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.

A Disruptive Ecclesial Economy

By dri November 4th, 2019 in People, Publications, Students

Anicka Fast has recently published, "Let us “also work with our hands, so that the Lord’s work may be furthered”: A disruptive ecclesial economy at Kafumba, 1922-1943," in the Mennonite Quarterly Review 93, no. 4 (October 2019): 437-472. She describes how Aaron and Ernestina Janzen, American Mennonite Brethren missionaries, resigned from the Congo Inland Mission in 1920 in order to begin independent work at Kafumba. A lack of financial support from their Mennonite Brethren Conference led them to undertake significant self-supporting activities, including the production of palm oil, coffee, and food crops. Historians have disagreed about whether this episode of independent, self-supporting mission—which ended after the conference takeover in 1943—should be interpreted as an all-too-brief moment of gospel equality and economic sharing, or as an unfortunate derailment into a colonialist, station-centered pattern of ministry. Fast's essay offers the first detailed analysis of the ecclesial economy of Kafumba prior to 1943 based on primary sources. It demonstrates that the experiences of church shared by the Janzens and Congolese believers played a crucial role in shaping the development of this economy over time. Though marked by a degree of paternalism and racial separation, the Kafumba economy followed a disruptive logic by providing a refuge to Congolese young people from the most exploitative and abusive aspects of the palm oil industry that dominated the region.

Call for Papers: The Past and Future of Evangelical Missions

By dri November 4th, 2019 in Call for Papers

“The Past and Future of Evangelical Missions”

2020 Evangelical Missiological Society Call for Papers

Every few years, missiologists innovate or adopt models to address the missionary task amidst changing global realities. Some models have enjoyed a long “tail life” and endure for decades. Others are quickly abandoned. Unfortunately, we often move on to the next approach without adequately evaluating the usefulness of earlier theories, or the ramifications for those theories on future missionary work. How did those models actually advance the Great Commission in specific fields? How should those models be adjusted or abandoned as we make disciples across cultures into the future?

Missionary models to consider from the past may include:

  • Historical models such as Bosch’s paradigms and Winter’s eras
  • Evangelistic models including Church Planting Movements (CPMs), Disciple Making Movements (DMMs).
  • Demographic models like Unreached People Groups (UPGs) and the 10-40 window.
  • Indigenization models like the 3 selves and the pilgrim and indigenous principle.
  • Contextualization models like the C1-C6 spectrum and critical contextualization.

Current models that address 21st century realities take into account the changing face of the missionary force and mission fields. There are more Christians in Africa than on any other continent, Latin America has a thriving Pentecostalism as well as a resurgent Catholicism, and there a strong pockets of Christianity in Asia as well. The advent of World Christianity requires a rethinking of missions. Further, globalization, migration, and new technologies force is to reexamine how missions should be conducted.

As missiologists anticipate the future of missions, we must examine past models as well as the new context.  This year’s EMS theme encourages presenters to research and critique the permutations and implications of seminal models in missiology. It also encourages presenters to anticipate future directions in the missions enterprise, especially in light of the need to minister to the next generations and the impact of missions in the workplace, neighborhood, and other sectors of society.

Accepted papers should be 4500-7000 words in length and use Chicago Turabian author-date citation format. Selected papers presented at the regional meetings will be invited to be presented at the annual EMS meeting in Dallas, October 9-11, 2020, leading to the possibility of being published as a chapter in the EMS Annual Compendium for 2021.

2020 EMS conference chairs:

Aminta Arrington aarrington@jbu.edu John Brown University         

Ken Nehrbass ken.nehrbass@biola.edu Biola University

Narry Santos narrysantos@gmail.com Tyndale Seminary

Defining World Christianity

By dri October 30th, 2019 in People, 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.

Call for Papers: The Family in Chinese Christianity

By dri October 26th, 2019 in Call for Papers

Generational Legacies: The Family in Chinese Christianity

May 3-4, 2020 (arriving May 2, departing May 5)
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

This conference seeks to examine Chinese Christianity through the lens of the family. Chinese culture has a strong emphases on the family and expressions of Christianity in China are often family-centered. Therefore, understanding the role of the family in Chinese Christianity is critical for understanding Chinese Christianity.

The Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University invites presentation proposals that look at various aspects of the family in Chinese Christianity. Topics may include:

  • Commemoration of family history by Chinese Christian families
  • The role of Christianity in Chinese households
  • How Chinese Christian families perform life course rituals
  • How Chinese Christianity is linked to kinship or lineage networks
  • Chinese Christian theologies of family
  • “Sinification” of Chinese Christian families
  • Intergenerational challenges for Chinese Christian families
  • Multi-religious or mixed religious Chinese families
  • Transnational experiences of Chinese Christian families
  • Religious socialization in Chinese Christian families
  • The role of family in conversions to Christianity

In addition to presentations by scholars of Chinese Christianity, we also invite submissions from descendants of Chinese Christian families to present on the Christian history of their family. Such individuals are encouraged to share conversion experiences of ancestors, biographical information on prominent Christian family members, and unique Chinese Christian elements that characterize their families.

This gathering also hopes to collect firsthand historical sources, including personal papers (such as diaries), family photos, or other private holdings, which we hope to preserve and eventually digitize. Descendants of Chinese Christian families or scholars with relevant documents are encouraged to contact us regarding the collection of such sources.

Hotel and food expenses will be covered for all participants and limited travel funds are available to subsidize transportation costs for some scholars.

Applications from scholars should include a paper title, abstract (no more than 500 words), brief CV, and if you are applying for a travel subsidy (and if so, approximate cost of airfare). Applications from descendants of Chinese Christian families should include brief biographical information of the family (no more than 1,200 words), including region of origin, number of Christian generations, and prominent figures. A brief CV of the person(s) who will represent their families should also be included. 

Deadline to submit applications: December 13, 2019. Application material should be sent to crcs@purdue.edu. Please indicate “Generational Legacies” in the subject line. We will notify selected participants of acceptance and allocation of travel funds by January 15, 2020.

 

Gina Zurlo (’17) Named as One of BBC’s 100 Women of 2019

By dri October 16th, 2019 in Alumni Profiles and News, Announcements, People

Dr. Gina Zurlo, Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity, has been named one of the BBC's 100 Women of 2019. She is recognized as a scholar of religion and an expert in religion statistics. As a part of the BBC's 100 Women, Dr. Zurlo will be speaking in Delhi next week on the future of religion worldwide, especially the role that women play, as research consistently finds that women are more religious than men.

CT Blogpost Highlights Work of Soojin Chung (’18)

By dri October 16th, 2019 in Alumni Profiles and News, Publications, Research, World Christianity

Changing the Course of Church History
I recently listened to a message from Tim Keller where he referenced the Haystack Prayer Meeting. I’d heard about the gathering before. It took place in 1806 at Williams College and is considered the impetus for the modern missions movement. But I don’t think I realized how revolutionary the idea of global missions must have been at the time.

Keller recounts that while American churches back then had sent out missionaries to the frontier, no churches on the continent had been involved in any sort of prayer or missions internationally.

“A bunch of college kids got together under a haystack, they began to pray, God moved mightily. They thought about doing something no one had thought about doing … they changed the course of history,” he said.

I had a similar reaction when reading a recent CT History piece exploring the history of American adoption from Korea, which told the story of how World Vision and the precursor to Compassion International transformed Americans’ views of Asian orphans.

Their founders “helped conservative Christians integrate evangelism with social action by grafting evangelism with humanitarianism.” Their outreach laid the groundwork for a wave of adoption from Korea, which has only tapered off in recent decades.

These ideas—praying for global evangelism, caring for children and orphans—seem so essential to the work of the church today that it was hard for me to imagine a time before they were a major priority. Both are undeniably biblical, right? Jesus calls on his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19) and “be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), and both Old and New Testaments contain specific directives to care for the widow and orphan, with James saying true religion is to “to look after orphans and widows in their distress” (1:27).

Certainly these Scriptures, and the same Holy Spirit that inspires the church today, were at work among the early leaders of America’s international missions movement and overseas orphan care initiatives. Looking back at their history reveals how far we’ve come on these fronts.

A few years ago, Williams College—where a monument now commemorates the site of the Haystack Prayer Meeting—discussed whether the campus landmark should be “contextualized” to note what some see as imperialist and racist motivations at the heart of Christian missions. And while some research shows that Western missionaries don’t live up to that stereotype, there has still been so much needed reorienting that has taken place in missions, from dropping terminology like “foreign” or “Orient” or “third world” to relying on missionaries from outside the West to serve, teach, and train (as Dorcas Cheng-Tozun has written about).

We have also grown far more sensitive to the dynamics around adoption, including prioritizing family unification, avoiding negative characterizations of birth parents, and giving adoptees themselves a greater voice in the movement. As Soojin Chung writes, “American rhetoric concerning Korean children was at times tinged with paternalism. World Vision’s newsletter … predicted that the older children would soon ‘forget their life in Korea’ and would have only ‘memories of kind parents whose hearts were big enough to take them in.’” She notes that more recently, adult adoptees have begun to write their own narratives. “Their stories are often layered with experiences of abandonment, identity crisis, and longing for their cultural roots.”

These historical accounts also remind us that even when the biblical command seems so clear-cut, there is still work to be done to ensure our global engagement is as compassionate, respectful, and ultimately, Christlike as possible.

Kate

The Archives of the Holy See

By dri October 15th, 2019 in Announcements, Opportunities, Research, World Christianity

Winter Workshop: The Archives of the Holy See: an Introduction,  Rome, 20th -24th January 2020

Organized by the Sangalli Institute

The seminar will include lectures/laboratories on the following topics:

Introduction to Archival Research in Rome; The Vatican Secret Archives: Brief History and Structure; Archival Research in the Archives of the Fabbrica di San Pietro; Archival Research in the Archives of the Vicariate of Rome; Archival Research in the Archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Archival Research in the Archives of the Congregation for the Evangelization of People (de Propaganda Fide); Laboratories on Manuscripts & Documents: Language, Scripts, Conventions, Dating & Documentary Typologies.

The lectures and the laboratories will be held, among others, by Proff. Matteo Binasco (University for Foreigners of Siena); Benedetta Borello (University of Cassino); Irene Fosi (University of Chieti), Massimo C. Giannini (University of Teramo); Giuseppe Mrozek Eliszezynski (University of Chieti); Giovanni Pizzorusso (University of Chieti).

Cost of the seminar (including morning lectures and visits to archives): 1.000 € (one thousand euros).

https://www.istitutosangalli.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Winter-Roman-Workshop-Call.pdf
https://www.istitutosangalli.it/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Bando-settimana-archivi-romani.pdf