Christianity has from its beginning been global in principle, and for many centuries was so in practice. In the first six or seven centuries of Christian history, Christian presence spread across the greater part of the then known world – the vast landmass that constitutes Europe, Asia and Africa – and constituted a world Christianity which was multicentric, multilingual and multicultural. But the doctrinal disputes of the fifth century led to the alienation of large numbers of Coptic- and Syriac-speaking Christians from those who thought and spoke in Greek and Latin, and the ecumenical tragedy of the sixth century saw the great multicultural church divided along lines of language and culture. We are now in a new age of world Christianity – an even larger and more diverse reality than that of the first Christian centuries, but like it, multicentric, multilingual, multicultural. The acid test for Christianity in the twenty-first century will be whether the break-up of that first age of world Christianity can now be repaired.
{"title":"The Break-up of Early World Christianity and the Great Ecumenical Failure","authors":"Andrew Finlay Walls","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0387","url":null,"abstract":"Christianity has from its beginning been global in principle, and for many centuries was so in practice. In the first six or seven centuries of Christian history, Christian presence spread across the greater part of the then known world – the vast landmass that constitutes Europe, Asia and Africa – and constituted a world Christianity which was multicentric, multilingual and multicultural. But the doctrinal disputes of the fifth century led to the alienation of large numbers of Coptic- and Syriac-speaking Christians from those who thought and spoke in Greek and Latin, and the ecumenical tragedy of the sixth century saw the great multicultural church divided along lines of language and culture. We are now in a new age of world Christianity – an even larger and more diverse reality than that of the first Christian centuries, but like it, multicentric, multilingual, multicultural. The acid test for Christianity in the twenty-first century will be whether the break-up of that first age of world Christianity can now be repaired.","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41698367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article looks at an aspect of the cosmology of the Jukun of north-central Nigeria, specifically their theism, and how it has changed through their encounter with Christian monotheism. Many contemporary Jukun people assume that their indigenous cosmology has always been anchored on a Supreme Being akin to the Christian God. In this study I show that this currently held belief is largely due to the theological framework which Christian missionaries sought to make the Jukun worldview fit into. And even prior to the first Christian contact, Jukun indigenous cosmology had been in contact with Islam. I give a very brief history of the Jukun and of the Christian missionary efforts among them starting in 1906 and, starting from my own questions growing up as a Jukun, look at how indigenous concepts and categories for deities were adapted over the course of time as the majority of Jukun became Christian.
{"title":"‘The Eliminated Gods’: The Christian Reconfiguration of Jukun Theism","authors":"Nathan Irmiya Elawa","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0390","url":null,"abstract":"This article looks at an aspect of the cosmology of the Jukun of north-central Nigeria, specifically their theism, and how it has changed through their encounter with Christian monotheism. Many contemporary Jukun people assume that their indigenous cosmology has always been anchored on a Supreme Being akin to the Christian God. In this study I show that this currently held belief is largely due to the theological framework which Christian missionaries sought to make the Jukun worldview fit into. And even prior to the first Christian contact, Jukun indigenous cosmology had been in contact with Islam. I give a very brief history of the Jukun and of the Christian missionary efforts among them starting in 1906 and, starting from my own questions growing up as a Jukun, look at how indigenous concepts and categories for deities were adapted over the course of time as the majority of Jukun became Christian.","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47875744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Editorial: World Christianity and Reciprocal Exchange","authors":"A. Adogame, R. Barreto, R. F. Young","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0386","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0386","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47877367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This essay explores how West Africa became a landscape of religious exchange, creativity and synthesis connecting Africa and South Asia. It follows the lead of Afe Adogame and Jim Spickard, who argue that ‘Africa is not merely a passive recipient of global pressures. It is also a site of religious creativity that has had considerable effect on the outside world. The growth and global influence of the three religious heritages of sub-Saharan Africa – indigenous religions, Christianity and Islam – needs to be understood against the backdrop of mutual influence and exchange at various historical epochs’ ( Adogame and Spickhard 2010 : 2—3). To explore such transformations, I draw on the cases of the Ahmadiyya Muslim missionary movement in Ghana and Nigeria and Hinduism in Ghana. The Ahmadiyya began as a mission to correct Christianity's influence on West Africans, but was transformed by African influence on South Asians into a pluralistic knowledge-seeking movement. In a similar vein, Africans reshaped Hinduism away from cultural isolationism and worldly attachments of the Indian-diaspora Africa towards a spiritual ethic of racial integration and devotionalism that Africans and Indians now share. I conclude by reflecting on how African modes of religious interrelationality – influenced by the historical trajectories of Christianity on the African continent – have been crucial in the polycentrism that world Christianity scholars have revealed.
{"title":"A Missing Link: African Christian Resonances in the Rise of Indian Muslim and Hindu Missions","authors":"Shobana Shankar","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0388","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0388","url":null,"abstract":"This essay explores how West Africa became a landscape of religious exchange, creativity and synthesis connecting Africa and South Asia. It follows the lead of Afe Adogame and Jim Spickard, who argue that ‘Africa is not merely a passive recipient of global pressures. It is also a site of religious creativity that has had considerable effect on the outside world. The growth and global influence of the three religious heritages of sub-Saharan Africa – indigenous religions, Christianity and Islam – needs to be understood against the backdrop of mutual influence and exchange at various historical epochs’ ( Adogame and Spickhard 2010 : 2—3). To explore such transformations, I draw on the cases of the Ahmadiyya Muslim missionary movement in Ghana and Nigeria and Hinduism in Ghana. The Ahmadiyya began as a mission to correct Christianity's influence on West Africans, but was transformed by African influence on South Asians into a pluralistic knowledge-seeking movement. In a similar vein, Africans reshaped Hinduism away from cultural isolationism and worldly attachments of the Indian-diaspora Africa towards a spiritual ethic of racial integration and devotionalism that Africans and Indians now share. I conclude by reflecting on how African modes of religious interrelationality – influenced by the historical trajectories of Christianity on the African continent – have been crucial in the polycentrism that world Christianity scholars have revealed.","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44143121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kenneth R. Ross and Wapulumuka Mulwafu (eds), Politics, Christianity and Society in Malawi: Essays in Honour of John McCracken","authors":"J. Mackenzie","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0396","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0396","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45748877","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Among many issues associated with religious negotiation and intercultural ministry and mission in the history of Christianity in China, the most important issue involves the Chinese rite of offering sacrifice to ancestors. This issue has been closely connected to the process of the Sinicisation of Christianity in all Pan-Chinese societies, including the Greater China and Chinese diasporic communities worldwide. This paper first reviews key historical elements of the Chinese Rites Controversy (1645–1941) on ‘Sacrificing to Ancestors’ ( jizu), and then considers some details of the ‘Three Rites’ of ‘Reverencing Ancestors’ ( jingzu) as a historical development within the Bread of Life Christian Church (BOLCC, Ling Liang Tang) in Taipei and the Bread of Life Global Apostolic Network (BGAN) of nearly 600 local churches on all continents as of 2020. Through this case study, the paper argues that the BOLCC, an independent Christian church established in 1942 and a contemporary Sinophone-based Christian movement, could expand quickly by applying its intercultural ‘Ling Liang Rule’ to continue the successful culture-accommodating ‘Matteo Ricci Rule’ among the Pan-Chinese (Chinese descendants in China and beyond) by providing an ‘in-between space’ negotiating for Christianity and Confucianism to satisfy their believers’ ‘hybrid identity’. Through the Christianised Reverencing Ancestors Rites to hybridise the Confucian Sacrificing to Ancestors Rites, Bread of Life Sinophone Christians in many places of the world can simultaneously affirm their cultural ‘hybrid identity’ as both Christian and Sinophone through core cultural interactions between Christianity and Confucianism in filial piety ( xiao).
{"title":"From ‘Sacrificing to Ancestors’ (jizu) to ‘Reverencing Ancestors’ (jingzu): Bread of Life Christianity's Cultural Negotiation between Christianity and Confucianism for a Hybrid Identity","authors":"Sheng Ping Guo","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0389","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0389","url":null,"abstract":"Among many issues associated with religious negotiation and intercultural ministry and mission in the history of Christianity in China, the most important issue involves the Chinese rite of offering sacrifice to ancestors. This issue has been closely connected to the process of the Sinicisation of Christianity in all Pan-Chinese societies, including the Greater China and Chinese diasporic communities worldwide. This paper first reviews key historical elements of the Chinese Rites Controversy (1645–1941) on ‘Sacrificing to Ancestors’ ( jizu), and then considers some details of the ‘Three Rites’ of ‘Reverencing Ancestors’ ( jingzu) as a historical development within the Bread of Life Christian Church (BOLCC, Ling Liang Tang) in Taipei and the Bread of Life Global Apostolic Network (BGAN) of nearly 600 local churches on all continents as of 2020. Through this case study, the paper argues that the BOLCC, an independent Christian church established in 1942 and a contemporary Sinophone-based Christian movement, could expand quickly by applying its intercultural ‘Ling Liang Rule’ to continue the successful culture-accommodating ‘Matteo Ricci Rule’ among the Pan-Chinese (Chinese descendants in China and beyond) by providing an ‘in-between space’ negotiating for Christianity and Confucianism to satisfy their believers’ ‘hybrid identity’. Through the Christianised Reverencing Ancestors Rites to hybridise the Confucian Sacrificing to Ancestors Rites, Bread of Life Sinophone Christians in many places of the world can simultaneously affirm their cultural ‘hybrid identity’ as both Christian and Sinophone through core cultural interactions between Christianity and Confucianism in filial piety ( xiao).","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46751886","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Renie Chow Choy, Ancestral Feeling: Postcolonial Thoughts on Western Christian Heritage","authors":"A. Chow","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0392","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0392","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47822510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A. Scott Moreau, Gary R. Corwin and Gary B. McGee (eds), Introducing World Missions: A Biblical, Historical, and Practical Survey","authors":"Warren R. Beattie","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0394","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0394","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44131413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
World Christianity has been described as ‘the great Christian fact of our time and the great Christian resource of our time’. Andrew Finlay Walls and Ogbu Uke Kalu emerged as pioneering figures responsible for the making and shaping of this field of study and research. Together, they brought about a renewed consciousness of the multicentric, multilingual and multicultural nature of Christianity. Their research altered the course of the study of Christian history, missions, ecumenics, the nature of conversion, and world religions. It redefined the conventional understanding of the interaction between Christianity and culture and, more broadly, between God and humanity. In memory and celebration of these two giants of World Christianity, this article points to some of the significant contributions of Ogbu Kalu and Andrew Walls to the field and draws on discussion in the two special panels held in their honour at the third World Christianity Conference at Princeton Theological Seminary, 3–6 March 2021.
{"title":"The Making and Shaping of World Christianity: Commemorating the Legacies of Andrew F. Walls and Ogbu U. Kalu","authors":"R. Amwe, Byung Ho Choi","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0391","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0391","url":null,"abstract":"World Christianity has been described as ‘the great Christian fact of our time and the great Christian resource of our time’. Andrew Finlay Walls and Ogbu Uke Kalu emerged as pioneering figures responsible for the making and shaping of this field of study and research. Together, they brought about a renewed consciousness of the multicentric, multilingual and multicultural nature of Christianity. Their research altered the course of the study of Christian history, missions, ecumenics, the nature of conversion, and world religions. It redefined the conventional understanding of the interaction between Christianity and culture and, more broadly, between God and humanity. In memory and celebration of these two giants of World Christianity, this article points to some of the significant contributions of Ogbu Kalu and Andrew Walls to the field and draws on discussion in the two special panels held in their honour at the third World Christianity Conference at Princeton Theological Seminary, 3–6 March 2021.","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41554833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Karen Lauterbach and Mika Vahangas (eds), Faith in Lived African Christianity: Anthropological and Theological Perspectives","authors":"Emma Wild-Wood","doi":"10.3366/swc.2022.0395","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/swc.2022.0395","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42820,"journal":{"name":"Studies in World Christianity","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.6,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44120413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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