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.
Call for Papers on the Theme of Majority World Epistemologies
Highlights from Faculty Associate Dr. Jonathan Bonk
The Center for Global Christianity and Mission celebrates the diverse and valuable contributions of our Faculty Associates.
Dr. Jonathan Bonk offers the following report on his recent work:
"I continue to serve as President of the Korean Global Mission Leaders Forum. From November 9-12 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, we convened our 6th biennial forum --- this one on the theme 'Missions and Money.' The forum was a hybrid affair, but went very well. The book containing forum papers, case studies, and workshops was officially released in March, together with a Korean version of the book.
"We are also planning for one more forum under my watch, also in Pyeongchang, scheduled for November 7-10, 2023. We're tackling what is perhaps the most challenging theme of the series: "Global Calamity and Mission: Climate Change and the Gospel of Hope."
"I published a short article on “Andrew Walls: Mentor, Friend, Exemplar” in the Journal of African Christian Biography. Vol. 6, No. 4 (October 2021), Pp. 3-21. And I've agreed to do a 5,000-word article on "The Writings and Legacy of Andrew F. Walls” for The Palgrave Handbook of African Christianity from Apostolic Times to the Present, scheduled for publication in 2023.
"I continue to preach somewhat regularly in our Mennonite congregation, and I have given a lecture and been featured in one "conversation" as a Canadian Mennonite University Fellow here in Winnipeg. The topic of that particular conversation was: "'Exterminate all the brutes': A conversation on Christian mission's complicity in the west’s grand quest to "civilize" the uncivilized and "develop" the underdeveloped." You can tell I've been reading Joseph Conrad and Sven Lindqvist and Raoul Peck! Not very cheery stuff, but necessary.
One-week course in Rome on the History of Religious Orders and History of Catholicism – June 13-17, 2022
Faculty Associate, Dr. Eugenio Menegon, Chaired a Session of the Renaissance Society of America
CGCM faculty associate, Dr. Eugenio Menegon, chaired a session of the Renaissance Society of America on March 31st, 2022 in Dublin, Ireland on “The image of Confucius in the writings of Catholic missionaries between the 17th and 18th Centuries”.
Read the full article here.
New Book Released by Faculty Associate Jon Bonk
New Book Released by Faculty Associate Jon Bonk
The Realities of Mission & Money: Global Challenges & Case Studies
The Realities of Money & Missions provides a unique level of credibility and transparency as it calls for evangelicals to reevaluate their relationship with money, both personally and corporately. Global case studies, workshops, and testimonials cover a broad range of topics such as:
- Misalignment between fiscal theology and practice
- Environmental stewardship, community development, and business as mission
- Mobilization, fundraising practices, and “faith financing”
- Short-term missions, patronage, and dependency
- Power dynamics and structural injustice
The Realities of Money & Missions was not written by experts in the fields of investment, money management, or fundraising, but by men and women whose calling as missionaries, pastors, and administrators has brought them face-to-face with the complex, real-life issues involving the intersection of money and ministry.
Highlights from CGCM Faculty Associate Prof. John Thornton
The Center for Global Christianity and Mission celebrates the diverse and valuable contributions of our Faculty Associates.
Dr. John Thornton, CGCM faculty associate, offers the following report on his recent work:
"I wrote quite a bit last year, and some of it was published, the rest is more or less waiting. Probably the biggest work was on my biography of Afonso Mvemba a Nzinga, King of Kongo. I have a contract to publish a biography of Afonso, as well as English translations of his letters and a few allied documents. He wrote a bit over 20 letters between 1506 and 1542. You might remember the bio of him I wrote for the Dictionary of Christian Biography.
"I finished an intermediate draft, and the publisher is now sending it around to readers to assess its potentials as a textbook. This is not a review for publication, that peer review is done. Rather it is a sort of copy-editing exercise to improve style and presentation. We hope the book will be out in 2022.
"As far as global Christianity is concerned, I also gave a recorded public lecture on how Kongolese Christianity intersected with other African religions to create Vodou in Haiti. This was presented on April 29th as a part of Harvard's ongoing lecture series, and is available on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arANJmBdy5s The title of the lecture is very misleading, it was a preliminary title that never got changed.
"I gave a talk in Portuguese, an interview with a Brazilian academic named Fabio Ferreira, on the history of Kongo which did deal with religious topics, this was on May 25th. It is also on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALPHLok-E74
"I was also part of a conference at the Kongo Academy, a new organization that does a lot of work on Kimbanguism. They invited me to talk about the eighteenth-century prophet D. Beatriz Kimpa Vita, the 'Kongolese Saint Anthony' as a precursor to Kimbangu.
"I also wrote several other pieces, but they were not on topics dealing with religion or global Christianity, for example, a revision of my earlier estimates of the population of Kongo (published in the Journal of African History) and an article on the expansion of the Lunda empire, which I think is a chapter in a book that might already be published."
Inaugural World Christianity Summer Institute at CCCW, July 18-22, 2022
The Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide is delighted to announce its first residential World Christianity Summer Institute on "Grief, Resilience, and Hope amid the Pandemic."
Article from Alumnus Michel Chambon (’19) on Chinese Christianities
CGCM alumnus Michel Chambon ('19) recently published, "How Do Chinese Christians Draw Boundaries among Themselves? Reassessing the Question of Chinese Christianities" in the online journal Religions.
To read the article, visit the web link here.
Highlights from CGCM Faculty Associate Dr. David Scott
The Center for Global Christianity and Mission celebrates the diverse and valuable contributions of our faculty associates.
Dr. David Scott, CGCM Faculty Associate and BU Alumnus, has recently published the following works:
- With Thomas Kemper, Methodist Mission at 200: Serving Faithfully Amid the Tensions. Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2021.
- With Darryl W. Stephens, The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends from Everywhere to Everywhere. New York: Routledge, 2021.
- With Daryl R. Ireland, Grace Y. May, and Casely B. Essamuah, Unlikely Friends: How God Uses Boundary-Crossing Friendships to Transform the World. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021.
- With Jerome Sahabandhu. “Study Paper—CWME Working Group on Mission from the Margins.” In Call to Discipleship: Mission in the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace, ed. by Risto Jukko, 59–69. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 2021.
In addition to these contributions, David Scott served on the North American panel during the WCC's "100 Years of the Founding of the International Missionary Council Centenary Online Conference," 16-18 November 2021.
He delivered a virtual presentation, “Mission and Migration, the Twin Antagonists of Geographically Based Church Structures,” at the American Society of Missiology Annual Conference on June 18, 2021.
And Dr. Scott has launched a book project with Filipe Maia on Methodism and American Empire. He anticipates the book to be published in late 2022 or 2023.
2022 GEMN Mission Conference on Women in Mission
Registration is now open for the “Women in Mission” conference sponsored by the Global Episcopal Mission Network (GEMN) online, May 12-14. Conference information is here, and the registration portal is here. Spanish interpretation will be available for all plenaries and for some of the workshops.
Four plenary speakers will highlight the work of women in mission:
- The Rev. Canon Hilda Kabia, dean of Msalato Theological College in Dodoma, Tanzania, will offer an African theological perspective on women’s work in mission and focus on the work of the Mothers Union in Anglican and ecumenical ministry in Africa.
- Ms. Elizabeth Boe, mission personnel officer in the Episcopal Church’s Office of Global Partnerships, will reflect on the work of women missionaries and facilitate a panel of current missionaries in diverse parts of the world.
- Dr. Dana Robert, professor of mission and world Christianity at Boston University School of Theology, will present an ecumenical overview of the history of women in world mission and identify current trends in women’s work globally.
- Ms. Lynnaia Main, the Episcopal Church’s representative to the United Nations, will speak on the church’s interaction with United Nations initiatives for women, especially through the annual meetings of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Conference attendance is free and open to the public. Freewill donations are encouraged and can be made at registration. Zoom sessions will be held 1-4 p.m., Eastern U.S. Daylight Time on the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the conference, May 12-14. The GEMN Annual Meeting will be held an hour earlier on Friday the 13th at 11:45 a.m.