Yale-Edinburgh 2025 – Call for Papers

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.

Please, send us your name, affiliation, and 250-word abstract by 15 December 2024 using this form. We accept proposals and papers in English, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Studies in World Christianity 30.2

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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The RBMU’s Calls for Personnel and Materials

by Savannah Weiler

This flyer by the Regions Beyond Missionary Union’s Southern Sierra Team was printed in 1973 to advertise personnel requirements on the one side, and material requirements on the other. The illustrations make the advertisement more eye-catching and invite the reader to read the advertisements. The Southern Sierra Team stated they needed a car, cassette players and contributions towards the establishment of a radio show that transmitted daily Gospel messages (see figure 2).

This use of cassette players and establishment of a radio programme tie into my previous blogposts, outlining the use of these media to spread Gospel messages in areas in the Loreto region. A similar tactic was clearly being used by the Southern Sierra Team. The advertisement for cassette players states that evangelical and teaching messages can be left on these tapes in Quechua or Spanish in villages or homes as part of teaching via the extension method or to foster interest in the mission’s teachings.

The daily radio programme advertisement describes the success of Hermano Pablo, or Paul Edwin Finkenbinder, in using radio Gospel messages as an evangelistic tool. Hermano Pablo’s radio gospel show In Mensaje a La Consciencia garnered many listeners in El Salvador, where he operated as an evangelist.The RBMU wanted to adopt a similar programme, as it was proving successful for other evangelicals in South America. The radio show was meant to garner interest in the Gospel, and could be supplemented by a free correspondence course, another example of teaching via the extension method. This method could also be used by Jan Hellens and Rosemary Flack, two missionaries for the RBMU who wished to go to villages in the surrounding area of Calhuanca on weekly visits, and were asking for a vehicle for their work in the Calhuanca area.

The other side of the flyer states that missionaries applying to the advertised posts often needed to speak both Spanish and Quechua (see figure 1). This would potentialize the effectiveness of their work and allow them to take part in the creation of such radio shows and cassette recordings and effectively reach out to communities in these areas.

This pamphlet is a visually interesting supplement to lots of the heavily textual material housed in the archive, while still being informative and interesting. It shows some of the approaches to missionary work adopted by the RBMU and how they reached out to potential new recruits.

Figure 1 – Projected Personnel Requirements for the Southern Sierra Team.
CSWC 33/41/1, Archives of the Regions Beyond Missionary Union, Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh.
Figure 2 – Projected Materials Requirements for the Southern Sierra Team.
CSWC 33/41/1, Archives of the Regions Beyond Missionary Union, Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh.