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.
Dr. Soojin Chung Promoted to Associate Professor
Alum Dr. Soojin Chung ('18) is promoted to Associate Professor. She teaches at Azusa Pacific University.
Bio Updated: Since August 1, 2023, Dr. Chung has been the Director of the Overseas Ministries Study Center and Editor of the International Bulletin of Mission Research at Princeton Theological Seminary. More on her profile and academic interests here.
Antipas Harris awarded the Young Adult Influencer Award
The Alliance for Black Pentecostal Scholarship awarded the high honor of the Young Adult Influencer Award to Antipas Harris at the Gala at Oral Roberts University.
Dr. Rady Roldan-Figueroa will hold the Rev. Robert Randall Distinguished Professorship in Christian Culture
Dr. Rady Roldan-Figueroa, Associate Professor of the History of Christianity at Boston University School of Theology, and a CGCM Faculty Associate will be Rev. Robert Randall Distinguished Professor in Christian Culture in the fall.
The Randall Professorship is held by a recognized scholar whose work concentrates on an understanding of culture that embodies a Christian view of human achievement. The selected individual contributes to undergraduate instruction in the theology, philosophy, history, literature, or social sciences departments, directs student research, and delivers public lectures.
The Korean Church of Boston 70th Anniversary Symposium
The Korean Church of Boston (PCUSA) looks back on the past as we welcome our 70th anniversary in 2023 as an immigrant church planted in the United States, and we thank God for God's great love bestowed upon us. Therefore, we have prepared events to commemorate our 70th anniversary under the title "Gratitude," and a meaningful symposium as below:
Two Tales of a City upon a Hill:
- Unlocking the Past for a Better Future Together:
Stories of Native Americans & Korean American Churches
2023. 4.24-26
The Korean Church of Boston (PCUSA)
32 Harvard St. Brookline, MA 02445
Dr. Eunil David Cho, a CGCM faculty affiliate, will be speaking.
More details on the event here.
More on the Korean Diaspora Project here.
New Book Release: Portraits of Global Christianity
Postdoctoral Workshop Applications
CALL FOR APPLICATIONS FOR AN INTERNATIONAL POSTDOCTORAL WORKSHOP
ON THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY IN EAST ASIA
AT BOSTON COLLEGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U.S.A.
The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at Boston College will hold a four-day international workshop in Boston, Massachusetts, from October 22 through 26, 2023. Please note that the working language of the workshop will be English.
All participants will be expected to arrive by Sunday, October 22, and depart on Friday, October 27, 2023. They are required to attend all workshop-related activities and sessions.
Located in a newly renovated building on the Brighton Campus of Boston College, the Ricci Institute is inviting post-doctoral level scholars and junior faculty members whose research focuses on Christianity in East Asia and who are currently preparing a book manuscript for publication to apply. Entitled “Historical Legacies of Christianity in East Asia: Bridging a New Generation of Scholars and Scholarship”, this workshop is administered by the Ricci Institute.
For more info: Call for Applications for the Boston International Workshop 2023
CGCM Notes: March 2023
Legend has it that for years the Association for Asian Studies steadfastly refused any public conversations about Christianity in China because Christianity was Western not Asian. A stalwart of the AAS, historian Kathleen Lodwick of Pennsylvania State University, continued to lobby for the importance of Christianity in modern China, and ultimately gained permission to form the China Missions Group in 1983. Later renamed the China Christianity Studies Group, this collection of scholars has helped move the study of Christianity in China out of its foreign religious ghetto and into larger conversations about its role in Chinese society, politics, culture, economics, science, and more. No one doubts the importance of Christianity in China any longer, and it is hard to describe it still as a foreign import when, in fact, China’s 100 million Christians have turned their faith into an export, sending their own missionaries across Asia, Africa, Europe, North and South America, and Oceania.
This month, the China Christianity Studies Group will celebrate its 40th anniversary at Boston University. Its parent organization, the AAS will hold its annual conference just a mile down the road, so the Center for Global Christianity and Mission invited the CCSG to use space on campus to host its annual gathering. Separated from Boston’s Convention Center, this event is now free and open to all interested in Christianity in China. You can join us in person on March 18th at 7 pm EST, or you can participate online. This is an opportunity to hear how the study of Christianity in China has become a flourishing field.
Other significant opportunities to hear about Christianity in China are available this month. On March 21st, Boston’s various theological schools will collaborate to present “Christianity in China Today,” an event that will bring together scholars, students, and missioners to reflect on the rapidly changing religious landscape in China. One week later, Eugenio Menegon will offer an online workshop about the Chinese documents available in Archive of the Congregation of the “Propaganda Fide” in Rome.
The Center for Global Christianity and Mission has prioritized China as one of its research foci. This month is an opportunity to expose yourself to what that means and discover what the China Christian Studies Group knew four decades ago: Christianity is vital for understanding China, and now also for grasping the dynamism of World Christianity.
Daryl Ireland
CGCM, Associate Director
Dr. Kyama Mugambi’s Upcoming Lecture
As part of the CGCM Spring Lecture series, Dr. Kyama Mugambi, Assistant Professor of World Christianity, Yale Divinity School, will lecture on "Kenyan Pentecostalism" on April 4, 2023, at 3.30 pm at the Boston University College of General Studies, Room 421.
More Universal than Catholicism?
This conference, organized by The Centre for Marian Studies, will touch on essential issues related to Marian devotions across contemporary Asia, religious boundaries, inter-religious dialogue, etc. More info here: https://www.isac-research.org/asianmary2023
CGCM Notes: February 2023
In 2001, Marthinus L. Daneel and I founded the Center for Global Christianity and Mission. One of its key purposes at the time was to support a Theological Education by Extension program connected with the religiously-based tree-planting and environmental movement the Zimbabwean Institute of Religious Research and Ecological Conservation (ZIRRCON). Our TEE program not only taught such traditional subjects as biblical studies and contextual theology, but we also conducted reflection on ecological ethics with members of African Initiated Churches in rural Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe. The TEE program accompanied an innovative earthkeeping movement that included tree-planting Eucharists with Christians, ancestral veneration tree-planting ceremonies for Traditionalists, gully reclamation projects, women’s earth care groups, and arbor days at public schools. Over a fifteen-year period, we grew and planted hundreds of thousands of trees each year.
Since the 1990s, when Prof. Daneel’s two books on African Earthkeepers were published, commitment to earth care has proliferated in multiple directions, including as a priority for Christian mission. The Center has sustained its interest in African earthkeeping through our website Old and New in Shona Religion and through the innovative scholarship of Visiting Researcher the Rev. Dr. Kapya Kaoma. 2023 is proving to be a watershed year for conferences on mission, world Christianity, and ecology. Conferences on World Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, the Yale-Edinburgh Group, and the Korean Global Mission Leaders’ Forum (KGMLF) under the leadership of Research Professor Jonathan Bonk all concern climate change and World Christianity, mission and ecology, and similar urgent global issues.
Center faculty, researchers, and students will be represented at all three conferences. We look forward to a stimulating year of research on World Christianity, ecology, and mission, an intersection of priorities that was a founding vision for the Center for Global Christianity and Mission over twenty years ago.
Dana L. Robert
Director, CGCM