OverviewIn the last fifty years, the center of gravity of Christianity has shifted to the non-Western world, and this consultation attempts to reflect that reality. Rather than the old paradigm of missions where the West evangelizes the non-West, today it is much more appropriate to speak of Christianity worldwide as both indigenously specific and universally accessible (a la Andrew Walls’ “pilgrim principle”). The Southern and Eastern continents are the present and the future of Christianity, and evangelicals need to keep pace with this reality lest we become outdated and irrelevant. This consultation aims to follow the origins, growth, ministry, and various expressions of Christianity around the globe, using the fields of, but not exclusively limited to, missiology, anthropology, theology, sociology, history, linguistics, philosophy, and intercultural studies. This is, by its very nature, an interdisciplinary consultation and it will focus on factors that make Christianity grow (including its historical lineage and what is its uniqueness among other world religions), “reverse mission” (the non-Western world’s coming-of-age as dominant voices in the Christian conversation, as missional agents, as gatekeepers of orthodoxy, and as producers of unique theological perspectives), and the translatability and contextualization aspects of Christianity (a la Lamin Sanneh). “World Christianity” does not only include the so-called “Majority World” or “Two-Thirds World” (the non-Western continents) but also ethnic minorities within North America and Europe. We are looking for papers representing any of these ethnic groups or geographical regions. |
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