. Migrant workers and their families arrive in the hundreds to the Heavenly Feast worship service in Jleeb Al-Shuyouk, Kuwait, locally called Abbassiya, the enclave of Malayalee immigrants in Kuwait. This is one of the fastest growing churches in Kerala and in Kuwait. Men and women, youth and children, fill the 500-seat auditorium quickly. The worship leader, who is a young man in his twenties wearing jeans and a T-shirt accompanied by an electronic keyboard, leads the congregation in song. The multi-layered sounds from the keyboard make it seem as though there is an entire orchestra hidden behind the curtains. The majority of churches in Kuwait worships on the National Evangelical Church of Kuwait compound located in Kuwait City which functions as the official and legitimate place of worship. Because of the limitation of space on the compound, scores of churches meet in basements, hotels, villas, schools, and auditoriums such as the one I am visiting today. The auditorium fills with the sound of audience’s clapping along to popular worship songs sung in many of the Pentecostal churches in Kerala. The service is almost entirely in Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerala, interspersed with English phrases and worship songs. Throughout, the worship leader encourages the audience to shake hands with their neighbors with instructions for declarations such as, “I am going to be blessed today.” The worship medley of more than ten hymns strung together flows from one song to the next, interspersed with shouts of “Hallelujahs.” About an hour into the singing, the pastor comes on the stage. He appears to be in his late thirties, wears a short sleeve shirt and dark trousers, and continues to lead the congregation in the singing. He declares victory and deliverance over evil spirits, specifically calling out spirits of suicide and addictions. He goes on to declare, “We will see even greater things ... we will fill this hall, we will fill a stadium full of people. We will have worship in every language in Kuwait!” A spirit of expectation and anticipation is palpable in the room.
{"title":"The Rise of ‘New Generation’ Churches in Kerala Christianity","authors":"S. John","doi":"10.1163/9789004444867_014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004444867_014","url":null,"abstract":"It is 9:00 a.m. on Friday morning, the official day of worship in many Muslim countries. Migrant workers and their families arrive in the hundreds to the Heavenly Feast worship service in Jleeb Al-Shuyouk, Kuwait, locally called Abbassiya, the enclave of Malayalee immigrants in Kuwait. This is one of the fastest growing churches in Kerala and in Kuwait. Men and women, youth and children, fill the 500-seat auditorium quickly. The worship leader, who is a young man in his twenties wearing jeans and a T-shirt accompanied by an electronic keyboard, leads the congregation in song. The multi-layered sounds from the keyboard make it seem as though there is an entire orchestra hidden behind the curtains. The majority of churches in Kuwait worships on the National Evangelical Church of Kuwait compound located in Kuwait City which functions as the official and legitimate place of worship. Because of the limitation of space on the compound, scores of churches meet in basements, hotels, villas, schools, and auditoriums such as the one I am visiting today. The auditorium fills with the sound of audience’s clapping along to popular worship songs sung in many of the Pentecostal churches in Kerala. The service is almost entirely in Malayalam, the language spoken in Kerala, interspersed with English phrases and worship songs. Throughout, the worship leader encourages the audience to shake hands with their neighbors with instructions for declarations such as, “I am going to be blessed today.” The worship medley of more than ten hymns strung together flows from one song to the next, interspersed with shouts of “Hallelujahs.” About an hour into the singing, the pastor comes on the stage. He appears to be in his late thirties, wears a short sleeve shirt and dark trousers, and continues to lead the congregation in the singing. He declares victory and deliverance over evil spirits, specifically calling out spirits of suicide and addictions. He goes on to declare, “We will see even greater things ... we will fill this hall, we will fill a stadium full of people. We will have worship in every language in Kuwait!” A spirit of expectation and anticipation is palpable in the room.","PeriodicalId":40931,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85047678","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_007
J. Lee, C. Chow
To stage a meaningful dialogue between China area studies and Christianity worldwide, this chapter draws on the changing landscape of Chinese Christianities to reframe certain parameters and norms in the study of global Christian movements. By focusing on the interplay between global religious forces and local conditions, this chapter argues that the Chinese concern about global-local church ties is largely defined by the very question of churchstate relations. The voices and narratives of Chinese Christians throw light on their own understanding of the global Christian body and on their ongoing struggles to define an authentic religious identity in a state-centric society. The existing debate about what constitutes Christianity in China is fraught with two misconceptions. First, there has been a tendency to define an indigenous church against Euro-American missionary Christianity. This nationalistic narrative of Christianity in China was derived from the post-1949 ideological environment, where separating the ties between Chinese and global churches has been a political agenda of the Communist state. Second, Christian groupings in China are diverse and fragmentary. Analytical terms like ‘Chinese Christianity’ and ‘popular Christianity’ are too simplistic and ignore many transnational, intra-/inter-church boundaries arising from doctrinal, liturgical and political disagreements. Today most of the missionary-founded churches such as the Anglicans, Baptists, Presbyterians and Seventh-day Adventists as well as indigenous movements like Watchman Nee’s Little Flock and the True Jesus Church, and recently, some zealous Christian groups like The Church of Almighty God, have not only survived persecution but also become an integral part of global Christianity, exporting their own doctrines and faith practices worldwide. To locate China’s rich and diverse Christian experience within the broader landscape of Christianity, this chapter proposes an alternative way to rewriting the state-centered church history. It shows that the Chinese Protestant expressions of Christianity took root in resistance to
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Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_011
L. V. Liere
On January 15 2015, a video was posted on the internet by Al-Hayat Media Center, showing the beheading of twenty-one men (Schnellmann.org). The video was claimed by Islamic State’s “Tripoli Province”, a group allied to Islamic State, and addressed to “the nation of the cross”. Political and religious leaders responded with shock and abhorrence. In the video, the twenty-one men were presented as “people of the cross, followers of the hostile Coptic Church”. One of the killers explained that the captives were murdered as a revenge for the suffering of members of the Muslim community in Egypt. Responses to the atrocity, from Egypt as well as from Europe and the US, appealed to religious ideas of unity and solidarity. These ‘frames’ were particularly set through interpretations that were spread on the Internet. In this chapter, I will show how these interpretations played an important role in constructing frames of global religious connectivities. Attention for translocal connectivities is considered a key feature of a World Christianity approach as outlined elsewhere in this volume. This contribution illustrates connectivities and dynamics of incorporation forged through discourse and shows that such connectivities can be construed by agents both from within and outside the Christian tradition(s). By using the word ‘frame’ I refer to a set of convictions and related practices that evolves through selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration and promote a causal interpretation between events, and a moral evaluation of these events (McCombs 2004: 89). Starting with a contextualization of the above-mentioned video this article seeks to make clear that information technologies play a significant role in the development of these frames that use well-worn Christian theological concepts with deep historical roots like ‘the baptism of blood’ and ‘martyrdom’ as vivid building blocks to stress a world-wide connectivity and solidarity that support a
{"title":"Conquering Rome: Constructing a Global Christianity in the Face of Terror. A Case Study into the Representations of the Beheading of Twenty-One Migrant Workers in January 2015","authors":"L. V. Liere","doi":"10.1163/9789004444867_011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004444867_011","url":null,"abstract":"On January 15 2015, a video was posted on the internet by Al-Hayat Media Center, showing the beheading of twenty-one men (Schnellmann.org). The video was claimed by Islamic State’s “Tripoli Province”, a group allied to Islamic State, and addressed to “the nation of the cross”. Political and religious leaders responded with shock and abhorrence. In the video, the twenty-one men were presented as “people of the cross, followers of the hostile Coptic Church”. One of the killers explained that the captives were murdered as a revenge for the suffering of members of the Muslim community in Egypt. Responses to the atrocity, from Egypt as well as from Europe and the US, appealed to religious ideas of unity and solidarity. These ‘frames’ were particularly set through interpretations that were spread on the Internet. In this chapter, I will show how these interpretations played an important role in constructing frames of global religious connectivities. Attention for translocal connectivities is considered a key feature of a World Christianity approach as outlined elsewhere in this volume. This contribution illustrates connectivities and dynamics of incorporation forged through discourse and shows that such connectivities can be construed by agents both from within and outside the Christian tradition(s). By using the word ‘frame’ I refer to a set of convictions and related practices that evolves through selection, emphasis, exclusion and elaboration and promote a causal interpretation between events, and a moral evaluation of these events (McCombs 2004: 89). Starting with a contextualization of the above-mentioned video this article seeks to make clear that information technologies play a significant role in the development of these frames that use well-worn Christian theological concepts with deep historical roots like ‘the baptism of blood’ and ‘martyrdom’ as vivid building blocks to stress a world-wide connectivity and solidarity that support a","PeriodicalId":40931,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88240390","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_003
Martha Frederiks
Over the past years, I have been teaching an introductory course on Christian history. During the weekly seminars the students read a selection of primary sources. One of the seminar sessions is dedicated to the ‘Church of the East’, during which we do a parallel reading of the text of the Nestorian monument, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the ‘luminous religion’ in China (781) and the dialogue between the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdī and Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I in Baghdad (c. 780). Both materials originate from the same period and church tradition, but where the Nestorian monument uses Buddhist and Daoist notions to express Christianity, the Baghdadi dialogue engages Islam as its main conversation partner (Horne 1917: 381–392; Ji 2007: 24–81; Mingana 2009). Students are often astonished to discover that these texts, which are so dissimilar in genre, locality, and context, are connected through the person of Timothy I, who, while resident in Baghdad, was also the patriarch of the Nestorian churches in China when the monument was erected. Philip Jenkins calls him “arguably the most significant Christian spiritual leader of his day, much more influential than the Western pope, in Rome” (Jenkins 2008: 6). Timothy’s patriarchate was vast, with bishops in present-day Syria, Armenia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, and China (Irvin and Sunquist 2001: 284–287). Yet however impressive the spatial extent of Timothy’s ecclesial responsibilities, in the class we remind ourselves that there was more to the Christian story in the latter decades of the eighth century than the Church of the East. We recall, for example, that around the same time, somewhat further to the west, Empress Irene was taking measures to end the first period of Byzantine iconoclasm, itself a side-effect of the advance of Islam (Crone 2017: 361–397). Or that even further west on the Iberian Peninsula a member of the Umayyad dynasty had established the emirate of Cordoba and was commissioning the construction of the illustrious Mezquita de Cordoba on the site of a former Visigoth church (Hillenbrand 1994:113–114). Towards the north, Charlemagne was on the warpath, simultaneously submitting and Christianizing neighbouring Saxons and Lombards to realize his ambition to
{"title":"World Christianity: Contours of an Approach","authors":"Martha Frederiks","doi":"10.1163/9789004444867_003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004444867_003","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past years, I have been teaching an introductory course on Christian history. During the weekly seminars the students read a selection of primary sources. One of the seminar sessions is dedicated to the ‘Church of the East’, during which we do a parallel reading of the text of the Nestorian monument, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the ‘luminous religion’ in China (781) and the dialogue between the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdī and Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I in Baghdad (c. 780). Both materials originate from the same period and church tradition, but where the Nestorian monument uses Buddhist and Daoist notions to express Christianity, the Baghdadi dialogue engages Islam as its main conversation partner (Horne 1917: 381–392; Ji 2007: 24–81; Mingana 2009). Students are often astonished to discover that these texts, which are so dissimilar in genre, locality, and context, are connected through the person of Timothy I, who, while resident in Baghdad, was also the patriarch of the Nestorian churches in China when the monument was erected. Philip Jenkins calls him “arguably the most significant Christian spiritual leader of his day, much more influential than the Western pope, in Rome” (Jenkins 2008: 6). Timothy’s patriarchate was vast, with bishops in present-day Syria, Armenia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, and China (Irvin and Sunquist 2001: 284–287). Yet however impressive the spatial extent of Timothy’s ecclesial responsibilities, in the class we remind ourselves that there was more to the Christian story in the latter decades of the eighth century than the Church of the East. We recall, for example, that around the same time, somewhat further to the west, Empress Irene was taking measures to end the first period of Byzantine iconoclasm, itself a side-effect of the advance of Islam (Crone 2017: 361–397). Or that even further west on the Iberian Peninsula a member of the Umayyad dynasty had established the emirate of Cordoba and was commissioning the construction of the illustrious Mezquita de Cordoba on the site of a former Visigoth church (Hillenbrand 1994:113–114). Towards the north, Charlemagne was on the warpath, simultaneously submitting and Christianizing neighbouring Saxons and Lombards to realize his ambition to","PeriodicalId":40931,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78144869","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_006
Emma Wild-Wood
Studies in World Christianity have often analysed a variety of religious expression by attending to local responses under-represented in global church structures. Many historians of World Christianity emphasise the plurality within Christianity by seeking indigenous perspectives on the processes of religious change, Christian development and transnational influence. Frequently, much historical evidence for the activities and reception of early Christian converts, church workers and religious movements is found in the vast corpus of documentation produced and preserved by western missionary societies in Europe, North America and the Antipodes. This literature has been considered flawed evidence, focussed upon the concerns of missionaries, their societies and supporters, and therefore unrepresentative of the social, political and economic dynamics of communities that missionaries were working amongst and dismissive of their cultural norms. From around 1990, however, approaches to World Christianity studies have been influenced by a renewed use of missionary archives by historians and anthropologists. This chapter starts by reviewing the variety of theoretical perspectives produced through the use of mission sources to understand historical processes of social and religious change. The second section of the chapter provides a detailed study of an event described in a missionary source in order to enquire in depth into the problems and possibilities of the sources. The final section of the chapter furthers this enquiry by examining the nature of missionary sources. This chapter illustrates its discussion of the problems and possibilities of missionary literature largely with reference to nineteenth and twentieth century European and Protestant sources in sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, it shows that missionary sources are particularly informative about the participation of indigenous Christians in a global movement which comprised common threads as well as distinct, local practices.
{"title":"The Interpretations, Problems and Possibilities of Missionary Sources in the History of Christianity in Africa","authors":"Emma Wild-Wood","doi":"10.1163/9789004444867_006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004444867_006","url":null,"abstract":"Studies in World Christianity have often analysed a variety of religious expression by attending to local responses under-represented in global church structures. Many historians of World Christianity emphasise the plurality within Christianity by seeking indigenous perspectives on the processes of religious change, Christian development and transnational influence. Frequently, much historical evidence for the activities and reception of early Christian converts, church workers and religious movements is found in the vast corpus of documentation produced and preserved by western missionary societies in Europe, North America and the Antipodes. This literature has been considered flawed evidence, focussed upon the concerns of missionaries, their societies and supporters, and therefore unrepresentative of the social, political and economic dynamics of communities that missionaries were working amongst and dismissive of their cultural norms. From around 1990, however, approaches to World Christianity studies have been influenced by a renewed use of missionary archives by historians and anthropologists. This chapter starts by reviewing the variety of theoretical perspectives produced through the use of mission sources to understand historical processes of social and religious change. The second section of the chapter provides a detailed study of an event described in a missionary source in order to enquire in depth into the problems and possibilities of the sources. The final section of the chapter furthers this enquiry by examining the nature of missionary sources. This chapter illustrates its discussion of the problems and possibilities of missionary literature largely with reference to nineteenth and twentieth century European and Protestant sources in sub-Saharan Africa. Nevertheless, it shows that missionary sources are particularly informative about the participation of indigenous Christians in a global movement which comprised common threads as well as distinct, local practices.","PeriodicalId":40931,"journal":{"name":"Journal of World Christianity","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85975005","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1163/9789004444867_004
D. Nagy
‘Recalling’ can be both an act of remembering and of taking back something that is known and used by a broader public, such as the term ‘World Christianity’, which has been understood in different ways and used for different purposes by an English-speaking and reading public for the last hundred years at least.1 It has meant different things for different people in different times, and it continues to create even more new functions when transposed from English into other languages.2 In fact, the jury is still out on the necessity of ‘World Christianity’ being transposed into different languages, especially ones that facilitate communication within the academia, and whether the English term is synonymous with the German term Weltchristentum, the French term Christianisme mondial, or the Portuguese term Cristianismo mundial.3 ‘World Christianity’, in spite of its broad contextual usage, which resulted in the establishment of institutes and chairs at universities, and increased the sales of publishing houses, keeps raising the question, “What do you mean by it?” Even scholars such as Dale Irvin, who were at the cradle of the most recent
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