A great four-volume history presenting in comprehensive perspective, within the limits of a single narrative, the various attempts to plant and develop Christianity in Africa. The method of presentation is chronological rather than regional, taking the whole story forward stage by stage rather than dealing completely with one region at a time. As Groves shows in his continental survey, Christianity is now in the midst of its third great attempt to occupy Africa. Volume I (to 1840) deals with the land and its people; Christianity in the Apostolic Age; the early church in North Africa; Islam; slavery; the formation of Missionary Societies and the arrival of David Livingstone. Volume II (1840-1878) covers the years in which the Christian faith ' following the trail-blazing of Livingstone and Stanley in Central Africa and the Congo respectively ' leaped ahead and became one of the formative factors in African life Volume III (1878-1914) continues the account of the European penetration into Africa and describes the effect of the 'scramble for Africa' on the work of the various Christian missions and the growth of the Christian Churches. Volume IV (1914-1954) surveys the period after the First World War in which startling and momentous changes took place, with upheavals in African society which have permanently affected the spread and influence of Christianity, and goes up to the era of decolonisation, which created an entirely new social and political background for the churches.

A great four-volume history presenting in comprehensive perspective, within the limits of a single narrative, the various attempts to plant and develop Christianity in Africa. The method of presentation is chronological rather than regional, taking the whole story forward stage by stage rather than dealing completely with one region at a time. As Groves shows in his continental survey, Christianity is now in the midst of its third great attempt to occupy Africa. Volume I (to 1840) deals with the land and its people; Christianity in the Apostolic Age; the early church in North Africa; Islam; slavery; the formation of Missionary Societies and the arrival of David Livingstone. Volume II (1840-1878) covers the years in which the Christian faith ' following the trail-blazing of Livingstone and Stanley in Central Africa and the Congo respectively ' leaped ahead and became one of the formative factors in African life Volume III (1878-1914) continues the account of the European penetration into Africa and describes the effect of the 'scramble for Africa' on the work of the various Christian missions and the growth of the Christian Churches. Volume IV (1914-1954) surveys the period after the First World War in which startling and momentous changes took place, with upheavals in African society which have permanently affected the spread and influence of Christianity, and goes up to the era of decolonisation, which created an entirely new social and political background for the churches.

This is a groundbreaking study of the relationship between Christianity and collective violence in late nineteenth century China. Using American Baptist and English Presbyterian examples in the Guangdong province, the book examines the scale of Chinese conversions, the creation of Christian villages and the power relations between Christians, non-Christians and between different Christian denominations.
The spread of Christianity needs to be understood in the context of intense violence within and between villages and lineages, and patterns of conversion often following the lines of existing communal divisions.
This book is based on a very comprehensive foundation of data and the Protestant missionary and Chinese archival materials are supplemented with fieldwork data that were collected in several Christian villages.

This book is a study of the changing relationship over time (1856-1994) between the Rishi, an ex-Untouchable jati of Bengal/South-West Bangladesh, and various groups of Catholic missionaries. The book's originality and importance lies in its multi-disciplinary approach, which combines anthropological fieldwork, historical research, philosophical enquiry and contemporary missiological debates. Moreover, it addresses issues of great current relevance in its discussions of Orientalism, Neo-colonialism and Otherness.

How can one believe in a God of love amid all the evil and suffering found in the world? How does one do theology 'after Auschwitz', while vast numbers of people still have to endure violent oppression every day? This book seeks to address such questions from a standpoint informed by life in Africa, which in the face of extraordinary difficulties bears witness to Gospel hope by demonstrating forgiveness in action and promoting reconciliation. The work unfolds in two parts. In the first part, a description of the misery that characterises much of life in Africa in the recent past opens up to a theological consideration of the underlying causes and of God's response to them. In the second part, the joy which is so characteristic of life in Africa even in places of immense suffering sets the scene for detailed reflections on liturgy, memory, forgiveness and hope.

This book assesses the conceptualisation of international mission in the Methodist Church Ghana. It demonstrates that Ghanaian Methodists possess a robust ecclesiology with roots in the Akan concept of "abusua" and an evangelical theology rooted in John Wesley. The author gives interpretations to the ways mission takes place and proposes twelve models of mission whereby members of diasporic communities are agents of mission. As mission is seen a responsibility of the whole church, mission is a common theme related to the migration of Ghanaian Methodists to other contexts, often understood in terms of in the global North. The church's presence in North America and Europe presents challenges and opportunities that must be negotiated in a broader Methodist mainline milieu.

Despite the popularity of sport in contemporary China, the practice of physical education is not indigenous to its culture. Strenuous physical activity was traditionally linked to low class and status in the pre-modern Chinese society. The concept of modern PE was introduced to China by Western Christian missionaries and directors of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA). It then grew from a tool for Christian evangelism to a strategic instrument in Chinese nation-building. This book examines the transformation of Chinese attitudes toward PE and sport, drawing on the concepts of cultural imperialism and nationalism to understand how an imported Western activity became a key aspect of modernization for the Chinese state. More specifically, it looks at the relationship between Christianity and the rise of Chinese nationalism between 1840 and 1937. Combining historical insight with original research, this book sheds new light on the evolution of PE and sport in modern China. It is fascinating reading for all those with an interest in sports history, Chinese culture and society, Christianity, physical education or the sociology of sport.

Addresses the nature of the influence of the European Enlightenment on the beliefs and practice of the Protestant missionaries who went to Asia and Africa from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, particularly British missions and the formative role of the Scottish Enlightenment on their thinking.

"Sino-Christian theology" usually refers to an intellectual movement emerged in Mainland China since the late 1980s. The present volume aims to provide a self-explaining sketch of the historical development of this theological as well as cultural movement. In addition to the analyses on the theoretical issues involved and the articulations of the prospect, concrete examples are also offered to illustrate the characteristics of the movement.

As incredible as it may seem, the American missionaries who journeyed to China in 1860 planning solely to spread the Gospel ultimately reinvented their entire enterprise. By 1900, they were modernizing China with schools, colleges, hospitals, museums, and even YMCA chapters. In Cultures Colliding, John R. Haddad nimbly recounts this transformative institution-building-how and why it happened-and its consequences. When missionaries first traveled to rural towns atop mules, they confronted populations with entrenched systems of belief that embraced Confucius and rejected Christ. Conflict ensued as these Chinese viewed missionaries as unwanted disruptors. So how did this failing movement eventually change minds and win hearts? Many missionaries chose to innovate. They built hospitals and established educational institutions offering science and math. A second wave of missionaries opened YMCA chapters, coached sports, and taught college. Crucially, missionaries also started listening to Chinese citizens, who exerted surprising influence over the preaching, teaching, and caregiving, eventually running some organizations themselves. They embraced new American ideals while remaining thoroughly Chinese. In Cultures Colliding, Haddad recounts the unexpected origins and rapid rise of American institutions in China by telling the stories of the Americans who established these institutions and the Chinese who changed them from within. Today, the impact of this untold history continues to resonate in China.

In the decades before the Civil War, evangelical Protestants struggled for the mind and soul of America. Their impact on American life had immediate as well as far-reaching consequences, and is the subject of Curtis Johnson's concise and discerning account of a major force in the nation's history. The religious combatants described by Mr. Johnson not only sought to rescue America from Catholics and unbelievers, they battled one another over the meaning, practice, and social implications of their common faith. While prosperous evangelicals often tried to impose their religious understanding on the social and political order, common whites resented this elite meddling in their lives, and black Americans achieved a measure of autonomy by forging a liberating faith. Evangelical battles over biblical interpretation, the Second Birth, personal and national righteousness, and the Second Coming released forces that reverberated throughout antebellum culture. White evangelicals disagreed over the importance of education, the role of emotion, the possibility of personal perfection, and political philosophy. But when large numbers of black and white evangelicals agreed that God could not bless the nation until slavery was abolished, they abandoned their slaveholding co-religionists, and America moved toward Civil War. American Ways Series.

This is the only book that addresses the relations between religion, Protestant missions, and empire building, linking together all three fields of studyby taking as its starting point the early eighteenth century Anglican initiatives in colonial North America and the Caribbean. It considers how the early societies of the 1790s built on this inheritance, and extended their own interests to the Pacific, India, the Far East, and Africa. Fluctuations in the vigour and commitment of the missions, changing missionary theologies, and the emergence of alternative missionary strategies, are all examined for their impact on imperial expansion. Other themes include the international character of the missionary movement, Christianity's encounter with Islam, and major figures such as David Livingstone, the state and politics, and humanitarianism, all of which are viewed in a fresh light. This monumental study shows that the missionary movement had a far more complex and ambiguous relationship with the Empire than has previously been thought, and will be widely welcomed by students and scholars of imperial history and the history of religion. -- .

The word "evangelism" evokes strong reactions among Christians. Conflict about what it is, whether to do it, how to go about it, and the desired results divides churches, demonstrating the need for new theologies and methods that address today's religiously pluralistic and secular contexts. This book offers a comprehensive treatment of evangelism, from biblical models to contemporary practice. Frances Adeney shows that understanding different contexts and approaches to evangelism and accepting the views of others on this crucial topic can help replace the "evangelism wars" (social action vs. proclamation) with a more graceful approach to sharing God's good news with the world.

Through a series of case studies of major fundamentalist missionary institutions and campaigns in China from 1930 to 1937, this work traces and clarifies the historical process of the movement and its controversy with modernism, the nature of character of the movement, its theological cores, its impact upon missionary thinking and strategies, and its influences on emerging evangelicals within Chinese churches.

This collection of historical and theological essays re-assesses the centenary history of the Church Missionary Society by Eugene Stock and of the strategic vision of Henry Vann, one of the two architects of the Three-Self theory of the indigenous church. There are chapters on the close links between the CMS and the Basel Mission, female missionaries, and regional studies of Samuel Crowther and the Niger mission, Iran, the Middle East, New Zealand, India and Kikuyu Christianity. The text makes a contribution to literature on indigenization of missionary traditions and should be of interest to historians of the missionary movement and non-Western Christianity, as well as to theologians concerned with religious pluralism and mission.

This hand sized NKJV edition is the perfect travel companion for readers who like to take their Bibles with them throughout the day. Though it fits easily into backpacks and purses, you won’t have to sacrifice readability or study resources.

The exclusive Thomas Nelson NKJV Comfort Print® typeface was designed to be easy to read at any size, so you can experience deeper engagement in God’s Word. This edition also includes over 73,000 cross-references, a concordance, and full-color maps so you have everything you need for serious study at your fingertips.

Features include:

• Presentation page
• Red letter words of Christ
• 73,000+ cross-references trace the connections in Scripture
• Concordance
• Full-color maps
• Satin ribbon marker
• Clear and readable 7-point NKJV Comfort Print

Commissioned in 1975 by Thomas Nelson, 130 international and multi-denominational Bible scholars, church leaders, and lay Christians worked for seven years to create a completely new, modern translation of Scripture that retained the purity and stylistic beauty of the King James Version. The New King James Version is faithful to the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic text, and provides transparency to the recent research in archaeology, linguistics, and textual studies in the footnotes. The result is a Bible translation that is both beautiful and uncompromising—perfect for serious study, devotional use, and reading aloud.

Series Information:
Gender, Culture and Global Politics

Transforming Priesthood offers a major theological reappraisal of the present and future role of the parish priest in Britain. Although written primarily with Anglicans in mind, the book is full if insights for partner churches - especially for those in which professional ministers and lay people recognize the need to collaborate effectively in carrying forward the mission and ministry of the whole Church. 'At last, here we have a practical, imaginative, and intelligent vision of priesthood for today's Church of England and beyond it. Dr Greenwood is widely experienced in parish ministry as well as at diocesan level and in academic theology. He is both realistic and theologically perceptive about contemporary England and its churches. His analyses are convincing; he is in touch with the livliest developments at local level and in theological thinking; and at the heart of his prescription is a relevant and passionate affirmation of the Trinitarian God. The result is a book that should not only stimulate debate of the right kind at a time of momentous change in all churches, it should also help to nurture Christian vocations, both as laity and parish priests.' David F Ford, Regius Professor of Divinity, University of Cambridge.

The first full-length biography of Rev. Long, one of the most remarkable Protestant missionaries working in India in the 19th century, examining his work and activities in the context of his own background, philosophy and motivation as well as the political and cultural climate of the day.

In the late eighteenth century, French emigre priests fled the religious turmoil of the French Revolution and found themselves leading a new wave of Roman Catholic missionaries in the United States. Fathers on the Frontier explores the diverse ways these missionary priests guided the development of the early American church in Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, and other pockets of Catholic settlement throughout much of the trans-Appalachian West. Over the course of their evangelistic endeavor, this relatively small group of priests introduced Gallican, ultramontane, and missionary principles to a nascent institutional church prior to the immigration of millions of European Catholics in the nineteenth century.
As author Michael Pasquier shows, this transformation of American Catholicism did not come easily. Several generations of French priests struggled to reconcile their romantic expectations of missionary life with their actual experiences as servants of a foreign church scattered throughout a frontier region with limited access to friends and family members still in France. As they became more accustomed to the lifeways of the American South and West, French missionaries expressed anxiety about apparent discrepancies between how they were taught to practice the priesthood in French seminaries and what the Holy See expected them to achieve as representatives of a universal missionary church.
At no point did French missionaries engage more directly in distinctively American affairs than in the religious debates surrounding slavery, secession, and civil war. These issues, Pasquier argues, compelled even the most politically aloof missionaries to step out of the shadow of Rome and stake their church on the side of the Confederacy. In so doing, they set in motion a strain of Catholicism more amenable to Southern concepts of social conservatism, paternalism, and white supremacy, and strikingly different from the liberal, progressive strain that historians have usually highlighted. Focusing on the collective thoughts, feelings, and actions of priests who found themselves caught between the formal canonical standards of the church and the informal experiences of missionaries in American culture, Fathers on the Frontier illuminates the historical intersection of American, French, and Roman interests in the United States."

Settlements were a distinctive aspect of late-Victorian church life in which individual philanthropic Christians were encouraged to live and work in communities amongst the poor and set an example for the underprivileged through their own actions. Often overlooked by historians, settlements are of great value in understanding the values and culture of the 19th century.
Settlement missions were first conceived when Samuel Barnett, the incumbent of St Jude's, Whitechapel, in the East End of London, sought to introduce them as a major aspect of Victorian church life. Barnett argued that settlers should be incorporated into London communities that suffered from squalor and poverty to live and work alongside the poor, to demonstrate their Christian faith and attempt to enhance social conditions from the inside. His first recruits were Oxford undergraduates and when Toynbee Hall was founded in Oxford in 1884, his radical vision of adapting Christian morality towards tackling social deprivation had begun. By the end of the Victorian era more than fifty similar institutions had been created.
Whilst few settlements lasted beyond the Victorian period, by injecting Christian ethics into trade unions, local government and the community, they had a huge impact which is still felt in the way these organisations operate today.

Christian missions in Africa are commonly seen as a blatant example of ethnocentrism. This stereotype partly persists because the day-today interaction between missionaries and Africans has so rarely been studied. This book shows how Africans and missionaries co-produced a Catholic Church in the Uluguru mountains of eastern Tanzania in the late colonial period, and thereby adapted each others' routines in the fields of initiation, education, magic, and religion in Africa by showing how the presence of the mission resulted in a rift between spiritual and worldly magic, and in the underdevelopment of the capacity of Waluguru to mange their own practices of revelation.