This is an interview with Prof. Andrew F. Walls, founder and honorary professor of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, conducted in August 2016. Prof. Walls discusses his understanding of the field of study which is now known as ‘world Christianity’ – a field which he helped to create.
Beyond the Binary of East and West
However hard it tries, scholarship in world Christianity does not find it easy to escape the grip of the long-standing historical binary of East and West. The Christianities of Asia, Africa, and even Latin America are still often labelled as ‘non-Western’, as if their multiple identities consist primarily in their shared departure from the implicit default setting of European or North American Christianity. The four articles in this issue of Studies in World Christianity analyse aspects of Asian Christianity Continue reading
Hong Kong Public Lecture
6th October, 2015 (Tue), 7:30-9:30pm, HKSKH All Saints’ Cathedral
Christianity and Nationalism: Friend or Foe?
Reflections from East Asian Experience in the Twentieth Century
Speaker: Professor Brian Stanley, University of Edinburgh
Respondent: Professor Francis CW Yip, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Biblical and Non-Biblical Sources of Popular Religiosity in World Christianity
Christianity, as our first contributor to this issue of Studies in World Christianity reminds us, is supremely a religion of the Book. The narratives, symbols and doctrinal content of the biblical writings supply the constituent texture of the religion. Nevertheless, as the same contributor, Ole Jakob Løland, points out, for much of Christian history the great majority of Christian believers did not have direct access to the text of the bible: its teaching was mediated and refracted through their participation in, or observation of, a non-vernacular liturgy, and through religious art, music, drama and the communal observance of pilgrimages and festivals in honour of the saints. Continue reading
