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: Migration, Exile, and Pilgrimage in World Christianity
This is the official call for papers for the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity conference, which will be held at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, Connecticut on June 29 – July 1, 2017.
Offers of short papers are welcome on any aspect of the conference theme: Migration, Exile, and Pilgrimage in the History of Missions and World Christianity. Please submit your paper proposal as an email attachment to Martha Smalley (martha.smalley@yale.edu) by March 5. Your proposal should include your name, academic affiliation/status, and a one paragraph summary of the proposed topic. If your proposal is accepted, you will be notified by March 15. Our pattern has been to have each oral presentation limited to 20-25 minutes, followed by discussion. Full papers are welcomed in advance and, if received by June 27, will be available for download by conference participants.
Preliminary information about the meeting is available at http://divinity-adhoc.library.yale.edu/Yale-Edinburgh/2017y-einfo.htm, including a link to the pre-registration/accommodations form. If you plan to attend the conference, please submit the pre-registration form at your earliest convenience; attendance at the meeting will be limited to 75 people. If you need a letter of invitation in order to obtain a visa or institutional funding, please indicate this on the registration form. The registration deadline is April 30th.
Participation in the meeting is limited to members of the Yale-Edinburgh Group, which consists de facto of the members of the “Missions” listserv. If you know of people who may be interested in participating in the conference but are not members of the listserv, please ask them to contact me.
Thanks to funds contributed by the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh, we are able to waive the $75 registration fee for all participants who have student status, and subsidize housing costs.
Information about a small number of fellowships sponsored by the Yale Divinity Library’s David M. Stowe Fund for Mission Research will be forthcoming next week. These fellowships are available to cover travel and accommodations expenses of younger scholars who wish to attend the conference and spend some time at the Library doing research.
41st Korea Missiology Forum
A Korea Missiology Forum, which has been hosted by Korea Research Institute for Mission (KRIM) since 2004, was held on January 12, 2017 at Nam Seoul Presbyterian Church, Seoul, South Korea. Rev. Daewon Moon, who is Ph.D. candidate at Boston University, spoke about “Ancestor Cults in Africa and African Initiated Churches” and Rev. Chun Lee, who is managing director of KRIM, responded. The session was followed by a period of questions and answers, and and a fuller discussion. The presenter, Daewon Moon explained the nature of Africans’ ancestor cult and how African Initiated Churches have responded to the practice, while Rev. Lee noted connections with the Korean Confucian traditions of ancestor worship. 
Missionary Backstories
ABCFM Missionaries and their role in the Ottoman Empire, Hawai'i and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States will be explored through a series of lectures. Owen Miller will speak on January 19th, February 16th, and March 16th. More details are available from the Congregational Library and Archives.
Call for Papers: Converting Spaces: Re-Directing Missions Through Global Encounters
The department of religious studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara, with support from the Cordano Endowment in Catholic Studies, will host an interdisciplinary conference from May 4-6, 2017, entitled “Converting Spaces: Re-Directing Missions Through Global Encounters.” The keynote speaker for the event is Dr. Liam Brockey of the history department at Michigan State University.
Proposals addressing the relation of space to conversion in the context of European global and colonial expansion from the sixteenth century onwards are welcome from established scholars, graduate students, and independent researchers. The deadline for submissions is February 17, 2017.
We seek papers addressing the relation of space to conversion in the context of European global and colonial expansion from the sixteenth century onwards. We invite contributions that explore the relationship between “mission” and the conversion of spaces globally, focusing on how these spaces both converted and were converted by different contexts, people, and environments. We especially solicit papers that examine missions against the particular historical contexts and cultural environments into which they entered. We therefore encourage contributions that consider how Christian missions have been sent in different directions by the people they have sought to missionize, and consider how those who were the targets of conversion “indigenized” the spaces that were produced to convert them. We conceive of space broadly—as sites or loci of interaction and exchange; as an effect of social practices within communities; as an ontological question (e.g., the relation of the metaphysical to the physical); and as an epistemological category bound up with producing order and legibility. What were the politics of this exchange, and how did the spaces shape transmission? Likewise, how did missionaries contribute to the creation of epistemological spaces (e.g. museums, archives, schools) in which the study of the “other” was institutionalized and bound to colonial taxonomies? What were the responses to missionaries by the “missionized”: how did buildings, hymns and texts serve as spaces of contestation and adaptation?
As an interdisciplinary conference interested in the ambiguity of Christian missions, conversion and inculturation, we welcome papers addressing the following themes:
1. Spaces of missionary/colonial knowledge
• The politics of archives and museums ranging from collection and preservation of, as well as access to materials. Missionary influence on educational systems and their curricula. We are especially interested in papers articulating approaches to decolonizing epistemologies of archives.
• Academic texts and conferences as sites for the creation or contestation of knowledge and policy for colonial powers.
• The Christian social-spatial imaginary in relation to conceptions of “mission fields,” “10/40 window,” “the Muslim world,” and similar (pseudo)geographical frames.
2. Material histories of the mission
• The spatial organization of the mission, including the relation of sacred space to sites of labor and production.
• Political economies of missions, including commodity production, educational services, economics of charity, land, and labor.
• The indigenization of Christian art, architecture, relics, and liturgy.
3. The politics of enclosing and (de-)constructing borders
• Critical discussion of the relation of the spatial and directional qualities embedded in categories of “missionized,” “indigenous,” “native,” “local,” “reached/unreached.”
• Charting spaces—how did mapmaking, census-taking, and similar processes of inscribing legibility by missionaries contest existing understandings of place and community?
• Differing ontologies: what were the modes, practices and understandings of “space” encountered by missionaries in different contexts. What were the limitations of their categories and epistemological assumptions, e.g., where “converts” understood themselves not as “either/or” but as occupying polysemous/ambiguous spaces.
4. Conversion and the creation of “California”
• The transformation of indigenous lands into Spanish colonial and Catholic missionary spaces.
• The politics of “conservation” and its connection to cultural and territorial dispossession. The relation of history-making to history-writing and the authority of the “historian.”
• Indigenous Californian evaluations of California history. What are the responses to California-textbook history? How was the land conceived of prior to Spanish missionary/colonial expansion?
To submit a proposal, send an abstract of 300-500 words, along with a one-page CV, to UCSBConvertingSpaces@gmail.com.
Website: http://blogs.ssrc.org/tif/2017/01/06/cfp-converting-spaces/#more-44344
Source: Dwight Reynolds
Migration, Human Dislocation, and Mission Accountability
The theme of the Korean Global Mission Leadership Forum this year is "Migration, Human Dislocation, and Mission Accountability." Research Professor Jon Bonk will chair the executive meeting in New Haven on February 20th in preparation for the fourth meeting of the Korean Global Mission Leadership Forum, scheduled for Sokcho in South Korea, November 7-10. The papers and responses will be published in English and Korean as the fourth volume in the series on "Accountability in Mission."
Andrew Walls Centre for the Study of African and Asian Christianity International Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS
The year 2017 sees the 500th anniversary of events often seen as initiating the Protestant Reformation. The years that followed saw a series of spiritual movements, some among Catholics, and some among Protestants that brought renewal to the Western Church. In the course of their long histories, African and Asian Christianity have also experienced movements that sought reform and renewal in the Church. In the early centuries, the young Coptic layman Antony, seeking to be a perfect disciple of Christ, inaugurated a new era of Christian spirituality, and the early Syriac church hosted the movement of consecrated young people that became the Children of the Covenant. Later centuries were to witness the monastic revivals in Ethiopia, the twentieth the East African Revival, new devotional movements in the Chinese churches and the remarkable response to such figures as John Sung in South East Asia. Some movements sought greater cultural authenticity, some sought fuller engagement with the principalities and powers at work in society, some brought fresh affirmation to neglected doctrines or forgotten Biblical themes; some recall Antony’s quest of perfect discipleship. Some have been shared with the Western world and interacting with it. The modern charismatic movement is worldwide, and early Pentecostalism found expression in India, China and Korea as well as in USA; others have been purely local in scope. Together they form a highly significant element in the Christian story.
For the 2017 international conference of the Centre, papers are invited on any aspect of movements of reformation, revival and renewal in African and Asian Christianity. Please email a 300-word abstract of your proposed paper before Friday 17 March 2017 to Professor Daniel Jeyaraj (jeyarad@hope.ac.uk). By the end of March 2017, the Conference Committee will inform those whose papers are selected for presentation at the Conference.
Specially subsidized rates are available for both speakers and participants. Online booking will start on 28 February 2017. Early Bird Rate of GBP 160/- (arrival on 9 June 1017 and departure on 11 June 2017, registration feel, accommodation in single en-suit rooms in Hope Park, all meals and refreshments) is available until 28 April 2017. Then the Standard Rate of GBP 175/- will apply. Early Bird Rate GBP 110/- (arrival on 9 June 1017 and departure on 11 June 2017, registration feel, accommodation in single en-suit rooms in Hope Park, all meals and refreshments) is available until 28 April 2017 for postgraduate / doctoral research students, and those speakers / participants, who come directly from Africa and Asia. Then the Standard Rate of GBP 125 will apply. Day Participants will pay GBP 30/-. It includes registration, meals, and refreshments. All reservations, particularly for accommodation, will follow the principle of ‘first-come-first-served.’ For easy and quick online payment, The Hope Store has set up a special account: Reformation-Revival & Renewal Movements in Africa Conference. In case, if this link does not work in some places, please email your reservation preferences to Prof. Jeyaraj (jeyarad@hope.ac.uk) and then pay the amount on your arrival. If necessary, you can contact Miss Lauren Whiston (whistol@hope.ac.uk) for technical information. During your stay, you can consult the excellent collections of the Andrew Walls Centre. Hearty welcome!
Call for Chapters: American Society of Missiology
Call for Chapter Proposals
One of the outcomes of the last ASM meetings was the development of a book project that will allow the introduction of new scholars in missiology. We have meet with the acquisitions editor for Baker Academic and he is very interested in our book proposal and now we are seeking contributors to this volume.
The following is a description of the book:
Practicing Mission: From Theory to Practice and Back Again. The book is intended to demonstrate how theories from various disciplines can inform and improve the practice of mission and how the practice of theory in mission serves to refine theory. Each chapter introduces the prominent theories in the various aspects of mission in the 21st century, shows how those theories can be integrated into practice, and then provides case studies from around the world that will engage students while also showing how practitioners help refine theories through their application of them.
We are looking for female scholars interested in contributing chapters on current issues in missiology such as diaspora, migration, urbanization, gender, sex trafficking, language and identity, health care, ecology, art, or other current issues in missiology. Chapter contributions will each follow the same format. Each chapter should first address current theoretical trends in the discipline. It should then address how that theory has been used in practice and/or current theoretical trends that are relevant to mission. Finally, each chapter should present case studies of the application of theory to practice and how practice refines theories. Each chapter would be approximately 4-5000 words.
We are interested in chapter proposals (200-400 words). In your proposal, please include your topic, relevant theories you would cover, and a brief description of how they have been used in the practice of mission. Please e-mail your chapter proposal by February 1, 2017 to sue.russell@asburyseminary.edu to be considered for inclusion. If accepted, completed chapters will be due by July 30, 2017.
Call for Papers: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society
The year 2019 will mark the centenary of the Mandarin Union Version (Heheben 和合本) of the Chinese Bible, which remains the most widely used biblical translation in the Chinese-speaking world, even though it was produced by western Protestant missionaries with the help of Chinese Protestants during the last two decades of the Qing dynasty and the early years of Republican China. To celebrate this occasion, it is proposed that a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society be prepared, so as to offer an opportunity to explore the history and legacy of the Mandarin Union Version, to shed light on the interaction of biblical texts with Chinese culture and society, and to reflect on the place of Bible translation in Chinese Christianity and more broadly speaking, Christianities in East Asia, a region which was influenced by Chinese culture and for which the Chinese language served as a lingua franca for centuries.
Prospective contributors are invited to address the themes including but not limited to the following:
- The social, religious and cultural contexts in which the Mandarin Union Version was produced and has been used
- The relationship of the Mandarin Union Version with other Chinese Union Versions, i.e. High Wenli, Easy Wenli and Wenli Union Versions
- The publishing history of the Mandarin Union Version
- The roles of the Mandarin Union Version in Chinese Protestant communities
- The literary and linguistic influences of the Mandarin Union Version
- The Mandarin Union Version and biblical translations in Chinese dialects
- Comparison between the Mandarin Union Version and other Chinese Bible versions
- Comparison between the Mandarin Union Version and other biblical translations in East Asia that are in the nature of a ‘union version
The accepted abstracts will form the basis of the proposal to be submitted to the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, the editorial office of which has expressed initial interest in this publication project. The decision to publish the submitted manuscripts will be subject to the usual peer review process of the journal. If the proposal for publication is approved and the submitted manuscripts go through the peer review process satisfactorily, it is expected that the special issue will be published as the October issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2019.
Submission Deadlines
27 January 2017 Abstract (about 250 words) & Biography (100-150 words)
By the end of February 2017 Notification of Selection
30 September 2017 Manuscripts for Peer Review (about 6,000 words)
The submissions must be based on original research, not be published before, and not be considered for publication elsewhere.
For details about the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, visit https://www.cambridge.org/core
For enquiries and submission of abstracts, please contact me, who will serve as the guest editor of the proposed special issue, at ggkwmak@cantab.net.
George Kam Wah Mak
David C. Lam Institute for East-West Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University
Call for Papers: EMS Northeast Regional Conference
On March 18, 2017 the northeast regional EMS conference will be held at First Baptist Church of Flushing in Flushing, NY. Our main theme will be Engaging Theology, Theologians, and Theological Education in (or from) Majority World Contexts. While missiology pioneered early discussions of theology in cultural context, and of self-theologizing as a core value, missiology must remain current in its engagements with theology and theological education if it is to build on missiological strengths and remain central to such conversations. We would like to explore aspects of what it means for missiology, theology, and theological education in North America to engage theology, theologians and theological education from (or in) Africa, Asia and Latin America and other majority world contexts.
Association of Professors of Mission: Call for Papers
Deadline: February 15, 2017
Teaching Mission in the Complex Public Arena: Developing Missiologically Informed Models of Engagement
2017 Annual Meeting
Wheaton College - Wheaton, IL
June 15-16, 2017