Studies in World Christianity 30.3

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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The Theatre of Conversion

On November 2, 2021, Professor Anthony Clark (Whitworth University) delivered a paper entitled “The Theatre of Conversion: Catholic Drama and the (Re)presentation of China,” speaking about the Jesuit mission to China during the late-Qing that employed the dramatization of Boxer era Christian martyrs to “canonize China” as an East Asian holy land.

If you are unable to access the video above from YouTube, you can also try watching it from the University of Edinburgh’s Media Hopper service.

Studies in World Christianity 26.3

The COVID-19 Pandemic and World Christianity

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic will, for generations to come, constitute a point of reference for many endeavours, issues and social institutions, including religion. Some of the most public responses to the pandemic have been of a religious nature. The pandemic has also obviously affected our understanding of world Christianity and its contextual expressions and responses, especially in the face of the enigma of evil. Historically speaking, the pandemic has permanently inserted itself into how the Christian life is lived and expressed. It struck at a time on the Christian calendar when Christians worldwide were preparing to celebrate the major landmarks of the faith – Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost.

In non-Western contexts in particular, these historical Christian events occasion major celebrations in various church activities with some of them culminating in social gatherings in the holidays associated with the Crucifixion and the Resurrection in particular. In some parts of Europe where traditional church services are no longer the norm, the Monday after Pentecost is a public holiday. Whether these Christian landmarks were to be celebrated in religious services, Masses or as social gatherings, the coronavirus ensured that in-person meetings had to be aborted. In many cases, media technology of various sorts came to the rescue as churches and their leaders looked for innovative ways in which to stay in touch with the faithful.

We have dedicated this and the next issues of Studies in World Christianity to the study of how select Christian churches and communities from different continental contexts responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly regarding church services. Religion is itself a mediated phenomenon, and modern media technology has evolved as a major means of religious practice. In virtually all the studies relating to the church and the coronavirus scourge, media technology had to play a critical role in religious mediation and communion. The spread of COVID-19 led to the cancellation of events, negatively affected economics, disrupted political and social life and, most importantly for our purposes, religious life as well. When such negativities strike in terms of affliction, people search for answers. The Christian religious context, on account of its promises of salvation and deliverance from evil, became one of the main sources of appeal as people sought to make sense out of the pandemic situation.

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Online Index of Studies in World Christianity

Studies in World Christianity has been a pioneer in the academic field for over a quarter of a century. Undoubtedly, the journal reflects the idiosyncrasies of its various editors and its associated Centre for the Study of World Christianity. But more importantly, it has become a historical record of some of the major concerns in this important field. To make this easier to explore, we have recently produced a digital index of the journal.

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