Scripture, prayer and worship are three key elements of the internal life of Christians across the world. Corporately or individually, Christians hear, read, enact and inhabit the bible. They pray alone, in twos and threes, and in large gatherings. They pray aloud or in silence. They pray spontaneously or following a common form of words. Christians sing songs and make music. They perform and recite liturgies. Such is the ubiquity of these elements that it seems surprising that it was not until 2018 that the Yale-Edinburgh Conference chose ‘Scripture, Prayer and Worship in the History of Missions and World Christianity’ as its theme. This special issue of Studies in World Christianity brings together six of the excellent papers that were presented at the conference. Together they offer a time frame of about two hundred years and an impressive global range – New Zealand, Argentina, India, USA and China. Although they only focus upon Protestant practice, the articles demonstrate how rich that practice has become.
- Geoffrey Troughton, Scripture, Piety and the Practice of Peace in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand Missions
- Alan M. Guenther, Ghazals, Bhajans and Hymns: Hindustani Christian Music in Nineteenth-Century North India
- María Eugenia Cornou, Formative Worship ‘at the End of the World’: The Worship Practices of Methodists, Baptists and Plymouth Brethren in the Emergence of Protestantism in Argentina, 1867–1930
- Edward Allen, The Form and Function of Prayer in the Student Volunteer Movement, 1886–1914
- Aminta Arrington, From Missionary Translation to Local Theological Inquiry: A Narrative History of the Lisu Bible
- Mark McLeister, Worship, Technology and Identity: A Deaf Protestant Congregation in Urban China
At the Yale–Edinburgh Conference at which these papers were presented participants celebrated the 90th birthday of one of its founding fathers, Professor Andrew Walls. Sadly, it would prove to be the last conference attended by its other founding father, Professor Lamin Sanneh, who died suddenly at the beginning of this year. This issue contains an obituary of Lamin Sanneh written by his long-standing friend and colleague, Andrew Walls.
- Andrew F. Walls, In Memoriam: Professor Lamin O. Sanneh (1942–2019)