World Christianity – serie

Operating on the premise that our failure to recognize our interconnected relationship to the rest of the cosmos is the origin of planetary peril, this volume presents academic, activist, and artistic perspectives on how to inspire reflection and motivate action in order to construct alternative frameworks and establish novel solidarities for the sake of our planetary home.The selections in this volume explore ecologies of interdependence as a frame for religious, theological, and philosophical analysis and practice. Contributors examine questions of justice, climate change, race, class, gender, and coloniality and discuss alternative ways of engaging the world in all its biodiversity. Each essay, poem, reflection, and piece of art contributes to and reflects upon how to live out entangled differences toward positive global change.Constructive and practical, global and local, communal and personal, Ecological Solidarities is an innovative contribution to the discourses on relational and liberative thought and practice in religion, philosophy, and theology. It will be welcomed by scholars of World Christianity and theology as well as seminary students, activists, and laity interested in issues of justice and ecology.

The story of how the Lisu of southwest China were evangelized one hundred years ago by the China Inland Mission is a familiar one in mission circles. The subsequent history of the Lisu church, however, is much less well known. Songs of the Lisu Hills brings this history up to date, recounting the unlikely story of how the Lisu maintained their faith through twenty-two years of government persecution and illuminating how Lisu Christians transformed the text-based religion brought by the missionaries into a faith centered around an embodied set of Christian practices.Based on ethnographic fieldwork as well as archival research, this volume documents the development of Lisu Christianity, both through larger social forces and through the stories of individual believers. It explores how the Lisu, most of whom remain subsistence farmers, have oriented their faith less around cognitive notions of belief and more around participation in a rhythm of shared Christian practices, such as line dancing, attending church and festivals, evangelizing, working in one another’s fields, and singing translated Western hymns. These embodied practices demonstrate how Christianity developed in the mountainous margins of the world’s largest atheist state.A much-needed expansion of the Lisu story into a complex study of the evolution of a world Christian community, this book will appeal to scholars working at the intersections of World Christianity, anthropology of religion, ethnography, Chinese Christianity, and mission studies.

The story of how the Lisu of southwest China were evangelized one hundred years ago by the China Inland Mission is a familiar one in mission circles. The subsequent history of the Lisu church, however, is much less well known. Songs of the Lisu Hills brings this history up to date, recounting the unlikely story of how the Lisu maintained their faith through twenty-two years of government persecution and illuminating how Lisu Christians transformed the text-based religion brought by the missionaries into a faith centered around an embodied set of Christian practices.Based on ethnographic fieldwork as well as archival research, this volume documents the development of Lisu Christianity, both through larger social forces and through the stories of individual believers. It explores how the Lisu, most of whom remain subsistence farmers, have oriented their faith less around cognitive notions of belief and more around participation in a rhythm of shared Christian practices, such as line dancing, attending church and festivals, evangelizing, working in one another’s fields, and singing translated Western hymns. These embodied practices demonstrate how Christianity developed in the mountainous margins of the world’s largest atheist state.A much-needed expansion of the Lisu story into a complex study of the evolution of a world Christian community, this book will appeal to scholars working at the intersections of World Christianity, anthropology of religion, ethnography, Chinese Christianity, and mission studies.

Despite the remarkable growth of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the twentieth century, there is a dearth of primary material produced by these Christians. This volume explores the problem of writing the history of indigenous Christian communities in the Global South.Many such indigenous Christian groups pass along knowledge orally, and colonial forces have often not deemed their ideas and activities worth preserving. In some instances, documentation from these communities has been destroyed by people or nature. Highlighting the creative solutions that historians have found to this problem, the essays in this volume detail the strategies employed in discerning the perspectives, ideas, activities, motives, and agency of indigenous Christians. The contributors approach the problem on a case-by-case basis, acknowledging the impact of diverse geographical, cultural, political, and ecclesiastical factors.This volume will inspire historians of World Christianity to critically interrogate—and imaginatively use—existing Western and indigenous documentary material in writing the history of Christianity in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania.In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include J. J. Carney, Adrian Hermann, Paul Kollman, Kenneth Mills, Esther Mombo, Mrinalini Sebastian, Christopher Vecsey, Haruko Nawata Ward, and Yanna Yannakakis.

Despite the remarkable growth of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America in the twentieth century, there is a dearth of primary material produced by these Christians. This volume explores the problem of writing the history of indigenous Christian communities in the Global South.Many such indigenous Christian groups pass along knowledge orally, and colonial forces have often not deemed their ideas and activities worth preserving. In some instances, documentation from these communities has been destroyed by people or nature. Highlighting the creative solutions that historians have found to this problem, the essays in this volume detail the strategies employed in discerning the perspectives, ideas, activities, motives, and agency of indigenous Christians. The contributors approach the problem on a case-by-case basis, acknowledging the impact of diverse geographical, cultural, political, and ecclesiastical factors.This volume will inspire historians of World Christianity to critically interrogate—and imaginatively use—existing Western and indigenous documentary material in writing the history of Christianity in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania.In addition to the editor, the contributors to this volume include J. J. Carney, Adrian Hermann, Paul Kollman, Kenneth Mills, Esther Mombo, Mrinalini Sebastian, Christopher Vecsey, Haruko Nawata Ward, and Yanna Yannakakis.

Sometimes presumed to be a mere relic of British colonialism, the Anglican Church in Burma (Myanmar) has its own complex identity, intricately interwoven with beliefs and traditions that predate the arrival of Christianity. In this essential volume, Edward Jarvis succinctly reconstructs this history and demonstrates how Burma’s unique voice adds vital context to the study of Anglicanism’s predicament and the future of worldwide Christianity.Over the past two hundred years, the Anglican Church in Burma has seen empires rise and fall. Anglican Christians survived the brutal Japanese occupation, experienced rampant poverty and environmental disaster, and began a tortuous and frustrating quest for peace and freedom under a lawless dictatorship. Using a range of sources, including archival documents and the firsthand accounts of Anglicans from a variety of backgrounds, Jarvis tells the story of the church’s life beyond empire, exploring how Christians of non-Western heritage remade the church after a significant part of its liturgical documents and literature was destroyed in World War Two and how, more recently, the church has gained attention for its alignment with influential conservative and orthodox movements within Anglicanism.Comprehensive and concise, this fascinating history will appeal to scholars and students of religious studies, World Christianity, church history, and the history of missions and theology as well as to clergy, seminarians, and those interested in the current crises and future direction of Anglicanism.

Sometimes presumed to be a mere relic of British colonialism, the Anglican Church in Burma (Myanmar) has its own complex identity, intricately interwoven with beliefs and traditions that predate the arrival of Christianity. In this essential volume, Edward Jarvis succinctly reconstructs this history and demonstrates how Burma’s unique voice adds vital context to the study of Anglicanism’s predicament and the future of worldwide Christianity.Over the past two hundred years, the Anglican Church in Burma has seen empires rise and fall. Anglican Christians survived the brutal Japanese occupation, experienced rampant poverty and environmental disaster, and began a tortuous and frustrating quest for peace and freedom under a lawless dictatorship. Using a range of sources, including archival documents and the firsthand accounts of Anglicans from a variety of backgrounds, Jarvis tells the story of the church’s life beyond empire, exploring how Christians of non-Western heritage remade the church after a significant part of its liturgical documents and literature was destroyed in World War Two and how, more recently, the church has gained attention for its alignment with influential conservative and orthodox movements within Anglicanism.Comprehensive and concise, this fascinating history will appeal to scholars and students of religious studies, World Christianity, church history, and the history of missions and theology as well as to clergy, seminarians, and those interested in the current crises and future direction of Anglicanism.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Xiamen’s pursuit of World Heritage Site designation from UNESCO stimulated considerable interest in the city’s Christian past. History enthusiasts, both Christian and non-Christian, devoted themselves to reinterpreting the legacy of missionaries and challenged official narratives of Christianity’s troubled associations with Western imperialism. In this book, Jifeng Liu documents the tension that has inevitably emerged between the established official history and these popular efforts.This volume elucidates the ways in which Christianity has become an integral part of Xiamen, a Chinese city profoundly influenced by Western missionaries. Drawing on extensive interviews, locally produced histories, and observations of historical celebrations, Liu provides an intimate portrait of the people who navigate ideological issues to reconstruct a Christian past, reproduce religious histories, and redefine local power structures in the shadow of the state. Liu makes a compelling argument that a Christian past is being constructed that combines official frameworks, unofficial practices, and nostalgia into social memory, a realm of dynamic negotiation that is neither dominated by the authoritarian state nor characterized by popular resistance. In this way, Negotiating the Christian Past in China illustrates the complexities of memory and missions in shaping the city’s cultural landscape, church-state dynamics, and global aspirations.This groundbreaking study assumes a perspective of globalization and localization, in both the past and the present, to better understand Chinese Christianity in a local, national, and global context. It will be welcomed by scholars of religious studies and world Christianity, and by those interested in the church-state relationship in China.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, Xiamen’s pursuit of World Heritage Site designation from UNESCO stimulated considerable interest in the city’s Christian past. History enthusiasts, both Christian and non-Christian, devoted themselves to reinterpreting the legacy of missionaries and challenged official narratives of Christianity’s troubled associations with Western imperialism. In this book, Jifeng Liu documents the tension that has inevitably emerged between the established official history and these popular efforts.This volume elucidates the ways in which Christianity has become an integral part of Xiamen, a Chinese city profoundly influenced by Western missionaries. Drawing on extensive interviews, locally produced histories, and observations of historical celebrations, Liu provides an intimate portrait of the people who navigate ideological issues to reconstruct a Christian past, reproduce religious histories, and redefine local power structures in the shadow of the state. Liu makes a compelling argument that a Christian past is being constructed that combines official frameworks, unofficial practices, and nostalgia into social memory, a realm of dynamic negotiation that is neither dominated by the authoritarian state nor characterized by popular resistance. In this way, Negotiating the Christian Past in China illustrates the complexities of memory and missions in shaping the city’s cultural landscape, church-state dynamics, and global aspirations.This groundbreaking study assumes a perspective of globalization and localization, in both the past and the present, to better understand Chinese Christianity in a local, national, and global context. It will be welcomed by scholars of religious studies and world Christianity, and by those interested in the church-state relationship in China.

The Cambodian Civil War and genocide of the late 1960s and ’70s left the country and its diaspora with long-lasting trauma that continues to reverberate through the community. In this book, Briana L. Wong explores the compelling stories of Cambodian evangelicals, their process of conversion, and how their testimonials to the Christian faith helped them make sense of and find purpose in their trauma.Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Cambodian communities in the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Paris, and Phnom Penh, Wong examines questions of religious identity and the search for meaning within the context of transnational Cambodian evangelicalism. While the community has grown in recent decades, Christians nevertheless make up a small minority of the predominantly Buddhist diaspora. Wong explores what it is about Christianity that makes these converts willing to risk their social standing, familial bonds,and, in certain cases, physical safety in order to identify with the faith. Contributing to ongoing dialogues on conversion, reverse mission, and multiple religious belonging, this book will appeal to students and scholars of world Christianity, missiology, and the history of Christianity, as well as Southeast Asian studies, secular sociologies, and anthropologists operating within the field of religious studies.

The Cambodian Civil War and genocide of the late 1960s and ’70s left the country and its diaspora with long-lasting trauma that continues to reverberate through the community. In this book, Briana L. Wong explores the compelling stories of Cambodian evangelicals, their process of conversion, and how their testimonials to the Christian faith helped them make sense of and find purpose in their trauma.Based on ethnographic fieldwork with Cambodian communities in the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Paris, and Phnom Penh, Wong examines questions of religious identity and the search for meaning within the context of transnational Cambodian evangelicalism. While the community has grown in recent decades, Christians nevertheless make up a small minority of the predominantly Buddhist diaspora. Wong explores what it is about Christianity that makes these converts willing to risk their social standing, familial bonds,and, in certain cases, physical safety in order to identify with the faith. Contributing to ongoing dialogues on conversion, reverse mission, and multiple religious belonging, this book will appeal to students and scholars of world Christianity, missiology, and the history of Christianity, as well as Southeast Asian studies, secular sociologies, and anthropologists operating within the field of religious studies.

Following the Communist Revolution of 1949, missionaries were kicked out of China and proselytizing was outlawed. However, since the beginning of the reform era, China has witnessed a massive return of missionary workers. Today there are more Christians in church on a given Sunday in China than anywhere else on the globe.This book investigates the interaction of Western missionaries, ethnic minorities, and Han Chinese converts with the Chinese state in an increasingly globalized China. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yunnan, it tries to make sense of the disparity between official state rhetoric and everyday reality. Examining morality in the context of the free-market system, spatial practices, linguistic activity, and Christian welfare organizations, Gideon Elazar reveals the ways in which the previously conflicting Communist Party and Christian “civilizing projects” have reached a measure of convergence, enabling local authorities to treat missionaries with a degree of tolerance. Elazar shows how this unofficial arrangement relates to the social realities and challenges of the reform era, including ethnic culture and identity, Yunnan’s many social problems, and the integration of ethnic minorities into the state system.By exploring the continuously shifting social and religious borders negotiated by converts, missionaries, and state authorities in Southwest China, this book sheds light on the larger issue of contemporary religion in China’s global era. It will be of interest to researchers of religion, Christianity, and minority groups in the People’s Republic of China.

Following the Communist Revolution of 1949, missionaries were kicked out of China and proselytizing was outlawed. However, since the beginning of the reform era, China has witnessed a massive return of missionary workers. Today there are more Christians in church on a given Sunday in China than anywhere else on the globe.This book investigates the interaction of Western missionaries, ethnic minorities, and Han Chinese converts with the Chinese state in an increasingly globalized China. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Yunnan, it tries to make sense of the disparity between official state rhetoric and everyday reality. Examining morality in the context of the free-market system, spatial practices, linguistic activity, and Christian welfare organizations, Gideon Elazar reveals the ways in which the previously conflicting Communist Party and Christian “civilizing projects” have reached a measure of convergence, enabling local authorities to treat missionaries with a degree of tolerance. Elazar shows how this unofficial arrangement relates to the social realities and challenges of the reform era, including ethnic culture and identity, Yunnan’s many social problems, and the integration of ethnic minorities into the state system.By exploring the continuously shifting social and religious borders negotiated by converts, missionaries, and state authorities in Southwest China, this book sheds light on the larger issue of contemporary religion in China’s global era. It will be of interest to researchers of religion, Christianity, and minority groups in the People’s Republic of China.

By the time the Capuchins arrived in the seventeenth century, Kongo had been Catholic for nearly two hundred years. The European mission could not be conversion, then, but reinforcement; the Capuchins sought to establish the sacraments and a line to Rome in a lay-led church already suffused with an enduring, creative, and complex theological culture. In Memorializing the Unsung, Elochukwu Uzukwu uses the framework of this “ancient” Kongo Catholicism to explore European dependence on enslaved Kongo Catholics and the unconscionable Capuchin and Spiritan participation in the slave trade at large—a practice denounced by the lone voices of Capuchin Epifanio de Moirans and Spiritan Alexandre Monnet. Reconstructing the church that missionaries and Kongo Catholics built together on the foundations of local religion, Memorializing the Unsung contrasts the dignity denied the Kongo Catholics with the freedom they nonetheless performed. Uzukwu is particularly deft in tracing the agency of Kongo elites and laypeople from the fifteenth century through the nineteenth, carefully evaluating their deliberate engagements with southern Europeans, the role of the maestri (translator-catechists) in guiding the faithful, and the ultimate development of a unique theological vocabulary endorsed by the Kikongo catechism.Without the support and creativity of these unsung lay Catholics across west-central and eastern Africa, Uzukwu shows, the European missions in the region would have failed. Even while enslaved, the Kongo Slaves of the Church and the eastern African Slaves of the Mission served as mediators, co-creators, and reinventors of their world.

By the time the Capuchins arrived in the seventeenth century, Kongo had been Catholic for nearly two hundred years. The European mission could not be conversion, then, but reinforcement; the Capuchins sought to establish the sacraments and a line to Rome in a lay-led church already suffused with an enduring, creative, and complex theological culture. In Memorializing the Unsung, Elochukwu Uzukwu uses the framework of this “ancient” Kongo Catholicism to explore European dependence on enslaved Kongo Catholics and the unconscionable Capuchin and Spiritan participation in the slave trade at large—a practice denounced by the lone voices of Capuchin Epifanio de Moirans and Spiritan Alexandre Monnet. Reconstructing the church that missionaries and Kongo Catholics built together on the foundations of local religion, Memorializing the Unsung contrasts the dignity denied the Kongo Catholics with the freedom they nonetheless performed. Uzukwu is particularly deft in tracing the agency of Kongo elites and laypeople from the fifteenth century through the nineteenth, carefully evaluating their deliberate engagements with southern Europeans, the role of the maestri (translator-catechists) in guiding the faithful, and the ultimate development of a unique theological vocabulary endorsed by the Kikongo catechism.Without the support and creativity of these unsung lay Catholics across west-central and eastern Africa, Uzukwu shows, the European missions in the region would have failed. Even while enslaved, the Kongo Slaves of the Church and the eastern African Slaves of the Mission served as mediators, co-creators, and reinventors of their world.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, China underwent tumultuous times—from nation building and the New Culture Movement to the Japanese occupation and the renunciations accompanying the Korean War. As Yun Zhou argues, this transformative period cannot be fully understood without considering the evolving role of women and Christianity in Chinese society.At the turn of the twentieth century, American missionary women established Nü duo (The Woman’s Messenger), a Christian women’s magazine based in Shanghai whose publication spanned four decades of changing values around feminine virtue. Tracing the magazine’s evolution across its three editors, Zhou shows how growing intellectualism among the magazine’s staff and readership challenged a homogenous ideal of womanhood. While Nü duo began under the editorship of a white American missionary championing traditional domestic values, the Chinese editors who went on to lead the magazine in subsequent decades broadened the boundaries of Christian gender ethics, emphasizing matters of indigenous agency, leftist thinking, theodicy, and personal spiritual elevation. Zhou shows how the magazine’s trajectory points to a subtle yet profound process wherein the women involved—navigating ideas concerning God, gender, nation, warfare, and even the details of everyday life—became agents of historical change rather than mere recipients of it.Drawing from a wide range of sources from China and the West, this book makes an important contribution to the fields of women’s studies, print culture, modern Chinese history, and world Christianity.

In African literature, Christianity has long been represented as a foreign religion, associated with the history and ongoing legacies of European colonialism and mission. But in recent decades, writers have begun to engage with it in more complex, ambivalent, and at times liberatory ways that are reflective of the religion’s tremendous growth and diverse transformations across the continent.Adriaan van Klinken addresses this literary shift in the context of Nigeria, a major center of literary production and Christian growth on the continent. Through close dialogue with works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Okey Ndibe, Chinelo Okparanta, and others, van Klinken probes the lived and imagined experiences of Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism across Nigeria in the wake of decolonization. Taking Nigerian literary writers seriously as social and religious thinkers, van Klinken puts their novels into conversation with the works of major African theologians, philosophers, and social theorists. By foregrounding the creative theologizing that fiction writing participates in, this book demonstrates how these literary texts—beyond merely representing and critiquing sociopolitical realities—also take part in envisioning the alternative worldmaking potential of Christian traditions in the Nigerian context.

In African literature, Christianity has long been represented as a foreign religion, associated with the history and ongoing legacies of European colonialism and mission. But in recent decades, writers have begun to engage with it in more complex, ambivalent, and at times liberatory ways that are reflective of the religion’s tremendous growth and diverse transformations across the continent.Adriaan van Klinken addresses this literary shift in the context of Nigeria, a major center of literary production and Christian growth on the continent. Through close dialogue with works by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Okey Ndibe, Chinelo Okparanta, and others, van Klinken probes the lived and imagined experiences of Catholicism, Evangelicalism, and Pentecostalism across Nigeria in the wake of decolonization. Taking Nigerian literary writers seriously as social and religious thinkers, van Klinken puts their novels into conversation with the works of major African theologians, philosophers, and social theorists. By foregrounding the creative theologizing that fiction writing participates in, this book demonstrates how these literary texts—beyond merely representing and critiquing sociopolitical realities—also take part in envisioning the alternative worldmaking potential of Christian traditions in the Nigerian context.

Christianity has become one of the most powerful markers of identity in the mountainous borderlands of China and Southeast Asia, also known as Zomia. This region is home to tens of millions of people—including the Ahmao, the Kachin, the Lisu, and many other highlanders—all living at a far remove from the population centers of the lowlands. This volume explores how their creative engagement with Christianity has transformed their communities and reshaped their relationships with nation-states and dominant cultures.Highland Christianity brings together indigenous, in-group scholars and external researchers to examine Christianity’s complex entanglement with ethnicity and modernity across eastern Zomia. Chapters investigate mass conversions, the creation of Bible orthographies, the indigenization of Christian practice, and the tensions Christianization generated with lowland states and majority populations. Contributors highlight the dramas and ambiguities of these changes while foregrounding the creative agency of highland peoples in reworking the faith to generate cohesion, cultural capital, and renewed forms of belonging. Moving beyond colonial frameworks, this interdisciplinary volume maps the profound and ongoing transformations of communities across this borderland region. It will be an essential resource for scholars and students of world Christianity, Asian studies, and anthropology.In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Aminta Arrington, Chijui Hu, Jianxiong Ma, Pum Za Mang, Lagai Zau Nan, Anh-Minh Nguyen-Dang, Yoichi Nishimoto, and Zhu Jili.

Sometimes called the Mexican Joan of Arc, Teresa Urrea was a renowned folk saint and religious healer in northern Mexico and the US borderlands in the 1890s. Though she was never canonized, many believed that she possessed miraculous powers—and thousands of pilgrims sought out her cures and divine intervention. Her nickname, “Santa de Cabora,” became a rallying cry in pre-revolutionary uprisings, prompting the Mexican government to arrest and deport her. She later supported Sonoran immigrant labor activism in California before dying of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three.Despite her saintly reputation, Urrea’s life is rarely considered in the context of her religious beliefs and practices. Ryan T. Ramsey invites us to reflect on her politics in relation to her spirituality, foregrounding what Urrea herself took most seriously in life. Through news clippings, oral histories, novels, and folklore, Ramsey examines Urrea’s life and spiritual praxis from all angles, placing her story in its wider context of Mexican Indigenous Christianity, popular mestizo Catholicism, Spiritism and other metaphysical religions, and Indigenous resistance movements. Ultimately, Ramsey shows how Urrea practiced a Christianity that crossed Indigenous borders, united groups, and opposed forces of coloniality. This fascinating volume will appeal to scholars and general readers interested in Chicanx and Latinx history, Indigenous studies, and world Christianity and is especially well suited for upper-level undergraduate courses in these subject areas.