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.
Alumnus Continues to Document Mission Work in Charlotte, NC
BU alumnus Kendal Mobley (’04) and his team recently released “That They All May Be One,” the fourth episode in their Crisis and Compassion documentary (featured in an earlier post). “That They All May Be One” tells the story of the congregation at the Chapel of Christ the King Episcopal Church, which is working to transform the church’s underutilized property into an edible landscape. A new orchard and community garden will address food insecurity and provide an outdoor space where longtime residents and new arrivals can come together in the Optimist Park neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina. The episode also explores the church’s role in organizing an emergency property tax relief fund to help longtime residents hold on to their homes as the neighborhood experiences rapid gentrification. Much of the housing in Optimist Park was built by Habitat for Humanity in 1987, in a project led by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, but many current homeowners are struggling to hold on to their homes as property values skyrocket.Remembering Fr. Vincent Machozi, Congolese Martyr
Five years ago on Palm Sunday, Fr. Vincent Machozi ('15) was shot to death as a result of his efforts to document, protest against, and end violence and exploitation of the people of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Fr. Machozi, who was born in the village of Vitungwe-Isale in North Kivu, was a member of the Augustinians of the Assumption. In order to gain control of valuable coltan mines, many different armed groups terrorized and exacted forced labor from the people living in this region, which borders Rwanda and Uganda. Fr. Machozi ran an important website, Beni Lubero, where he publicized the atrocities for all to see. After spending time in studies at the Boston University School of Theology, Machozi returned to the Congo, where he eventually was selected as president of the Nande community. As a result of his continued work for justice in the region, Fr. Machozi was murdered on March 20, 2016, in Katolu village.
A fuller story of Fr. Machozi's life and struggle can be found in Bostonia magazine and at the Dictionary of African Christian Biography.
Registration for Regional AAR Symposium
The New England-Maritimes Region of the American Academy of Religion is hosting a virtual symposium on April 9, 2021. Registration is now open, and the schedule is available. Dr. Mayra Rivera of Harvard Divinity School and Dr. Marla F. Frederick of Candler School of Theology will serve as keynote speakers.
Current BUSTH PhD candidates Shaunesse' Jacobs and Sheila Otieno are serving on a panel at 10:15am to discuss "Graduate Study in Times of Crisis."
Eugenio Menegon to Deliver Lecture in “Keys to Understanding Early Modern Christianities” Series
On April 20 at 10am (Central European Time), CGCM faculty associate Dr. Eugenio Menegon will deliver one of the Frankfurt Lectures on "Keys to Understanding Early Modern Christianities." His topic, local religion in late imperial China, is one of several interesting themes explored by the lecturers, such as polycentricity in global Catholicism, tolerance in the Iberian Atlantic, and connected histories in Eastern Christianities.
Prof. Menegon's presentation will examine the notion of "local religion." As a specific academic concept in English, the expression found one of its earliest and most articulate expressions in William Christian's 1981 book Local Religion in Sixteenth Century Spain. Christian's work drew on his own sociological and anthropological research in the Iberian countryside during the late 1960s and early 1970s, but his thinking was also nourished by his reading of European scholarship. He found that it was often in the countryside that traditional religious ideas and practices from the medieval and early modern periods survived the longest. In Christian's wake, scholars have increasingly focused their attention on the social and ritual life of Christian communities across the globe. What was true for post-war Spain also applies to modern China. This talk offers an assessment of recent work on Christianity as a "local religion" in late imperial China (1550-1850 ).
These online conferences, directed by Prof. Dr. Birgit Emich, are sponsored by the Early Modern Section of the Research Group Polycentricity and Plurality of Premodern Christianities (POLY). All of the lectures are free and are delivered at 10am, Central European Time.
Registration for the online-event at: pluralchristi
BU Alum Co-Authors Book on Grief and Loss
BU alum Dr. Pat McLeod ('09) was recently interviewed by Rabbi Yitzi Weiner as part of a series on “individuals and organizations making an important social impact” for Authority Magazine. Pat and his wife Tammy serve as chaplains at Harvard University. As part of this work, they organized the Mamelodi Initiative in the township of Mamelodi, South Africa, which "connects Harvard students with at-risk youth in a mentoring and educational program to prepare them for college."
In addition to describing his campus ministry work, Pat also describes the story of his son's severe traumatic brain injury--an experience of grief and loss on which he and Tammy reflect in their recent book Hit Hard: One Family’s Journey of Letting Go of What Was — and Learning to Live Well with What Is (Tyndale Momentum, 2019).
Learn more about the McLeod's work at their website.
CFP from the Conference on Faith & History: “Protest, Resistance, and Transformation”
If you are interested in putting together a panel focused on women's and gender history, and/or a panel with all female presenters, please use the Women's Network Conference database here.
(ldiller@southern.edu) by April 30, 2021. Proposals should include abstracts, paper titles, and names/institutions/contacts for each paper.
Liberating the Ladies’ Aid: Public Lecture with Dr. Margaret Bendroth
Upcoming Lecture on “The China Bible House in the Second Sino-Japanese War”
The Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences is hosting a seminar with Dr. George Mak entitled "Spreading the Word of God in Wartime China: The China Bible House in the Second Sino-Japanese War." The event will take place on April 13, 2021, 12:00nn – 1:00 pm (HK Time). Registration is required by April 12, 2021.
Registration: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/
Presentation Abstract:
Established by an amalgamation of the China agencies of the British and Foreign Bible Society and the American Bible Society in 1937, the China Bible House (中華聖經會) was the first national Bible Society in China, specializing in Bible translation, publishing and distribution. Its formation was immediately followed by the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), which hindered its development from a foreign-dominated organization into a self-supporting, self-governing one. Drawing on findings from my preliminary archival research on the China Bible House’s work during the war, I will argue in this talk that the China Bible House’s sustained connection with the two foreign Bible societies was instrumental in enabling it to publish and distribute more than twenty-two million copies of complete Bibles, Testaments and biblical portions over the course of the war. Moreover, I will illustrate that wartime conditions resulted in a provisional consolidation of operation of the China Bible House and the National Bible Society of Scotland, another foreign Bible society working in China, in Kuomintang-controlled area. This paved the way for the official integration of the latter’s work in China into the China Bible House in 1946, which resulted in the union of all foreign Bible societies’ operations in China.
About the Speaker:
Dr. George Kam Wah Mak is Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University and President of the Society for the Study of History of Christianity in China (2020-2022). He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in the United Kingdom and the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Dr. Mak obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge and specializes in the history of Chinese Bible translation. He is the author of Protestant Bible Translation and Mandarin as the National Language of China (Leiden: Brill, 2017) and The British and Foreign Bible Society and the Translation of the Mandarin Chinese Union Version (in Chinese) (Hong Kong: Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture, 2010). His research work earned him the Royal Asiatic Society’s Barwis-Holliday Award for Far Eastern Studies in 2014 and Special Mention in Stephen C. Soong Translation Studies Memorial Awards 2010.
New Film on Jesuit Mission in New France and East Asia
The Ricci Institute at the University of San Francisco has recently released a documentary film on Jesuit mission work, comparing and contrasting work done in New France with their work in China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
The film is freely available to watch at jesuits.org.
Registration Open for Yale-Edinburgh Group, June 2021
- There will be synchronous and asynchronous sessions- We will be highlighting some interesting projects from Yale-Edinburgh partners across the globe through video-We will have both live and pre-recorded presentations- Opportunities to present papers and posters of research- Virtual Coffee & Chat… and more.
As always, if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out at cswc-events@ed.ac.uk.