Category Archives: Studies in World Christianity

Thirty Years of Studies in World Christianity

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This year, Studies in World Christianity celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. Today, readers will recognise it as the leading journal in the study of World Christianity, and often presume it to be founded by the historian Andrew Walls and an extension of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh. In actuality, the journal was founded in 1995 by a theologian—and one with an international and egalitarian vision—during a time when ‘World Christianity’ was still a nascent discourse.

The Centre itself had a different name when it was established by Andrew Walls in 1982 at the University of Aberdeen, before it moved to Edinburgh in 1987. The Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, as Walls called it, highlighted the history of Christianity beyond a glorified form of ‘European clan history’ (hence, ‘Non-Western’). Brian Stanley, the Centre’s fourth director, renamed it in 2009 to its current name, because ‘World Christianity’ includes Europe and North America, and is mindful of migratory and indigenous populations.

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Studies in World Christianity 31.1

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Variety and Connections

Nine out of the last ten issues of this journal have been special issues that have focused on a specific topic in World Christianity or have been developed from a particular conference theme. In this issue, then, it is pleasing to return to the familiar collection of general articles. The articles in this issue offer a range of topics, disciplines and geographical locations. The articles range from philosophical and theological enquiry to the history of Christian organisations and sociological reflections on contemporary phenomena. Two articles have an African focus. Three focus on Asia. Together they offer a smorgasbord of tasty scholarly ‘dishes’ that demonstrate the variety of the study of World Christianity.

Yet even in an eclectic selection there are ideas and questions that connect subjects over time, space and disciplinary endeavour. Critiques of colonial influence appear in an exploration of Tite Tiénou’s theology of religious pluralism against Mazuri’s synthesis of religions (van Veelen) and in an historical discussion of the inculcation of international values by missionary use of the scouting movement that contravened a sense of Chinese nationalism expected by the state (Law). Nationalism and religious pluralism are also themes addressed in the assessment of Catholic Indian theologians’ defence of secularism when faced with Hindutva politics (Beltramini). Arguments for distinct roles for Christianity appear in Tiénou’s theology and in the use of Mozi, a philosopher from the fifth century BCE, by nineteenth century Protestant missionaries to China (Liu and Zou) in another chapter in the contested history between Christianity and Confucianism. Institutional change is the topic of the article on charismatic Anglicans in Nigeria (Wong). Wong finds fruitful for his sociological assessment the notions of hybridity, insider and multiple religious belonging. Topic and disciplinary difference illuminate distinct perspectives on similar themes, allowing readers to consider surprising connections and to identify important distinctions. Such a comparative exercise is not intended to make facile links that erase difference. Rather, thinking across variety can hone our consideration of local forms and global ideas within Christianity.

This issue also contains the second Walls–Bediako memorial article awarded to scholars from the Majority World and established in memory of two pioneering scholars in World Christianity: historian and missiologist Andrew F. Walls and theologian Kwame Bediako. The designation Walls–Bediako memorial article is given to ‘Caught in Colonial Contradiction: British Missionaries and the Cultivation of Chinese Citizenship amongst Griffith John College Boy Scouts in Hankou, 1915–1925’, written by Peter Kwok-Fai Law. Conscious of Walls and Bediako’s emphasis on the role of the vernacular in theology, we are glad to publish the abstract of Law’s article in his mother tongue of Cantonese.

Walls—Bediako Memorial Article

Other Articles

This is an excerpt from the editorial of SWC 31.1 by Emma Wild-Wood, entitled ‘Variety and Connections’.

Studies in World Christianity 30.3

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Latin America and World Christianity

Editors: Manoela Carpenedo and Pedro Feitoza

Despite its globalising and ecumenical aspirations, there remain significant geographical and confessional blind spots in the literature in World Christianity. As the leading sociologist of religion, globalisation and politics Paul Freston has remarked in an interview for this special issue, Latin America is the Cinderella of World Christianity, the continent left out of the party. We believe there are a number of reasons for that. The first has to do with the genealogy of the field. The study of Christianity in Africa generated much of the initial intellectual impetus for World Christianity. The key architect of the field, British mission historian Andrew Walls, before establishing the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Aberdeen in 1982, also founded the Journal of Religion in Africa in 1967, an important venue for the study of local seizures of the Christian faith in the continent and its interactions with Islam and traditional religion. Since the interest around World Christianity emerged in part out of a critique of the links between mission and empire, the initial intellectual capital and interest for it flourished in former British colonial territories. Notably in Britain, some of the leading scholarly influences of the field spent part of their careers in colonial and post-colonial Africa as lecturers, teachers and researchers, including Adrian Hastings, Terence Ranger, John Peel, David Maxwell and Emma Wild-Wood. Specialists in South and East Asia, most of them theologians based in North American institutions, also joined the party and made decisive contributions to World Christianity literature, including Robert Frykenberg, Kirsteen and Sebastian Kim, Peter Phan, Alexander Chow and Chloë Starr. Although there have been recent attempts to correct this imbalance, such as the appointment of Brazilian theologian Raimundo Barreto, Jr, as co-editor of the Journal of World Christianity, scholarly attention to Latin America still lags far behind the academic literature on Africa and Asia. Second, another crucial stream that shaped the concerns of World Christianity scholars and students was a focus on Protestantism, especially its evangelical variants. The first two generations of scholars who built up the field, such as Walls, Brian Stanley, Dana Robert, Mark Hutchinson, Mark Noll and Ogbu Kalu, came from Protestant backgrounds and were experts in mostly Protestant and evangelical history and theology: Lamin Sanneh was the notable exception. Catholicism, the form of Christianity that has historically predominated in Latin America, also lags behind, while Orthodoxy only makes occasional appearances in the literature and conferences.

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Studies in World Christianity 30.2

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Orthodox Christian Churches and War Politics in Ethiopia and Ukraine

Guest editors: Romina Istratii and Lars Laamann

In November 2020 a conflict erupted in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Religious discourse was used to propagate ideas favourable to war by both members of the public and church-affiliated individuals, including close advisors to the Prime Minister. Soon ethnicity became a clear dividing factor in Ethiopian society and the Church, resulting also in the declared separation of the Tigray Diocese from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOTC). A convergence of faith and politics was also seen in the crisis that erupted in Ukraine in February 2022. Not only was there a strong identification of political and Church leadership in Russia from the beginning that favoured the ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, but religious identity was invoked as a distinctive characteristic of an ‘Eastern’ identity in need of protection from encroaching Western expressions of secular modernity. In this case too, the political events resulted in rifts and divisions between Orthodox Churches in Russia and Ukraine, endangering unity in the broader Eastern Orthodox world.

From the outset of the war in Ukraine, the media conveyed the impression that the Moscow Patriarchate or, more specifically, Patriarch Kirill, either held substantive power over political decisions or was entirely enslaved to political leadership. Conversely, in representations of the Ethiopian conflict the EOTC has often been identified with either the Patriarch’s isolated condemnation of violence against Tigrayans or the inflammatory pro-war narratives of visible Church representatives. In relation to both conflicts, we saw tendencies among observers to reduce complex relations and narratives to homogenising pro-/anti-war lines of thinking, not recognising psycho-political experiences on the ground characterised by struggles of consciousness, self-censorship in the face of stark repercussions and the pressures of group think.

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