Tag Archives: Song

Studies in World Christianity 31.3

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Thirty Years of Studies in World Christianity

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of Studies in World Christianity, established in 1995. It has been the first and foremost journal to promote the academic discourse of World Christianity. Its history has included the publication of many field-defining articles. It also continues to be the outlet of choice for studies on the local and the global particularities of Christianity as a worldwide religion.

Thirty years on, it is worth correcting two common misunderstandings of the journal’s legacy. First, many automatically presume the journal was started by the historian Andrew Walls, the doyen of the field. Rather, the journal was established — not by Walls, but by that scholar of World Christianity studies James Mackey. Mackey? Who is James Mackey? I suspect many readers of this journal would not readily know this name, because he is rarely mentioned in standard primers on World Christianity. James Mackey was a Catholic theologian — and, no less, the Thomas Chalmers Chair of Theology and the Dean of the Faculty (now School) of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. Importantly, this esteemed theologian established the journal during a time when ‘World Christianity’ was still a nascent discourse.

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Studies in World Christianity 28.1

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Oral, Print and Digital Cultures

A few years ago, Andrew Walls told me that he had once hoped to become a missionary to China. However, with the rise of the Chinese communist revolution, those plans were dashed, and he eventually made his way to Sierra Leone in 1957, followed by Nigeria in 1962. One wonders how the study of World Christianity would have been different if the doyen of the academic field spent his formative missionary years in China instead of Africa. Would he have had the same epiphany in Beijing or Shanghai or Wenzhou that he was ‘actually living in a second-century church’? When considering Confucianism or Daoism, would he likewise speak of the place of ‘primal religions’ in shaping the consciousness of another faith, be it Christianity or Buddhism? Both are undoubtedly possibilities. But perhaps, in this parallel universe, the area less likely to have developed would have been his recognition of the importance of oral cultures – a pervasive characteristic in his beloved Africa, but scantly recognised in China.

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Online Index of Studies in World Christianity

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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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Studies in World Christianity 25.2

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Scripture, prayer and worship are three key elements of the internal life of Christians across the world. Corporately or individually, Christians hear, read, enact and inhabit the bible. They pray alone, in twos and threes, and in large gatherings. They pray aloud or in silence. They pray spontaneously or following a common form of words. Christians sing songs and make music. They perform and recite liturgies. Such is the ubiquity of these elements that it seems surprising that it was not until 2018 that the Yale-Edinburgh Conference chose ‘Scripture, Prayer and Worship in the History of Missions and World Christianity’ as its theme. This special issue of Studies in World Christianity brings together six of the excellent papers that were presented at the conference. Together they offer a time frame of about two hundred years and an impressive global range – New Zealand, Argentina, India, USA and China. Although they only focus upon Protestant practice, the articles demonstrate how rich that practice has become.

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