Category Archives: Studies in World Christianity

Studies in World Christianity 32.1

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Familiar Themes, New Angles

The articles in this issue present new angles on familiar themes within World Christianity. Translation, the regional histories of churches and organisations, material aspects of religious belonging, and diasporic Christianity are all explored here. Particular case-studies in specific geographical locations are examined in each article. Yet each article also acknowledges the ways that Christians in one area relate to those in another part of the world. The intersection of a specific context and the actors’ wider connections are the ingredients for exploring a theme for a fresh perspective.

In each of these articles, attention to a specific place and organisation allows the authors to examine new aspects of wider themes, furthering knowledge and understanding of World Christianity as both local and global, distinct and interconnected. Reading these articles, we observe how and why translation and interpretation of key concepts shaped a Christian movement, how far regional histories of global organisations and women’s groups in mission-initiated churches disseminate and adapt Christian practices and values. We learn in what ways material aspects of religious identity influence behaviour and belonging, and how diasporic churches live their fellowship in marginal and hostile environments.

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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 31.2

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Ancestors, Spirits and the Holy Spirit

Historically, one of the most important theological questions raised by missionaries as they entered new contexts was the so-called ‘term question’ – that is, how do we speak of the Christian God in a new language and a new context? Do we coin a neologism in the new language to transliterate Deus or YHWH, or to translate key divine characteristics? Or, more often, do we look for a ‘high god’ in the new context and appropriate this for Christianity? The term question, if you will, is the key question if the Gospel is to be heard among this new people.

However, as Majority World Christians wrestle with their new faith and their pre-existing cosmologies, a new theological question arises: how do we reckon with our world of spirits and ancestors? No longer is there a term question. Now there is a discernment question. And the focus shifts from the doctrine of God to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. How do we discern the spirits and, therefore, differentiate the one Holy Spirit from the rest?

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Thirty Years of Studies in World Christianity

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This year, Studies in World Christianity celebrates its thirtieth anniversary. Today, readers will recognise it as the leading journal in the study of World Christianity, and often presume it to be founded by the historian Andrew Walls and an extension of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh. In actuality, the journal was founded in 1995 by a theologian—and one with an international and egalitarian vision—during a time when ‘World Christianity’ was still a nascent discourse.

The Centre itself had a different name when it was established by Andrew Walls in 1982 at the University of Aberdeen, before it moved to Edinburgh in 1987. The Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, as Walls called it, highlighted the history of Christianity beyond a glorified form of ‘European clan history’ (hence, ‘Non-Western’). Brian Stanley, the Centre’s fourth director, renamed it in 2009 to its current name, because ‘World Christianity’ includes Europe and North America, and is mindful of migratory and indigenous populations.

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