Abstract
This is an interesting book, and skilfully edited by Jehu J. Hanciles (Candler School of Theology at Emory University, Atlanta). It comprises three sections (conceptions, methods and horizons), each featuring original essays by leading experts. The volume seeks to offer a critical reassessment of the study of world Christianity that connects historical developments to current debates and new trajectories. Contributors include Dale T. Irvin, Dana L. Robert, Paul Kollman, Kwok Pui-lan and Gemma Tulud Cruz.
In many respects, this is a refreshing oeuvre, and it will engage scholars and students of all disciplines that take religion seriously. The emerging field of world Christianity presents new opportunities and serious intellectual challenges, and the establishment of the study of world Christianity as a new and burgeoning discipline is to be welcomed. However, I want to sound three notes of caution that will help explain the reservations one might have with a text like this, and its eventual positioning within the academy.
First, contextual theology teaches us that culture determines faith, belief and practice. Christianity may be universal, but it also has a distinctly local flavour to it wherever it is encountered. Churches and denominations are always a resolutely incarnate theological expression of the local, and for all the commitment one may have to the Church Universal, world Christianity is inherently diverse, particular, regional, local and temporal. The authors in this volume would not dissent from this outlook. However, in missiology there is often a temptation to assume that the gospel and essence of Christianity have a transnational and supra-ethnic identity that is beyond what is encountered. Such assumptions need to be treated with critical caution.
Second, the vantage point from which this book surveys the world is, of itself, somewhat questionable. It would still be standard practice today – in Bible colleges and in missionary training – to assume that the invitation to make disciples in all nations (Matthew 28) would provide the template for transcultural evangelistic endeavour. However, this assumes that national and regional boundaries define and constrain as they once did, and that basic concepts such as citizenship, values, politics, economics and culture depend on being physically located in one specific region as opposed to another. Yet, as we know, identity, belonging and believing no longer depend on physical proximity. Whatever the world is becoming in the twenty-first century, it does not seem to depend on the constraints of geography – economically, culturally or politically.
Third, few observers of the late twentieth century have put their fingers so presciently on the pulse of global political and economic realignments, ushering in the new millennium, as James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. In The Sovereign Individual (1997), the authors explored the (arguably) most significant economic and political transitions to take place for several centuries: namely, the shift from an industrial age to an information-based society. This transition – ‘the fourth stage of human society’, as Rees-Mogg and Davidson dubbed it – is an information revolution. And like many revolutions, it may liberate and enslave individuals as never before. By irrevocably altering the power of government, the information revolution is on a par with the development of the printing press, which enabled the mass communication that formed the basis for the Reformation.
The world has changed as never before in the last 200 years, and Christianity is still struggling to comprehend how faith and values have morphed as a result of these changes. Remember that it took Caesar the same time to march troops across Gaul as it took Napoleon to march across France. Transport is a creature of the Industrial Revolution. The information revolution – replete with Zoom, Skype, Teams and other social media platforms – means that you don’t need to travel at all. Even something as simple as money – conventionally national currencies, under the control of governments that ascribe their value – is being usurped by bitcoins and cryptocurrencies. Large global trading companies can operate in multiple countries, yet pay tax in none.
Religion is not immune to these new forms of globalization. Anglicans – even in England – no longer need to take Canterbury as a reference point for authority, if they are offered oversight, fellowship, nurture and identity in GAFCON or the Diocese of the Southern Cross (Australasia). In a world where place matters less and less, Christians now have to figure out what the world is becoming.
To put it bluntly, nations are so ‘last millennium’. In the emerging era, where we have come from will barely matter. Increasingly, what does matter is where we are heading, why, with whom, and to what end. The world is no longer the same, and our cultural weather has changed markedly and is still subject to significant flux. We are surely now on the precipice of several major revolutions. World Christianity needs to read the signs of the times, listen, learn – and adapt.