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: Socio-Political Disruptions and Missions Praxis
The October 2020 issue of Global Missiology - English will take up the urgent theme of “Socio-Political Disruptions and Missions Praxis.” Regional case studies are welcome, as are papers that take up any number of related topics, including:
- The rise of global populism and of political radicalism, plus the challenges both present to nation-states as well as to Christians’ unified witness
- Accelerating phases of technology: the digitalization of the world, the turn to social media and big data (facebook, twitter, instagram), and resulting opportunities and challenges for missions praxis. (One example among many topics worth pursuing is how cross-cultural workers have been affected by increased availability of online entertainment and social media: whereas in the past a person or a group would have gone out for evangelism, some missionaries are spending more time watching movies and trying to cope with culture shock by turning inwards or homewards.)
- Global demographic transformations - including aging populations in the West and other “developed” nations such as Japan and South Korea, as well as younger populations in Africa - that carry vast implications for points of mission focus as well as for missions mobilization, funding, and generational missions visions. Exploration is needed also of the ministry implications of today’s more porous social, cultural, and class boundaries (caused by, for example, urbanization and intermarriages), for example neo-cosmopolitan people group reconfigurations and diffuse (mixed) group identities. There are new questions about mission among aging generations that rejected Christianity a few decades ago, but are now facing mortality.
- Increased migrations, displacements and refugees, as well as ethnic or racial marginality, associated with violence and other catastrophes. With such dynamic people movements all over the world, how might churches re-imagine discipling and socializing new generations of displaced people, including Christians? The much-discussed phenomenon of “reverse missions” relates here, but there is a need for more in-depth explorations.
- The “closing up” or “limitation” of certain frontier missions, e.g., China’s and India’s restrictions, Africa’s control of work permits. What kinds of stories are emerging in these areas? If you have been a missionary who has been displaced by restrictions, can you tell your story to GM?
- Increased mixing of Christian and other activists in both social activism as well as social relief. How has Christian mission been affected in specific areas?
Proposed titles with approximately 100-word abstracts are due as early as possible, with an absolute latest deadline of April 30, 2020. Full manuscripts of approved paper proposals will be due July 31, 2020. Manuscript guidelines can be found on the Global Missiology website at
http://ojs.globalmissiology.org/index.php/english/about/submissions#authorGuidelines.
Please address all submissions and questions to globalmissiologyenglish@gmail.com.
Call for Papers: Christian Revival and Renewal Movements
Christian Revival and Renewal Movements in 20th and 21st Centuries
DATES: 28 to 30 June 2020
VENUE: Hope Park Campus, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool L16 9JD, England
Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ requires Christians to change their customary ways of thinking and living in their specific contexts. In this process, they seek to orient their heritages, contemporary situations and future aspirations towards the Lord Jesus Christ as well. They want to cultivate in themselves the mind of the Lord Jesus Christ and to adjust their priorities accordingly. In due course, small changes begin to occur; gradually, they grow into sizable movements of revivals and renewals. Revivals improve how Christians perceive themselves, their loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ, their practices of spirituality and social engagement. They resurrect and reinvigorate their study of the Bible, prayer, meditation, church attendance, and missionary witness. As they seek to relive in their diverse contexts the examples of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles, as mentioned in the New Testament, they revisit the ideals of dependence of God for beneficial directions and full human flourishing here and now in this world. They renew spiritual practices such as personal and corporate reading of the biblical texts, stewardship and simplicity, tithing and giving for missionary purposes. Their regenerated and revitalised spiritual and temporal life leads at personal and corporate level to revival and renewal movements; these want to be at home in their contexts; but they question the legitimacy of inherited prejudices, unjust structural systems and mechanisms for excluding the weak and underprivileged. The ripple effects of their spiritual revivals and renewals manifest themselves in transformations of communities both within and outside of the Christian congregations.
The Yale-Edinburgh Conference of 2012 explored different facets of ‘Religious Movements of Renewal, Revival and Revitalization in the History of Missions and World Christianity.’ The conference of the Andrew Walls Centre at Liverpool Hope University focuses its attention on the revival, renewal and revitalisation movements of World Christianity since the dawn of 20th century. During the past 120 years, Christianity has recorded an astonishing growth of African Christianity. During this period, several Christian movements in Asia, the Pacific and Latin America underwent renewals. While Euro-American Christians attempt to rejuvenate their denominational and confessional teachings and institutions, their post-Christian societies either tolerate or disregard their presence and witness in the public sphere. Diaspora Christian communities exist in all countries and they seek to renew the spiritual life of the people in their host countries. Christian missionaries from South Korea, Nigeria, Brazil, for example, serve in many countries in the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. Evangelism through conventional and digital mass media spread the Word of God and certain Christian traditions everywhere. Both friends and ‘foes’ engage with the claims and actual manifestations of Christianity in their immediate neighbourhoods. For instance, the early 20th century saw the rise of figures such as W.W Harris, Sampson Oppong, Garrick Braide and many others, inspired by African readings of Scripture, leading mass movements to Christian faith. The East African Revival, which has had a massive effect on whole churches in several countries, count they engage with the East African Revival among the Anglicans, began in one small Anglican mission party. The later part of the 20th century a youth-led charismatic movement re-shaping many churches originating from Western historic Protestant missions. The 21st century continues to see new movements, some of them under leaders perceived as embodying the restoration of the spiritual gifts of the apostolic age. Similar revivals and renewals are evident among the peoples of North East India, the Kachin, Karen and Chin of Myanmar, the Koreans (1903–1907), the Chinese (House Church movements), Vietnam, Cambodia and Central Asia. At present, several revival movements happen in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Pacific Realm, and in the Euro-American countries. Understanding their goals, theologies, work methods, successes and limitations would enrich our knowledge of contemporary World Christianity.
The organisers of this invite 300-word paper proposals on any aspect of the national or regional, denominational or confessional revivals, renewals and revitalisation of Christianity; they can also deal with the responses of the people other faiths and traditions respond to these revivals. You may email your paper proposal before 31 January 2020 to the organisers, namely to either Professor Daniel Jeyaraj (jeyarad@hope.ac.uk) or Dr. Harvey Kwiyani (kwiyanh@hope.ac.uk).
After the Selection Committee has chosen the papers, we will contact you in the first week of February 2020. Details of registration for conference and accommodation will be available soon online at https://store.hope.ac.uk/conferences-and-events. In the meantime, the organisers will be happy to answer your queries about this conference.
Professor Andrew Walls, Professor Daniel Jeyaraj and Dr. Harvey Kwiyani
Maryknoll 2019
This year’s meeting of the Eastern Fellowship of Professors of Mission held at Maryknoll was attended by 57 people from a total of 16 institutions—a record number on both accounts. The theme of “Visualizing Mission” fired the imagination of presenters and participants alike. On Friday, Maryknoll Father Larry Lewis unveiled jewels of “God images” and signs of divine presence in several mainstream American and foreign films, emphasizing the mission of fully living out one’s humanity for God. After dinner, filmmaker James Ault played an excerpt of his new film project on Mechanic Manyeruke, considered a father of gospel music in Zimbabwe. Daryl Ireland (Boston University) prompted lively discussion with his fascinating findings on the portrayal of the cross in the CGCM’s digital Chinese poster collection (www.ccposter.com). Saturday morning, James Kim (New Brunswick Theological Seminary) showed excerpts of two Korean documentaries and highlighted some of the painful history of the coming of Christianity to Korea and the work of western missionaries. Finally, brief presentations by Meg Guider (Boston College), Michèle Sigg (Boston University), and James Taneti (Union Presbyterian Seminary) launched a plenary discussion on “Missionaries in the Movies.” Themes that emerged from the conversation included the importance of visual resources for churches in Africa, the ongoing challenge of negative portrayals of mission and missionaries in mainstream media, and the role of missiologists in evaluating these images within the evolving curriculum of mission studies and world Christianity programs.
Aristocratic Patronesses of the Chinese Catholic Mission
What do a Chinese élite lady in Shanghai, a Portuguese duchess in Madrid, an Austrian queen in Lisbon, and a Bavarian countess in Augsburg all have in common? These women, in spite of distance in time and space, all became revered patronesses of the Jesuit missions in China in the early modern period.
Candida Xu (許甘第大, 1607-1680), granddaughter of the most prominent Chinese Catholic convert of the late Ming period, the imperial Grand Secretary Xu Guangqi 徐光啓, once widowed at age 46 poured her fortune and energies in religious endeavors within the Catholic mission, and became a paragon of patronage and holiness both for her compatriots and the European readers of her French (1688), Spanish (1691) and Dutch (1694) biographies.
The Portuguese noblewoman and heiress Maria de Guadalupe de Lencastre y Cárdenas Manrique, Duchess of Aveiro (1630-1715), cultivated a sprawling epistolary network with Jesuit missionaries across the globe, including several in China, financially supporting them, and receiving in return spiritual blessings and information on their activities.
Maria Anna Habsburg of Austria (1683-1754), Queen Consort of Portugal and Regent of Portugal from 1742 until 1750, through her Jesuit confessor, the Austrian astronomer of the China Portuguese mission Augustin Hallerstein, organized a lavish embassy to the Qianlong Emperor to save the Chinese church from annihilation.
Finally, Countess Maria Theresia von Fugger-Wellenburg (1690-1762), a descendant of the Fugger banking dynasty in Swabia, through the Bavarian Jesuit Florian Bahr, supported Chinese abandoned infants and acted as a chain of communication between the Qing and the Wittelsbach courts.
This presentation examines these prominent women’s interactions with, and patronage of, the Jesuit missionaries in China, and, how, through their correspondence, as well as their political and financial influence, they sustained a far-flung network of male ecclesiastical admirers and expressed feminine spirituality and influence across the continents.
Wednesday, November 13, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Annmary Brown Memorial, 21 Brown Street | Free and open to the public.
Missiological Conversations
In October, Anicka Fast published, "Sacred children, white privilege, and mission: the role of historical reflection in moving toward healthier relationships within the global church," in Missiology: An International Review 47, no. 4 (October 2019): 435-448. The piece was a response to a rebuttal to her 2018 article “Sacred children and colonial subsidies” which also appeared in Missiology. Both the rebuttal by Lawrent Buschman and her response appear in this (October) issue ofMissiology. The editor Rich Starcher offers an introduction to the conversation in which he states: “While the process was stressful, the resultant dialogue was so rich that one prominent ASM leader suggested that such conversations on other disputed/controversial issues would be a good feature in future issues of the journal.”
A Disruptive Ecclesial Economy
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
“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
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.
100 Women of 2019
Gina Zurlo ('17) was selected as one of the 100 women of 2019 by the BBC. She spoke in New Delhi at a BBC-sponsored event, discussing the role of women in religion. Her talk begins at 56:27.
Call for Papers: The Family in Chinese Christianity
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.