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.
History of Christianity in East Asia at the University of Oxford
Call for Applications for an International Workshop
on the History of Christianity in East Asia at the University of Oxford
The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco in collaboration with the China Centre at the University of Oxford will hold a four-day international workshop at Oxford from September 20 through September 23, 2017.
We are inviting post-doctoral level scholars and junior faculty members with their research focus on Christianity in East Asia who are currently preparing a book manuscript for publication to apply. This workshop is part of a four-year project supported by the Henry Luce Foundation in New York City. The project is entitled, “Historical Legacies of Christianity in East Asia: Bridging a New Generation of Scholars and Scholarship” and is administered by the Ricci Institute.
National U.S. Catholic China Bureau National Conference
Experience of the China Church in the 21st Century — The 27th National U.S. Catholic China Bureau National Conference
St. John’s University, Jamaica, Queens, New York City. August 11-13, 2017,
Scheduled Keynote Speakers: Father Joseph Jiang, S.J., Boston College
Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti Archbishop Eugene Nugent: From 2001 until 2010 he directed the Holy See Study Mission in Hong Kong.
Saturday August 12 sessions: Father Zhang, Biblical Studies Professor, China;
Father Tommy Murphy, S.S.C., Former Columbans Superior General; Sister Rita Hongyan Ge., Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Hope, MA Candidate in Spirituality, Loyola University of Chicago; Joann Pittman, China Source; Father Michael Li, China; Dr. Joseph Lee, Professor of History and Executive Director, Confucius Institute, Pace University, NYC; various representatives and laity from U.S. Chinese Catholic communities and associations.
Saturday afternoon Chinese Catholic liturgy, Chinese banquet, and cultural evening presentation
Sunday morning August 13 Plenary Session: Interdisciplinary Scholarly Exchange on Christianity in China and modern topics of Catholic religion. Scholars, graduate students and others may submit proposals and will remain open until all panels are filled.
General public, students and scholars are welcome to attend. Register now at www.uscatholichina.org.
Early bird housing and registration till July 21, 2017
Questions: Contact Executive Director Father Rob Carbonneau, C.P., Ph.D.
Contemporary Mission Theology
David B. Barrett and the Quantification of World Christianity
Join Ph.D. candidate Gina Zurlo in a lunch forum discussing Barrett's achievement and her process of researching and writing a dissertation. Lunch Provided.
Goals of Frontier Church Planters and Other Missionaries According to the Serampore Form of Agreement
In 1805 the famed missionary trio of William Carey, William Ward, and Joshua Marshman, along with six other men of the British Baptist Missionary Society who were stationed at Serampore, India, set forth for themselves, and a stream of new missionaries arriving from England, eleven “great principles” (as they called them) to explain their commitments and aims. The Serampore Form of Agreement (SFA) articulates a more robust and biblical understanding of the church planter’s life and ministry than typically does the popular contemporary literature on missions that is consumed by US American evangelicals.
Travis Myers, STH alumnus, recently published an article titled "The 'Peculiar Qualifications' and Goals of Frontier Church Planters and Other Missionaries According to the Serampore Form of Agreement (1805)" in Journal of Global Christianity. His article demonstrates Serampore Form of Agreement's early-nineteenth-century signers’ attention to culture learning and avoiding offense, to building rapport and diligent evangelism, to proper doctrine and patient disciple-making, as well as to indigenous churches and missionary oversight. Throughout the article, he suggests several points of application to certain contemporary issues in missions, especially those related to best practices in the field and missionary qualifications.
Books on Korean Protestantism
Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak, STH alumnus, published two books on the history of early Korean Protestantism for the Korean audience. A New History of Early Korean Protestantism is a critical study of many accepted, yet distorted narratives of early Korean churches up to 1910. It demythologizes historical heroes and criticize renowned historians’ interpretations. Recently Christianity Today Korea chose this book as the best book of the year in history and nominated it for the book of the year.
The First Forty-five Events of Early Korean Protestantism presents 45 first figures and events in the early history of Korean Christianity such as the first visiting missionary, the first vernacular Korean Christian tract, the first baptism in Pyongyang, and so on. Oak’s three sourcebooks also come out this January. Sources of Samuel Austin Moffett, vol. 1 (1854-93) and vol. 2 (1894-1900). This ten-volume series compiles all English materials of the first American missionary couple to Pyongyang and translate them into Korean with annotations and photos. Sources of Modern Nursing in Korea, vol. 2 (1910-19) transcribes, translates, and annotates the primary (English, Japanese, and Korean) sources of the nursing work in Korea.
“Spatial Spirituality and Latino Ethnic Identity: How Religious Affiliation Facilitates Diverging Forms of Local Ethnic Belonging”
"Spatial Spirituality and Latino Ethnic Identity: How Religious Affiliation Facilitates Diverging Forms of Local Ethnic Belonging"The Missiology of Pearl Sydenstricker Buck
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck’s fame as a novelist (best known for her beloved book The Good Earth) often overshadowed her original vocation as a Presbyterian missionary and her later role as a social activist. Her Christian values, however, provided an important foundation for humanitarian works. Soojin Chung recently published an article titled "The Missiology of Pearl Sydenstricker Buck" in International Bulletin of Mission Research Vol. 41 No.2. The article underscores Buck's identity as a missionary and a humanitarian who formed a bridge between the East and the West. The first half of the article delineates her life, and the second half expounds on her missiology in close conjunction with her peer William E. Hocking.
Research Fellowship
The David M. Stowe Fund for Mission Research is intended to support visiting researchers who come to the Yale Divinity Library to use its missions and world Christianity-related collections. This year we are happy to announce that $5,000 is available to subsidize the travel and accommodation expenses of individuals whose research would benefit from using the resources available at the Yale Divinity Library. It is our preference that the researchers visit the Yale Divinity Library in connection with the Yale-Edinburgh Group meeting of June 29 – July 1, 2017 and spend at least one week in residence in New Haven to use the collections. We will give preference to younger scholars who may lack institutional funding for research travel. Because of financial regulations here, we can only use the funds to book travel for researchers and cover accommodations costs at OMSC or YDS; we cannot provide reimbursements or stipends. The number of fellowships distributed will depend on the travel/accommodation costs of the successful candidates. Individuals who have been awarded Stowe funding in the past will not be eligible for another award.
If you would like to be considered for an award from the Stowe Fund, please send a statement to me indicating your area of research and the specific holdings of the Divinity Library that are of interest to you. The library's catalog is available at http://orbis.library.yale.
Information about the June meeting of the Yale-Edinburgh Group is available at: http://divinity-adhoc.
Call for Papers: Christianity in Modern China
CHRISTIANITY IN MODERN CHINA Series, Palgrave Macmillan
Editor: Cindy Yik-yi Chu, Professor of History, Hong Kong Baptist University
About this series
This series addresses Christianity in China from the time of the late Ming and early Qing dynasties to the present. It includes a number of disciplines—history, political science, theology, religious studies, gender studies and sociology. Not only is the series inter-disciplinary, it also encourages inter-religious dialogue. It covers the Presence of the Catholic Church, the Protestant Churches and the Orthodox Church in China. While Chinese Protestant Churches have attracted much scholarly and journalistic attention, there is much unknown about the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church in China. There is an enormous demand for monographs on the Chinese Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. This series captures the breathtaking phenomenon of the rapid expansion of Chinese Christianity on the one hand, and the long awaited need to reveal the reality and the development of Chinese Catholicism and the Orthodox religion on the other.
Christianity in China reflects on the tremendous importance of Chinese-foreign relations. The series touches on many levels of research—the life of a single Christian in a village, a city parish, the conflicts between converts in a province, the policy of the provincial authority and state-to-state relations. It concerns the influence of different cultures on Chinese soil—the American, the French, the Italian, the Portuguese and so on. Contributors of the series include not only people from the academia but journalists and professional writers as well. The series would stand out as a collective effort of authors from different countries and backgrounds. Under the influence of globalization, it is entirely necessary to emphasize the inter-cultural dimension of the monographs of the series. With Christianity being questioned in the Western world, as witnessed in the popularity of Dan Brown’s books since some time ago, the Chinese have surprised the world by their embracement of this foreign religion.
If you would like to submit a proposal for this series please do not hesitste to contact the series editor:
Cindy Yik-yi Chu
Professor of History
Hong Kong Baptist University
cindychu@hkbu.edu.hk