Yale-Edinburgh Group meeting report by Daryl Ireland
The Yale-Edinburgh Group held its 23rd meeting in New Haven, Connecticut, June 27-29, 2013. The theme, “Health, Healing, and Medicine in the History of Christian Missions and World Christianity,” inspired diverse papers, ranging from an investigation of John Wesley’s medical advice to the use of herbal medicine in Ghanaian Christianity.
The number of participants was capped at 80, so having six people from Boston University demonstrated its prominence in the field of global Christianity. Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak (Th.D, 2002), Associate Professor at UCLA considered how Christian medical missions in Korea moved, “From the Plough of Evangelism to the Fruit of Christian Love,” during the 1920s. Also looking at Asia, Daryl Ireland investigated a mission hospital in China and asked if medicine was “Christian, Secular, or yet Something Else?” Daewon Moon pointed to the “Ruanda Mission and its Contribution to the East African Revival,” while Michele Sigg explained the prominent role women have played in “Carrying Living Water” during the fifohazana revival in Madagascar. In addition, Eva Pascal introduced a new movie on Seventh-Day Adventist medical work around the world. Gina Bellofatto, a student in the joint ThD program between Boston University and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary also attended the conference.