News of the extended network of faculty, alumni, students, visiting researchers, and mission partners is regularly updated, and some of the big ideas or major events in Global Christianity are covered in the CGCM News.
The Challenges of Sacred Charters for World Christianity
The Center for the Study of World Christianity (CCCW) warmly invites you to attend the CCCW Day Lecture, in person or online, on Tuesday, 17 February 2026, featuring Professor Dana Robert (Boston University).
Professor Robert will present a lecture titled: “The Challenges of Sacred Charters for World Christianity.” This lecture offers timely and critical reflections on key developments shaping World Christianity and mission in the twenty-first century.
Engaging Christian theology in dialogue with early Chinese ethics, this book offers a rich and thoughtful exploration of intercultural philosophical and religious engagement.
We are delighted to invite you to the upcoming CCCW Day Lecture on Tuesday, 17 February, featuring Professor Dana Robert of Boston University.
Professor Robert will present a lecture titled "The Challenges of Sacred Charters for World Christianity," offering timely and critical reflections on key developments shaping World Christianity and mission in the twenty-first century.
This event will also celebrate the relaunch of "Connecting Christianities: World Christianity and Mission in the Twenty-First Century," edited by Muthuraj Swamy and Jenny Leith and published by Brill. Professor Robert is one of the editors of this significant volume, published just before Christmas 2025.
Tuesday, 17 February 4:00–5:30 PM (GMT) Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity
We warmly encourage colleagues, students, and friends to join us for this special lecture and book relaunch. More details about the CCCW Day Lecture will be shared soon.
Lecture: Christianity, Class, and Masculinity in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Sri Lanka
Join Dr. Jessica A. Albrecht (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen–Nuremberg) on Tuesday, 3 February 2026, 4:00–5:30 PM GMT in Lecture Room 2, Faculty of Divinity, or online. This presentation analyses how these schools have produced and stabilized specific ideals of middle- and upper-class masculinity from late colonial rule into the present.
Click here for more information and registration. Download the flyer here.
Since 2018, Africa has been the continent with the most Christians worldwide. In the next two decades, the growth of Christianity in Africa will far outpace that of every other continent. Since its conception in 1995, the mission of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (DACB.org) has been to recover and preserve the history of this remarkable growth by collecting the biographies of the African men and women at the center of this narrative. This webinar will track the milestones of this now 30-year-old project, the insights gained for historical research in the 21st century, emerging approaches to collaborative scholarship, and resources for theological education in Africa.
On Thursday, 15 January 2026, at 1400 UTC, Dr. Michèle Sigg, Executive Director of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography (DACB), will introduce the role of this project in documenting the stories of our fathers and mothers.
We are grateful to celebrate the book launch of Rodney L. Petersen’s new commentary on the "Book of Revelation" at Marsh Chapel on November 20, 2025.
Now a visiting scholar at Duke Divinity School, Dr. Petersen has long been a valued member of the Center of Global Christianity and Mission community. We also want to recognize the colleagues and friends—especially Rev. Dr. Casely Essamuah, Dan Carman, Jeffrey Cox, and Becky—who have been involved with the Center and helped make this celebration possible.
Anicka Fast is editing a biographical book series about Anabaptists in Africa, Asia and Latin America. This series brings global history to life, as it is told by local historians. The first volume of the series focuses on Mennonite leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Paradoxes of the Regional and the Local in Pacific Theologies and Christianities
Dr Richard Davis, Wesley House, Cambridge
Wednesday 5 November 2025, 4.00–5.30pm GMT
Lightfoot Room, Faculty of Divinity, West Road & Online
Pacific Christianity has an identity crisis. On the one hand, Pacific Christians speak of the “Pacific Way” or a common “Pacific Culture” in their perennial quest for a Pacific contextual theology. Such theologies have been based on the common experience of the sea, the communal, or “relational” nature of Pacific cultures, or the (largely) shared colonial/post-colonial experience. On the other hand, the Pacific region’s diversity makes such commonalities highly questionable, while at the same time ecumenical commitments are waning. The regionalists speak in ideological and regional terms, which cut across ethnographic methods, leading to regional theologies and frameworks which local theologians and churches are expected to adopt. In response, local and parochial theologies and Christian institutions are in the ascendancy, which ultimately threaten the regional institutions that provide the scholars and leaders of national churches. Yet while the regional approaches are failing or intellectually weak, they are needed to support regional and ecumenical Christianity in the Pacific. This paper will explore these questions and ask whether regional theologies can mediate between the universal and the local for the advantage of all.
Dr Richard Davisis the Vice Principal and Director of the Centre for Faith in Public Life at Wesley House, Cambridge. A New Zealander, Richard taught theology and ethics for several years at the Pacific Theological College in Fiji Islands. At Wesley House he teaches African contextual theology and supervises PhD students from around the world. His own research is in Decolonial Settler Theology, being a contextual decolonising theology for and by settlers in settler colonial societies. He has authored several publications on themes including Christianity in Oceania, political/public theology, settler colonialism, and climate justice.
The Center for Global Christianity and Mission's Affiliated Faculty member, Professor Eugenio Menegon, recently published two new essays:
1) “Carletti and Religion: Christianity and Asian Traditions in the Ragionamenti,” in Brian Brege, Paula Findlen and Giorgio Riello eds., Trading at the Edges of Empire: Francesco Carletti’s World, ca. 1600, Florence & Cambridge (Ma.): Villa I Tatti - Officina Libraria - Harvard University Press, 2025, pp. 117-137; and,
2) “The Tragic Jesuit Embassy of the Kangxi Emperor to Pope Clement XI, and the Lisbon Experience of ‘Imperial Envoy’ Antonio Provana,” in David Salomoni, Luana Giurgevich, and Henrique Leitão eds., Santo Antão: The Jesuit College in Lisbon and Its History, Leiden: Brill, 2025, pp. 316–38.
The Challenges of Sacred Charters for World Christianity
The Paradoxes of the Regional and the Local in Pacific Theologies and Christianities
The Center for Global Christianity and Mission's