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.
Mission and Transformation in Burundi
Daewon Moon (PhD '18) and Joenghwa Park spent an afternoon at Boston University, describing their work in holistic mission in Burundi. Together they showcased how churches, schools, and global connections interact to create a healthy and vibrant community.
Call for Papers: Yale-Edinburgh Group
Diversity and Difference in Custom, Belief, and Practice in the History of Missions and World Christianity
That World Christianity is diverse, goes without saying; and any serious study of the missionary movement from the West, inseparable from the history of World Christianity, reveals not only diversity, but evident, often deeply held and sometimes strongly asserted difference. Sometimes the causes of difference lie in the Christian histories of Europe or America; transported to Africa or Asia, the distinctions, even if losing their original significance, remained sources of organizational division within African or Asian churches. Within missions, differences of age or of social or educational background have sometimes had quite as much influence on events as has theological divergence; and the same has been the case with differences arising from ethnic or cultural factors in churches. In both missions and churches movements seen by some as bringing renewal and revival have been seen by others as vehicles of disruption and confusion.
In both missions and churches, too, policies and priorities have changed over time, sometimes in response to movements of religious activity or theological reflection, sometimes independently of either. Some tensions are built into the nature of Christian mission: the call to daring faith and self-sacrifice goes out along with the call to devout prudence and responsible use of scarce resources, and some hear one sound while others hear the other. And there have always been maximalists and minimalists in mission: those whose vision embraces all creation and all human society, and those whose vision is unwaveringly concentrated on one thing needful. Both forms of vision have had an impact on World Christianity.
The degree of diversity in the interests, specialist knowledge, and perspectives of our members promises a rich and revealing time together as we pursue this theme, and studies are set before us of diversity and difference - whether in the same location at the same time, the same location at different times, or in different locations.
Please direct any questions about the theme essay or the 2019 meeting to my Yale email address (Christopher.j.anderson@yale.edu).
Call for Papers: Mission Amid Global Crises
“Mission Amid Global Crises”
2019 Evangelical Missiological Society Theme
Call for Papers
Today perhaps more than ever before, global missionaries encounter numerous forms of crises and human suffering in the normal course of their work. Whether it’s poverty in Africa, a Tsunami in southeast Asia, human trafficking in India, or refugees in Europe and America, the likelihood that missionary efforts will intersect with some form of global crisis appears to be on the rise. What does this mean for mission theology and practice in the 21stcentury? How will these events shape the future of the church engaged in the missio Dei? These issues raise important missiological questions for the church, including:
- How do these realities impact the ongoing debate between holistic missions advocates and those who emphasize proclamation?
- What are the implications for indigeneity when it comes to responding to global crises? How can disaster relief efforts build on the knowledge and cultural insight of local churches and local believers? How can local believers be an integral part of disaster response?
- What contextual theologies are coming from the global south that inform modern mission praxis as it relates to human suffering?
- What do global crises mean for North American and European churches, especially in light of materialism and individualism that often characterize Western churches?
- How does the concept of missio Dei relate to responding to human need?
- What are churches among the poor doing to respond to crises in their own communities?
- How do global crises especially affect women and children? How can the church on mission serve the needs of women and children in crises?
Papers are solicited that address these and other related topics from missiological, theological, historical, sociological, and/or regional perspectives.
To propose a paper, send a topic title and 200-300 word abstract to marcus.dean@houghton.edyour regional EMS vice president. Paper proposals aubmitted by January 23, 2019, will receive priority consideration for acceptance. Accepted papers should be 4500-7000 words in length and use Chicago Turabian author-datecitation format. Selected papers presented at the regional meetings will be invited to be presented at the annual EMS meeting in Dallas, September 13-15, 2019, leading to the possibility of being published as a chapter in the EMS Annual Compendiumfor 2020.
2019 EMS conference chairs:
Kirsten Priest (kersten.priest@indwes.edu)
Michelle Raven (Michelle.Raven@ciu.edu)
Jerry M. Ireland (irelandj@evangel.edu)
Call for Papers: Korean Christianity
Call for Papers: UCLA 2019 Im Conference of Korean Christianity
The UCLA Center for Korean Studies is pleased to announce that the 2019 Im Conference of Korean Christianity will be held at 10383 Bunche Hall on April 26 – 27, 2019.
The conference aims to give scholars in all Korea-related and world-Christianity fields an opportunity to present their researches on Korean Christianity, especially on the topics related to (1) Christianity in North(ern) Korea (2) Colonialism and Christianity, 1910-1945, and (3) Christianity, Nation Building, and US-Korea Relations, 1945-1965.
The papers dealing with the following issues and related issues are to be considered by the selecting committee—(1) Critical issues of Christianity in northern Korea, 1890-1945; Christianity in North Korea, 1945-1988 or 1988-2018; North Korean refugees and Christianity, 1995-2018 (2) Protestantism and colonial modernity; Roman Catholicism and colonial modernity; Christian nationalism and Pro-Japanese collaboration; colonialism and Christian education; and the colonial medical hegemony and Christian medical work. (3) Conflict between Christianity and Communism, 1945-1955; Christianity and the American Military Rule, 1945-1948; the Korean War and Christianity, 1950-1953; Christian Ideas of the Nation, 1945-1955; Christians and the Syngman Rhee Government, 1948-1960, or Global Connections of Korean Christianity, 1945-64.
The paper should be one that has not been published in an academic journal or a book yet. The conference is open to doctoral students, postdocs, and junior professors. It is also open to all applicants in the world, but preference will be given to those who are in the US and Canada.
Applicants should submit a short CV and proposal/abstract (within 400 words) by December 31, 2018, and the full paper (7,000-10,000 words) by March 15, 2019, to professor Sung-Deuk Oak. The result of the application will be notified by March 22.
Airfare (round trip), accommodations (a single room, 2 nights), and local transportation fees (shuttles from home to airport and LAX to UCLA) will be funded to all accepted participants.
All presenters will have a 40-minute talk and 15 minute-discussion session at the conference.
For further information, see the program webpage (http://koreanchristianity.humnet.ucla.edu) and contact Dr. Hyung-Wook Kim, assistant director of the UCLA Center for Korean Studies (hyung-wook.kim@international.ucla.edu).
African Initiative and Inspiration in the East African Revival, 1930-1950
In the 1930s and 1940s, African revivalists in colonial Ugandan and Ruanda-Urundi appropriated Christian beliefs and practices to forge a distinctively African Christian spirituality that precipitated the moral and spiritual transformation of many people in East Africa. Daewon Moon, in his successfully defended dissertation, demonstrated that African revivalists had the support and sympathy of evangelical-minded missionaries, but it was African evangelists, teachers, and hospital workers who fueled the rapid expansion of the movement.
Lay and Ecclesiastical Travelers from Europe to China in the Long 18th Century
In Illusion and Disillusionment: Travel Writing in the Modern Age, Eugenio Menegon opens the edited volume with a chapter on "Desire, Truth, and Propaganda: Lay and Ecclesiastical Travelers from Europe to China in the Long Eighteenth Century." The introduction explains: "The letters written by this early modern eighteenth century traveler, the Italian Serafino da San Giovanni Battista (1692-1742) provide a stark contrast to the other travelers and essays in the collection, offering a good starting point for our discussion. Penned as utilitarian documents, these letters were not meant for printed public consumption. The correspondence does not offer lengthy reflections on cultural difference, or the meaning of Serafino's voyage. However, the letters do include reports on the logistics of travel, and relate the difficulties of early modern travel, just before the onset of modernity in travel writing. The focus on the material reality in Menegon's essay diverges from the literary representations of voyages included in the rest of the volume, but is also linked to them in its exploration of illusion and disillusionment in missionary travel and activities."
Life and Death in the Missions of New France and East Asia
Narratives of Faith and Martyrdom
October 18-21, 2018
Midland, Ontario
Canada
Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled
A 17th-Century Chinese Christian and His Conflicted Worlds
The Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College will host a presentation of the recently published book Global Entanglements of a Man Who Never Traveled (Columbia University Press, 2018), a strikingly original work and a major contribution to East Asian, transnational, and global history, with important implications for historical approaches and methodologies. Dominic Sachsenmaier explores the mid-seventeenth-century world and the worldwide flows of ideas through the lens of a Chinese Christian’s life (Zhu Zongyuan), combining the local, regional, and global. In his book, he argues that particularly a combination of micro- and macro-historical perspectives can help us understand how large power systems impacted religious life on the ground. It can also help us raise new questions about the complex and often contradictory set of foreign and domestic forces that framed the history of Christianity in seventeenth-century China.
Friday, October 5, 2018, 12 - 2 p.m.
Boston College
Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies
Ground level of Simboli Hall
9 Lake Street
Brighton, MA 02135
A light lunch provided
RSVP iajs@bc.edu
Dominic Sachsenmaier holds a chair professorship in “Modern China with a Special Emphasis on Global Historical Perspectives” at Göttingen University, Germany. He has held faculty positions at Jacobs University Bremen, Duke University and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dominic Sachsenmaier is the president of the US-based Toynbee Prize Foundation, and he is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is also one of the three editors of the book series Columbia Studies in International and Global History (Columbia UP).
Colonialism, Christianity, and Personhood in Africa
"Africans labor under the weight of a crisis of personhood, self-identity, and a split self that is a legacy of Christianity and colonialism," Nimi Wariboko argues. In his recent publication, "Colonialism, Christianity and Personhood," which appears in the Blackwell Companion to African History, edited by William H. Worger, Charles Ambler and Nwando Achebe, Wariboko explores the dual nature of African identity, its source in African tradition and Western colonialism and the spread of Christianity. He ends in hopeful expectation that the twin forces within the African self will no longer stand in opposition to one another, but begin to create a new combination.
The Role of Missionaries in the Inception of Transnational Adoption, 1949-1960.
Soojin Chung successfully defended her dissertation on "The Role of Missionaries in the Inception of Transnational Adoption, 1949-1960."
