Popular, Folk, Grassroots and Pop Culture in World Christianity and the History of Mission 10–12 June 2026 ‧ New College, University of Edinburgh ‧ #YaleEdin2026 Yale-Edinburgh Conference on World Christianity and the History of Mission Deadline for Proposals: 1 February 2026
Christian communities, individuals, and institutions have always grappled with grassroots cultural expressions that surround them in different historical and social settings. This relationship has been riven with ambiguities. Songs, plays, and literature, print, radio, television, and the internet are deemed to edify or to scandalise, to propagate the Gospel or to profane it, to promote Christian virtues or to reject them, to encourage devotion or to deaden Christian sentiments. Missionaries have drawn upon familiar forms for hymns or folk traditions for liturgy. They have also eschewed popular songs and myths as antithetical to the Gospel. Majority World Christians simultaneously cultivate a ‘world-breaking’ attitude towards popular culture, casting off local traditions and customs as demonic, and a ‘world-making’ posture that positively engages local ontologies and folk cultures, like the Orthodox Anastenaria in which icons are displayed at festivals.
Historically, one of the most important theological questions raised by missionaries as they entered new contexts was the so-called ‘term question’ – that is, how do we speak of the Christian God in a new language and a new context? Do we coin a neologism in the new language to transliterate Deus or YHWH, or to translate key divine characteristics? Or, more often, do we look for a ‘high god’ in the new context and appropriate this for Christianity? The term question, if you will, is the key question if the Gospel is to be heard among this new people.
However, as Majority World Christians wrestle with their new faith and their pre-existing cosmologies, a new theological question arises: how do we reckon with our world of spirits and ancestors? No longer is there a term question. Now there is a discernment question. And the focus shifts from the doctrine of God to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. How do we discern the spirits and, therefore, differentiate the one Holy Spirit from the rest?
Centre student Zihao He shares his reflections on the 2025 Yale-Edinburgh conference, held in São Paulo, Brazil, on the theme ‘Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism’.
Group photo of delegates at Yale-Edinburgh 2025.
As a current PhD student at the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, I had the great privilege of attending this year’s Yale–Edinburgh Conference, held at Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie in São Paulo, Brazil. The theme of this year’s gathering, ‘Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism’, could not be more timely in our increasingly volatile world. It also closely resonates with my own research interests in Chinese pre-modern nationalism, Christianity, and the issue of violence. Significantly, I had the unique opportunity to witness a historical milestone: for the first time, this influential conference was held in the Global South.
For the first time since its inception the next Yale-Edinburgh conference will be held in the Global South. Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest private universities, has kindly agreed to host the conference in their Higienópolis Campus on 28-30 May 2025. We are thankful to Prof Sérgio Santos, head of the School of Theology, for his generosity. The theme will be ‘Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism.’
Christianity, Democracy, and Nationalism 28-30 May 2025 ‧ Universidade Mackenzie, São Paulo, Brazil ‧ #YaleEdin2025 Yale-Edinburgh Conference on World Christianity and the History of Mission Deadline: 15 December 2024
Christian communities around the world have long developed an ambiguous and troubled relationship with nationalist movements and processes of democratisation. They can be seen on all possible sides of the religious, political, and ideological divides: at times fostering patriotic sentiments, at times falling victim to nationalist pride; at times providing theological rationale and exemplary models for movements of racial, gender, and class equality, at times portraying social hierarchies as organic and God-given. Such interactions between religious communities, the authority of the state, and the imagining of the nation shaped decisively the historical experiences of the modern world and exert a profound impact in the political and religious configurations of our time. In the Global South, local and indigenous leaders educated in Christian institutions rallied against foreign colonial control and laid the groundwork for movements of independence. We can think of the Latin American Catholic clergymen in the nineteenth century and their role in fostering “creole patriotism” against the Iberian colonisers, or the young leaders educated in Protestant missionary schools in Africa and East Asia who around a century later challenged Western colonialism. Nationalist ideals, however, could also be leveraged against religious minorities. Catholics in nineteenth-century Britain, for instance, were seen as disloyal to the monarchy on account of their attachment to Rome, while Christian conversion in post-1949 China and postcolonial India was often deemed as detrimental to the nation. In yet another way, Christian thinkers and laypeople in the modern era conceived themselves as members of a universal fellowship crossing territorial, ethnic, and linguistic boundaries, sentiments that challenged aspects of nationalist pride. Much has been written in recent years about the simultaneous revival of populist regimes and charismatic Christianity worldwide, especially their impact on processes of democratisation. The intersection of these two forces have contributed to the polarisation of civil society and the destabilisation of democratic systems of checks and balances in the United States, Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, and Zimbabwe. Conversely, Christians of different persuasions have both organised large-scale mobilisations in favour of the enfranchisement of social and religious minorities and deployed theological arguments to withstand political authoritarianism. Examples of this abound and range from the Catholic critique of totalitarianism in interwar Europe, the evangelical participation in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, the militant Christianity of Latin America in the Cold War, to grassroots movements of popular theological reflection and action in East Asia.
For our 2025 conference we invite papers that interrogate the relationship between democracy, nationalism, Christian communities, and the Christian faith around the world. We especially welcome historical case studies exploring the relationship of Christian bodies with changing sociopolitical circumstances; ethnographies that illuminate the religious and cultural imaginaries of Christian communities and their lived realities; theological interrogations into the politicisation of Christian religion; comparative studies highlighting patterns of interactions between religious communities, democratisation, and nationalism; and any other pertinent topics.
