Studies in World Christianity 22.1

Posted on 1 April 2016 by Brian Stanley

Missionary Eyes and Indigenous Eyes

From the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, Catholic and Protestant missionaries were the eyes through which Europe viewed the religious and cultural systems of the non-European world. Merchants, soldiers and diplomats sometimes fulfilled the same function, but they were birds of passage who rarely had the necessity or inclination to observe the ritual practices of indigenous peoples at close hand. Missionaries, by contrast, were in for the long haul. The objective of conversion required careful and patient observation of local traditions, the slow learning of language, the gradual attuning of the mind to the finer points of ceremonial observance, totem or taboo. Missionaries compared and contrasted what they saw with what they had seen elsewhere, or with what was familiar to them in European Christendom. As they did so, they began to order the miscellany of phenomena they encountered into divisions, categories, even systems. Continue reading →

Interview with Dr David C. Kirkpatrick

Posted on 31 March 2016 by CSWCEdinburgh

This is an interview with Dr David C. Kirkpatrick, alumnus and teaching fellow of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, conducted in March 2016. Dr Kirkpatrick discusses how he first came to the University of Edinburgh to study at the Centre, before talking about his research in Latin American Christianity and his experience as a teaching fellow at his alma mater.

Responses to Missions: Appropriations, Revisions, and Rejections – Call for Papers

Posted on 11 January 2016 by CSWCEdinburgh

Responses to Missions: Appropriations, Revisions, and Rejections

Annual Meeting of Yale-Edinburgh Group
on the History of the Missionary Movement and World Christianity

University of Edinburgh, 23-25 June 2016
Deadline: 7 March 2016

For more information, see the official 2016 meeting page.

Studies in World Christianity 21.3

Posted on 3 December 2015 by CSWCEdinburgh

Special Issue: Religion and Sport

Religion and Sport is an emerging theme. However, while there is an ever-increasing literature base, there is a serious lack of empirical research in the field of sport and religion. Research, scholarly meetings, journals and practical initiatives that focus on sport and religion have exponentially increased during the last decade. However, these discourses are limited to contexts of a particular country and of a particular discipline. The vast majority of research on sport–religion has come from the USA and focused on a narrow evangelical manifestation of Christianity. There is little, except for Catholic reflection on sport from the Vatican, from mainland Europe and on non-Western understandings of religion and sports. Most of the contributions published in the USA or the UK, for instance, do not take into account developments on the European continent or in Canada, not to mention Africa, Latin America and Asia. And yet important sporting events are characterised by their international dimension.

The articles in this special issue of Studies in World Christianity addresses this fascinating theme, and is based on a interdisciplinary workshop held in March 2013 at the University of Edinburgh entitled ‘Religion and Sport: Past, Present and Future’. Continue reading →