Overview

The Center for Global Christianity and Mission at the Boston University School of Theology explores the most important development in Christianity during the early twenty-first century: the shift of Christianity's demographic center to the southern hemisphere. Whereas in the year 1900, over 70% of the world’s Christians were of European background, by the year 2000 the ethnically European component of the world church had shrunk to less than one-third of the total number of Christians. To explore the meaning and implications of this massive cultural shift is one of the most challenging tasks of theological education and scholarship today.

The Center seeks to address several critical aspects of Christianity’s “shift southward” in the twenty-first century:

1. Christianity must be understood as a multi-cultural and global movement, an enduring theological tradition that finds new life in the lived realities of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

2. The dramatic growth of nonwestern Christianity begs for analysis of the missionary dimension in these churches, as initiators rather than receptors of mission outreach.

3. The expanding churches of the nonwestern world are in need of theologically trained leaders, ranging from seminary professors, to grassroots leaders of indigenous churches.

Download our brochure: CGCM_Brochure.pdf