Author Archives: CSWC

About CSWC

The Centre for the Study of World Christianity (formerly, the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World) is a research centre in the School of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Lamin Sanneh: In Memoriam

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The following tribute was written by Professor Sanneh’s longtime friend and colleague Professor Andrew F. Walls.

We have learned with sorrow of the passing, after a short illness, of Lamin Sanneh, D Willis James Professor of World Christianity at Yale University, co-founder and joint convener of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of Missions and World Christianity. The Group’s annual conferences, meeting in Yale and Edinburgh alternately, have been an important feature of the life of our Centre.

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Fieldwork in Religion Workshop at the University of Kent

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AN INTENSIVE TRAINING PROGRAMME

Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society, University of Kent

25th of February to the 1st of March 

This training programme is available for doctoral students registered at any higher education institution in the UK/EU and abroad. It is based on previous training developed by the Centre for Religion and Contemporary Society, funded by the AHRC, which led to the development of the Religion Methods website, and aims to provide students with a core training in fieldwork approaches to the study of religion.

Topics covered by the training will include: Continue reading →

Prof. Stanley Interviewed about Latest Book

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Professor Brian Stanley, director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, was recently interviewed about his new book, Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History, by Professor Crawford Gribbon of Queen’s University Belfast. Click here to listen.

Recap of Yale-Edinburgh 2018

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Calida Chu is a PhD student at the Centre for the Study of World Christianity. Her research focuses on public theology in Hong Kong.

This year’s meeting of the Yale-Edinburgh Group (28–30 June 2018) was welcomed to Scotland with unusually warm weather. While we had the rare occasion to grumble that the Scottish weather was too warm for us, the three-day conference continued in a warm and friendly atmosphere. On the first day of the conference, some of our delegates attended the launch of our current director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity Professor Brian Stanley’s new book, Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History, which he dedicated to Andrew F. Walls, the founder of the CSWC. Dr Emma Wild-Wood, who joined the CSWC in January, then delivered the opening lecture on the social meaning of baptism in Uganda between 1890 and 1910. Continue reading →

Co-Editor Kenneth R. Ross on the Latest in the Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity Series

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2018 has seen the publication, on schedule, of the second volume in the series of Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity from Edinburgh University Press. Co-edited by Mariz Tadros, Todd M. Johnson and me, Christianity in North Africa and West Asia offers an account of the Christian presence in every country within these two UN regions.

Building on the success of EUP’s best-selling Atlas of Global Christianity, this series takes the analysis of worldwide Christianity to a deeper level of detail. It offers both reliable demographic information and original interpretative essays by indigenous scholars and practitioners. It maps patterns of growth and decline, assesses major traditions and movements, analyzes key themes and examines current trends.

Besides country-level analysis, the volume on North Africa and West Asia examines each of the major Christian traditions. Continue reading →

Yale-Edinburgh Group 2018 Programme #YaleEdin2018

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In two weeks’ time (28-30 June 2018), the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity will be holding its 2018 annual meeting in the University of Edinburgh. The theme, ‘Scripture, Prayer and Worship in the History of Missions and World Christianity’, has drawn a strong number of excellent papers covering an impressive number of topics:

Papers from our 2017 meeting have recently been published in Studies in World Christianity 24.1, and a selection of this year’s papers will likewise be published in a future issue of the journal.

Book Launch: Christianity in the Twentieth Century

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On the morning of June 28, 2018 at 10:30am, we will be launching Brian Stanley’s new book, Christianity in the Twentieth Century: A World History (Princeton University Press, 2018).

The event is co-sponsored with the Princeton University Press and will be held in the Martin Hall, New College. It will include a discussion by Professor Stewart J Brown (University of Edinburgh).

The event will be followed by a reception and is open to the public. For more details, please see the advertisement flier.

Write for The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception

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The editors of The Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception (EBR) are looking for contributors to write articles from a world Christianity perspective. Professor Dyron Daughrity of Pepperdine University serves as the world Christianity editor and potential authors should contact him.

The project’s website describes the EBR as ‘a multi-faceted reference work which covers biblical and religious topics as well as their reception in an array of religious, cultural and academic disciplines and fields.’ Editors have assembled an interdisciplinary team of more than 3500 authors representing over 50 countries, ensuring a broad outlook for the encyclopaedia, which is projected to consist of 30 volumes. In addition to theology and religious studies, disciplines represented include classics, literary studies, archaeology, music, visual arts, and film. Continue reading →

Latin American Christianity in the US: A Window Into the Study of Migrant Christianity and its Theological Benefits

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Iglesia Gospel Temple, Los Angeles, California, USA. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Matheus Reis is a PhD student at the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh. His research focuses on Brazilian Protestantism in the United States. This essay continues our series discussing issues raised in the ‘Currents, Perspectives, and Methodologies in World Christianity’ conference at Princeton Theological Seminary held 18–20 January 2018. Our series began with a reflection on the conference by Jason Bruner on 30 January and continued with posts from Elizabeth Marteijn on 13 February and 19 March.

The recent conversation on this blog has been focused on World Christianity’s methodologies. Both Jason Bruner and Elizabeth Marteijn note that the quest for interdisciplinarity and openness is a mark of much current research. In this post, I look at how Latin American Christianity in the United States presents an opportunity for interdisciplinary study, and I offer some benefits that may arise from such a study. Continue reading →

Between Christianity and Judaism?: The Rise of ‘Judaising Evangelicalism’ in Brazil

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Manoela Carpenedo is associate lecturer in religious studies at the University of Kent and an affiliated researcher at the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. The following is a summary of some of her doctoral research at Cambridge, which she presented at the Centre for the Study of World Christianity’s weekly research seminar. We present it here as an example of ethnographic research in our ongoing discussion of methods in world Christianity begun with Jason Bruner’s post on 30 January 2018.

Manoela Carpenedo discusses her research on Judaising Evangelicals in Brazil at the CSWC’s research seminar on 23 January 2018.

Ritual borrowing and appropriation of Jewish religious tenets by Christians is not something new. On the contrary, it constitutes the very basis of Christian tradition itself. Yet, the current appropriation of Jewish narratives, rituals and even political anxieties by Christians is gaining more and more relevance in the religious and socio-political landscape. Continue reading →