Alexander Duff Lectureship

Alexander Duff Lectureship

Alexander Duff (1806–1878)

Alexander Duff was the first official missionary of the Church of Scotland, sailing for Calcutta in 1829. He put his focus on higher education and had great influence in Bengal and throughout India, not only among those who became Christians but in the development of the whole educational system. Along with all but one of the missionaries of the Church of Scotland in Bengal, he adhered with the new Free Church in 1843 and built a parallel structure in Calcutta, but continued to work cooperatively with the new Church of Scotland colleagues sent out to serve in Calcutta after the split. He returned to Scotland in 1849 to take up what has been described as the first Chair of Missiology to be established anywhere in the world – at New College in Edinburgh. 

After his death in 1878, using the proceeds of his personal property which he had instructed to be used for this purpose, his son, William Pirie Duff, and daughter, Rebecca Jane (Duff) Watson, established in his memory this series of lectures and were active in choosing the lecturers to continue their father’s interests and to ensure ‘full justice was done to his very strong and earnestly held Evangelical sentiments’ (Trust Deed, 30 June, 1879).  

Originally it functioned rather like a visiting professorship with the lecturer in residence for several months over a four-year period, repeating the lectures in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Trust Deed allows for a broad range of interests with the lecturer at liberty to choose their own topic, ‘such subject being within the range of Foreign Missions and cognate subjects.’ 

For some reason the lectureship stopped in 1966, and it was not until 1987 that the series was reorganised, with the Church of Scotland working in association with the Centre for Christianity in the Non-Western World, now the Centre for the Study of World Christianity. Kwame Bediako of Ghana was the first lecturer under the new arrangements, which has consisted of one lecture, delivered in Edinburgh and sometimes in Glasgow, with the aspiration that it would be published subsequently. 

There has been a distinguished series of lecturers over the years, e.g. A. T. Pierson, James Stewart, R. E. Speer, J. H. Oldham, V. S. Azariah, A. G. Hogg, Stephen Neill, James S. Stewart, M. M. Thomas up until 1966, and since the re-organisation, Kwame Bediako, Jyoti Sahi (plus a 24-canvas exhibition), Naim Ateek, Vinoth Ramachandra, Tinyiko Maluleke, Dana Roberts, James Tengatenga, Kwok Pui Lan and Ruth Padilla DeBorst.

Ian W Alexander, Church of Scotland


YearNameCountryTitle of Lecture
1880Thomas SmithScotland/IndiaMediæval Missions
1887William Fleming StevensonScotlandThe Dawn of the Modern Mission
1889Monier Monier-WilliamsIndia/EnglandBuddhism
1894A. T. PiersonUSAThe New Acts of the Apostles
1897John Marshall LangScotlandThe Expansion of the Christian Life
1903James StewartSouth Africa/ScotlandDawn in the Dark Continent
1905John Murray MitchellIndia/ScotlandThe Great Religions of India
1910Robert E. SpeerUSAChristianity and the Nations
1930Charles H. BrentCanada/USA/PhilippinesThe Commonwealth: Its Foundations and Pillars
1924James Nicoll OgilvieScotlandOur Empire’s Debt to Missions
1926Patrick Johnson MacLagan Chinese Religious Ideas
1933J. H. OldhamEnglandThe Christian Message in the New Era (Unpublished)
1937Diedrich WestermannGermanyAfrica and Christianity
1940V. S. AzariahIndia(Undelivered due to World War II)
1947A. G. HoggIndia/ScotlandThe Christian Message to the Hindu
1949Arthur Mitchell Chirgwin The Decisive Decade
1956James S. StewartScotlandThine is the Kingdom
1959Stephen NeillIndia/ScotlandCreative Tensions
1963James W. C. DougallScotlandChristians in the African Revolution
1966M. M. ThomasIndiaThe Christian Response to the Asian Revolution
1988Kwame BediakoGhanaChristianity as a non-western religion
1993Jyoti SahiIndiaArt and Mission in the Indian Context: Sources of conflict and also creative dialogue (Plus a 24-canvas exhibition)
2000Naim AteekJerusalemPalestinian Christians: Between Politics, Fundamentalism, and Justice
2004Vinoth RamachandraIndiaGlobal Religious Transformations, Political Vision and Christian Integrity
2006Tinyiko MalulekeSouth AfricaOf Lions and Rabbits: The Role of The Church in Reconciliation in South Africa
2010Dana RobertsUSACross-Cultural Friendship in the Creation of Twentieth-Century World Christianity
2013James TengatengaMalawiBicentenary of the birth of David Livingstone
2017Kwok Pui LanUSA/Hong KongWomen, Mission, and World Christianity
2021Ruth Padilla DeBorstCosta RicaFleeing the hot spots: Climate change, migration and mission
2023Stan Chu IloUSA/NigeriaCosmic Flourishing: An Ubuntu Ethics of Creation, Collective Ownership and Responsibility; Ecological Conversion as Missionary Conversion: A Spirituality of Stewardship for Cosmic Flourishing

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Studies in World Christianity 30.3

Latin America and World Christianity

Editors: Manoela Carpenedo and Pedro Feitoza

Despite its globalising and ecumenical aspirations, there remain significant geographical and confessional blind spots in the literature in World Christianity. As the leading sociologist of religion, globalisation and politics Paul Freston has remarked in an interview for this special issue, Latin America is the Cinderella of World Christianity, the continent left out of the party. We believe there are a number of reasons for that. The first has to do with the genealogy of the field. The study of Christianity in Africa generated much of the initial intellectual impetus for World Christianity. The key architect of the field, British mission historian Andrew Walls, before establishing the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Aberdeen in 1982, also founded the Journal of Religion in Africa in 1967, an important venue for the study of local seizures of the Christian faith in the continent and its interactions with Islam and traditional religion. Since the interest around World Christianity emerged in part out of a critique of the links between mission and empire, the initial intellectual capital and interest for it flourished in former British colonial territories. Notably in Britain, some of the leading scholarly influences of the field spent part of their careers in colonial and post-colonial Africa as lecturers, teachers and researchers, including Adrian Hastings, Terence Ranger, John Peel, David Maxwell and Emma Wild-Wood. Specialists in South and East Asia, most of them theologians based in North American institutions, also joined the party and made decisive contributions to World Christianity literature, including Robert Frykenberg, Kirsteen and Sebastian Kim, Peter Phan, Alexander Chow and Chloë Starr. Although there have been recent attempts to correct this imbalance, such as the appointment of Brazilian theologian Raimundo Barreto, Jr, as co-editor of the Journal of World Christianity, scholarly attention to Latin America still lags far behind the academic literature on Africa and Asia. Second, another crucial stream that shaped the concerns of World Christianity scholars and students was a focus on Protestantism, especially its evangelical variants. The first two generations of scholars who built up the field, such as Walls, Brian Stanley, Dana Robert, Mark Hutchinson, Mark Noll and Ogbu Kalu, came from Protestant backgrounds and were experts in mostly Protestant and evangelical history and theology: Lamin Sanneh was the notable exception. Catholicism, the form of Christianity that has historically predominated in Latin America, also lags behind, while Orthodoxy only makes occasional appearances in the literature and conferences.

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