Defining World Christianity
October 17-19, 2019, the Candler School of Theology at Emory University sponsored a workshop on World Christianity. As programs multiply across Europe and North America, it was an opportunity to bring people from almost 20 different institutions together to talk about such things as what we are teaching, which guilds support our work, how World Christianity fits in different institutions (universities, seminaries, colleges), and why World Christianity seems like a particularly North Atlantic concern. Debates also surfaced over World Christianity is best imagined as a field, a discipline, a perspective, a lens, or the like.
Conversations were always lively because World Christianity is so incredibly young (for another perspective click here). Just as the first milliseconds after the Big Bang released an extraordinary burst of energy in all directions, so World Christianity is doing something similar. Historians, sociologists, anthropologists, theologians, linguists, political scientists, demographers, people specializing in media, urban studies, immigration, literature, and even computer science are doing things that fall under this umbrella of World Christianity. At times it looks chaotic, since methodologies, audiences, and faith commitments vary widely.
By the end of the workshop, however, I was excited. Eventually things may cool off and harden into particular structures and pathways. For the moment, though, World Christianity is in a more liquid state. It means just about anything can happen, as World Christianity is currently a laboratory for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary experimentation. At a moment when the academy is expressing frustration with the siloing of different disciplines, I walked away thinking World Christianity may be a pioneer in new forms of scholarship.