Good News from Latin America? - International Bulletin of ...

Vol. 28, No. 2April 2004

On Page50 Shopping Around: Questions About Latin

American ConversionsEdward L. Cleary, O.P.

55 Latino Immigration in Europe: Challenge andOpportunity for MissionMiguel A. Palomino

60 Christology, Inculturation, and TheirMissiological Implications: A Latin AmericanPerspectiveJohn F. Gorski, M.M.

63 The Jesuits in Latin America: Legacy andCurrent EmphasesJeffrey Klaiber, S.J.

68 Latin American CatholicismBryan T. Froehle and Mary L. Gautier

70 My Pilgrimage in MissionJ. Andrew Kirk

72 Noteworthy75 The Legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch: A Life

Informed by MissionBarbara A. Lundsten

79 The Legacy of Archibald B. ReekieWilliam H. Brackney

83 Book Reviews93 Dissertation Notices96 Book Notes

Good News from Latin America?One has to listen attentively to hear good news from

Central and South America—together referred to asLatin America. Catering to our almost pathological appetite forthe sensational, a steady flow of bad news is obligingly disgorgedby the media—drug wars in Colombia, U.S.-sponsored murdersin Central America, guerrilla atrocities in Peru, cruelty in ElSalvador, torture in Guatemala, corruption of air and politics inMexico, economic collapse in Argentina, and on it goes.

Bad news from Latin America is not a recent phenomenon.In American Holocaust: Columbus and the Conquest of the New World(Oxford University Press, 1992), David Stannard chronicles withdoleful clarity the most sweeping genocide in human history,one that implicated “Christians” in the systematic obliteration ofan estimated one hundred million indigenous inhabitants of theWestern Hemisphere.

Yet today the church in Latin America boasts an aggregatemembership approaching half a billion. Refracted by a bewilder-ing variety of institutional and cultural allegiances, believers—most of whom are baptized Roman Catholic—are in a state ofconstant, ongoing conversion, sometimes to unbelief. Tensionsassociated with this frequently controversial phenomenon areelucidated in the lead article by Edward Cleary, O.P.

Latin American Christians are also swept up in the globe’stidal waves of human migration, forsaking the familiar in searchof a better country, often in Europe. Miguel Palomino, himself anevangelical, explores ways in which the “popular Protestantism”of these European immigrants affects both them and their newsocial and religious contexts.

Contributing editor John Gorski, M.M., highlights LatinAmerican manifestations of two seminal missiological concerns:(1) the complex interplay of cultural form and theological sub-stance, so that newly born, culturally diverse congregations ofbelievers have “their own face” while still evincing the Christianfamily resemblance; and (2) the challenge to these newly formedchurches of assuming their proper responsibility for missionactivity beyond their own parochial frontiers.

The essay by Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J., reviews the integral roleplayed by Jesuits throughout the history of Christian presence inLatin America. Rendered persona non grata in 1767 by KingCharles III of Spain, the society’s suppression six years later byPope Clement XIV resulted in a further forty-one-year morato-

rium on their labors. Much that is good about the news fromLatin America today can be traced to the indomitable Society ofJesus.

Add Andrew Kirk’s missioner-pilgrim reminiscences, thelegacies of Walter Rauschenbusch and Archibald Reekie, and theilluminating statistics from the Center for Applied Research inthe Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University, and readerswill discover much in this issue to provoke, stimulate, inform,and transform. Good news from Latin America? You be thejudge!

50 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH, Vol. 28, No. 2

When two noted anthropologists canvassed coloniza-tion projects in Bolivia’s lowlands, they reached the

last house on the new dirt road. The owner heard them comingand ran out of the house yelling as they approached, “Soy católico.Nunca van a convertirme” (I’m Catholic. You’re never going toconvert me.) He was the last and only Catholic left in the project.1

This article focuses on the popular subject of conversion inLatin America, with the difficulties both of terminology and ofactually counting the number of converts. At the center of theproblem is the issue of how long these conversions last. It appearsthat, in Latin America at least, it is not prudent to study conver-sion without also studying dropping out, leaving religion as wellas entering it. Following earlier usage, we may also refer to suchleaving as apostasy.

Religious Conversions in Latin America

At times it does seem that the whole of Latin America is convert-ing. Religious conversion is the single greatest social processchanging Latin America and the Caribbean in the twentieth andtwenty-first centuries. Conversions from and within religiousgroups have rocked the region and changed the face of religion.The process has taken place through a series of quiet explosionsthat are only now becoming clear.2

While the mainstream media in the United States and GreatBritain has taken notice of this process, coverage has focusedmainly on the challenge that Pentecostalism has represented tothe dominance of the Catholic Church.3 Far less attention hasbeen paid to the role conversion and intensified religious practicehave played in many other contexts, including the reinvigorationof Indian religions,4 African religions,5 and even the CatholicChurch itself. Indeed, the changes within religious denomina-tions are as significant as those between denominations. Whilemany Catholics are becoming Pentecostal, many mainstreamProtestants and classic Pentecostals are also converting to “healthand wealth” neo-Pentecostal groups. Traditional Catholics haveconverted to social Christianity by the millions. At the same time,many socially active Christians have joined more otherworldlyCatholic and Protestant charismatic groups. Among the indig-enous groups of the region, many persons who are officiallyCatholic now openly embrace Mayan or Andean spirituality.

Many historians and social scientists who have been lookingat Latin American religion for the last twenty or thirty yearsagree, first, that the main religious shift in Latin America hasbeen from Catholicism to evangelical religion, especiallyPentecostalism or neo-Pentecostalism. Mainstream Protestantsalso, however, have suffered losses. While these Protestants havebeen overshadowed by the fast-growing Pentecostals, in coun-tries like Costa Rica or Argentina they exercise an influence farbeyond their numbers.

Second, the major sector of Catholicism affected by this shifthas been that of nominal, indifferent Catholics, who have sup-plied most of the converts to Pentecostalism.6 This pool of nomi-nal Catholics was very large. In 1960 probably two-thirds of the

Shopping Around: Questions About Latin American Conversions

Edward L. Cleary, O.P.

Catholic population seldom or never attended church. Startingin the late 1960s two trends occurred: large numbers of Catholicsin many countries became active in church, and Protestants intwo-thirds of Latin American countries gained large numbers ofconverts. Empirical studies and the long history of religiousconversion have shown that the convinced and the committedare rarely converted to a different faith or group. Rather, it istypically the nominal Catholic or indifferent Protestant whobecomes the engaged Pentecostal.

Scholars from various disciplines have begun looking moreclosely at conversion in Latin America, asking who the convertsare and how they became converted. Besides the insight thatPentecostal converts typically come from the large indifferentsector of Catholicism, we have evidence that converts adopt andremain in another religion primarily because of networks offriends, job acquaintances, and neighbors who bring them intothe church and help them remain faithful. We have begun to lookmore systematically at why so many Latin Americans havechanged religion, both by studying the social context for changeand by listening to the reasons converts give for their new (orrenewed) commitment to a religion.

Conversion, Switching, and Indifference

Observers note that the rates of conversion to the new andchanging religious groups are far greater in some countries thanin others. Geographers studying the patterns of religion showsome sections of the same country with much greater religiouschange than other sections. Reginald Prandi and other veteranBrazilian observers note that 25 percent of the population of SãoPaulo, one of the largest cities of the world, has converted toanother religion. Respected Argentine researchers have alsonoted the incursion of both Pentecostalism and African religioninto the extremely traditional religious grounds of their country.

For Latin American social scientists this moving betweenreligions seems a new and especially Latin American character-istic. Some give explanations along the lines of switching reli-gions being another Latin fad. Similar observations, however,were made of the United States, as newspapers in the 1990s spokeincreasingly of a religious marketplace. The Boston Globe ex-pressed some amazement at the blooming of black Pentecostalchurch buildings within its Puritan city, claiming that there weremore Pentecostal churches in Boston than Catholic ones. Laterthe paper looked more closely and published another story,again with implied exclamation marks: 25 percent of the peoplein the Boston area had changed religious affiliation.

Changing religious groups is not a new story in the UnitedStates. People have been switching church affiliation for decades.About 40 percent of North Americans belong to a religion differ-ent from the one in which they were raised. Some observers haveclaimed, on the basis of new churches being built, that switchingmust be more common than it was. This is not true, however, forthere has been little, if any, increase above the 40 percent norm.7Probably, then, Latin America lags behind the United States. Iattribute this difference to Latin America’s becoming a moreopen and diversified society, although lagging behind the UnitedStates in the process.

Religious switching raises questions about conversion. When

Edward L. Cleary, O.P., is Professor of Political Science and Director of LatinAmerican Studies, Providence College, Providence, Rhode Island. He served asa missionary in Bolivia and Peru, 1958–63 and 1968–71.

51April 2004

much of the switching has been from denomination to denomi-nation, it does not seem like a true biblical metanoia (repentance,or turning). Does the switching, at least in the United States,represent a trend toward a search for deeper spiritual decisionmaking? Does switching represent an intensified religious sensi-bility on the part of persons seeking new (and better) messagesand new messengers? Perhaps, but more common reasons forchanging religious affiliation include changes in life conditions,such as religiously mixed marriages; moving into new neighbor-hoods, cities, and regions of the country; searching for socialservices, such as day care or self-help groups (as for addictionsufferers); and new friendship circles.8

Pentecostalism does seem to change the way one looks atreligion in Latin America. While it is clear that the main Pentecos-tal growth in Latin America is not induced from the UnitedStates, still Latin American Pentecostalism shares characteristicsof religion in the United States. Specifically, it places exceptionalemphasis on congregational participation and worship atten-dance as a measure of religious involvement.

This emphasis is not true of all major and global religions.Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism emphasize ritual and worshipat home and with the family to a much greater extent than LatinAmerican Pentecostalism. Nor did Latin American Catholicism

For Latin American socialscientists, moving betweenreligions seems new andespecially Latin American.

give the same weighty emphasis that Pentecostalism did tocongregational participation and worship attendance. PopularCatholicism was, at least until recently, the religion of mostCatholics.9 From their earliest years, practitioners of popularCatholicism learned from their parents that saints were some-how active in their lives and could be venerated in church, athome, or at strategic places in the city or country. PopularCatholics celebrated feasts, made promises, and prayed for bless-ings, in and outside of church.

The criterion to be established here for later reference is thatindifference, or having no religion, is not measured the same forPentecostals as it is for popular Catholics. Indifference, beingnada (nothing), for Pentecostals means not attending church atleast weekly. For cultural Catholics, in contrast, it means notparticipating in some ritual, in or outside of church, by whichGod is honored.

Conflict over Terminology and Statistics

The terms used to refer to the various Christian groups are oftenunsatisfactory. We seem to be stuck with the Spanish termevangélico for a wide range of Protestants, which is the usage ofLatin American demographers and also the way many LatinAmerican Protestants refer to themselves. Recent authors deal-ing with Latin American religion, such as Timothy Steigenga andKurt Bowen, have used this word broadly to include all non-Catholics who are Protestant, and many professional colleaguesseem to have adopted their usage without objection. Steigengaand Bowen also distinguish between historical Protestants andPentecostal Protestants. This usage may be unfortunate, since

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classic Pentecostals are uncomfortable being under the same tentwith “health and wealth” neo-Pentecostals. (For that matter,many Pentecostal pastors consider Catholics to be outside thenumber of true Christians.)

For statistics, recent academic publications continue to citefigures from Patrick Johnstone’s Operation World: The Day-by-Day Guide to Praying for the World (1993). A recent example isAnne Hallum’s citation in a key 2003 essay in the Latin AmericanResearch Review.10 After some initial hesitation (could I obtainreliable statistics from a prayer book?), I obtained a copy of thiswork, which was reputed to be the best source available forstatistics on religion in Latin America. That might have been trueten years ago, but no longer.

In Operation World (1993), Johnstone claimed that 27.9 per-cent of all Chileans were Protestant, with 25.4 percent Pentecos-tal/charismatic.11 These figures, however, are much higher thanthose reported in the carefully and rigorously conducted na-tional census of 1992, which showed only 12.4 percent evangélicos.According to preliminary indications, the national census of 2002will reveal about 16 percent evangélicos.12 Other systematic sur-veys of Chilean religion have confirmed the levels of the 1992census.

The two other Latin American nations cited as the mostPentecostal or most Protestant are Brazil and Guatemala. ForBrazil, no one doubts that Pentecostal growth there is impressive;

Pentecostal pastors took upthe challenge of religiousnonpractice honestly.

probably half of Latin America’s Pentecostals reside in Brazil. In1993 Johnstone gave the Protestant population as 21.6 percent ofthe national population.13 That stands in contrast with the na-tional census of 2000, conducted by apparently competent de-mographers, that shows 15.4 percent evangélicos. Evangelicalsthemselves seem to be happy with the census’s lower figure. TheWeb site (www.infobrasil.org) of Servicio Evangelizadora paraAmérica Latina, or SEPAL, an international missionary group inBrazil, provides information based on the national census, not onJohnstone.14

An End to Evangelical Growth?

Latinamericanists consistently identify Guatemala as the mostProtestant country in Latin America. In Guatemala, however,evangelical growth has leveled off. Some Protestant missionarieswithin the country are now willing to admit there has been nogrowth for a decade.

Since the early 1990s longtime experts on Guatemalan reli-gion Virginia Garrard Burnett and Bruce Calder have reportedtheir impressions that Protestant growth in Guatemala hadleveled off. They observed that Protestant pastors and otherobservers of religion felt that Guatemalan Protestantism hadreached a “kind of natural limit.” “Some people,” one pastor saidin resignation, “will always be Catholic.”

Surveys of Guatemalan religion, including those by SEPAL,have found that Protestant growth rates were indeed flat. Onemight think that this information would be important in missionand academic circles, but missiologists and academics havegenerally failed to take notice.

Only now is it clear from SEPAL and other sources that thegrowth of Pentecostalism and Protestantism leveled off in Gua-temala some time ago at about 25 percent Protestant in theGuatemalan total population. The Gallup Organization’s groupin Guatemala began doing surveys in the country in the 1990s,including questions of religious affiliation. These surveys, re-peated at various intervals and by now in the public domain fora number of years, consistently have showed Protestant affilia-tion to be in the 25 percent range.15

One might note that though their number as a proportion ofthe Guatemalan population has remained constant, the conver-sion rate for neo-Pentecostals and others counted as evangélicoshas continued to increase. How can that be? How can a rising rateof conversions be paired with a stagnant rate of growth? We shallsee that conversion is only one part of the story.

Nonpractice Among Pentecostals

An initial observation is that many Pentecostals are not veryobservant. This is a fact that one would not easily learn, evenfrom persons who conduct valuable studies. Two systematicsurveys of Chilean religion were conducted by the ChileanInstitute of Public Studies, an institute similar to the AmericanEnterprise Institute in Washington and having close ties toeminent sociologist Peter Berger of Boston University. In 1991this Chilean institute published studies that went beyond censusdata and asked about church attendance. It was quite a surpriseto learn that less than half of Chile’s Pentecostals attend churchonce a week, and more than a third hardly attend church at all.

One of the main researchers, Arturo Fontaine Talavera,barely alluded to the significance of nonpractice among ChileanPentecostals.16 But this finding was scandalous to Pentecostalpastors, since Pentecostals strongly stress attendance at weeklyservices and many Pentecostals go to church more than once aweek. The results of the surveys were broadcast on Chileantelevision and threw pastors into a panic.17

By and large, Pentecostal pastors took up the challenge ofreligious nonpractice directly and honestly, searching their soulsfor reasons for the worrisome dropping out. They wonderedwhether a contributing factor might be the growing distancebetween the education and class background of the pastorsversus that of the persons in the pews. At the time, 40 percent ofPentecostals were middle class in terms of education, which wasa higher percentage than that of pastors.18

The same pattern of nonattendance is evident in Mexico.Bowen found that “fewer than half, forty-eight percent, contin-ued to be active evangelicals who attended a church service atleast once weekly.”19 The vast majority of the other 52 percentnever or almost never attended services.

Leaving Protestantism

A further consideration is that leaving church or religion, drop-ping out, though seriously understudied in the United States, iseven less well researched in Latin America.20 Recent studies havefound that not only is nonpractice widespread but also manyProtestants are leaving their churches altogether. Bowen foundthat 43 percent of those raised in Protestant churches were nolonger Protestants as adults. Also, 68 percent of those baptized inProtestant churches in Mexico in the 1980s had left by 1990.21

Steigenga believes the same rates of leaving may be true inGuatemala.22

As noted above, several Latin American countries exhibit a

53April 2004

rather high rate of evangelical conversion, but not much of a riseor none at all in the percentage of Protestants. Retention is thusclearly a factor. In terms of conversion, when 40 percent or so donot continue in their commitment, does the conversion itselfhave to be doubted? In Latin America, one common response isto say that only God knows. But in social science and missiology,when a religion displays such a high dropout rate, to discussconversion without also looking at apostasy seems partial andmisleading.

One reason researchers have overlooked the significance ofchurch leaving may be that they believed they were looking atnomadismo: people shopping around for religion. In typical pat-terns, people shifted from indifferent Catholic to Pentecostal,from Pentecostal to neo-Pentecostal, from Catholic to Afro-Brazilian religions. Sometimes they seemed to convert to thesereligions all in the same day.

Why They Leave

One can learn a lot from delving into church leaving. Here we arediscussing mainly Pentecostals who have departed. Not only arePentecostals the largest non-Catholic group in Latin America,but also, judging by Mexico, they may have the highest dropoutrates. But why? The responses are complex, but years of inter-viewing Pentecostals and of observing Pentecostal churches inmost Latin American countries convince me that living up to theperfectionist character of Pentecostalism is extremely difficult.Over the long haul, most people simply tire of trying to follow theheavy moral and social demands that many Pentecostal churchesimpose.

Entry into Pentecostalism takes seriously the turning thatearly Christians thought necessary. Men and women are ex-pected to change their behavior to include not only the familiarrules of no smoking, no drinking, and no dancing and the givingof 10 percent of one’s income to the church, but also maritalfidelity and a wholehearted embrace of communal life andfrequent prayer.

The Assemblies of God churches that flourished in CentralAmerica have had pastors who preach observance of theReglamento local, the stated rules for doctrine and practice bywhich the communicants are expected to live. Members of As-semblies churches, as classic Pentecostals, have a gritty sense ofliving counterculturally, an acute awareness of evil in persons andinstitutions, and a humility born from watching their own andothers’ minor slips and major failures. Many Central Americanpastors confided to Everett Wilson, recent president of BethanyCollege (Scotts Valley, California) and longtime resident in Cen-tral America, that over a long period of time only about 15 percentof congregants showed fidelity to the Reglamento local.23

There is another side to the Pentecostal churches’ highdropout rate that needs to be explored, an aspect that few haveemphasized. Do Pentecostal churches keep key members andattract many new ones because, directly or indirectly, they effec-tively cast off their faltering members? After he had walkedalong Mexican dirt roads and byways for years, listening toPentecostal pastors and communicants, it occurred to Bowenthat Latin American Pentecostal churches actually cast off theless committed among their members so that those more com-mitted might continue unimpeded in the pursuit of their highgoals. Less committed members would tend to pull the morecommitted down to a common denominator of laxer practice.The churches keep the luster of their religion bright precisely byshedding the nonobservant and the unrepentant.

Moving to No Religion

Until recently, Latin America stood out, at least from Europe andCanada, in having relatively few persons in the category “noreligion.” Manuel Marzal, a respected expert in religious re-search in Latin America, says that this kind of person was hardlyrepresentative of Latin Americans.24 His argument is based notonly on forty years of looking at religion in the region but also ona global study of religion in 2000. Marzal’s view is challenged,however, by new evidence that shows a widening pool of “noreligion” in Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Chile. This new factlends significance to the question, Where are the church leaversgoing?

Much anecdotal evidence exists indicating that many Pente-costal dropouts return to the Catholic Church. James Scanlon, aMaryknoll priest, said that he and his activist parish membersbrought 1,800 persons in his Guatemala City neighborhood backto the Catholic Church.25 Somewhat similar stories were heard byothers in Guatemala.26 But Steigenga, who conducted surveys inCosta Rica and Guatemala in 1992 and 1993, took a careful lookat the persons who said they had no religious affiliation andfound evidence that many had practiced, some rather profoundly,evangelical religion. Of this group, 13 percent said they hadspoken in tongues, 37 percent said they had experienced a

personal conversion, and 57 percent said they had experienced amiraculous healing. In general he found that few formerevangelicals turned (one cannot say returned, because manywere born Protestants) to Catholicism. Polls in Guatemala since1990 show a group of about 12 percent of the national populationthat identify themselves as having no religion.

In Mexico Bowen’s grassroots questioning of evangelicalpastors and lay Mexicans found that 43 percent of those raised inthe second generation of evangelicals no longer claimed anyreligious affiliation. Within that group, the rate for Pentecostaldropouts in the second generation was even higher: 48 percent.He found that hardly any of the leavers chose to practice Catholi-cism or any other faith. In terms of Mexican evangelicalism, theywere nada (nothing).27 This conclusion repeated what Steigengafound in Guatemala and Costa Rica, where leavers from evan-gelical, mostly Pentecostal, backgrounds may be going into adark pool of “no religion.”

This is a new category, one virtually unknown previously inGuatemala and much of Latin America. But what is it like to bewithout religion in this hotly religious country? Would one feelrelief to be on an island of calm away from the heat of religiouspassion? Do people who say they have no religion still believe inGod? Are they hurting and in need of help? We know almostnothing about this category.

In Conclusion

By looking at both conversion and dropping away, it becomespossible to ask whether evangelicals are destined to remain a

It occurred to Bowen thatLatin American Pentecostalchurches actually cast offless-committed members.


Notes1. This article is based on a presentation made in July 2003 in New

Haven, Connecticut, to the Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History ofthe Missionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity.

2. Manuel Marzal has a valuable discussion of conversion in LatinAmerica in his Tierra encantada (Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2002), pp.497–530.

3. Recent works on Pentecostalism in Latin America include Brian H.Smith, Religious Politics in Latin America: Pentecostal Versus Catholic(Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1998); Edward L.Cleary and Hannah Stewart-Gambino, eds., Power, Politics, andPentecostals in Latin America (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1997); TimothyJ. Steigenga, The Politics of the Spirit: The Political Implications ofPentecostalized Religion in Costa Rica and Guatemala (Lanham, Md.:Lexington, 2001); and Daniel R. Miller, ed., Coming of Age: Protestantism inContemporary Latin America (Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1994).

4. Edward L. Cleary and Timothy J. Steigenga, eds., Resurgent Voice(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, forthcoming), and AlisonBrysk, From Tribal Village to Global Village: Indian Rights andInternational Relations in Latin America (Stanford, Calif.: StanfordUniv. Press, 2000).

5. See, for example, John Burdick, Blessed Anastacia: Women, Race, andPopular Christianity in Brazil (New York: Routledge, 1998), and AriPedro Oro, Axé Mercosul: As religiões Afro-Brasileiras nos paises doPrata (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1999).

6. Luis Corral Prieto, “La iglesias evangélicas,” Estudios teológicos 13(January–June 1980): 1–199; Clifton L. Holland, interview, October30, 1990. Timothy Steigenga found that 81 percent of personsconverting to mainstream Protestantism and 83 percent convertingto Pentecostalism were previously Catholic (Politics of the Spirit, p.37). See also Guillermo Cook, “The Evangelical Groundswell inLatin America,” Christian Century, December 12, 1990, pp. 1175–76.

7. N. J. Demerath III, Crossing the Gods: Worldly Religions, Worldly Politics(New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 221–22.

8. N. J. Demerath III and Yonghe Yang, “What American ‘CultureWar’? A View from the Trenches, as Opposed to the Command Postsand the Press Corps,” in Culture Wars in American Politics: CriticalViews of a Popular Thesis, ed. Rys Williams (Chicago: Aldine deGruyter, 1997).

9. Marzal, Tierra encantada, p. 336.10. Anne Motley Hallum, “Taking Stock and Building Bridges: Feminism,

Women’s Movements, and Pentecostalism in Latin America,” LatinAmerica Research Review 338, no. 1 (2003): 169–86.

11. Patrick Johnstone, Operation World: The Day-by-Day Guide to Prayingfor the World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993), p. 160.

12. El Mercurio, April 10, 2002.13. Johnstone, Operation World (1993), p. 128.14. Hallum and some other authors do not refer to the more recent 2001

edition of Operation World: Twenty-First-Century Edition (Carlisle,Eng.: Paternoster, 2001) in which authors Patrick Johnstone andJason Mandryk use much lower figures for Chile (p. 156) and Brazil(p. 120) and call attention to the fact that they are doing so (p. 120).

15. Public opinion polls include a CBN Poll of March 1990; eight pollstaken by CID-Gallup, from January 1990 to February 1997; andSEPAL 2001. The polls show the Protestant populations as rangingfrom 18 to 26 percent of the general population. See also Roger W.Grossmann, “Interpreting the Development of the EvangelicalChurch in Guatemala: Year 2002” (D.Min. project, SoutheasternBaptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, N.C., September 2002).

16. Arturo Fontaine Talavera, “Trends Toward Globalization in Chile,”in Many Globalizations: Cultural Diversity in the Contemporary World,ed. Peter L. Berger and Samuel P. Huntington (New York: OxfordUniv. Press, 2002), pp. 263–95, comments on the remarkable growthof Pentecostals in Chile but does not mention obvious signs of agingand decline in the fourth generation of Pentecostals.

17. See Edward L. Cleary and Juan Sepúlveda, “Chilean Pentecostalism:Coming of Age,” in Power, Politics, and Pentecostals, ed. Cleary andStewart-Gambino, p. 110.

18. Ibid., p. 111.19. Kurt Bowen, Evangelism and Apostasy: The Evolution and Impact of

Evangelicals in Modern Mexico (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press,1996), p. 71.

20. Exceptions are provided by Leslie J. Francis and Yaacov J. Katz, eds.,Joining and Leaving Religion: Research Perspectives (Leominster, Eng.:Gracewing, 2000), and Stan L. Albrecht and Howard M. Bahr,“Patterns of Religious Disaffiliation: A Study of Lifelong Mormons,Mormon Converts, and Former Mormons,” Journal for the ScientificStudy of Religion 22, no. 4 (1983): 366–79.

21. Bowen, Evangelism and Apostasy, pp. 218, 224.22. Steigenga, Politics of the Spirit, p. 48.23. For description of Assemblies of God discipline, see Everett W.

Wilson, “Guatemalan Pentecostals: Something of Their Own,” inPower, Politics, and Pentecostals, ed. Cleary and Stewart-Gambino, pp.147–49.

24. Marzal, Tierra encantada, p. 227.25. Interviews with Carroll Quinn, July 19 and October 3, 1990.26. Steigenga, Politics of the Spirit, p. 38.27. Bowen, Evangelism and Apostasy, pp. 70–71.

small but vibrant minority, or whether they are capable ofembracing sufficient numbers of Latin Americans for LatinAmerican society as a whole to be transformed. It is clear that thecapacity of the vibrant community of evangelicals to change theface of Latin American religion is severely curtailed by its inabil-ity to retain many of its members. The Mexican churches are

losing many new members. The older Chilean churches are alsolosing members, perhaps third- and fourth-generation ones. It isalso clear that there is a growing pool of Latin Americans with noreligion. This is no surprise to those who look at the challenge ofconversion. We still stand in amazement at Paul, Augustine, andLatin Americans who persevered in their Christian commitment.

55April 2004

As a consequence of tougher U.S. immigration policiesafter the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Latin

Americans are now looking to Europe as the next land of oppor-tunity. In some ways, Europe has become an easier destinationthan the United States and, for many, a more attractive one, to thepoint that its population of legal and illegal Latinos could now beas high as 3 million.

Immigrants typically face a bewildering array of needs andproblems. So indeed do host countries, which are often con-cerned to manage or restrict the flow of people entering theircountry. As Mario Vargas Llosa has pointed out, however, “anti-immigrant policies are destined to fail because they will neverstop immigrants. These policies will only have the perverse effectof undermining the democratic institutions of the nations thatapply them to give xenophobia, racism and authoritarianism anappearance of legitimacy. Immigrants do not take jobs awayfrom locals. On the contrary, they create them, and bring progress,rather than deterioration. . . . [Immigration] is a shot of life,energy, and culture, which should be considered a blessing byreceiving countries.”1

An important dimension of this “blessing” of immigrationrelates to mission, for immigrants represent a clear challenge andopportunity for spiritual and church growth. We consider thisidea after first reviewing the phenomenon of migration and thentaking a closer look at needs of immigrants themselves.

The Phenomenon of Migration

No one knows exactly how many Latinos have left their countriesin recent years. Today, however, Latinos can be found every-where on the planet. Let us consider Peru, my home country, asit illustrates the scope of this problem. According to officialgovernment reports, “the main Peruvian export is neither cottonnor copper, but Peruvians. Almost 1 million Peruvians have fledthe country and established themselves in foreign lands as illegalimmigrants. Two out of twenty-four Peruvians have left thecountry for good, and of the twenty-two who stayed, 48 percent(eleven) would leave if they could. The numbers are hard tobelieve. Almost 1 million citizens have left Peru and neverreturned. Their favorite destination is the United States, wherean estimated 500,000 Peruvians now reside illegally. There are80,000 in Venezuela, 52,000 in Spain, 50,000 in Japan, 50,000 inItaly and more than 40,000 in Argentina. There are 41,000 inChile, and 30,000 in Bolivia. According to the authorities, there isno country in the world without Peruvian presence.”2

Peru is not an isolated case. Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador,Uruguay, and most other nations of Latin America are experienc-ing similar mass movements of people out of their country.

Because of its language, historical connections, and culture,Spain is the most popular gateway for Latino immigrants. Be-

sides the linguistic similarities, this country for years has grantedspecial status to Latin Americans because of its strong ties withthe region.3 Jorge Moragas, secretary of international relations ofthe Partido Popular in Spain, has stated: “We need laborers. Forthat reason we favor Latin American immigration. Latin Ameri-cans who experience social instability and economic depressionin their societies play an important role in the Spanish labormarket.”4 Spain, with one of the fastest-growing economies inEurope, certainly needs foreign workers for its strong tourismand construction sectors, and immigrants are in demand becausethey tend to be highly reliable, punctual, stable, hard-working,and flexible.

Also in Switzerland, Italy, and Britain, Latinos represent thefastest-growing immigrant community. Hundreds of illegal im-migrants ride the rails from Spain to the French Alps, then slipinto Switzerland from French border villages. Switzerland has asmany as 1 million residents who speak Spanish. If the trendcontinues, Spanish will soon surpass Italian as the country’sthird-largest language group, after German and French. Italy,because of its low birthrate, “last year has been able to support aprogressive, increasingly aging population, thanks to the immi-grants,” according to Las Américas, a Latin American newspaperin Italy.5 A similar shift is occurring in London, where Latinostake jobs that Britons and the children of earlier immigrantsreject. Isaac Bigio, a Peruvian scholar at the London School ofEconomics, estimates there are at least half a million Spanishspeakers in Britain.

Immigration, however, means not only low-wage labor butalso a clash of cultures. Observers say that what is at stake on thecontinent is Western values. Most European immigrants areMuslim, and most are not assimilating well, while others openlyand actively reject liberal values such as secular education or therights of women and gays. In this case, some say that the UnitedStates is fortunate that most of its immigrants are from LatinAmerican cultures that accept Western values as their own.6While “Americans worry about the threat of occasional terroristacts that do not directly endanger basic institutions, Europeansworry that immigrants could turn back the clock on centuries ofcostly social gains.”7 EU members looked to the Middle East toimport guest workers and bolster their diminishing populations.Unfortunately, these immigrants, both legal and illegal, bringwith them a strong theocratic, totalitarian background that keepsthem from accepting notions of a liberal society based on free-dom of choice. Since Latino immigrants, whatever their status,possess a work ethic, a respect for Western laws, and an appre-ciation of the heritage of western Europe, coupled with a founda-tion in Catholicism, it would seem to be easy enough for govern-ments to receive them. For this reason, some Europeans arguethat drawing labor from a new source—Latin America—mayhelp stem the flow of illegal arrivals from Muslim lands.8

Needs of the Immigrants

Immigrants are pressed by poverty at home and by fear for theirpersonal safety. The United States has long been a safe haven forimmigrants, and Europe is now becoming a refuge as well. Yet

Miguel A. Palomino, a Peruvian and an ordained minister of the Christian andMissionary Alliance, is Director of the Facultad Teológica LatinoamericanaAlianza (FATELA), a CMA graduate school of theology and mission withbranches in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. He cur-rently resides in São Paulo, Brazil.

Latino Immigration in Europe: Challenge andOpportunity for Mission

Miguel A. Palomino


visa restrictions and more rigorous border regulations uninten-tionally force illegal immigrants to do in Europe what they do inthe United States: remain illegally, since they find it difficult toreturn to their home countries, even if they would like to do so.9

These men and women suffer a traumatic uprooting experi-ence in leaving their homeland, with all its social and affectivebonds. They must enter a foreign culture, where they will haveto adapt themselves to a new language, another legal identity,and new ways of relationship, as well as new food, music,transportation, finances, and lots more. The role of social net-works that help newcomers get oriented is proving to be crucialfor the adaptation of the immigrants. Within these networks, thechurch is usually one of the most trusted organizations.

Here we consider briefly four critical areas in the experienceof immigrants, each with distinct fears and hopes.

Economic stability. The promise of a better future helps newsettlers endure the difficult situations they encounter daily. Onefeature of Latino immigration is that women often outnumbermen,10 and very often they are discriminated against,marginalized, and even abandoned by relatives or partners.Bolivian journalist Edwin Perez Uberhuaga states that most

One of the first thingsLatinos do once settled ina new place is try to havetheir relatives join them.

immigrants in Spain, for instance, are women. They work inhouses as domestics, and some even get pregnant to make surethat their children will have a Spanish birth certificate, which willhelp them to gain legal residence.11 Spain began recruitingwomen from the Dominican Republic in the 1990s to work asmaids. Eventually the new arrivals replaced Spanish migrants,who once flocked north for jobs in richer countries such asEngland, Switzerland, and Germany. As Spain prospered, fewerof its own workers went abroad, thus allowing further opportu-nities for the new immigrants in the rest of Europe.12

All these sacrifices and efforts may well be paying off. InMarch 2003 Washington’s Inter-American Development Bankreported that cash remittances from Europe to Latin Americadoubled between 2000 and 2002, to more than $2 billion a year.In concrete terms, this flow of money is a significant benefit to theeconomy of Latin American countries. For example, according toIvonne Zimmermann, in 2001 the remittances of Ecuadorianimmigrants to their homeland exceeded the combined exportvalue of banana, shrimp, coffee, and cacao, becoming the secondlargest source of income after oil.13 Worldwide, all immigrantsestablished in industrialized nations send about $80 billion peryear to their families in their homelands. If we contrast this figurewith the $50 billion that the rich countries have designated forassistance and development of the poor nations,14 we can appre-ciate the contribution that immigrants make to their nativecountries.

Assimilation. Every immigrant knows that the process ofgetting established can be painful, including the difficulty oflearning a new language and of facing changes in family routineand diet. The area causing the most concern, however, involvesfamily matters. Immigrants come to Europe expecting to find afinancial paradise, only to be overwhelmed by an economic

struggle for survival. Parents often need to take several jobs.Without the support of an extended family, children are left ontheir own for long periods of time. As a result, they are heavilyinfluenced by the public schools and their European peers,something that parents often see as a threat to their value systemand family solidarity.

A related issue is bilingualism. Once the family has settled,parents must accept the idea that their children will probablyprefer to speak the new language instead of Spanish or Portu-guese. This situation can be a problem as far as communicationwithin the family is concerned. It also, though, can be a richexperience for the children, who will be able to understand andinterpret their own culture in creative ways.

Another concern is legal status, for a great many immigrantsare illegal aliens, dealing with all the risks and hassles of such astatus. They live in the fear of being deported, and many arephysically or mentally abused by employers who threaten toturn them over to the police if they dare to speak out about theirjob conditions. Immigrants typically live in marginalized sectorsof the city, where they are exposed to a variety of dangers.

Longing for the homeland. Today’s Latino immigrants in Eu-rope fare differently from Europeans who emigrated to LatinAmerica in the first half of the past century. In those days themeans of transportation were slow and difficult, money wasscarce, and communication was very complicated. Millions lefttheir own homes with the assumption that they would never seethem again. Now, however, there seems to be less of a demandthat immigrants leave their old selves behind when they come toa new place. Instead, the notions of tolerance, personal freedom,respect for the law, and allegiance to the new land may be all thatEuropeans are expecting from immigrants, rather than demand-ing that they become less Latin American than they were before.Latinos indeed like to keep their family ties, cultural traditions,and music, allowing them to express their own ethos whereverthey go.

One of the first things Latinos do once they have settled in anew place is try to have their relatives join them. The presence ofparents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts is important for thesake of the family. Second, they establish cultural centers, socialclubs, and ethnic restaurants in order to maintain their traditions,language, and food. In cities where immigrants are numerous,even their national holidays and festivities are celebrated. Forinstance, the greatest event of the growing Latin Americancommunity in Britain is the Carnaval del Pueblo, held in August.This music festival has been called the most important Latincelebration of Europe; in 2002 it attracted more than 80,000people.15 As a friend of mine, a prosperous businessman andimmigrant, once said to me, “You can leave your country, butyour homeland will never let you go.”

Religious experience. An important point in the phenomenonof migration is the role that religion plays in the assimilation ofimmigrants to their new place. Immigrants, especially those whocome from nations where churches are experiencing a spiritualawakening, are shocked when they see half-empty churches onSundays or church buildings converted into theaters, coffeeshops, and fitness clubs. Evangelical immigrants cannot under-stand how these churches that used to send missionaries to LatinAmerica are now in such a poor spiritual condition. Immigrantsnormally prefer to attend masses and services conducted in theirown language. The ethnic church thus is key for the spiritual andmoral support of the immigrant, and the priest or ministerbecomes an authority figure who helps reaffirm the immigrant’sidentity and culture. Though churches are not social clubs, yet,

57April 2004

sociologically speaking, they are seen as havens,16 communitiesthat become the immigrants’ extended families.

For believers in Jesus Christ, the idea of being pilgrims in theworld is a strong symbolism that enables them to adjust them-selves much better to their new place than is possible for immi-grants with no religious connection. Viewing the church as thepeople or house of God undoubtedly offers the believer thepossibility of finding in local congregations the family warmthneeded in times of difficulties and loneliness.

Immigration and Mission

Ray Bakke and other missiologists have pointed to the phenom-enon of migration as a major challenge and opportunity for thechurch and mission today. Bakke notes that when God commu-nicated with the human race, he did it through his Son, who wasborn in Asia and went as a refugee to Africa, where he spent thefirst years of his life. Half of the world’s children are born in Asia,and half of the refugees anywhere in the world are Africans,which means that Jesus somehow can appeal to them. Further-more, like modern refugees, Jesus knew about poverty, beingborn in a borrowed manger, buried in a borrowed tomb, andnever owning a house. Certainly the pain, frustration, humilia-tion, and lack of necessities that many immigrants and refugeesexperience now would not be strange to Jesus if he were here onearth again today.17 In this sense, immigrants can be a reminderof the incarnational nature of the church in times when changesare required in order to accomplish God’s mission. It is not far-fetched to think that South-to-North migration might be instru-mental in the completion of the missionary task, thanks to itshuge mobilization of believers.

More than a decade ago, former RBMU missionary EstuardoMcIntosh was one of the first missiologists in Latin America todraw attention to this point when he noted, “According to officialstatistics, 200,000 Peruvians leave the country every year. Weknow there is a 5 percent evangelical population in Peru. If wehypothesize that evangelicals are also fleeing, then we havearound 10,000 ‘missionaries’ per year leaving Peru. Obviously,this pattern surpasses any other ‘formal’ pattern of mission.”18

Who are these evangelical immigrants? A good number ofthem are part of the new breed of revitalized and fast-growingindependent Pentecostal/charismatic churches that are so com-mon now in Peru and the rest of the continent. They emerged inthe midst of the deep cultural and social changes that LatinAmerica experienced in the last three decades, and now they arereshaping the religious landscape of the whole region, as well asthe way to do mission. These immigrants, and many others likethem, have a double purpose in mind: work hard to give theirfamilies a better life, and plant new churches wherever they go.Three factors should be considered here:

• Organization. This movement of evangelical immigrantschallenges the idea that a sophisticated organization andtimetable are fundamental to accomplishing the task. Forthem, flexibility and spontaneity are equally appreciated,and sometimes even more important, since these ele-ments may help with moving in accordance with God’sleading, regardless of existing programs and schedules.

• Leadership. Generally speaking, the concept of leadershipemphasizes the leader as patron or a father figure, incontrast to the Western notion that understands leader-ship as a function or a job, based on rules and regulations.Usually a strong personality himself or herself, the Latino

leader is expected to be always moving forward andshowing results. A weak or indecisive leader wouldlikely have little following. Westerners have a democraticand egalitarian view of leadership, with a small “power-distance” between the leader and the sheep, unlike thenormal case in Latin America.

• Spiritual world. Latinos come to Europe with a naturalsensitivity to the spiritual world that is not so common forWesterners. This characteristic has proved to be usefulwhen dealing with questions of the supernatural. Whenthings go wrong, it is necessary to discern whether theproblem is due to bad organization or to demonic attacks.In many occasions the latter turns out to be the cause.

Consider the Comunidad Cristiana de Londres (CCL), aLatino church founded by Edmundo Ravelo in the early 1980s,one of the first to begin working with immigrants. In those yearsjust a few Latinos lived in London. Today, however, Ravelomeets them in the streets, buses, and subway every day. Thisincrease in the Latino population led him to revise his outreachstrategy, with remarkable results. After many years of strugglingwith a congregation of around 80 members, the church hasgrown in the last six years to about 3,000 members.

The CCL is developing a new mission pattern whose stylereflects the ethos of the Latin American culture. One of its firstpriorities is the formation of communities in the rest of Europe,similar to ones that have already blossomed in France and Spain.Two aspects are significant in working with immigrants. First,the worship service is regarded as a fiesta. Second, the cell-groupapproach reproduces many features of the extended family.

For evangelicals, the culto (worship service) is an importantpart of both the church’s life and missionary work.19 Believersmeet in their churches to celebrate God and then go out to sharethe Gospel with others. In the case of the CCL, its culto empha-sizes the emotional and supernatural, focusing primarily on theimmigrant.

In this scheme, the unción de poder, or “anointing of [God’s]power,” takes place in the celebration. Empowered by the Holy

The immigrants have adouble purpose: work hardand plant new churcheswherever they go.

Spirit, the worship leader expels the territorial demons thatcontrol towns, cities, and the nation, reclaims authority over theprincipalities, and declares the sanctuary holy. During the timeof ministry the pastor feels free to preach and then to performhealings and work wonders. Here he prays for those who areunemployed, have no place to live, want to bring their families, orneed to adjust their legal status. This is a moment when people feelcared about and supported by hundreds who understand thembecause they are also going through the same situation. Partici-pants naturally tell others what happened to them and find it easyto bring relatives and friends along with them the next Sunday.

In the CCL, work in the cell groups complements whateveris said and done in the culto. Believers meet at homes on week-days to discuss the Sunday sermon, share their worries andemotional loads, and pray about them. Each cell leader oversees


13. Ivonne Zimmermann, La doble moral de la política migratoria. October23, 2002. See http://www.rebelion.org/ddhh/zimm231002.htm.Zimmermann is a freelance journalist based in Drumcree, NorthernIreland.

14. Figures according to the International Red Cross. See Terra,“Imigrantes enviam US$ 80 bi por ano a seus países,” July 17, 2003,http://noticias.terra.com.br/mundo/interna/0,,OI121710-EI318,00.html.

15. Isaac Bigio, “Carnaval Latinoamericano de Londres,” Siglo 21, no.110 (June 18, 2003).

16. Swiss sociologist Christian Lalive d’Epinay observed that Pentecostalchurches in Chile served this purpose for the rural immigrants whocame to the capital city. In a sense, the same phenomenon might betaking place in Europe with the ethnic churches. See his Haven of theMasses: A Study of the Pentecostal Movement in Chile (London:Lutterworth, 1969).

17. Ray Bakke, World Mission Has Come to America (Chicago: InternationalUrban Associates, n.d.).

18. Estuardo McIntosh, 7 Ensayos de la realidad misiológica en AméricaLatina (Lima: PUCEMAA, 1990), p. 29.

19. “Worship service” does not carry the whole meaning of the Spanishand Portuguese word culto. It is more than the regular Sundayservice, for culto conveys the idea of any meeting where prayer andBible reading are performed both formally and informally. Thesegatherings may take place at church, in homes, or at any otherlocation that people might find suitable.

20. Lalive d’Epinay, Haven of the Masses.21. Edmundo Ravelo, Peruvian and an immigrant himself, was one of

the first pastors who started working with the Latino and Spanishimmigrants in London. Not only is his church reaching out to thegrowing Latin community arriving in England, but it has also ledKensington Temple, a solid, well-known, and established church inLondon, to adopt the same strategy for church growth. See “TheG-12 Vision Explained,” Revival Times (Kensington Temple magazine)3/2 (February 2001).

22. Samuel Escobar, “Conflict of Interpretations of PopularProtestantism,” in New Face of the Church in Latin America, ed.Guillermo Cook (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994), p. 112.

Notes1. Mario Vargas Llosa, “Los Inmigrantes,” article reprinted in Caretas,

no. 1470, Lima, June 19, 1997. This article won him the Mariano deCavia Prize, awarded by the Madrilenian daily news ABC in October1996. For the electronic version, see http://www.caretas.com.pe/1470/mvll/mvll.htm.

2. “Casi un millón de compatriotas ilegales,” La República (Lima),February 8, 1999, editorial page.

3. The escalating black market in Spanish birth certificates and passportsalso attracts many Latinos who want to move freely within the EU.

4. “Europa, el nuevo destino de los latinos,” La Semana del Sur (Tulsa,Okla. / Houston, Tex.), year 3, no. 149, November 19–25, 2003. It isworth mentioning that many Spanish citizens do not necessarilyagree with this policy that welcomes Latinos. Racist comments anddiscrimination against Latin Americans are well documented.

5. See http://www.latinos.it/noticias/americas/18/editorial.html.6. For an account of Latino immigration in the United States, see Robert

Suro, Strangers Among Us: Latino Lives in a Changing America (NewYork: Vintage Books, 1999).

7. Andrew Reding, “Can Europe Keep Its Western Values withUnassimilated Immigrants?” NCM, May 22, 2002, http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=387.

8. Joel Millman, “Europe Dances to Latino Moves,” Wall Street Journal(Madrid), September 20, 2003.

9. Gabriela D. Lemus, “For Latinos, Immigration Is a Family Affair,”http://www.afsa.org/fsj/jun01/lemusjune01.cfm.

10. In cities where there is a vast concentration of immigrants, it is easyto observe long lines in places of envío de dinero (lit. “remittance ofmoney”). These places allow persons to place international calls,send money, and dispatch small packages and documents safely.The surprise here is not to see lots of people waiting but the fact thatpractically all of them are women.

11. Agência de Informação Frei Tito para a América Latina,“Casi 40 mil bolivianos sin papeles viven en España,” July 14, 2003,h t t p : / / w w w . a d i t a l . o r g . b r / a s p 2 / n o t i c i a . a s p ? i d i o m a=ES&noticia=7969.

12. Joel Millman and Carla Vitzthum, “Europe Becomes New Destinationfor Latinos Searching for Work,” Wall Street Journal (Madrid),September 12, 2003.

the group’s activities, functioning as the cell pastor, since thenature of the small group—limited to a maximum of twelvepeople—allows him or her to build a close relationship with thepeople as if it were an extended family. These relationshipsenable the immigrant to adjust himself or herself in the foreigncountry with more confidence, knowing that now he or she canlean on others.

Sociologists of religion tell us that the extended family isimportant in the process of assimilation to the new culture.Writing about Pentecostals in Chile back in the 1960s, ChristianLalive d’Epinay observed that for the migrants who came fromthe provinces to the capital, the small Pentecostal fellowshipswould resemble the hacienda they left back home.20 These fellow-ships gave them security and shelter in the big city, providingthem a place of transition while they adjusted to the new city. Inthe case of the CCL, the cell groups accomplish a similar role butwith a richer dynamic because the leader can relate much betterto the situation of the group, since he or she is also an immigrant.This combined effort, uniting the culto and the cell group, hascertainly strengthened this community, to the point that itsmembers feel good about themselves, support one another, andare always looking after the newcomers. As a result, the CCLnow has a daily radio program (the only Spanish broadcast in theLondon area) and holds seminars for local English churches thatwant to develop similar programs.21

As Samuel Escobar has noted, this type of evangelical move-

ment, which some call “popular Protestantism,” may further thecompletion of the unfinished missionary task in other parts of theworld.22 Latino evangelical immigrants are already doing mis-sion among their peers, and also among their host Europeans inwhat could be called mission in reverse. It remains to be seen,however, whether European churches will endorse what theyare doing.

Conclusion

It is hard to forecast the future for Latino immigrants in Europe.Based on the U.S. experience, however, it seems that within theEuropean Union they will probably maintain Spanish or Portu-guese as a home language and strive to keep their traditions alive.More Spanish-speaking and Portuguese-speaking churches willemerge, churches of neo-Pentecostal style that will target otherimmigrants and will also help local congregations to becomespiritually revitalized—something that is already happening inEngland, Spain, and Switzerland. And as the population ofEurope ages, bringing with it great demands on governmentservices, the input from Latinos during the peak years of theirproductive working lives will help keep this continent finan-cially solvent. All in all, the enormous movements of immigrantsnow occurring will have a most profound effect on Europe at alllevels, including on church and mission.

59April 2004

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This article addresses some missiological implications ofChristology from the perspective of mission activity in

Latin America.1 I understand missiology to be the specializedbranch of theology that accompanies, analyzes, and gives direc-tion to the missionary activity of the church, which involves theevangelization of human groups that do not yet know Christ oramong whom a mature local church does not yet exist.

There are two major missiological concerns in Latin America.The first is the response to missionary situations in that conti-nent, namely, the evangelization of culturally diverse groups sothat local churches may come to birth with “their own face,” thatof their own culture. The second, closely related concern is thechallenge to these churches to assume their proper responsibilityfor mission activity beyond their frontiers, to engage in mission-ary situations in other continents.

The Missionary Challenge in Latin America

Although the great majority of Latin Americans profess to beCatholic Christians, for many of them the profession is merelysociological in nature, and thus there are many “missionarysituations” in the continent. One-eighth of the population be-longs to the indigenous peoples, at times called Amerindians, theoriginal inhabitants of the continent, who speak close to 600different languages.2 Also, more than one-fifth of the people areAfrican-Americans, the descendants of the slaves brought to thecontinent between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The1979 Puebla conference of Latin American bishops called theindigenous and Afro-American people the “poorest of the poor.”They are tired of being considered objects of pity, however, andwant to be valued as protagonists of history and of a newevangelization. These indigenous people, together with a muchsmaller Asian-American minority, constitute almost 35 percentof the continent’s people. That is, fully a third of Latin Americansare not “Latin” in their cultural roots.

Apart from these ethnically distinct groups, we have themestizos. We can safely say that one-half of all Latin Americansare racially and culturally mestizos, with mixed racial and cul-tural roots, partly European and partly Amerindian, African, orAsian. Besides these traditional non-European cultures there isanother reality that challenges the church today: the number ofpeople living in a situation of migration, relocating from one partof their country to another, or even to other nations, which maybe as high as one-third of the total population. These people nolonger express their vitality in the traditional cultural and reli-gious forms that served their ancestors. Instead, they live with amixture of their own traditions and elements from other cultures,along with a dose of modern and postmodern elements. Particu-larly I am describing here the challenge of urban populations andthe youth.

Christology, Inculturation, and Their Missiological Implications:A Latin American Perspective

John F. Gorski, M.M.

This multiethnic, pluricultural, and even plurireligious hu-man reality relates the Latin American church to its sister churchesin Africa and Asia. Because the continent’s dominant culture wasof European roots and expressions, particularly the “Latin”variety of Spain and Portugal, for centuries it was presumed thatthe big challenge in evangelization was teaching people to learnthe proper Catholic religious expressions transmitted throughthe models of the dominant culture and to pass it on from onegeneration to the next. An anthropologist would say that the firstcontact with Christianity involved a process of acculturation (aculture change produced by direct and prolonged contact withanother culture), and its further transmission was a matter ofenculturation (learning established cultural models). Where itexisted, catechesis was often part of a “pastoral action” that wasso general that it evangelized no one in particular and touchedonly a superficial level of the people’s own culture. Since theSecond Vatican Council, and particularly since EvangeliiNuntiandi (1975) of Pope Paul VI and the Puebla conference,with their emphasis on what was then called the evangelizationof cultures and is now called inculturation, the focus has been aspecific evangelization of each human group, taking account ofits own cultural identity and religious experience.

Inculturation: From Ecclesiology to Christology

In the past quarter-century the term “inculturation” has beenused by many missionaries, missiologists, and others all over theworld. Since the 1977 Assembly of the Synod of Bishops onCatechetics, the term has been part of the official vocabulary ofthe Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II has spoken of inculturationin many of his documents and discourses. Yet in spite of thepassing of the years, the use of the term often seems unclear. It isnow employed not only by missiologists but also by many othersfor whom theological precision is not a controlling concern. If themeaning we give to the term is not clear, however, neither will itsimplications be clear for the mission activity of the church.

We have tended to consider inculturation basically as aquestion of externals involving church order and new, culturallyenriched expressions of Christian life and faith. We would dobetter, however, to view inculturation as a matter of Christology,not of ecclesiology. Specifically, we should focus on how faith inJesus the Christ underlies the whole problematic of inculturation.

When inculturation is viewed ecclesiologically, we focus onhow the local ecclesial community draws from its culture newexpressions of its Christian faith in catechetics and liturgy and informs of ministry and church structure. Such an emphasis looksto the fruits of inculturation more than to its roots.

At times one gets the impression that the objective ofinculturation is simply the fostering of cultural pluralism in thechurch, as an end in itself. Or inculturation may seem to have asits end the autonomy or even independence of the various localchurches. At times it seems that the result of inculturation wouldbe a Christianity that admits of radically diverse principles andmodels of worship, doctrine, and morality, all of them fullyacceptable and mutually respected. At times one even gets theimpression that inculturation is based on the concepts of cultural

John F. Gorski, M.M., a contributing editor, has been assigned to Bolivia sincehis ordination to the priesthood in 1963. Since 1989 he has been Professor ofMission, Ecumenism, and Inculturation at the Catholic University of Bolivia inCochabamba. In 2000 he was elected President of the new InternationalAssociation of Catholic Missiologists.

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relativism, ecclesiastical congregationalism, or postmodern sub-jectivism rather than any clear doctrinal convictions. Others missthe point entirely by applying the term to missionaries as indi-viduals or groups rather than to a local church. They speak ofmissionaries becoming “inculturated,” when they should bespeaking of their experience of acculturation. In short, peopleseem to be concerned not so much about the theological identityof the church as about its operations. Its identity, however, isbased on Christology.

For me the great issue is Christology: how the knowledge ofGod revealed in Jesus Christ affects the deeper levels of culture,that is, its “world vision” (cosmovision), its value system, and itspatterns of relationships. The big question in inculturation is

discipleship. Only a community that has come to know Jesus andto love him, and desires to follow him in communion with hisother disciples in the universal church, is capable of transformingits own culture as a true and life-giving expression of Christianlife and faith. If a local church community has not yet experi-enced how the Christian faith transforms the depths of its ownculture, how can it reach out missionally beyond its own frontiers?

Inculturation as a Missiological Concept

The term “inculturation” has its roots in the missionary activityof the Catholic Church of the past half-century or so. The firstrecorded use of the term seems to have been in the LouvainMissiological Week of 1959, but its precise meaning was initiallynot very clear. Already at that time missionaries were seeking anew term to speak of the proper relationship between the Chris-tian faith and culture. Up to the Second Vatican Council the terms“missionary adaptation” or “accommodation” were in generaluse. The use of “adaptation” and its linguistic counterpart “trans-lation” signaled the rejection of any crass imposition or trans-plantation of foreign models of Christian life on the people beingevangelized and showed a respect for their cultures. Certaincultural expressions not opposed to Christian faith or moralscould be used to “adapt” the Christian message to the mentalityof peoples in mission lands.

Adaptation was a step in the right direction, but it still hadits limitations. It was an indispensable step in making the Gospelunderstandable in the diverse cultures. But this approach, if itdid not develop further, implied that evangelization implicitlycould be reduced to a process of acculturation, in which changeproceeds from the outside. Another drawback was that thesubject of missionary adaptations or translations was almostalways a missionary from another culture, and the “content” wasalso imported. Adaptation hardly succeeded in penetrating morethan the superficial levels of culture.

Did more adequate terms exist in the social sciences? Thosemissionaries and missiologists aware of the meaning of the socialscience terms “acculturation” (learning a foreign culture) and

Inculturation supposesa paschal Christologyin which the Spirit ofGod is already activeamong peoples.

“enculturation” (learning one’s own culture) realized that therelation between the Christian faith and cultures could not beidentified with or reduced to either of these concepts. Thus“inculturation,” an entirely new term, was coined to expresswhat this relation of Gospel and culture should be. Its parentagewas not anthropological but rather missionary and theological.

Various definitions of “inculturation” have been proposed.The classic definitions of Pedro Arrupe (the former superiorgeneral of the Jesuits) and Arij Roest Crollius (present dean ofmissiology at the Pontifical Gregorian University), formulated inthe late 1970s, led the way to clarifying the concept.

Inculturation is the incarnation of Christian life and message in aconcrete cultural area in such a way that this experience not onlycomes to express itself with elements proper to the culture inquestion (which would be only a superficial adaptation) butbecomes an inspiring, normative, and unifying principle thattransforms and re-creates the culture, giving rise to a “new cre-ation.” (Pedro Arrupe)

The inculturation of the church is the integration of the Christianexperience of a local church in the culture of its people, in such away that this experience not only comes to be expressed inelements of that culture but becomes a force that animates, orients,and innovates that culture, to the point of creating a new unity andcommunion, not only in the culture in question, but also as anenriching of the universal church. (Arij Roest Crollius)3

These definitions insist that inculturation must go beyondmere external adaptations that may result in new outward ex-pressions of the faith. More significantly, it involves a “newcreation,” a new life-giving encounter between the Christianfaith and the deeper levels of a culture. Roest Crollius empha-sizes the ecclesial dimensions of inculturation, pointing to howthe faith experience of the local church is its moving force andhow the process enriches the universal church. These definitionsproved to be foundational, ones on which others had to build.

It is important to note that inculturation is specifically dis-tinct from “missionary adaptation.” This point is emphasized bythe special Synod of 1985, and Pope John Paul II also has referredto it. How is it distinct? First, its subject is not the missionary whocomes from another culture but rather a local church embeddedin its own culture. Second, its objective is different. While adap-tation looked to establishing a local branch of a basically mono-lithic church, inculturation seeks the birth of a truly particularchurch with its own vitality and identity within the universalchurch. Third, it is distinct in methodology. Adaptation is a formof acculturation, while inculturation seeks a gospel transforma-tion from within. Adaptation affects the external expressions ofculture, while inculturation reaches its cosmovision and valuesystems. The most important difference, however, is in thefundamental theology involved. Adaptation implies that Godbasically acts only in the visible church, while inculturationsupposes a paschal Christology in which the Spirit of God isalready active among peoples yet to be evangelized, drawingthem to Christ.

Inculturation as Dialogue

The definition of inculturation I use to introduce the concept inmy missiology courses is that of Aylward Shorter: “the ongoingdialogue between the Christian faith and cultures.”4 It impliesnot simply any kind of relation between the Gospel and culturesbut a specifically dialogic relationship. The missionary church


Notes1. This article is adapted from a presentation made in Rome on October

20, 2000, to the International Missiological Congress, in the panel“Jesus Christ the Saviour: Christology and Its MissiologicalImplications.”

2. For a report on current theological discussions involving the beliefsof indigenous peoples, see John F. Gorski, M.M., “The Promise ofTeología India: A Report on Two Meetings,” to appear in theInternational Bulletin of Missionary Research.

indeed has a message to communicate and a life to share, but italso is attentive to what the evangelized people have to say oftheir own encounter with the living God in their cultural history,an experience expressed in their own cultural language andreligious symbols.

Thinking of the relationship between Gospel and culture asdialogic supposes the theological conviction formulated inGaudium et spes (sec. 22), which affirms that God, by the action ofthe Holy Spirit, offers to all the possibility of participating in thepaschal mystery of Christ. Billions of the earth’s poor alreadyshare in the mystery of the cross. We missionaries want to helpthem experience the fullness of the paschal mystery, which is thejoy of the resurrection. If we accept this action of the Spirit beyondthe visible limits of the church as a reality, then the experience ofthis gift must also be real. Through the cultural expressions of thepeople, we can approach their experience of God. Pope JohnPaul II implicitly seems to understand the dialogic dimension ofinculturation when he speaks of inculturation as the incarnationof the Gospel and of the church in the diverse cultures (theChristian faith enriches the cultures) and of the introduction ofthese cultures into the life of the church (these cultures in turnenrich the church).5

Inculturation as “Rereading”

My own definition of inculturation is based on what I under-stand to be the process that the first Judeo-Christians used toreinterpret the religious history of Israel in the light of theirexperience of God fully revealed in the paschal mystery of Christ.In Luke 24 the risen Christ teaches his disciples to reread “the lawof Moses, the prophets, and the psalms” (v. 44) in the light of hisdeath and resurrection. The first Jewish disciples realized that

God had been active and present in the history of Israel, but theyalso realized that the new revelation of God in Jesus changedeverything. There is continuity between the old and the new, butalso a profound transformation. Similarly, communities of dis-ciples of Jesus among the diverse peoples of the world can realizethat their ancestors, by the unspeakable mercy of God and the giftof his Spirit, also had an authentic experience of God. Their newexperience of God revealed in Jesus does not destroy that previ-ous experience but brings it to fulfillment.

The community of the disciples of Jesus thus are the subjectsof inculturation: they know both their culture and the mystery ofGod revealed in Christ. Without the interaction of both of theseelements, inculturation is impossible.

We missionaries want tohelp people experience thefullness of the paschalmystery, which is the joyof the resurrection.

To recapitulate to this point:

• Without faith in Christ there is no inculturation.• Only disciples of Jesus can be subjects of inculturation.• Without a Christian ecclesial community embedded in

its own culture, there is no inculturation.• If a community does not know and love Christ, there is

no inculturation.• If this ecclesial community does not know and love its

own culture, there is no inculturation.• Only inculturation realized by local churches can trans-

form the universal church, making it effectively moreand more catholic.

• The fruit of inculturation is the birth and growth ofChristian ecclesial communities among the diversepeoples of the world, churches born not wearing a maskbut “with their own face,” that of their culture.

• These local churches are born to be missionary, born toevangelize those who are near and those who are faraway, and to evangelize these human groups in andfrom their own cultural identity.

• If a local church community has not yet had the life-giving and joyful experience of realizing how the Chris-tian faith transforms the depths of its own culture, howcan it reach out missionally beyond its own frontiers?

Theological Objective: Fuller Participation

The Spirit active in cultures is none other than the Spirit of therisen Christ. The dynamic of the Holy Spirit is to draw people toGod in Christ and to transform them into the likeness of Christ.The gift of the Spirit is there. What is often lacking in history andculture is a human participation that is conscious, intelligent,free, responsible, joyful, and devout.

We used to think of the salvation of the individual person atthe hour of death. Perhaps this is the case for the great majorityof humans who do not yet know Christ and who do not partici-pate in the life of the church. In Matthew 25 we read that in thefinal judgment Christ will surprise good and merciful peoplewho did not know him with a welcoming into his kingdombecause what they did unto others, they in reality were doingunto him. But is this the ideal way of salvation? Does not Godwant human beings to participate in his saving mystery in a waythat is as fully human as possible? We humans are created to beintelligent, free, and responsible. Those are the notes of a truly“human act.” The Second Vatican Council reminded us that Godwants to save us not as individuals but rather as a people (Adgentes 2). He wants to save us as members of society that ex-presses its vitality through cultural life, here and now in ourhistorical relationship with others.

It is here that I see the urgency of mission, the necessity of themissionary church. It is by the action of the church that people areenabled to participate in salvation in a way that, as stated, isconscious, intelligent, free, responsible, joyful, and devout, inhistory and culture. The task of the missionary church is to addto the dynamic of the Spirit a humanly and historically necessary“humanization.”

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3. From Bartolomeo Genero, ed., Inculturazione della fede: Saggiinterdisciplinari (Naples: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1981). The quotationfrom Pedro Aruppe, at the time superior general of the Jesuits, isfrom his “Letter to the Society of Jesus on Inculturation” (on p. 9). Thequotation from Arij Roest Crollius, who since 1976 has taught acourse on the theology of inculturation at the Faculty of Missiologyof the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, is from his article“Inculturazione della fede: La problematica attuale” (on pp. 31–32).

4. Aylward Shorter, Towards a Theology of Inculturation (Maryknoll,N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1988), p. 11.

5. Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in theModern World (1965), from Vatican II. An initial exposition of themissiological thought of Pope John Paul II is to be found in hisencyclical Slavorum apostoli (1985), on the mission of Saints Cyril andMethodius to the Slavic peoples, with his ideas on inculturationappearing in section 21. He developed his thought further in hisencyclical Redemptoris Missio (1990), on the permanent urgency ofthe missionary mandate of the Lord (the “Great Commission”); hespeaks of inculturation in sections 52–54.

The Jesuits in Latin America: Legacy and Current Emphases

Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J.

Jeffrey Klaiber, S.J., Professor of History at the Pontifical Catholic University,Lima, Peru, has lived and worked in Peru since 1976. His previous books includestudies of religion and politics in Peru and Latin America. Currently he isworking on a history of the Jesuits in Latin America.

The murder of six Jesuits in El Salvador in 1989 dramati-cally reminded the world that the Jesuits are still in Latin

America and, as usual, in the center of the storm. For more than400 years the Jesuits have been present in the region as educatorsand missionaries. Their colonial legacy is well known. Less wellknown is what they have been doing since they returned in thenineteenth century after their expulsion in 1767.

Early Service in Latin America, 1549–1767

The Jesuits were founded in 1540. Only nine short years later theysent their first missionaries to Latin America, to Brazil. In fact,they arrived on the ship carrying the first governor-general,Tomé de Souza. As such, the Jesuits were founders of Portugal’smost important New World colony. Manoel da Nóbrega and Joséde Anchieta, two of the first Jesuits, evangelized the Indians,founded mission towns (one of which was São Paulo), anddefended the Indians from the white colonists. But they alsofounded schools and parishes for the colonists. By the eighteenthcentury the Society of Jesus was the most important educationaland missionary order in Brazil.

The Jesuits arrived in Mexico and Peru in 1568. By coinci-dence, they arrived on the ship bearing Peru’s most importantviceroy, Francisco de Toledo. But these were more than coinci-dences: de Souza in Brazil and Toledo in Peru looked upon theJesuits as key advisers and collaborators in establishing theirrespective empires in the New World. As a newly founded order,untainted by the abuses that had affected older orders in theCatholic Church and fired with the enthusiasm of fresh troops,the Jesuits built schools and founded missions everywhere, fromMexico to Chile, from Brazil to Paraguay.

By the late eighteenth century the Jesuits were clearly themost influential order in Latin America. Their schools flourished,and their missions prospered. The Paraguay missions in particu-lar were already being romanticized in Europe as a sort of NewWorld utopia. A little over 100,000 Guaraní Indians in Paraguayand another 100,000 Indians in Bolivia (the Chiquitos and theMojos) lived in neatly organized towns, with their own Indian

militia. Scarcity and hunger were unknown. Peru’s leadingMarxist, José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930), observed in admi-ration that these Indian societies were the only places where theIndians were actually better off after the conquest. In the rest ofLatin America the Indians were exploited in the mines or forcedto perform menial services for the colonists.

Contemporary critics of the Jesuits accuse them of paternal-ism in their treatment of the Indians. That may be so, but it wascertainly a bland paternalism, because the Indians were allowedto bear arms and to make their own decisions affecting the dailylife of each mission.

In 1750 Spain and Portugal made a treaty by which sevenmissions were transferred to Portuguese territory. That incidentwas the background of the 1986 award-winning movie TheMission. The Jesuits told the Indians that they, the padres, had toleave, but the Indians were free to accompany them or to remain.The Indians chose to remain and to fight. For two years (1754–56)Jesuit-trained Indian armies held off two European armies, thePortuguese and the Spanish. (The Spanish king felt obliged tojoin the war in order to keep his word to the Portuguese king.)

Less defensible was the Jesuits’ use of black slaves to runtheir sugar estates and other properties, which the Jesuits ac-quired in order to finance their schools. Contemporary historiansdebate whether or not the Jesuits were modern capitalists. Theywere certainly efficient, and their haciendas prospered. Theywere not really modern capitalists, however, for they did not aimto expand their wealth beyond what they strictly needed tosupport the schools. Also, not all Jesuits accepted slavery. In fact,they were repeatedly warned by the general in Rome to end thepractice. But the New World Jesuits, like people with vestedinterests everywhere, claimed that they could not run theirhaciendas without slaves. At least the slaves were baptized,taught Christianity, and decently fed. Also, the Jesuits encour-aged the slaves to marry, which was a way to guarantee stability.

Suppression

When everything seemed to be going well, the axe fell. In 1767 theSpanish king Charles III ordered all the Jesuits out of Spain andLatin America. In fact, the king of Portugal had already expelledthe Jesuits (559 altogether) from Brazil in 1759. Most of the 2,171exiled Jesuits ended up in the Papal States, and only a handfullived to return to their homelands in the next generation. The


Arrupe urged all Jesuits inLatin America to make thecall for social justice theheart of their ministries.

expulsion can be understood in the context of royal absolutismand the perception that the Jesuits, staunch defenders of thepapacy, were outside royal control. All their schools, missions,and lands were expropriated. The schools and missions wereturned over to the bishops and other religious orders, and thehaciendas were auctioned off.

In 1773 Pope Clement XIV suppressed the entire Society ofJesus. He did so under pressure from the Catholic kings ofEurope. As a result of the suppression all the exiled Latin Ameri-can Jesuits were now former Jesuits. Those who were priestsjoined the local diocesan clergy. Those who were not yet priestshad to find a means to support themselves, which some did by

The Jesuits establishedcolegios and universities,which were recognized asamong the best.

teaching or writing. But these exiled former Jesuits were quiteactive. In fact, they made a major contribution to the history andliterature of their homelands.

Three in particular wrote histories of their countries thatinfluenced local Creoles (the whites born in the New World whowould eventually lead the independence movement) in search ofa national identity. Francisco Javier Clavijero, one of the exiledMexican Jesuits, wrote a history of the Aztecs and other Indiancultures. Although Clavijero acknowledged that the Aztecs werequite bloody, he also recognized the value of their great templesand other cultural achievements. Juan Ignacio Molina, a ChileanJesuit, wrote a history of Chile that exalted the courage of theAraucanians (today called Mapuches), who never surrenderedto the Spanish. And Juan de Velasco, an Ecuadorian, wrote ahistory of the Indian peoples of Ecuador.

Another of the exiled Jesuits became famous because heopenly called for Latin Americans to break with Spain. JuanPablo Viscardo y Guzmán wrote an open letter to the Creoles in1792 in which he denounced the Spanish king as a despot. Hisletter, the Latin American equivalent of Thomas Paine’s CommonSense, influenced many of the independence leaders. Viscardodied in London in 1798, but not before he had turned all hispapers over to Rufus King, the American ambassador in En-gland. Inspired by Viscardo’s ideas, King tried unsuccessfully topersuade the American government to join the movement toliberate Latin America.

Return to Latin America, from 1816

The Society of Jesus was finally restored as a religious order in1814. But because the Jesuits were so few, they had to build upstrength before sending out missionaries to the rest of the world.They trickled back to Latin America, with one group arriving inBuenos Aires in 1836; another went to Colombia in 1844. Only inMexico were there Mexican Jesuits who had survived the longperiod of exile. In 1816 three aged Jesuits refounded the Mexicanprovince, which by 1820 had 37 members.

Unlike during colonial times, the Jesuits this time did notarrive with viceroys or governors. Quite the contrary, in all ofLatin America they were looked upon with suspicion and hostil-ity by liberal governments, which viewed them as harbingers of

papal interference and conservative reaction. There was somejustification for this attitude because the Jesuits, having beenexiled and suppressed, were much more cautious and less opento new ideas than their colonial predecessors had been. In fact, innearly every Latin American country, the Jesuits were soonexiled for a second time. The Jesuits who arrived in Argentina in1836 were exiled by the dictator Juan Manuel Rosas in 1843, andthe group that went to Colombia was exiled in 1850. Indeed, theJesuits in Colombia who went back in 1858 were exiled for a thirdtime in 1861.

On the positive side, these exiled Jesuits reestablished theSociety of Jesus in other parts of Latin America. Overall, theJesuits managed to weather liberal persecution, and by the end ofthe nineteenth century they were once again working in all LatinAmerica. In fact, they were thriving. In Mexico in 1900 there were244 Jesuits, most of whom were native born. The mission toColombia began in 1844 with 12 priests and 6 brothers. In 1924 theColombian province had 306 members, the vast majority nativeborn.

Everywhere the Jesuits founded colegios (in Latin Americacolegio refers broadly to primary and secondary education) anduniversities, which were soon recognized as among the best.They also went back to their old missions in the jungles or thedesert of northern Mexico among the Tarahumara. After theencyclical Rerum novarum (1891) of Pope Leo XIII, the Jesuits alsobegan preaching the new social message of the church. Althoughthe Jesuits still maintained their militant antiliberal mentality,they now had a more positive message to preach: social justice.

Liberal anti-Catholicism reached its zenith in Mexico duringthe Calles regime (1924–28). Bernardo Bergöend, a Belgian Jesuitwho went to Mexico at the end of the nineteenth century, foundedthe organization Catholic Action for Mexican Youth (1913).Many of the leaders of that movement became the leaders of theCristero (from their cry ¡Viva Cristo Rey! “Long live Christ theKing!”) rebellion against the Calles regime. One Mexican Jesuit,Miguel Pro (1891–1927), was captured and ordered shot for hisconnections with the Cristeros. Two of Pro’s brothers wereactively involved in the movement. But in fact Miguel Pro,though sympathetic to the movement, did not approve of itsviolent means. Even before his death Pro became a legend

because of his humor and antics. He would go around MexicoCity to celebrate Mass or hear confessions in many differentdisguises, sometimes as a worker and other times as a dandy. Prois currently a candidate for canonization.

A near-contemporary of Pro was Father Alberto Hurtado(1901–52) in Chile, who is also being considered for canonization.Hurtado was very much concerned about the lack of a Christianresponse to the poverty in Chile. As a young priest in 1937,recently returned from studies in Europe, he gave talks andwrote books urging Catholics to become more social-minded. In1944 he founded the Hogar de Cristo (Home of Christ) as a refugefor abandoned children. Since then the Hogar de Cristo hasbecame the largest private charity in Chile for abandoned chil-

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dren, the homeless, and the poor in need of health care andhousing. The Hogar receives most of its support from Chileans.Hurtado, an incredibly energetic man, also founded a center totrain Christian labor leaders and, in 1951, the magazine Mensaje(Message), which is one of the principal forums for Christianhumanism in Latin America. Hurtado died the next year ofcancer. Thousands of Chileans of all social classes accompaniedhis remains to their final resting place at the Hogar de Cristo. Aman ahead of his times, in 1941 he wrote a book that becamefamous, the very title of which brought criticism from conserva-tives: Is Chile a Catholic Country? In it he analyzes the weakness ofCatholicism in Chile and praises Protestants for their self-denialand sincerity.

Vatican II, Reform, and Revolution

Major changes took place in the Society of Jesus as a result ofVatican II and the dynamic leadership of Pedro Arrupe, who wasgeneral between 1965 and 1981. In fact, the changes had longbeen in the making. The general before Arrupe, Jean BaptisteJanssens, a Belgian, exhorted all the provinces, but especiallythose in Latin America, to face the social question and prepare totake action. Janssens, and later Arrupe, fostered the creation ofcenters of research and social action, known by their initials inSpanish as CIAS. Also, many young Jesuits were sent to studysocial science in Europe or the United States. In every province ofLatin America the Jesuits set up these centers, which in turnorganized “surveys” (the English word was used) to study thesocial situation of each country and propose reforms.

In 1968 Arrupe attended a meeting in Rio de Janeiro with allthe provincials and superiors of Latin America. There he urgedall Jesuits in Latin America to make the call for social justice theheart of their different ministries, whether they were universityprofessors, parish priests, or retreat directors. Everywhere thenew social consciousness was incorporated into formation pro-grams for young Jesuits. At the same time, major changes weresweeping over Latin America. The Cuban Revolution was fol-lowed by a series of military dictatorships in the 1960s that aimedto stop the changes. By way of exception, in Bolivia underGeneral René Barrientos (1964–69) and in Peru under GeneralJuan Velasco (1968–75), the military pushed for reforms. LatinAmerican society became highly polarized as the debate increas-ingly came down to the question: reform or revolution?

This polarization placed the Jesuits in the center of thedebate. For the political right wing and the military, the Jesuitswith their new message of social justice were perceived as alliesof the revolutionaries. In fact, several times Arrupe wrote lettersto Jesuits worldwide, but with a special eye toward Latin America,warning them of the pitfalls of Marxist analysis, and he exhortedthem not to favor violence. While most Jesuits eschewed Marxistinterpretations, they recognized the importance of using thesocial sciences (which included a knowledge of Marxism) inorder to study the causes of poverty and propose reforms.

This social polarization, plus the changes in the church,produced internal crises. Many Jesuits began to question theappropriateness of maintaining their schools for the middle andupper classes. In Mexico in 1971 the Jesuit provincial decided toclose the Instituto Patria, the principal Jesuit secondary school inthe capital. This decision not only provoked the anger of manyparents but also divided the Mexican Jesuits. Similar debateswere held throughout Latin America. Most provinces opted formaintaining their elitist schools, but only after introducing coursesand activities that would make the students more socially con-

scious. Today, in a typical Jesuit school in Latin America, upper-division students are encouraged to do voluntary work amongthe poor on the weekends or during the summer.

The Jesuits could not avoid the political crises that eruptedall over the continent. Many Spanish Jesuits were forced to leaveCuba after the Bay of Pigs invasion (1961), in which some of theirformer students participated, and Belén High School in Havana

(from which Fidel Castro graduated) was confiscated by thegovernment. In Chile, Roger Vekemans, the Belgian Jesuit whohelped found the Bellarmine Center (the CIAS center of Chile),left the country when Salvador Allende was elected in 1970.Vekemans and his team were very close to the Christian Demo-crats, and accusations had been made that the U.S. CIA hadfunneled money via Vekemans into the Christian Democrats’campaign against Allende. The accusations were unfounded, butthe stigma of being associated with the CIA was too great to bear.In the following years Vekemans became an adviser to AlfonsoLópez Trujillo, the archbishop of Medellín, Colombia, who spear-headed the conservative reaction against liberation theology.During the same period a Chilean Jesuit, Gonzalo Arroyo, wasinstrumental in founding the group Christians for Socialism,which supported Allende. Arroyo and many other priests fledthe country after Augusto Pinochet took over in 1973.

The Central American Jesuits were particularly hard hit.Most of Central America forms one province, and many of theJesuits came from the Basque regions of northern Spain. In the1960s the Society of Jesus founded three different universities:one in Guatemala City, another in Managua (Nicaragua), and thethird in San Salvador (El Salvador). Under Ignacio Ellacuría,accompanied by other Jesuits and lay professors, the UniversidadCentroamericana (UCA) of San Salvador became a lively centerof new ideas for change. Right-wing animosity increased as theJesuits became involved in grassroots movements. In 1977 RutilioGrande, a young Salvadorian Jesuit, was killed in reprisal for hiswork among peasants in an area north of the capital city. TheWhite Warrior Union, a paramilitary death squad, ordered allJesuits out of the country. During the civil war in that country(1980–92), which began with the assassination of ArchbishopOscar Romero and, later that year, four American religiouswomen, Ellacuría became one of the principal voices in favor ofreconciliation based on dialogue and reform. Right-wing politi-cians and military considered that position tantamount to trea-son. Top military leaders ordered Ellacuría and several compan-ions to be murdered in November 1989 while leftist forces wereattacking the city.

Nicaragua posed a peculiar problem. There the leftist forces,the Sandinistas, came to power in 1979, and several Jesuits andother priests were directly involved. Fernando Cardenal was themost prominent Jesuit (poet Ernesto Cardenal, his cousin, is nota Jesuit) in the Sandinista government. He organized a literacycampaign and served as minister of education. In 1984 thegeneral, Father Kolvenbach, requested Cardenal to leave theJesuits because the pope had expressly forbidden priests to hold

With their new messageof social justice, the Jesuitswere perceived as alliesof the revolutionaries.


Note1. I am now in the middle of writing a book tentatively titled Los Jesuitas

en America Latina (The Jesuits in Latin America). This article draws onthat research. Further information can be found in Nicholas Cushner,“Jesuits,” Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture (New

There is a Jesuit highschool in every major cityin Latin America.

political office. But the same general allowed Cardenal, whomade his first vows for the second time in 1997, back into thesociety.

The same story was repeated with variations in the rest ofLatin America. The dictator of Paraguay, Alfredo Stroessner(1954–89), had several Jesuits deported as a result of their socialcommitment to peasants and Indians. In 1981 the government ofHonduras denied permission to Jesuits and priests of Maryknollto enter the country. The accusation was always the same: thepriests were involved in “politics” and not performing their

religious functions.The period of dictatorships and internal wars ended in the

late 1980s and early 1990s, and the Jesuits ceased to be at thecenter of the storm. But they continue to be very active andinfluential in all Latin America. The Society of Jesus experienceda vocation crisis in the years following Vatican II but graduallyclimbed back, eventually reaching the same high numbers asbefore the crisis. In 1973 there were 3,801 Jesuits in Latin America,of whom roughly half were Latin Americans by birth. But in 2001that number had dropped to 3,474. Given the vocation crisis inEurope and North America, very few new missionaries now goto Latin America. On a positive note, however, the proportion ofnative Latin Americans has grown steadily. In Mexico, Colom-bia, and Chile the vast majority of Jesuits are native born. Incountries with a large Indian population (the Andean countriesor Guatemala), it has proved difficult to draw many nativevocations because of the high academic standards of the society.But even in those cases, the novitiates and formation programscall for more flexibility to allow for the great differences incultural backgrounds.

The Jesuits are still an educational force. There are nineteenuniversities and graduate faculties run by the Jesuits, some bigand others very new and small. One of the most prestigious is theIbero-American University in Mexico (of which Vicente Fox is agraduate). One of the biggest is the University of the Sinos River(UNISINOS) in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, with close to 30,000students. There is a Jesuit high school in every major city in LatinAmerica. Belén High School, closed by the Cuban government,was refounded in Miami, where it is flourishing today.

Current Jesuit Emphases

The Jesuits have long since gone beyond their traditional univer-sities and high schools. In 1955 José María Vélaz, a VenezuelanJesuit who was born in Chile, founded the first Fe y Alegría(Faith and Joy) school among the poor in Caracas. Basically, Fe y

Alegría schools are state schools run by the Jesuits. The Jesuitsmake up the national administrative team, while the individualschools are run by different religious orders of women or com-mitted lay Christians. The state pays most of the salaries of theteachers. Since its humble beginnings in Venezuela, Fe y Alegríahas grown until it now operates 1,675 centers, with over 437,000students in 15 countries. In Bolivia alone 6.4 percent of allprimary and secondary students are in Fe y Alegría schools.

The Jesuits also run many nongovernmental organizationsthat seek to foster community development and citizen partici-pation or to defend human rights. When the Mexican Jesuitsannounced their decision to close the Instituto Patria in 1971,they founded in its place a new entity, Cultural and EducationalDevelopment, which consists of a team of Jesuits and lay associ-ates who live with poor and indigenous communities with theaim of empowering them to bring about their own development.In Bolivia the Center of Research for the Promotion of thePeasantry (CIPCA, formed in 1971) offers workshops and pub-lishes materials to help the peasants organize themselves. In LaPaz the Jesuits also created the Center of Multi-EducationalServices (CEMSE), which aims to help children in state schoolsget a better education. State schools in Bolivia are so poor thatmost of them do not even have a library. CEMSE has a library andcomputers, and it encourages children from state schools in LaPaz to use the library. CEMSE also offers free health services andtraining courses for state teachers, and it produces educationalprograms for use nationwide.

Human rights have also become a major Jesuit concern. InMexico City the Miguel Agustín Pro Human Rights Center,founded in 1988, offers legal assistance to victims of humanrights violations (and many of those are victims of the govern-ment itself, as was the case during the Zapatista rebellion inChiapas in 1994). Other centers attempt to face the problem ofpoverty in creative ways. In 1977 Rosalynn Carter visited FatherJohn Halligan’s Center for the Working Boy, in Quito. Halligan,a New York Province Jesuit, founded his center in 1964 to takecare of abandoned children. In time, and with the help of gener-ous contributions, the center has become a model in Latin America.The center takes in poor families (not just boys) to educate theentire family—mother, father, and children—so that with newskills they can acquire decent jobs. More than 5,000 families havegone through the center’s training program.

Contemporary Jesuits in Latin America are very influencedby the principle of multiplying, for relatively few Jesuits actuallywork in their schools, universities, and research or human rightscenters. Rather, the Jesuits normally take a more advisory role,preferring to encourage committed laypeople to assume leader-ship positions. Jesuits look back on their colonial churches andmissions with pride but have no intention of reproducing themtoday. If anything, they aim to capture the creative spirit of theold Jesuits, but in the context of the challenges of the twenty-firstcentury. The colonial Jesuits defended the Indians and taughtthem how to defend themselves. That ideal, now extended to allmarginalized groups, is still very much alive today.

York: Simon and Schuster Macmillan, 1996), 3:316–19, and John W.Padberg, S.J., “Jesuits,” Encyclopedia of Christianity (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, 2003), 3:20–24.

67April 2004

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Crisis and Hope In Latin AmericaA Christian PerspectiveEmilio Nunez and William TaylorPanoramic yet thorough. Part one examines the historical, socio-political, and religious background of Latin America. Part two probes issues, such as post-conciliar Roman Catholicism, liberation theology, the charismatic movements, contextualization, and social responsibility. Part three explores the implications for the church, mission agencies, and expatriate missionaries serving in Latin America.WCL766-4 William Carey Library, 1996 Paperback, 544 pagesList: $17.99 Our Price: $14.39 3 or more: $13.49*

Understanding Latin AmericansWith Special Reference toReligious Values and MovementsEugene A. Nida“University students in North America will enjoy this brief, readable tour of the high points of contrast between their ways and those of Latin America. Moreover, this is solid knowledge. . . “ -Richard Millet Professor of History, So. Ill. State Univ. “Few North Americans have a grasp of the invisible realities of Latin American culture the way Engene Nida does, and fewer still can capture it all on paper with such skill. This is an essential text for anyone headed that direction.” -Marvin Mayers, Professor of Anthropology, Wheaton CollegeWCL117-8P William Carey Library 2003/1974 Paperback, 172 pagesList: $16.99 Our Price: $11.05 3 or more: $ 9.35*

The Cross and the SwordThe Rebellion & Revolution in Chiapas, MexicoCarl Lawrence, with Benjamin Rule“Spanish conquerors, Marxist priests... fearless American women missionaries... and a cast of thousands of displaced evangelical believers in Chiapas, Mexico, swirl together in a blaze of history, theology, and fi rst-hand reporting... Truth is stranger than fi ction, and never more tragically so than in The Cross and the Sword.Read it to be informed, read it and be challenged....read it and drop to your knees in prayer....” -Terry Madison, President/CEO of Open Doors with Brother Andrew, USASP1-7 Shannon Publishers, 1999 Paperback, 255 pagesList: $12.00 Our Price: $10.00 3 or more: $8.50*

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CARIBBEAN

In comparison to North America’s almost 20 million squarekilometers, the 24 countries or territories of the Caribbean coveronly a little more than 200,000 square kilometers. Populationdensity is much higher, with nearly 161 people per squarekilometer in the Caribbean, compared to 16 in North America.Countries or territories in this region include those on the islandsof the West Indies, which include the Greater and Lesser Antilles,as well as island chains such as the Bahamas, just outside theCaribbean Sea.

The Caribbean stretches 4,000 kilometers from the southerntip of the United States to Venezuela, dividing the Atlantic Oceanfrom the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The historicalimportance of these diverse islands as trading and militaryoutposts has resulted in a great diversity of separately governedmicrostates and a variety of official languages. The islands of thenorthern part are larger and comprise the Greater Antilles. Theyinclude Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, theCayman Islands (a British territory), and Puerto Rico (a territoryof the United States). These were the territories first encounteredby Christopher Columbus and the first Spanish missionaries in1492–3.

Of the 24 nations and territories in the Caribbean, the Do-minican Republic has the greatest Catholic population of any ofthe islands. The Church counts 88 percent of the 8.5 millioninhabitants as Catholic. This results in an average of 9,277 Catho-lics for each of the 804 priests. Forty-seven percent of its priestsare diocesan. More than 27,000 catechists and over 1,600 womenreligious minister to Catholics in 485 parishes in 12 dioceses.

The Lesser Antilles arc southeast from Puerto Rico to Ven-ezuela, and include territories of the Netherlands, Britain, France,Venezuela, and the United States. They include Barbados,Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, Aruba,Curacao, and Bonaire, together with the Leeward and Wind-ward Islands. The Leeward Islands include the British and U.S.Virgin Islands, Guadeloupe, St. Eustatius and Saba, St. Martin,St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Anguilla, andMontserrat. The Windward Islands include Martinique,Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grena-dines.

Catholics comprise about 80 percent of the population ofAruba, Dominica, Guadeloupe, Saint Lucia, Martinique, and theNetherlands Antilles (which include the islands of Curacao,Bonaire, Saint Eustatius and Saba, as well as part of Saint Martin).For the most part the populations of these island territories andmicrostates are quite small. The largest by far is that of Trinidadand Tobago. As a result, despite the fact that only about one inthree persons in Trinidad and Tobago is Catholic, its nearly

400,000 Catholics give it the greatest number of Catholics any-where in the Lesser Antilles. Within the islands and microstatesof the Lesser Antilles, the number of parishes ranges from 61 inTrinidad and Tobago to one in Anguilla, where 3 percent of thepopulation of 7,000 is Catholic.

MESOAMERICA

Given its common colonial origins, the Catholic Church in Mexicohas more in common with the nations of Central America thanwith Canada and the United States. For purposes of this book,therefore, Mexico is treated as part of “Mesoamerica,” a regionthat encompasses all the countries of Central America, includingPanama.

In spite of shared cultural roots, the diversity between thecountries of this region is great. A wide variety of pre-Columbianlanguages and cultural phenomena survive in Guatemala. En-glish is the official language of Belize, and Belize shares much incommon with the islands of the Caribbean basin. Panama washistorically tied to South America as part of Colombia, and onlycame to be seen as part of Central America in the twentiethcentury. Finally, Mexico is a separate case in its own right, and itssheer size dwarfs the rest of the region in geographic, demo-graphic, and economic terms.

The Church in Mexico dates to 1519, when Hernando Cortesand his men, together with their native allies, conquered theAztec Empire. In the aftermath of the colonial period, the historyof the Church in Mexico has been punctuated by times of sharphostility by the state towards the Church. The situation wasparticularly tense between 1923 and 1940. By 1958, relationsbetween the Church and the Mexican government began toimprove. In 1992, Mexico established full diplomatic ties with theVatican and has since moved to a situation of greater opennessand freedom for the Church.

In spite of Church-State tension across previous centuriesand the current rapid growth of evangelical Christians, espe-cially among the more indigenous populations in the south ofMexico, approximately nine in ten Mexicans are baptized Catho-lic. A little over 14,000 priests, 74 percent of whom are diocesan,are present to a Catholic population of nearly 90 million. The

Latin American Catholicism

Bryan T. Froehle and Mary L. Gautier

Bryan T. Froehle, formerly of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate(CARA), Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., and Mary L. Gautier,Senior Research Associate at CARA, publishers of the award-winning quarterlyCARA Report, are the authors of Global Catholicism: Portrait of a WorldChurch (Orbis Books, 2003). This overview of Latin American Catholicism isadapted from Global Catholicism, pp. 78–84. Global Catholicism is thesecond of three volumes profiling and reflecting on the Catholic Church in theUnited States and around the world. Used by permission.

South America has 7,112Catholics per priest, whileEurope has 1,342 per priest.

distribution of Catholics per parish and per priest is very differ-ent in Mexico and its neighbor to the north. Mexico has 15,502Catholics per parish, and the United States has 3,273. Likewise,Mexico has 6,382 Catholics per priest, and the United States has1,311. Catholic population in Mexico is 29 percent higher but thenumber of parishes (5,784) is 70 percent fewer. Mexico, however,has 171,719 catechists, for an average of 30 per parish, far higherthan for any other country in the Americas.

Guatemala, Mexico’s neighbor to the southeast, has some9,764 baptized Catholics per priest, a particularly elevated figure.

69April 2004

The Catholic Church in the Americas, by Region: 2000

Meso- North SouthCaribbean america America America

Catholic Population 25,207,200 119,914,000 76,815,100 297,455,000 % Catholic 67% 90% 25% 87%

Ecclesiastical Territories 54 140 267 589Parishes per Territory 33 53 92 36Dioceses 51 128 191 502Parishes 1,765 7,453 24,480 20,984Missions 238 1,546 50 4,158Catholics per Parish 14,345 16,074 3,189 14,236Catholic Schools 2,667 5,926 9,709 14,967

Priests 3,020 17,687 58,129 42,005 % Diocesan 50% 70% 64% 56%

Women Religious 5,331 35,720 103,560 88,375Catholics per Priest 8,384 6,773 1,343 7,112

Charitable Institutions Hospitals 56 341 652 897 Homes 130 349 1,251 1,735 Orphanages 99 357 685 1,375 Other 2,360 4,627 4,486 16,966

Another reflection of the Church’srelative weakness here is that only37 percent of its 970 priests are dioc-esan priests, suggesting a contin-ued dependence on internationalreligious orders to supply priests.This compares to the 74 percent ofpriests in Mexico who are diocesanpriests. The challenges the Churchfaces in Guatemala largely springfrom the country’s many decadesof civil war and endemic violence.Average income is less than halfthat of Mexico, and the literacy rateis one of the lowest in the Americas.Guatemala’s infant mortality rateof 46 per thousand live births is thethird highest, after Bolivia and Haiti.

SOUTH AMERICA

Both South America and Europehave similar numbers of Catholics(280,144,000 in Europe comparedto 297,455,000 in South America)and a similarly sized land mass(about 20 million square kilome-ters). However, this is where other comparisons from the per-spective of Church statistics demonstrate sharp differences.

Europe has over six times as many Catholic parishes asSouth America and 20 percent more dioceses and other ecclesi-astical territories. South America’s dioceses and ecclesiasticalterritories average about 36 parishes each while Europe’s aver-age 202. Europe has about five times as many priests as SouthAmerica and about six times as many women religious. SouthAmerica has 7,112 Catholics per priest while Europe has 1,342Catholics per priest. In terms of parishes, the difference is evenlarger: South America has 20,984 Catholics per parish and Eu-rope has 2,162 Catholics per parish.

Trends in the numbers of priests and women religioushighlight another facet of South America’s long relationship withEurope. Historically, large numbers of priests, particularly reli-gious priests, and women religious, came to South America fromEurope. When the number of religious in Europe began todecline in the late 1960s, fewer were sent and others returned toEurope. As a result, the proportion of native-born diocesanclergy has been increasing and the overall rate of growth withinnumbers of priests and women religious has been slow, due tothe loss of Europe as a major source for Church personnel.

Diversity in this large region is defined largely by geogra-phy. The Andes mountain chain stretches from Eastern Venezu-ela to Bolivia and the Southern Cone includes Chile, Argentina,and Uruguay. The largest country, Brazil, occupies about half theland mass along with the vast Amazon River basin and is usuallyconsidered separately, as is the relatively small area to the east ofVenezuela colonized by the English, Dutch, and French.

The Andean countries historically had the strongest Churchpresence in this land of mountains and plateaus, where theChurch had a well-established place in the life of the large estatesand towns. The sparsely settled jungles leading to the Amazonbasin, as well as the traditionally less settled coastal regions,tended to have a weaker Catholic presence and practice.

The Southern Cone of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay has a

temperate climate and grew rapidly through immigration fromSpain and Italy during the nineteenth and early twentieth centu-ries. As a result, the Church in the Southern Cone has tended tohave the most in common with the Church in Europe. Uruguay,the smallest of these countries, is also the one where Catholi-cism—and organized religion in general—is most weakly estab-lished. The first diocese was created in Montevideo in 1878 andthe political climate reflected the relatively strong anticlericalorientation of nineteenth-century immigrants. Between a quar-ter and a third of the population has counted itself as agnostic andbeen unaffiliated with Catholicism since the turn of the twentiethcentury.

The Church in Brazil includes 143 million baptized Catho-lics. Brazil’s 8.5 million square kilometers are divided into some267 ecclesiastical territories which in turn contain over 8,700parishes. Although the United States has many more parishesthan Brazil, no other country in the world has more dioceses. Theaverage diocese or ecclesiastical territory has 33 parishes. Thisratio is about a third of the average for North America and a fifthof the average for Europe.

In comparison to Mexico’s average of 1,120,800 Catholics perdiocese, there are 577,921 Catholics per diocese in Brazil. Theaverage number of baptisms per diocese, as reported by theChurch in Brazil (8,687), is about three times lower than thesimilar figure for Mexico (25,031). This may suggest that Brazilhas a greater proportion of baptized Catholics who do notbaptize their children as Catholics.

Catholic history in Brazil has been punctuated with difficul-ties. After independence from Portugal in 1822, the governmenttook a heavy hand to regulating Church actions and growth.During the dictatorships of the 1960s and 1970s, the Church inBrazil was at the forefront of leadership for change. Many bish-ops advocating land reform and defending democracy werethreatened with violence, echoing the call of missionaries in theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries to stop the exploitationand enslavement of indigenous peoples.


So many have been my experiences of the world churchand its mission that it is hard to select from the host of

influences that have helped form my pilgrimage. By God’s graceI have been greatly privileged in the wealth of exposure I havehad to the Christian community on all continents (with theexception of Antarctica!). I was born in London two years beforethe Second World War began and evacuated to the country aboutseventy kilometers from the capital. I have some deep impres-sions of the event, not least my first meeting with black people:GIs in transit in a local army camp on their way to the D-Daylandings, whom we entertained in our house.

I was brought up as a conventional Anglican, during thedecades regarded by Callum Brown as still the peak of religiousobservance in Britain.1 My profession of faith was largely formal,though never seriously questioned. I came alive to the reality ofJesus Christ, however, while doing military service in Berlin.(There, among other duties, I helped guard the notorious Nazileaders Hess, Dönitz, and Speer, whom we could see exercisingin the prison’s inner yard.) I vividly remember kneeling in thebarracks chapel and making a first commitment to follow whereJesus would lead. Many surprises ensued: the first was a changein my career plan, from farming to the ordained ministry.

In my last year reading theology in the University of Lon-don, the Christian Union held a convention on the challenge ofcross-cultural mission. My college was responsible for preparingan exhibition on Latin America. This was the beginning of myinterest in that region, greatly stimulated by the vibrant enthusi-asm of Canon Harry Sutton, then general secretary of the SouthAmerican Mission Society. As a young Christian, I had beenencouraged to read missionary biographies. I was impressedthen by the argument that a Christian should normally considerservice overseas unless specifically called to stay at home. At thattime (the early 1960s), thinking about mission still largely ac-cepted the view that Western Christianity was the measure of thefaith, that Western Christians had much to offer Christianselsewhere, and therefore that the older churches still bore a greatresponsibility for the younger churches. Later, I came to realizethat one of the primary reasons for cross-cultural service was thevalue of cross-fertilization, through which mission partners wouldbecome transmitters of God-given insights into the Gospel in“reverse” mission from the receiving to the sending churches.Part of their commission was, as it were, to keep alive for the localchurch the “rumor” of the world church.

During my last term at theological college in Cambridge, Iwas introduced in person to the thinking of Francis Schaeffer.Later, on three separate occasions, I spent time at the L’Abricommunity in Switzerland that he and Edith, his wife, foundedin the mid-1950s. This encounter had a profound impact on myunderstanding of the Christian faith in relationship to contempo-rary culture. At that time, Bishop John Robinson’s renownedbook Honest to God had just been published. In his response to thebook, Schaeffer analyzed the drift of cultural history in a way that

made a lot of sense to me. Instead of merely denigrating Robinson’sargument for misrepresenting and departing from establishedChristian teaching, Schaeffer convincingly explained previousfaulty shifts in thinking that led inexorably to Robinson’s posi-tion. I also found Schaeffer’s insistence on the absolutely objec-tive reality of God and salvation a cogent response to the increas-ingly subjective and existentialist outlook of the culture. Perhapseven more important was the community’s living integration ofintellectual life with pastoral concern, prayer, evangelism, socialcommitment, and the ability to communicate the Gospel to ageneration completely alienated from all God-talk. I believe thatSchaeffer’s apologetic approach is still highly relevant in thetwenty-first century.

Resident in Latin America

Following ordination in 1963, I served a statutory three years ofparochial ministry in North Finchley in London, the politicalconstituency of a young member of Parliament named MargaretThatcher. There I met my future wife, Gillian Crane; we weremarried in 1968. Early in 1967 I left England for Mexico and fourmonths of language study. Learning another language is alwayschallenging and is an excellent way into the culture of those whospeak it. Spanish is a rich language, and I feel privileged to havehad the opportunity to learn it, albeit not very competently. Thelanguage school was in Cuernavaca—the city of eternal spring—in a center run by the highly controversial, but utterly fascinat-ing, Ivan Illich. What an introduction to Latin America! Onemonth prior to my arriving, Illich had written a polemical articlein the Jesuit journal America in which he debated the desirabilityof a moratorium on foreign missionaries going to Latin America.The argument is now familiar: most missionary work was beingundertaken under false assumptions in the belief that Christiansfrom the North could make up for the weaknesses and inadequa-cies of the Christian community in the South. The true mission-ary calling at the end of the 1960s, he argued, was to remain putand to urge the political and business establishment of the richnations to change radically the way they related to poor commu-nities elsewhere. Illich was an unconventional thinker, his line ofreasoning often difficult to follow. Later on he became involvedin contentious issues around psychiatric counseling and wrotehis celebrated books on conviviality, education, and medicine.

In spite of Illich’s call for a moratorium, I traveled on toArgentina in June 1967. The nation, like many others in SouthAmerica at that time, had a military government with ultra-Catholic leanings. Around that time, facing internal unrest, thepresident, General Ongania, proposed a ceremony to dedicatethe nation to the sacred heart of the Virgin Mary at the shrine ofLujan, outside Buenos Aires. Under pressure from reformingelements in the Catholic Church, the entire Protestant popula-tion, and other sectors of the nation, the project was eventuallycalled off. I became aware of a new reality for me: the power ofthe Catholic Church in the political and cultural life of a country.The hierarchy maintained a very conservative stance with regardto change. Later, at the time of the so-called dirty war (1976–82),when it identified itself with the ideological leanings of themilitary dictatorship, it came to regret its cultural captivity toforces of the extreme political right. Unfortunately, subsequent

J. Andrew Kirk spent twelve years in Buenos Aires in theological education, afurther twelve years in London involved in mission and lay education, and afinal twelve years in Birmingham in academic and vocational mission teaching.He is the author of a number of books, most recently, What Is Mission?Theological Explorations (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1999).

My Pilgrimage in Mission

J. Andrew Kirk

71April 2004

to that episode in the life of the nation, the church found itvirtually impossible to express officially real repentance for theerrors it made. Most of the Protestant churches did not do muchbetter in standing against the malicious abuse of power exercisedby the authorities at all levels.2 By 1971 the military was in controlin virtually all the nations of South America. The years 1964–84witnessed a long, bloody struggle between extreme, opposingideological forces.

Teaching and Liberation Theology

In such a setting, I found it impossible to avoid the impact of thesocial reality on understanding and teaching the relevance of theGospel to ordinary life. Many of the students in the seminary towhich I had gone as a lecturer in New Testament studies hadbecome politically radicalized. The year 1968 was denominatedthe Year of the Young Rebel. Student protests across campusesworldwide actually started in the Argentine city of Córdoba. Formany ministerial students Marxism had become the privilegedhermeneutical tool for interpreting the meaning of the Gospel. Iwell remember some of the students telling how they had been“converted” to Marxist thinking. Perhaps “enlightened” wouldhave been a better description, for they claimed to have suddenlyperceived with supreme clarity that the Marxist analysis andproject provided a definitive account of the social forces ofhistory. The future of the continent was not in the laissez-fairecapitalism that underlay Rostow’s “stages of growth”3 but in thesocialism inspired by the writings and speeches of Che Guevaraand Fidel Castro. To criticize the latter, as I found to my cost, wasthe equivalent of a mortal sin at that time. These students werebeing influenced theologically by the writings in particular ofHugo Assmann, José Miranda, Rubem Alves, and Richard Shaull.

In 1968 Gustavo Gutiérrez, then a young Peruvian theolo-gian, wrote a pamphlet entitled Toward a Theology of Liberation.The rest, as they say, is history! It was not too difficult to see thatin this climate conventional New Testament studies would makeno impact. I had quickly to rethink my approach to the contentand method of my classes. The pressure of the situation led to along-term project of studying the thinking of liberation theology,which I combined with my interest in the New Testament.Eventually it led to a thesis on the use of the Bible in liberationtheology.4

Around this time the traditional evangelical world in LatinAmerica was also beginning to stir theologically. At the firstcontinent-wide congress on evangelism, held in Colombia in1968, a group of church leaders committed themselves to initiat-ing a theological association to stimulate creative thinking andwriting about the church’s mission from a firm biblical basis. InDecember 1970, at an inaugural meeting in Cochabamba, theLatin American Theological Fraternity was born. I was privi-leged to be invited to the conference and thus became one of thefounding members. By way of objectives and working proposals,there was a strong determination that Latin American theologi-cal educators would seek to work at their own understanding ofthe meaning of the Gospel in their own societies. Samuel Escobarstressed that for too long the evangelical churches in LatinAmerica had been the recipients of an imported theology, madein Europe and the United States. Although in some ways thatimported theology was faithful to the core teaching of the NewTestament, in many others it uncritically reflected Anglo-Saxoncultural baggage coming from another time and place. I foundthis new questioning perspective, coming as it did this time fromwithin my own theological tradition, a further challenge to

understand more fully the rich meaning of the message of JesusChrist in a situation shaped decisively by a particular history thatonly recently I had begun to know personally.

The churches in Latin America, the Fraternity held, had totake responsibility for the way the message was formulated andlived out in their context. This conviction represented a newawakening of the evangelical communities to do theology as theyheard the Word of God, under the guidance of the Spirit and indialogue with the historical tradition of the universal church, andlistened to the cries of pain from lost and oppressed peoples. Itwas perhaps not surprising that the theme for the first meetingwas biblical hermeneutics. I came to appreciate the importance ofthis approach to Scripture, when understood not as the freedomto use the biblical text to confirm inherited theologies, doctrines,or ideologies, but as a principle of discernment by which authen-tic biblical truth could be separated from those obfuscatingcultural conventions and observances, from wherever they came,that distorted or compromised the call to radical Christian dis-cipleship. Like many other Christians, I continue to wrestle withthe challenge of listening to the word of God, both as a realitygiven at a particular moment of history and also as a living sourcefor contemporary Christian living.

The Fraternity has continued to bear witness to its key tenetsfor over thirty years: seeking to be faithful to the biblical Gospeland to valid elements in the evangelical heritage as well asseeking to be sensitive to Latin American social and culturalrealities. Among other notable leaders, René Padilla and SamuelEscobar, two of the keynote speakers at the Lausanne Congressin 1974, have been immense in their influence. The nonviolent,anti-Constantinian, Anabaptist tradition, stimulated by the think-ing of John Howard Yoder, has also been significant. The secondintercontinental conference, held in Lima in 1972, explored thedisputed, but paradigmatic, topic of the kingdom of God. Yoderwas an invited main speaker. He had also spent a year’s sabbati-cal study leave in Buenos Aires at the institution at which I wasteaching. This was for him, and others, a year of some tension,owing to the opposition of many students to the idea that violent

change was incompatible with the good news of Jesus. Togetherwith Yoder, José Míguez Bonino, and a group of postgraduatestudents, I was involved in a semester-long seminar on thesubject of violence in Christian thought and action. I found theinteraction enormously stimulating in light of the content, theexchange of sharply differing opinions, and the multidisciplinaryapproach to the subject. Throughout my pilgrimage I havecontinually returned to the problem of violence as a theologicaland practical challenge to the Christian conscience.

My time in Latin America was immensely significant in myunderstanding of mission. I became more certain that a gospelmessage that could not address directly and fittingly the majorsocial and political questions of the times was, at best, defectiveand, at worst, a false Gospel. To put it another way, the supremecalling of the Christian community to share the good news of

Seeing that conventionalNew Testament studieswould make no impact,I had quickly to rethinkmy approach to my classes.


Jesus Christ by word and life has a number of indispensablefacets. Thus, “every aspect of mission has an evangelistic dimen-sion, in that it shows forth the good news of Jesus Christ;however, not every aspect of mission has an evangelistic inten-tion.”5 The Gospel always addresses individual people andchallenges them to repent and believe the Good News, butalways as people with real social and cultural histories. At a laterstage, and in the light of controversies within Roman Catholic,evangelical, and ecumenical streams of the world church, I triedto work out what I understood to be the dialectic relationshipbetween evangelism and the whole mission of God’s people,using the biblical teaching on the kingdom of God as a main keyof understanding.6 This is a task that every generation needs tocontinue.

An Intercontinental Visitor

Late in 1978 my wife and I and our three young children returnedto England after nearly twelve years in Latin America, years inwhich I had received immeasurable help in understanding morefully the dimensions of faithful obedience to the calling of JesusChrist. The next twelve years saw a further stretching of horizonsin new directions. For most of this time I was working partly withthe Church Mission Society and partly with the London Institutefor Contemporary Christianity. With CMS I was given a role ofseeking to interpret to the church in the United Kingdom some of

the mission issues prevalent in Africa and Asia. This responsibil-ity involved me in significant visits to West Africa (twice), EastAfrica, Egypt, India, the Philippines, and Israel-Palestine, toppedand tailed by two return trips to Latin America. In each case Iproduced extensive reports on what I had encountered.

The primary purpose of my visits was to listen to the localchurches, observe their life and work, and make sense of it interms of changing perceptions of world mission. In doing so, Ihad to try to place myself imaginatively into the cultural andsocial contexts of these churches in order to begin to understandthe challenges they were facing and the responses they weregiving. This was a demanding task, given the diversity of situa-tions, my own limited experience, and the brief amount of timeavailable. For example, it was not easy to empathize with thecomplexity of the problems faced by someone from a Muslim orHindu background wanting to take a step toward public bap-tism. Nor was it easy to appreciate the depth of feeling around thequestion of polygamy held by many Africans, as I experienced ina two-hour discussion with a group of theological students ineastern Nigeria. However, these journeys helped to bring homevividly the enormous riches available within the world church interms of the understanding and practice of the Gospel and of thediversity of gifts given by the Holy Spirit to God’s peopleeverywhere. I began to learn just a little more about the potentialfor partnership in mission between different parts of the onebody.

NoteworthyPersonaliaThe International Association for Mission Studies has ap-pointed Lalsangkima Pachuau, professor of missiology atUnited Theological College, Bangalore, India, as editor-electof its journal Mission Studies, effective with the first issue of2005. The incoming associate editors are Johann JayakiranSebastian, also of United Theological College, Cathy RaeRoss of the Bible College of New Zealand, Auckland, andPaulo Suess of the Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil.The current editor of Mission Studies is Stephen B. Bevans,S.V.D., professor of mission and culture, Catholic TheologicalUnion, Chicago, Illinois. Visit www.missionstudies.org.

Daniel Jeyaraj, Judson-DeFrietas Associate Professor ofWorld Christianity at Andover Newton Theological School,Newton, Massachusetts, has been named as an IBMR contrib-uting editor. An Indian theologian, Jeyaraj is a leading author-ity on the Tranquebar Mission and the emergence of eigh-teenth-century Protestant churches in India. As a contributionto the Indian churches’ 300th anniversary celebrations in 2006,he recently translated two major monographs of the firstProtestant missionary to India, Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg(1682–1719), from German into English. Editor of DharmaDeepika: A South Asian Journal of Missiological Research and anordained presbyter of the Diocese of Tirunelveli, Church ofSouth India, Jeyaraj previously taught at Union Biblical Semi-nary and Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and ResearchInstitute in Pune and Madras, India, respectively, and mostrecently as John A. Mackay Professor of World Christianity atPrinceton Theological Seminary, Princeton, New Jersey.

Died. G. Linwood Barney, 79, missionary anthropologistand seminary administrator, October 29, 2003, in Fort Myers,Florida. He and his family served in Laos and Vietnam asmissionaries of the Christian and Missionary Alliance from1951 to 1954, where he worked with William Smalley and YvesBertrais on developing the romanized written form of theHmong language. After returning to the United States, hetaught at St. Paul Bible College, now Crown College, St. Paul,Minnesota, and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology atthe University of Minnesota. In 1960 he and Jack Shepherdfounded the Jaffray School of Missions, now the AllianceTheological Seminary, Nyack, New York. In addition to beingprofessor of anthropology for twenty-five years, he served forvarious periods as dean of students, dean of faculty, anddirector of studies. For twenty-five summers he also taught atthe Toronto Institute of Linguistics, and for twenty-four yearshe served on the board of the Overseas Ministries StudyCenter. His article “The Challenge of Anthropology to Cur-rent Missiology” appeared in the IBMR in October 1981.

Died. Jonathan Chao, 65, founder and president of ChinaMinistries International and director of the Christianity andChina Research Center, January 12, 2004, in West Covina,California. Born in northeastern China, he grew up in China,Hong Kong, and Japan, until he immigrated to the UnitedStates, where he graduated from Geneva College, WestminsterTheological Seminary, and the University of Pennsylvania(Ph.D. in Sinology, 1986). From 1977 to 1987 he taught at theChina Graduate School of Theology in Hong Kong, of whichhe was the founder, where he also established the Chinese

73April 2004

The Gospel in the Midst of Ordinary Life

With the London Institute, I was involved with a group ofdedicated and skilled Christian colleagues in a lay academywhose vision was (and is) to facilitate mission in the daily life ofwork and employment. Together with John Stott and someothers, I helped to make concrete an institution that was, in part,inspired by Kairos, a lay learning community founded in the1970s in Argentina.7 In its courses the institute focuses on issuesof faithful Christian witness in different areas of life, such asmedicine, education, the media, business, politics, and the arts.I came to appreciate more clearly that the life of work is for almostall Christians the primary missionary frontier: a concept that hasnot yet penetrated sufficiently into the mentality of the profes-sionally trained ordained ministry of the churches. I was pro-voked by the thinking and experience of both lecturers andstudents (from many parts of the world church) to consider thatthis reality should not be seen as a tension between a church-centered and world-oriented mission; rather, the whole Chris-tian community needs to learn and practice God’s calling in themidst of the world as followers of Jesus. It began to dawn on methat mission is not about Christians being sent into the world asif they were outside it; they are sent to engage with the manyaspects of human existence of which they are already an inextri-cable part. In some respects, the institute (and others like it) existsbecause the churches are failing to address adequately this

primary mission task, a deficiency largely caused by faultyexpectations laid upon the professional leadership.8

One memorable event at the institute was a special seminarconvened to discuss with Lesslie Newbigin some of the ideascoming from his recent books.9 This seminar began for me anextended relationship with the Gospel and Our Culture project,which was formed to explore further the implications of hisinsights into mission in the West. Newbigin’s thinking has beenformative for me in a number of ways: in particular, I havebenefited from his incisive critique of secular faith and his call formission to the whole of culture. Later, I was involved for fivefruitful years in the study project “Towards a Missiology ofWestern Culture” under the leadership of Wilbert Shenk andpartly inspired by Newbigin’s outlook. Participation in thisprogram, as a member of the subgroup that looked at the impli-cations of epistemological issues for mission, helped me tounderstand the importance of philosophy in evaluating the taskof mission in a Western environment. The major concern was toexplore the problems surrounding faithful Christian witness in alate modern, secular ambience, where basic assumptions aboutreality appear to contradict those affirmed by the Christian faith.The subgroup produced a pioneering book that sought to relatethe epistemological dilemmas of the late twentieth and earlytwenty-first centuries to Christian mission.10

During this same period I also became involved, ratherfortuitously, with an international Christian research institute

Church Research Center in 1978. His most recent book (inChinese) was A History of Christianity in Socialist China, 1949–1997 (1998).

AnnouncingThe Pontifical Institute of Foreign Missions has an onlineedition of its AsiaNews service. The agency, which has beenpublishing social, cultural, and religious news on Asia since1986, started the online edition November 2003. Directed byBernardo Cervellera, an expert in Chinese affairs, the agencyoffers daily news on all of Asia in Italian, English, and Chinese.Visit www.asianews.it.

The trustees of the United Board for Christian HigherEducation in Asia voted in November 2003 to move theirprogram personnel and program office from New York toAsia. “This is a significant change in the way the United Boardoperates and promises to transform its work, ensuring that itwill remain relevant, timely, and evidence-based,” accordingto a press release. The trustees’ decision came in response torecommendations of a task force chaired by Willi Toisuta,president emeritus of Satya Wacana Christian University,Yogyakarta, Indonesia. The move will “enable more immedi-ate and collaborative dialogue” between United Board pro-gram officers and their Asian scholar-partners. As a result, theAsian Christian Higher Education Institute, established in2001 and currently located at Hong Kong Baptist University,will be the main focus of United Board program activity inAsia. David Kwang-Sun Suh, founding executive director ofthe institute, now serves also as the United Board’s vice

president for programs. Richard J. Wood, president of theUnited Board and based in New York, will maintain oversightof the United Board as a whole, including the Asian Institute.

The International Association of Catholic Missiologistswill hold a workshop-encounter on the subject “Sharing Di-versity in Missiological Research and Education: Issues ofTheological Language and Intercultural Communication,”September 29–October 2, 2004, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. IACMplans to hold similar workshops in Africa (2005), Asia-Oceania(2006), Europe (2007), and Canada (2008). Contact John Gorski,M.M., IACM president, at [email protected] orvisit www.missionstudies.org/IACM.

The Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Mis-sionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity will holdits annual meeting July 1–3, 2004, at the University ofEdinburgh. Speakers will discuss the theme “Missions, Money,and Privilege.” The study group is cosponsored by the Centrefor the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at theUniversity of Edinburgh, Yale Divinity School, and the Over-seas Ministries Study Center. Visit www.library.yale.edu/div/yaleedin.htm for details.

The Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization iscalling church leaders from around the world to meet withmission strategists September 29–October 5, 2004, in Thailandfor the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization. Participants willexamine trends and develop plans to address thirty local andglobal issues that include globalization, transformation ofcities, the “uniqueness of Christ in a postmodern world,” and“at-risk people.” Visit www.lausanne.org/2004 for details.


based in Sweden that was set up to aid the churches in theirthinking and practice regarding global and local situations ofconflict. The institute has undertaken and completed researchprojects on a diversity of matters in many parts of the world.11 Myassociation with this work has convinced me that the transforma-tion of conflict through reconciliation in justice and truth is amandatory part of the missionary vocation.

Communities of Mission Learning

The final part of my pilgrimage in mission to date has taken placein the context of the former Selly Oak Federation of Colleges inBirmingham, United Kingdom. I was appointed as dean andhead of the Department of Mission in September, 1990.12 At thattime, the department was formed by a partnership among four(independent) mission colleges and a central unit. I was con-fronted, both personally and in my role as the coordinator ofmission education, by a number of different perspectives onmission represented among the teaching staff, particularly in theareas of evangelism, interreligious dialogue, and spirituality.Moreover, three centers for interreligious encounter and studyformed part of the federation, of which one remains—the Centrefor the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations. Thecenters had grown out of the federation’s concern with missionas attempts to understand better the multifaceted religious real-ity of the modern world. As they developed and took on a life oftheir own, they became increasingly wary of the Christian call tomission. My own experience of other faiths led me to believe thatonly informed Muslims, with a commitment to inviting people toIslam, really understand the attention Christians give to evange-listic mission. The city of Birmingham is an ideal location for thestudy of mission because of its multicultural and multifaithcomposition. For a number of years I was part of an informalgroup of Christians and Muslims who met monthly for thediscussion of both important social issues and the essentialquestions of our respective faiths. These meetings were con-ducted in an atmosphere of openness, understanding, frankness,and friendship. We were able to move beyond polemic to under-stand better each other’s core beliefs and values while bearingwitness to our own, and to work together on common localproblems. Undoubtedly these contacts and discussions withinthe Department of Mission prompted me to consider seriously

Notes1. Callum Brown, The Death of Christian Britain (London: Routledge,

2001).2. The role of the churches in the conflicts of that time is well documented

in María Alicia Gutiérrez, The Churches’ Role as Agents of Peace and De-velopment. Case Study: Argentina (Uppsala: Life and Peace Institute, 1992),and Pablo R. Andiñach and Daniel Bruno, Iglesias evangélicas y derechoshumanos en Argentina (1976–1998) (Buenos Aires: La Aurora, 2001).

3. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-CommunistManifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1960).

4. Published as J. Andrew Kirk, Liberation Theology: An Evangelical Viewfrom the Third World (London: Marshalls, 1979).

5. J. Andrew Kirk, What Is Mission? (Sundbyberg: Swedish MissionaryCouncil, 2002), p. 6.

6. See J. Andrew Kirk, The Good News of the Kingdom Coming: TheMarriage of Evangelism and Social Responsibility (Downers Grove, Ill.:InterVarsity Press, 1983).

7. Kairos continues to flourish, now in its own premises just outsideBuenos Aires.

8. For my recent thinking on the relationship between ordained and layministry, see J. Andrew Kirk, “Sundry Thoughts on Lay Ministry ina Fast-Changing World,” Studia Missionalia 49 (2000): 345–62.

9. Lesslie Newbigin, The Other Side of 1984: Questions for the Churches(Geneva: WCC Publications, 1983), and Foolishness to the Greeks(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).

10. J. Andrew Kirk and Kevin Vanhoozer, eds., To Stake a Claim: Missionand the Western Crisis of Knowledge (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books,1999). I have developed further my own thinking in this area in astudy with the preliminary title, Following Modernity and Post-Modernity: In Pursuit of Another World.

11. Details can be obtained from The Life and Peace Institute, P.O. Box1520, SE-751 45 Uppsala, Sweden (www.life-peace.org; [email protected]).

12. In 1999 the Department of Mission was integrated into the Departmentof Theology of the University of Birmingham. I retired from myposition with the university in September 2002.

13. In his Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in the Theology of Mission(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1991), David Bosch sets out the rangeof options in the section “Mission as Theology,” pp. 489–98. I havetentatively explored the nature of theology as a missionary enterprisein J. Andrew Kirk, The Mission of Theology and Theology as Mission(Valley Forge, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 1997).

matters relating to the reality of diverse religions as an aspect ofChristian mission.

One of the major causes of concern among both staff andstudents at Selly Oak was how to relate the academic andvocational aspects of mission education. The tension betweenthem continues to exercise my thinking. It may become for me thetheme of further writing at a later date. Academically, the rela-tionship between missiology and other theological disciplines isconstantly raised.13 Should it be considered an adjunct to practi-cal theology? Is it applied theology? Or is it a particular way ofdoing theology—missionary theology? Vocationally, becausethe students who studied at Selly Oak were, in the great majority,mature students with considerable mission experience behindthem, the dilemma of how to relate theory and practice con-stantly presented itself. Their interest was in reflecting criticallyand constructively on mission practice. Just because they werepractitioners, and because mission, by definition, covers mostaspects of Christian life, the dimension of worship and prayeralso became central for them.

Looking Ahead

My pilgrimage has covered five decades. My understanding ofmission has been forged out of encounters with different parts ofthe world church on most continents. I am conscious of havingreceived my life as a special gift of God’s grace. There can be fewpeople who have had the range of privileged experiences that Ihave. As if all so far recounted were not enough, since retirementI have been invited to participate in two mission educationprograms in central Europe, one in Budapest and one in Prague.These opportunities have been for me eye-openers into the vigor,as well as the frailty, of mission thinking and practice in theformer Communist countries. As cross-cultural mission cutsacross national and cultural boundaries, extending right throughcentral Asia to Vladivostok, the Gospel is indeed in our genera-tion reaching the ends of the world and will continue until theend of time. A decade ago, for example, who could have imag-ined a Polish woman together with a local church in Kazakhstanusing the film The Matrix as a means of evangelism? Mission inour generation is being inspired by a missionary God with greatimagination and immense resources.

75April 2004

A ccording to Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918), “theChristianization of the social order in the next two

generations” should be added to “the evangelization of theworld in this generation,” the dynamic watchword of the Stu-dent Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. At the turn ofthe century Rauschenbusch witnessed hundreds of studentspledge themselves to the austere goal of world evangelization.He longed, though, that “those who do not go to the foreign fieldwould bind themselves to give some term of their youth at leastto social work in the trenches.”1

For Rauschenbusch, known for his leading contribution tothe social gospel movement, the trenches were not only the fardistant places of the modern missionary movement but also thepolitical and economic social structures of society that impactedthe cities of America, which were teeming with newly arrivedimmigrants. Rauschenbusch, born to German immigrant par-ents, was no stranger to the trenches or to mission. Throughouthis life he was personally involved in mission, both home andworld, and took an avid interest in its impact as a movement. Ashis interests in the social gospel expanded beyond the confines ofthe church and into international relations, Rauschenbusch oftenlooked to the modern missionary movement, by then over acentury old, as a model for the social gospel movement.

Early Years

Walter Rauschenbusch was the fourth and youngest child ofAugust and Caroline Rauschenbusch. Born October 8, 1861, inRochester, New York, Walter became the seventh in a line ofuniversity-trained pastors and the sixth generation to join the“tradition of cultured university graduates.”2 AugustRauschenbusch, though never attaining the public stature of hisson, was a reformer in his own right. Reared and educated aLutheran, he came to the United States in 1846 as a missionary toGerman immigrants. In New York, during his work for theAmerican Tract Society, he broke with the Lutheran Church andbecame an avowed Baptist. August Rauschenbusch returned toGermany several times and in 1854 brought with him his newlywedded wife, Caroline. His leadership attracted attention, and in1855 he was asked to join the faculty of the Rochester TheologicalSeminary, which he did three years later.

Throughout his adolescence, Walter attended school both inRochester and in Germany. He studied in Germany between1879 and 1883, and upon his return to Rochester, he enrolled inthe University of Rochester, as well as Rochester TheologicalSeminary.

Educational and Spiritual Influences

Near the end of Rauschenbusch’s student years in Rochester, twooutside speakers left lasting impressions on him. The first, John

E. Clough, spoke at Rochester Theological Seminary’s 1884 com-mencement exercises. Clough, a well-known Baptist missionarywith the American Baptist Telegu Mission who had spearheadeda mass movement in India in the late 1870s, impressed upon hisseminary audience the need for workers to serve as evangelistsand pastors. Clough’s methods, often controversial, maintainedas much as possible the social cohesion of the community.3

In 1885, a year before Rauschenbusch graduated from semi-nary, he heard W. S. Rainsford, an Episcopal priest at St. George’sChurch on New York’s East Side, speak about the progressivereform among his congregation and the community. Rainsford’schurch was transformed into a center that welcomed the working-class neighborhood by providing immigrants with recreationas well as educational opportunities. With prophetic foresightRainsford cited the church’s urban mission as the place whereshe would either “win her greatest victory or suffer her mostdisastrous defeat.”4 Rauschenbusch, spurred by the missionalaction taken in the inner city, struggled to reconcile life in theincreasingly industrialized cities with his historical faith andwith confidence in the written Word of God. Few of his profes-sors spoke of the mounting concerns produced by the rapidindustrialization of cities, the influx of immigrants, the economicpower struggles between the rich and the poor, or the weakeningreligious mores impacting the changing society.

Rauschenbusch had more than a casual connection withClough and his foreign mission work. In 1882 EmmaRauschenbusch, his sister closest in age, became a missionary forthe Woman’s Baptist Missionary Society of the West. By 1883Emma had become Clough’s associate working among the Telegu,a movement that boasted a congregation of over 20,000 partici-pants—the largest Baptist church in the world at the time.5Clough respected Emma’s work and decided to take a much-needed furlough.

Upon his return to the United States, Clough accepted aninvitation to stay at the Rauschenbusch home in Rochester. Hisinvitation to be commencement speaker evidently came after hehad justified his conversion methods to Augustus H. Strong,president of the seminary and originally a skeptic of Clough’smissionary methods. The result of their discussions was that“Clough had completely won over Strong, as well as gained afirm ally in Rauschenbusch.”6 In 1894 Rauschenbusch’s “firmally” became his brother-in-law when Clough married Emma.Clough’s mission legend, retold to and written by Emma, wasgiven a title fitting for the Rauschenbusch legacy—Social Chris-tianity in the Orient (1914).

During the summers of 1884 and 1885, Rauschenbusch didwhat he referred to later as “home mission work among theGermans.”7 He served as an interim pastor in Louisville, Ken-tucky, to a German congregation mired in divisive issues. Hislabor-intensive summers produced conversions and a greatersense of church unity, leaving an indelible and formative markon his Christian faith. By the end of his years as a seminarian,Rauschenbusch reported: “Very soon the idea came to me that Iought to be a preacher, and help to save souls. I wanted to go outas a foreign missionary—I wanted to do hard work for God.Indeed, one of the great thoughts that came upon me was that I

Barbara A. Lundsten, a doctoral student in the School of Intercultural Studiesat Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, is currently researchinga women-led grassroots mission study movement that took place in the earlytwentieth century.

The Legacy of Walter Rauschenbusch:A Life Informed by Mission

Barbara A. Lundsten


ought to follow Jesus Christ in my personal life, and die overagain his death. I felt that every Christian ought to participate inthe dying of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in that way help to redeemhumanity, and it was that thought that gave my life its funda-mental direction in the doing of Christian work.”8

After Rauschenbusch’s graduation in 1886, he accepted acall to the pastorate of New York’s Second German BaptistChurch, a position he held for eleven years. Rauschenbusch cameprepared to save souls. He quickly understood that the area ofHell’s Kitchen on West 45th Street and Tenth Avenue—home togangs and immigrants, disease and promiscuity, “crowded ten-ements and noisy factories”—was not “a safe place for savedsouls.”9 The experience was an awakening, and one that he usedthroughout his life to challenge himself personally as well as the

He sought to balance socialmessage and personalcommunion with God.

church at large. He once told a friend, “In New York a person‘feels the waves of human life all around, as it really is, not as itought to be according to the decretum absolutum of an oldtheology.’”10

Rauschenbusch dug into his pastoral duties of preaching,visitation, counseling, and study. After only one month, how-ever, a hearing problem resurfaced that had first appeared inRochester. It was the beginning of a serious hearing condition—a degenerate neurological defect—that would impact him therest of his life. Rauschenbusch’s congregation gave their newlyarrived pastor two months to recuperate in the Allegheny Moun-tains.

In mid-August 1886, surrounded by the serenity of theAlleghenies, Rauschenbusch received an invitation from theBaptist Mission Union asking him to consider filling the presi-dency of the Telegu Theological Seminary in Ramapatnam,India. Though he had just recently taken the pastoral position inNew York City, he decided to consider the offer and gave themission agency the go-ahead to review him as a candidate for theposition. One of his professors, however, questionedRauschenbusch’s “view of the Divine Authority of the OldTestament,” and as a result, the mission retracted its offer.11

“A Missioner to the City”

Rauschenbusch’s congregation in New York consisted of Ger-man immigrants and children of immigrants, most of whomwere struggling to survive along with nearly 400,000 otherGerman immigrants living among New York City’s 1.5 millionpeople. Most immigrants had fled their rural farmlands on theContinent and came looking for better wages and opportunitiesto fulfill their dreams. A great many, however, had becomedisillusioned as they suffered joblessness, poverty, and injustice.

Rauschenbusch accepted his call and its meager annualsalary of $600. As a pastor, “he would live in near-poverty, denyhimself, and minister like Christ to the poor and abused. Hewould be a missioner to the city that more than any other wasshaping America’s future.” Ordained on October 21, 1886,Rauschenbusch plunged into his duties. His Sunday sermonsreflected his evangelical education and training—“My idea thenwas to save souls in the ordinarily accepted religious sense.”12 He

quickly expanded his ministry involvement to include weeklymeetings with other Baptist pastors, regional conferences, andcitywide campaigns for justice and political change.

During the summers of 1887 and 1888, Rauschenbusch trav-eled to Northfield, Massachusetts, where he participated in thesummer revivals led by evangelist D. L. Moody. There he wrote,“I gave myself to God unreservedly and had a rich blessing.”13

He savored the personal relationship such renewals wrought,and prior to 1886 had read sermons from men such as Moody,Henry Drummond, Edward Judson, and J. Hudson Taylor. Butthe more he read, studied, and associated with leaders and issuesof social justice, the more he sought to strike a balance betweenthe social message and personal communion with God.14

As he matured in his faith, social issues pressed to theforefront of his thinking. Without abandoning his personal com-mitment to God, he enlarged its horizons and envisioned itsbroader implications. In the process he questioned why thechurch never challenged him to consider the social question:“The church held down the social interest in me. It contradictedit; it opposed it; it held it down as far as it could; and when it wasa question about giving me position or preferment, the fact thatI was interested in the workingman was actually against me—not for me.”15 He had “personal religion” and a “large socialoutlook,” and he thought deeply how to bring these together into“a unity of life-faith.” For Rauschenbusch, religion aspired to aholistic conception of one God, one world, and one redemption.Faith was incomplete when life was compartmentalized andGod was reserved for one part but not another. He wondered,“Where does the social question come in? Where does the mattercome in of saving the world? That does not seem to have anyplace there, does it? And that was the real difficulty in mythought all the time—how to find a place, under the old religiousconceptions, for this great task of changing the world and mak-ing it righteous; making it habitable; making it merciful; makingit brotherly. Somehow, I knew in my soul that that was God’swork. Nobody could wrest that from me. Jesus Christ hadspoken too plainly to my soul about that. I knew that he was onthe side of righteousness, and on the side of his poor brother. Butwhere could I get it in with my old Christianity—with my oldreligion?”16

Throughout Rauschenbusch’s pastorate in New York, heactively engaged in broadening his own understanding of howto live out his Christian faith and participate in the regenerationof the community around him. He was convinced that thecapitalistic economic structure deterred righteousness, and hefought hard to bring about a more just system. He alignedhimself with Henry George, who ran for mayor of New York “asthe reform candidate of a coalition of labor unions and social-ists.” Later, Rauschenbusch lauded George’s influence on his lifewhen he said, “I owe my own first awakening to the world ofsocial problems to the agitation of Henry George in 1886 andwish here to record my lifelong debt to this single-mindedapostle of a great truth.”17

Richard Ely, an Episcopal layman and professor of politicaleconomy at Johns Hopkins University, also had a significantimpact on Rauschenbusch’s growing social conscience. He wenta step further than George by advocating church interventiontoward the reformation of the economic structure of America’scapitalistic system. Ely affirmed Rauschenbusch’s growing be-lief: “What we need is the whole truth, and that includes a socialas well as an individual Gospel. . . . It proclaims individual andsocial regeneration, individual and social salvation.” Ely blendedhis religion, economics, and ethics into a unified faith that

77April 2004

Rauschenbusch translateda number of Ira Sankey’shymns into German.

Rauschenbusch could embrace. Throughout Rauschenbusch’slife he considered Ely a significant influence upon his thoughtand his disciplined lifestyle of study, both being prerequisites ofsocial reconstruction.18

Rauschenbusch’s social position was often worked out in hiswritings. Because of his profound hearing loss, writing was anavenue that opened vistas of dialogue. Soon after he arrived inNew York, he published articles in newspapers and religiousjournals, founded and edited For the Right, a paper for theworking class, and expressed views that would eventually beexplicated in his numerous books. He wrote Sunday schoollessons and translated into German a number of church hymnscomposed by Ira Sankey, Moody’s renowned song leader.

By 1889 Rauschenbusch had delved more systematicallyinto the relationship between religion and the social question.“The major issue engaging him was how the church could closethe widening gap between itself and the urban masses. The issuepresented itself as two questions: How far can Christians gotoward embracing the aspirations of workers, especially thoseexpressed in socialism, and how can Christians be made to careabout the social revolution under way in their country?”19 ThoughRauschenbusch never formally joined the Socialist Party, hesympathized with, and worked for, the implementation of manysocialistic ideas. He felt that socialism, grounded in a solidChristian faith, merited consideration.

In 1891 he sailed to Europe for ten months to take time toreflect and study the social, economic, and biblical issues thatchallenged his views. He traveled to Birmingham, where heobserved economic reform in action. In London Rauschenbuschspent time with the Salvation Army, under the direction ofGeneral William Booth, and noted their “soul saving and societysaving,” though years later, Rauschenbusch felt that the Salva-tion Army failed to reach the root cause of poverty in its efforts toease the plight of the poor. He went to Berlin and studied the NewTestament in the light of social issues and the kingdom of God.

The year 1892 was a pivotal point in Rauschenbusch’sthought. He returned from England and the Continent invigo-

rated with ways to implement his maturing view of the centralityof the kingdom of God. In May 1892 the Baptist Congress, a“forum for debate on theological and social issues by bothNorthern and Southern Baptists,” along with other Baptist agen-cies, met in Philadelphia to commemorate the 100th anniversaryof William Carey’s missionary journey to India, which heraldedthe modern Protestant missionary movement.20 In an addressbefore the Baptist Congress, Rauschenbusch pressed “the con-version of America’s new urban-industrial order.”21

On April 12, 1893, Rauschenbusch married Pauline Rother,a schoolteacher who, as a girl of six, had emigrated to the UnitedStates (Wisconsin) from Prussian Silesia. During the first fouryears of their marriage they lived in New York, whereRauschenbusch continued his pastoral duties. In 1897Rauschenbusch, with his wife and their two children, left NewYork to take a position in the German department at RochesterTheological Seminary as professor of New Testament interpreta-tion, natural sciences, and civil government. By 1902 he was

awarded the chair in church history at the seminary, a position heheld until his death in 1918.22 While in Rochester, Rauschenbuschcontinued the diligent study, civic responsibilities, lecturing,correspondence, and writing needed to refine his ideas about thekingdom of God.

Professor and Advocate of Full-Orbed Mission

For Rauschenbusch the kingdom of God was “a conqueringidea,” an “all-powerful impulse to missionary effort, as thecenter of a valid theology, and as the basis for the task of socialregeneration to which he believed the Church is called.”23 In 1904he published an article entitled “The New Evangelism” in whichhe asked two important questions: “Are the traditional motivesstill effective? And is the moral standard held up by the churchsuch as to induce repentance?”24 According to Rauschenbuschthe traditional motive of mission involved solely an individual-istic salvation, which was seen as the sole motive and aim ofChristianity. Rauschenbusch maintained that such an “individu-alistic conception of personal salvation has pushed out of sightthe collective idea of a Kingdom of God on earth” and as a resulthas left the church “comparatively indifferent to the spread of thespirit of Christ in the political, industrial, social, scientific, andartistic life of humanity.” All these areas have been left as “theundisturbed possessions of the spirit of the world.”25

Personal salvation is the foundation of mission, to whichRauschenbusch attested in 1892: “To save men from sin anddeath and see them become brethren of Jesus Christ must everremain the first and mightiest motive of Christian missions.”This “evangelical conception of missions” is the primary motiveof mission—“first in order of importance, first also in order oftime.”26

Those who espoused traditional motives because of theirmillennial view he called “a dead weight against any effort tomobilize the moral forces of Christianity to share in the modernsocial movement.” Though “they are among the most devoutand earnest people,” their evangelical motive is to save “indi-viduals for the coming of the Lord”; they participate in worldmission “because it is an express condition that the Lord will notreturn ‘until the gospel has been preached to all nations.’”27

Rauschenbusch was no mission strategist, but he fought for“Christianizing the social order,” a title fitting for his secondbook. In his view, mission work was in fact modeling what heenvisioned:

The practical influence of foreign and home missions has beenanother constructive influence in modern Christianity which hasaided the advance of the social conception of the Kingdom. Theleaders of the missionary movement have been compelled toadopt imperial policies and to think in terms of nations and races.Missionaries have been forced by the facts of human life to lookbeyond the saving of single souls and the establishment of churchesto the christianizing of social customs and institutions. The strat-egy of missions has taught us to reckon with generations in theslow implanting of new powers of spiritual life in great races. Theablest leaders of the missionary propaganda have been among thepioneers of the Kingdom idea, because no other idea was ad-equate for their needs. The most effective expositions of thisrevolutionary new theology have come from the platform ofmissionary conventions, and not from the chairs of theologicalseminaries.28

Rauschenbusch challenged the church to gear up to “the biglive issues of today if it is to manifest its full saving energies.”29


Notes1. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order (New York:

Macmillan, 1912), p. 475; Walter Rauschenbusch, The Social Principlesof Jesus (London: International Committee of Young Men’s ChristianAssociations, 1916), p. 77.

2. Paul M. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer (New York:Macmillan, 1988), pp. 2, 12.

3. John E. Clough and Emma Rauschenbusch Clough, Social Christianityin the Orient: The Story of a Man, a Mission, and a Movement (Philadel-phia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1914), p. ix.

4. Quoted in Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, p. 45.5. Paul William Harris, “The Social Dimensions of Foreign Missions:

Emma Rauschenbusch Clough and Social Gospel Ideology,” inGender and the Social Gospel, ed. Wendy J. Deichmann Edwards andCarolyn DeSwarte Gifford (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2003), pp.87–100. Clough and his staff had baptized 9,606 converts, most ofwhom were untouchables from the Madigas tribe (p. 89).

6. Harris, in the prepublication draft of “The Social Dimensions ofForeign Missions,” sent by Harris to the author on January 17, 2003.The quotation was edited out of the version that appeared in Genderand the Social Gospel.

7. Dores Robinson Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch (New York: Macmillan,1942), p. 385.

8. Walter Rauschenbusch, “The Kingdom of God” (1913), in The SocialGospel in America, 1870–1920: Gladden, Ely, Rauschenbusch, ed. RobertT. Handy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 265.

9. Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch, p. 61.10. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, pp. 51–52.11. Ibid., p. 52.12. Ibid., pp. 50, 55.13. Ibid., p. 56.14. Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch, p. 64.15. Rauschenbusch, “Kingdom of God,” p. 266. Rauschenbusch’s

He warned: “If the Church tries to confine itself to theology andthe Bible, and refuses its larger mission to humanity, its theologywill gradually become mythology and its Bible a closed book.”30

Here he revisited the moral dilemma and challenged the churchto move beyond concern over the moral issues of the family—drunkenness, sexual immorality, profanity—into issues of “thejustice of holding land idle in crowded cities, of appropriating theunearned increment in land values, of paying wages fixed by thehunger of the laborers and taking the surplus of their output as‘profits,’ or of cornering the market in the necessities of life.”31

Rauschenbusch’s impact on mission methods was evidentwhen John R. Mott sounded the call for a greater involvement insocial issues of the day. Mott endorsed the social gospel when heaffirmed: “There are not two gospels, one social and one indi-vidual. There is but one Christ who lived, died, and rose again,and relates Himself to the lives of men.”32 In April 1914, at the“Conference on Social Needs,” Mott gathered social gospel lead-ers, one of whom was Rauschenbusch, along with representa-tives from North American student organizations, to address therelationship between students and the social realm. This meeting“marked an epoch in the social thinking of the student commu-nity.”33

World War I deeply affected Rauschenbusch. His Germanancestry, his connections to Germany, and his allegiance to theUnited States were difficult to reconcile during the war. Hisoldest sister, Frida, and her family lived in Germany and sup-ported its regime. His son Hilmar, with Rauschenbusch’s ap-proval, served in France with the Allies. At the outbreak of thewar in 1914, Rauschenbusch wore a black ribbon on his coat lapelto signify his “profound grief” and his commitment to peace.Rauschenbusch presented Germany’s side in journal articleswhile attempting to maintain his sympathy with the Allies.Many friends and colleagues distanced themselves from himbecause he did not vocally side with the United States. In 1917after the United States declared war, Rochester TheologicalSeminary pressured Rauschenbusch to establish his Americanloyalty in a written letter, parts of which were published in localnewspapers and religious journals.34 Rauschenbusch, thoughprofoundly shaken by the war, an agony that accompanied himto his grave, continued to write. He called the church to a higherlevel, to the “big, modern social task” ahead, “demanding achristianizing of international relations.”35 He saw the nationsand the races drawing together and in need of “a monotheisticreligion as a spiritual basis for the sense of human unity.”36 In1917 he published his last book, A Theology for the Social Gospel, inwhich he developed a theology to match his growing sense of

internationalism. “When the progress of humanity creates newtasks, such as world-wide missions, or new problems, such as thesocial problem, theology must connect these with the old funda-mentals of our faith and make them Christian tasks and prob-lems.”37

The war as well as pressure from conservatives concerninghis “liberal” views took their toll on Rauschenbusch’s final years.Though the next generation was accepting the basic tenets of thesocial gospel, Rauschenbusch was aware of the widening gapthat existed between social gospelers and conservatives espous-ing traditional Christianity. Try as he might to bridge the gap bycentering his writing on Jesus and the kingdom of God, thereremained “an attenuated connection between them.” Even in hislast days, Rauschenbusch tried to articulate a position that wasneither liberal nor conservative. “The old theology must developsocial relevance, the new social movement must discover reli-gious depth.”38 In the end, he found solace in his family. As hisfive children grew into adulthood, their lives reflected the influ-ence of their father’s social ideas. Diagnosed with perniciousanemia Rauschenbusch died on July 25, 1918, in Rochester, NewYork.

Assessment

Today, Rauschenbusch is remembered as a seminal thinker of thesocial gospel movement of the late nineteenth and early twenti-eth century. For the most part, however, he has little currencyamong liberals or conservatives, missiologists or theologians. Heis an important figure in mission history and mission theologybecause of the influence he exerted during his time.Rauschenbusch deserves to be rediscovered by those who struggleto attain social and theological balance in a full-orbed mission.

Rauschenbusch the pastor, as “a missioner to the city,” livedhis gospel message in the heart of New York City. He struggledwith political, social, and economic problems, as well as theologi-cal and missiological questions that assailed him at the turn of thecentury. Rauschenbusch the historian anchored his teaching andhis writing on the centrality of Jesus Christ and the kingdom ofGod. He faithfully challenged the church to embrace its “largermission to humanity.”

More than a social gospel reformer, Rauschenbusch was aman who understood the present in light of the past, attemptingto garner lessons and warnings that would make the world abetter place because of the pervasive influence of Christianityand its world mission. From start to finish, mission informed hislife’s thought and work.

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Selected BibliographyWorks by Walter Rauschenbusch1892 “Conceptions of Missions.” In The Social Gospel in America,

1870–1920: Gladden, Ely, Rauschenbusch, ed. Robert T. Handy,pp. 268–73. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966.

1897 “The Ideals of Social Reformers.” In Social Gospel in America, ed.Handy, pp. 274–89.

1904 “The New Evangelism.” In Social Gospel in America, ed. Handy,pp. 323–30.

1907 Christianity and the Social Crisis. New York: Macmillan.1912 Christianizing the Social Order. New York: Macmillan.1916 The Social Principles of Jesus. London: International Committee of

Young Men’s Christian Associations.1917 A Theology for the Social Gospel. New York: Macmillan.

Works About Walter RauschenbuschHopkins, Charles Howard. The Rise of the Social Gospel in American

Protestantism, 1865–1915. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1940.Landis, Benson Y. A Rauschenbusch Reader: The Kingdom of God and the

Social Gospel. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.Minus, Paul M. Walter Rauschenbusch: American Reformer. New York:

Macmillan, 1988.Sharpe, Dores Robinson. Walter Rauschenbusch. New York: Macmillan,

1942.Smucker, Donovan E. The Origins of Walter Rauschenbusch’s Social Ethics.

Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Univ. Press, 1994.Stackhouse, Max L., ed. Walter Rauschenbusch: The Righteousness of the

Kingdom. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1968. Part 3 has an extensivebibliography on Rauschenbusch, pp. 289–312.

reference to “giving me position or preferment” likely refers to twoincidents when he was initially considered for a position and thenrefused—a pastorate in Springfield, Illinois, and the presidency ofthe Telegu Theological Seminary at Ramapatnam, India. Hisbiographer D. R. Sharpe made an interesting point about the latteropportunity: “If he had gone as a missionary, one can imagine whattriumphs of faith would have been recorded, but then think of theloss to America and world Christianity. So, perhaps even the wrathor stupidity, or both perchance, of a theological professor was madean instrument of good” (Walter Rauschenbusch, p. 58).

16. Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch, pp. 221–22.17. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, pp. 61, 62.18. Ibid., pp. 63–64.19. Ibid., p. 65.20. Robert T. Handy, ed., The Social Gospel in America, 1870–1920: Gladden,

Ely, Rauschenbusch (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 290.21. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, pp. 84, 88; Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch,

p. 116.22. Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch, pp. 73, 141, 142.23. Ibid., p. 63.24. Walter Rauschenbusch, “The New Evangelism” (1904), in Social

Gospel in America, ed. Handy, p. 326.

25. Sharpe, Walter Rauschenbusch, p. 119.26. Walter Rauschenbusch, “Conceptions of Missions” (1892), in Social

Gospel in America, ed. Handy, p. 271.27. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (New York:

Macmillan, 1907), pp. 202–3.28. Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, pp. 90–91.29. Rauschenbusch, Social Principles of Jesus, p. 143.30. Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis, p. 339.31. Rauschenbusch, “New Evangelism,” p. 327.32. Charles Howard Hopkins, John R. Mott, 1865–1955: A Biography

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 417.33. Charles Howard Hopkins, The Rise of the Social Gospel in American

Protestantism, 1865-1915 (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1940), p. 300.34. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, pp. 178–84; Sharpe, Walter Rau-

schenbusch, pp. 385–92.35. Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York:

Macmillan, 1917), p. 4.36. Rauschenbusch, Social Principles of Jesus, p. 144.37. Rauschenbusch, Theology for the Social Gospel, pp. 4, 7.38. Minus, Walter Rauschenbusch, p. 187.

William H. Brackney, Professor of Religion and Director of the Program inBaptist Studies at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas, was formerly theprincipal of McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He isthe author of Christian Voluntarism: Theology and Praxis (Eerdmans,1997) and of historical works on Baptists.

Archibald Reekie (1862–1942), pioneer missionary toBolivia, remains historically important as well as a

significant symbol for continuing overseas missionary outreachin the Canadian context. As Canadian Baptists followed theirBritish and American cousins in establishing their overseasmissions in the nineteenth century, they produced a generationof stalwart entrepreneurs who served them well in several con-texts. A. B. Reekie was one of those “good knights in a newcrusade.”

Archibald Brownlee Reekie was born in Armow, KincardineTownship, in the province of Upper Canada (later Ontario), June12, 1862. Kincardine borders Lake Huron and experiences con-

sistently harsh winters, characterized by deep snowfalls andbitter wind chills. The Lake Huron lands were passed over byearly settlers for better possibilities beyond the Lakes. Archibald’sfather, John Reekie, a farmer and sometime lumberman, wasdescended from Scottish immigrants, likely from Edinburgh,from which the family name is derived. His mother was AnneSinclair, the township’s first schoolmistress. The Reekie familywas poor, living during a pioneering era in one of the less arableand productive areas of Upper Canada, owing to its shortergrowing season and the relative isolation from markets. Malechildren were expected to contribute the labor force on smallfarms, and Archibald and his siblings fulfilled this expectationwell—indeed until he was almost thirty years old. His schoolingwas interrupted several times, and for years it seemed he wouldinherit his father’s livelihood as a small-time, struggling farmer.Child mortality was high; in Archibald’s youth he nearly suc-cumbed to a fever, and one of his cousins died from complica-tions following a winter baptism.

The Legacy of Archibald B. Reekie

William H. Brackney


Laying a Spiritual Foundation

Two influences redirected Archibald’s future. First was his dreamof faraway places, and the second was his Christian conversion.His biographers and siblings tell of his early interest in geogra-phy, particularly that of Latin America. He read voraciously. Asensitive young person, at sixteen years old he witnessed thedeath and funeral of his local pastor, which profoundly affectedhim. In fact, a call to full-time Christian service began to takeshape as a result.

In 1891 Reekie’s life changed dramatically toward the real-ization of his youthful dreams. He reentered Kincardine HighSchool and then Woodstock College in southern Ontario, wherehe qualified for university studies. From Woodstock he enteredMcMaster University in Toronto, the provincial Baptist institu-tion of higher education, founded only a few short years before.

Self-supporting schoolshad been Reekie’s originalplan, and he relentlesslypursued that goal in eachBolivian city in which heministered.

As an older student, he took the English Bible course in preparingfor the ministry. His curriculum was a three-year program thatterminated in a diploma, rather than a degree, which fullyqualified him for ordination in the Baptist Convention of Ontarioand Quebec.

At McMaster he was able to engage in field education, whichplaced him in churches in the Toronto area during term time andin the summer months in missionary placements in the CanadianWest. In places across the province of Manitoba like Pilot Mound,Boissevain, and Ninga, Reekie learned how to conduct personalevangelism and plant new congregations under difficult circum-stances. He also took more time to read and write on the subjectof Latin America.

During the academic summer recess of 1896, Reekie took thebold step of exploring the possibilities of commencing a LatinAmerican mission. He collected funds from his fellow studentsand made contacts in the Toronto diplomatic community. Fi-nally, he developed a bold “prospecting” plan to actually visitSouth America. For six months he traveled the Atlantic andPacific oceans, encountering oppressive heat in the Isthmus ofPanama, climbing snow-capped mountains in Peru, and realiz-ing his total inadequacy in the Spanish language. At length hecrossed Lake Titicaca and reached La Paz, sold enough Bibles forhis return passage, and surveyed the possibilities. Returningthrough Lima, Peru, Reekie boarded with evangelical missionar-ies who discouraged his plans as they observed his languagedeficiencies and unfamiliarity with the culture. Undaunted,Reekie returned to McMaster and was confident of his call to bea missionary. His travel journal for the exploratory trip, completewith financial notations, is an exemplary piece of missionalia atthe turn of the century.

Reekie’s dream soon became an obsession in the halls ofMcMaster. His professors encouraged his call, and other friendswere drawn to the possibility of missionary work. Through the

Fyfe Missionary Society, named for the first principal at McMaster,Reekie presented lectures on South America. He communicatedalso with local churches and, before long, captured the attentionof the Foreign Mission Board of the Baptist Convention of Ontarioand Quebec. He published a series of articles on religion in LatinAmerica in the Canadian Baptist that further raised the conscious-ness of the denomination.

Due to uncertainty about funding, the annual meeting of theBaptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec in 1897 at London,Ontario, proved to be a trial for Reekie but ultimately led to goodin unforeseen ways. He hoped for approval to launch a self-funded mission, and he campaigned among the delegates to thatend. Praying throughout the sessions of the assembly, and withhelp from a keynote speaker, Reekie and the proponents of a newmission won approval and modest support for a Bolivian mis-sion. This was not an easy decision, as Canadian Baptists hadinvested heavily in their only field in India and were consider-ably in debt when Reekie’s proposal was proffered. Churchesand individuals were newly excited about missions and pledgedtheir support not only to Bolivia, but also to liquidating the Indiadebt. The 1897 Convention would long be remembered as the“Bolivia Convention.”

Over the next nine months, Reekie canvassed the churches ofthe Convention and secured the necessary travel documents tomove to Bolivia. He was ordained at the prestigious Bloor StreetBaptist Church in Toronto with the enthusiastic endorsement ofhis entire university faculty, a necessary step in the credentialingprocess. He managed to graduate from McMaster with a di-ploma, apparently distracted from his best academic efforts bythe prospects of Latin America. When he finally departedToronto’s Union Station on March 4, 1898, with a warm send-offby many students, pastors, and dignitaries, he doubtless gavethanks to God for allowing him to pick up his delayed dream. Hewas almost thirty-six years old.

Getting Under Way in a New Field

When he arrived in Bolivia to set up his mission in 1898, Reekiemoved quickly to organize a school. He was an entrepreneur atheart; the plan he developed on his exploratory trip in 1896 calledfor teaching English to support evangelical work. Through classesand personal witness, Reekie expected God to bring new con-verts into the kingdom. In Oruro there was sufficient opportu-nity to teach English, both to Bolivians and to foreigners whowere there as engineers and construction workers, plus theirfamilies. This work also became an ideal means for the mission-ary to learn Spanish himself.

Though Reekie had few personal converts, soon the workprospered through churches he organized and his reports to theboard back in Ontario generated more interest. In 1899 RobertRoutledge (1870–1961) arrived in Bolivia, followed by Charles N.Mitchell (1866–1917) in 1900, Archibald Baker (1875–1953) in1903, and Freeman J. Scott in 1907. Thereafter a steady stream ofappointments to Bolivia were made and sustained for severaldecades. Almost without exception, the missionaries to Boliviawere McMaster alumni, some with histories of negative personalrelations with Reekie. Dormitory life in the university had pro-duced both close ties and personal competition.

As several generations of biographers have shown, Reekiepossessed all of the boldness and impetuosity of a pioneer. Hisyears of self-reliance in Ontario had inured him to hardships andcriticism. He was intolerant of others, a harsh taskmaster, and apoor correspondent with his superiors. More than once he found

81April 2004

himself in difficulty with the board over financial overextensionsand inadequate credit provisions. He moved boldly in construc-tion projects and answered questions later. He was also uncom-promising about the nature of the mission in Bolivia beingeducational. Self-supporting schools had been his original plan,and regardless of others, he relentlessly pursued that goal in eachBolivian city in which he ministered. Apparently Reekie re-sented the appointment of female missionaries and related tothem with a characteristic coolness. Human relations became soproblematic in 1907–8 that the board launched an investigationthat tarnished the pioneer’s reputation.

Reekie’s bachelor status was well suited to the hardshipshe endured early in Oruro. His rented housing was a meager,dark, earthen-floored, street-level adobe structure from whichhe experienced urban life at its noisiest and dirtiest. For his firstterm, his sole companion was a cat. When his colleagues theArchibald Bakers joined him in Oruro, they found that Reekiehad one dry well, one black pig, and one little black hen. But hewas energetically involved in building and teaching. At least oneof the single female missionaries who arrived after 1905 com-mented that Reekie’s lack of order and cleanliness was a poortestimony.

During a return to Canada in 1905–6 on furlough, he marriedJeanette (Jean) Manzer of Midland, Ontario. Two months laterthe couple resumed Archibald’s work in Bolivia. In order tofacilitate another missionary couple and to accommodate Jean’saltitude sickness, the Reekies moved to Cochabamba, whichfeatured a lower altitude and more pleasant setting. The pleas-antness was short-lived, however, as opposition to Protestantsset in; at one point, Mrs. Reekie was struck in the face in an attackof rock-throwing. The Reekie family suffered perhaps theirgreatest tragedy in the loss of their firstborn son, AlexanderGrant Reekie, a victim of diphtheria. A large consolation was thebirth of their second child, Earl, born three days after his brother’sdeath.

As time went on, Mrs. Reekie’s compatibility with Boliviabecame more problematic. It is clear from correspondence thatthe couple disagreed about a calling to Bolivian missionarywork; Jeanette was emotionally unprepared to remain in SouthAmerica. In 1911 she left Bolivia, never to return, althoughArchibald hoped otherwise. He was again a bachelor house-keeper for two years, moving between Oruro, Cochabamba, andLa Paz, before returning to Canada in 1913.

In 1914, as both the Canadian board and the Reekies reas-sessed their circumstances, Archibald spent a short term in Cubaunder the auspices of the American Baptist Home Mission Soci-ety. While his work there was generally well regarded, theclimate was oppressively hot for a Canadian, and he returned toToronto in 1916. The political uncertainties of World War I, plusseparation from the family, made the Reekies’ plans indefinite.Archibald even considered volunteering for a chaplaincy over-seas, but he concluded that South America was his field.

Inevitably, Reekie’s career on the mission field came to anend. Problems with the physical and emotional fitness of JeanetteReekie, the leadership transition to younger missionaries, andArchibald’s own intractable stances led to an amicable parting ofthe ways in 1921. The board recalled Reekie’s work with deepappreciation and approved a modest annual pension of $520 peryear. Reekie assumed the pastorate of five different congrega-tions over the next twenty-one years. Life in small churches waskinder to Jeanette than the heights of the Andes; her musical andorganizational skills were a perfect match for Archibald’s pulpitand educational emphases.

Reekie’s Ongoing Legacy

In the early stages of his work in Bolivia, Reekie’s exploits werechronicled in the denominational press as well as in numerousmission study books about Bolivia. By 1910 he was known acrossCanada as the Pioneer. Stories about Reekie’s trials had directinfluence upon new potential candidates for service, notablyAlexander Haddow (1883–1947) and Norman Dabbs (1912–49).

A second aspect of the Reekie legacy was the broadening ofCanadian Baptist overseas involvement from essentially a singu-lar commitment to India (where they had worked in conjunctionwith American Baptists and later in their own right) to multiplefields, as limited resources allowed. As the Baptist family ofchurches across Canada grew in the twentieth century, Boliviabecame the first of more overseas interests in Africa, the Carib-bean, and Europe. In its context, Bolivia was a confidence builder.

Third, Reekie created in Bolivia a uniquely Canadian Baptistfield. At the end of the nineteenth century, Baptists across Canadawere moving steadily toward establishing themselves as a na-tional entity and an evangelical voice in their own right overseas.This growth had its difficulties, including competition with otherProtestants on potential fields, and the economic need to workwith other Baptists, notably the American Baptist MissionaryUnion. It was a bold step in 1870 when what evolved as a

Canadian Baptist Board of Missions was independently orga-nized and Canadians assumed the support of several stations inIndia. The possibility of a new work in Bolivia was daunting tomany in Canada in 1898 and a creative step of faith to a significantfew. Over the nine decades of enlarged support for the CanadianBaptist mission in Bolivia, Bolivians and Canadians exercised ahigh degree of spiritual camaraderie and ownership in eachother. As financial stresses and different paradigms of missionled to reduced support for Bolivia in the 1960s down to a minimalCanadian staff in the 1990s, sadness and resentment emerged inboth Bolivia and Canada.

Archibald Reekie’s denominational identity as a Baptist lefta deep impression in Bolivia. Reekie had learned well in his localand regional settings in Canada of the importance of congrega-tional autonomy to church development and of evangelisticpreaching. From professors like Albert H. Newman at McMaster,he imbibed a heritage of religious liberty and democraticdecision-making. In Bolivia Reekie and his successors followedthe political achievements of the Liberal Party in governmentreforms and assisted in the development of local institutionssuch as schools for ordinary citizens. His choice of a mining citylike Oruro for his mission beginnings over La Paz or Sucre, wheremore Conservative forces ruled, demonstrated his democraticpolitical savvy. As pioneers of Protestants, Baptists created a newmeaning for soul liberty and the priesthood of all believers in theface of centuries-old Catholic institutions. And, in due course, itwould be the Baptists who led in democratic land reforms atHuatahata, where peasants were given ownership shares ofagricultural lands. Bolivian Baptists in succeeding generations ofthe twentieth century evolved as a progressive evangelizingcommunity with social concern.

Reekie’s denominationalidentity as a Baptist left adeep impression in Bolivia.

Selected BibliographyReekie’s personal papers, local church minutes, student records, and theofficial records of the Canadian Baptist mission in Bolivia are in theCanadian Baptist Archives at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton,Ontario. There is a small collection of letters pertaining to his Cubaexperience in the correspondence files of the American Baptist HomeMission Society in the American Baptist Historical Society in ValleyForge, Pennsylvania. In Bolivia there are local church records andmission records pertaining to Reekie and his era in the historical papersof the Bolivian Baptist Union (UBB) and the Seminario Bautista Bolivianain Cochabamba.

Works by ReekieA. B. Reekie did not write any full-length works. His journalistic accom-

plishments were five articles published in 1897 in the CanadianBaptist. These articles exhibit not only his emerging theology andmissiology but also a contemporary North American’s perceptionof Latin American history and culture.

March 25: “The Indians of South America.”April 8: “South America After Three Centuries of Roman Catholic

Domination.”April 22: “The Darkness of Bolivia.”May 6: “Openings for Mission Work in Bolivia.”May 20: “Encouragements for Mission in Bolivia.”

Note1. This appraisal of Archibald B. Reekie’s legacy is drawn from my

account of his life and ministry, “A Good Knight in a New Crusade:Archibald Reekie and the Origins of Canadian Baptist Witness in

Bolivia,” in Bridging Cultures and Hemispheres: The Legacy of ArchibaldReekie and Canadian Baptists in Bolivia, ed. William H. Brackney(Macon, Ga.: Smyth & Helwys, 1997), pp. 1–35.

From the perspective of personnel policy, Reekie’s situationproved to be influential. The board in Toronto, thousands ofmiles distant from Bolivia, was forced to develop policies thatresponded adequately to human-resource disagreements. Con-cern for the ongoing health and fitness of Jeanette Reekie enabledthe leadership to discern the proper role of spouses in appoint-ments. And finally, as Reekie’s career wound to its conclusion,his negotiations over furlough employment and an adequatepension set patterns for generations to come.

Assessment

The story of Reekie’s life as a missionary could hardly be charac-terized as hagiography. His personality quirks and his tensionswith both board and missionary colleagues were hard to maskand sometimes greatly embarrassing to the board. As time wenton, the historical accounts became more candid about his prob-lems. Successive generations of missionaries to Bolivia wereoriented to both sides of “Reekie the pioneer.” In early writtenhistories of Canadian Baptist missions, authors made little at-tempt to disguise the problems encountered and caused in thefirst stages of the Bolivian mission. Canadian Baptists came toaccept that missionaries could be saints with feet of clay.

In Bolivia the legacy of Archibald Reekie stands out. Hiswork is recalled in establishing the congregation and construct-ing the building for the Primera Iglesia Bautista de Cochabamba,the oldest Protestant church edifice in the country. In Oruro, still

largely a mining community, the outstanding parochial school isthe Reekie School, named by the mission board in his honor in1921. In the centennial celebrations of 1998, Archibald Reekieachieved a kind of cult status in Canada as pilgrims retraced hisoriginal journeys, preached at sites mentioned in his journals,

The story of Reekie’s lifeas a missionary couldhardly be characterizedas hagiography.

wrote histories and biographies in English and Spanish defend-ing his right to be remembered as the pioneer, and launched newinitiatives of mission in his name.

Reekie spent his last years in the quiet context of a retirementpastoral ministry. After serving in a number of small Ontariovillage churches during the Great Depression, he finished hiscourse in Acton, west of Toronto. In the midst of a ragingblizzard, Archibald Reekie died on February 1, 1942, of a stroke.He was buried in White Chapel Cemetery in West Hamilton,Ontario, under a marker with the simple message, “PioneerMissionary to Bolivia.”

Works About ReekieBell, Inez. The Kantuta Blooms in Bolivia. Toronto: Canadian Baptist

Foreign Mission Board, 1971.Brackney, William H., ed. Bridging Cultures and Hemispheres: The Legacy

of Archibald Reekie and Canadian Baptists in Bolivia. Macon, Ga.:Smyth & Helwys, 1997.

Dabbs, Norman. Dawn over the Bolivian Hills. Toronto: Canadian BaptistForeign Mission Board, 1952.

Deiros, Pablo A. Historia del Christianismo en America Latina. BuenosAires: Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamerica, 1992.

Nacho, Arturo, comp., and Rodríguez Jaime Goytia, ed. Principios de laobra Bautista en Bolivia. Cochabamba: Imprenta Offset, 1985.

Phillips, David B. “Protestantism in Bolivia to 1952.” M.A. thesis, Uni-versity of Calgary, 1968.

Pierce, W. Lloyd. “Archibald Brownlee Reekie, 1862–1942.” B.D. thesis,McMaster University, 1952.

Prien, Hans-Jürgen. La historia del Christianismo en Latin America.Salamanca: Sigueme, 1985.

Stillwell, Herbert. Pioneering in Bolivia. Toronto: Canadian Baptist For-eign Mission Board, 1922. It was Stillwell who created the idea ofReekie as a prospector.

Turnbull, Johnson. From Mule to Jet in Bolivia. Toronto: Baptist Women’sMissionary Society, 1971.


Book ReviewsA Chinese Contribution toEcumenical Theology: SelectedWritings of Bishop K. H. Ting.

Edited by Janice Wickeri and Philip Wickeri.Geneva: WCC Publications, 2002. Pp. xii,115. SFr 22 / €15 / £8.95 / $12.95.

Christian churches in mainland Chinahave experienced significant changes inrecent years. As the editors of this volumenote, “There has been a consolidation of‘post-denominational’ Protestantism; asteady growth in Bible printing andreligious publishing; the opening orreopening of churches all across thecountry; the replacement of agingseminary campuses with new facilities;the building of new seminaries; a rise ofinterest in Christianity among non-Christian intellectuals and scholars ofreligion; and the initiation of health care,education and rural development projectsrun by the Amity Foundation” (p. vii).

In great part, these changes occurredthanks to the intellectual and pastoralleadership of K. H. Ting (Ding Guangxun).Born in 1915, Ting was ordained anAnglican priest in 1942. During theJapanese occupation (1937–45) he servedas pastor of Shanghai’s CommunityChurch. In 1946 Ting and his wife, Siu-May Kuo (d. 1995), left for North America,where he served as mission secretary forthe Canadian Student ChristianMovement. After obtaining an M.A. fromUnion Theological Seminary in New York,Ting went to Geneva to work as missionsecretary for the World Student ChristianFederation.

In 1951 the Tings returned to China.In 1953 Ting became principal of the newlyestablished Nanjing Union Theological

Seminary. He was elected to the standingcommittee of the Three-Self PatrioticMovement (TSPM) in 1954, and in 1955was consecrated bishop of the Anglicandiocese of Chekiang (Zhejiang).

Ting was a committed supporter ofthe TSPM, convinced that Christians andsocialists should collaborate for thecommon good of China and the Chinesechurch. After the Cultural Revolution(1966–76), Ting reemerged as thepreeminent leader of Chinese ProtestantChristians. In 1980 he became president ofthe China Christian Council (CCC) andthe reinstituted TSPM. In 1985 Ting helpedfound the Amity Foundation, anongovernmental organization initiatedby Chinese Christians to promote health,education, social service, and ruraldevelopment in China. He also traveledextensively to meet with church leadersall over the world. In 1991 Ting led aChinese delegation to Canberra, wherethe CCC joined the World Council ofChurches. In 1997 Ting retired from hisleadership of the CCC and TSPM.

The book under review is edited byJanice and Philip Wickeri, the former atranslator and the editor of the ChineseTheological Review, and the latter FloraLamson Hewlett Professor of Mission andEcumenism at San Francisco TheologicalSeminary. It contains some early sermonsand meditations, as well as some morerecent essays. It is a useful complement to

an earlier collection of Ting’s writings, NoLonger Strangers (ed. Ray Whitehead [OrbisBooks, 1989]).

The editors point out that Ting’stheology has been influenced by threefactors: the changing Chinese context, theecumenical movement, and Anglicantheology of the 1930s (p. x). The selections,preceded by the editors’ helpfulsummaries, nicely illustrate these threeinfluences. The following selections inparticular show theological depth,spiritual passion, and historical interest:“Does God Call Us?” “On ChristianTheism,” “A Rationale for Three-Self,”“The Cosmic Christ,” and “My View ofThese Fifty Years.”

K. H. Ting is a controversial figure,and his theology and activities have beencriticized, especially by conservativeChinese Christians. Readers can be grate-ful that the Wickeris have offered us theopportunity to become better acquaintedwith Ting’s thought and life. I stronglyrecommend this book for courses oncontemporary Chinese Christianity.

—Peter C. Phan

Peter C. Phan, Ignacio Ellacuría Professor of CatholicSocial Thought at Georgetown University,Washington, D.C., has written extensively onAsian Christianity, most recently In Our OwnTongues: Asian Perspectives on Mission andInculturation (2003).

The Quest for Russia’s Soul:Evangelicals and Moral Educationin Post-Communist Russia.

By Perry L. Glanzer. Waco, Tex.: Baylor Univ.Press, 2002. Pp. x, 234. $29.95.

Responding to the collapse of the SovietUnion and its official atheism, Westernevangelicals managed in 1991 to securethe collaboration of key officials in theRussian Ministry of Education for aprogram of technological andhumanitarian assistance that includedauthorization to work with Christianeducation and moral instruction in Russianschools. These evangelicals, led by Paul

Eshleman of Campus Crusade for Christand the Jesus Film Project, organizedthemselves as “CoMission” to targetRussian schoolteachers. The missionaryeffort that ensued and the conflictsengendered are the subjects of PerryGlanzer’s book.

The project was foredoomed by theradically conflicting goals of the respectiveparties. Protestant evangelicals in

CoMission, seeking to proselytize inRussia, anticipated 12,000 missionariesand billed the project as the greatestmissionary church-planting effort of thetwentieth century. Russian ministryofficials, whose motives remain obscure,probably sought to uplift the dispiritedranks of Russian schoolteachers bysecuring computer and related Westerncurricular support. By 1992–93CoMission’s International Schools Projectbrought close to 400 non-Russian-speakingmissionaries into Russian schools for“Jesus” film showings, follow-upconvocations, and Bible study meetings.Glanzer seeks to document the personalimpact of the mission in converting

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Russian teachers. Despite CoMission’sefforts to co-opt Russian church supportby providing technological and financialassistance for the Orthodox University inMoscow, the Moscow Patriarchateultimately could not countenance theaffront of such open Protestantproselytizing in the Orthodox heartland.The ensuing Russian church opposition toforeign missionaries culminated in itschallenge to the landmark 1990 legislationon religious liberty. In 1997 Russia’sParliament enacted a far more restrictivelaw, “On Freedom of Conscience and onReligious Associa-tions.” The irony is thatalthough limited CoMission programmingcontinues in Russia, CoMissionproselytizing helped to drive the very 1997restrictions on religious associations thatultimately spelled its own demise.

Glanzer, visiting professor at Russian-American Christian University in Moscow,tries to provide a balanced assessment. Heaccepts Walter Sawatsky’s critique ofmisguided Western evangelicalism,notably its lack of an ecclesiology. Butsome of the Protestant bromides aboutOrthodoxy’s preoccupation with“suffering” and its failure to offer religiousinstruction in an understandable idiomcontribute to the half-truths that obscureWestern understanding of Russianspirituality today.

—Stephen K. Batalden

Stephen K. Batalden, who writes on the history ofmodern Russian biblical translation, is Professor ofHistory and Director of the Russian and EastEuropean Studies Center at Arizona StateUniversity.

Back to Jerusalem: Called toComplete the Great Commission.

By Paul Hattaway, Brother Yun, Peter XuYongze, and Enoch Wang. Carlisle, Eng.:Piquant, 2003. Pp. xiv, 178. Paperback $11.99.

Back to Jerusalem presents a missionaryagenda shared by three major networks ofautonomous (“house”) churches in China:to complete the Great Commission bytaking the Christian Gospel westwardfrom China, through the Buddhist, Hindu,and Muslim regions of Asia and the MiddleEast and, ultimately, “back to Jerusalem.”Paul Hattaway, the founder and directorof Asia Harvest, is the principal writer ofthe book, but through most of it he claimsto be acting as interpreter for the leaders ofthe networks in question, Brother Yun,Peter Xu Yongze, and Enoch Wang.

The twelve short chapters fall intothree parts. The first summarizes ChineseProtestant church history and thedevelopment of a vision for missiontoward the west in some Protestant circlesbefore the Communist Party came topower in 1949. The middle chapters pre-sent the testimonies of the three Chinesecoauthors and show how their movementsshifted from a stance of rivalry to one ofcooperation in the mid-1990s, joiningtogether around the goal of sending out100,000 workers from China in the “backto Jerusalem” movement. The last fivechapters discuss the missionary strategiesthey plan to adopt, focusing on thereadiness of Chinese Christians to sufferfor the Gospel and their noninstitutionalmethods of church planting (“we won’tbuild a single church building anywhere,”p. 109). They also present a call to thechurches in other lands to reconsecratethemselves to missionary work.

It is apt that the book opens with a1902 quotation from John Mott on thepotential importance of China to the futureof Christianity. The missionary agendapresented in this book is reminiscent ofthe enthusiasm of Mott’s era for “theevangelization of the world in thisgeneration,” although very different in itsmethods of work. The book is highlyreadable, and the movement it details is ofpotential importance for the readers ofthis journal, depending on to what extentthe goals outlined here come to fruition.

—Ryan Dunch

Ryan Dunch is Associate Professor of ChineseHistory at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton,Canada. He has published Fuzhou Protestantsand the Making of a Modern China, 1857–1927(Yale Univ. Press, 2001).

Pride, Faith, and Fear: Islam inSub-Saharan Africa.

By Charlotte A. Quinn and Frederick Quinn.New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003. Pp. vii,175. $27.50.

This book is based on extensive tours ofvarious parts of Africa by Charlotte (whodied in 2000) and Frederick Quinn. Itcombines keen observations and the useof case studies to interpret Islam to Western

decision makers. From West Africa, wherethe Muslim population is estimated ateighty million, the Quinns considerNigeria, which has a strong Muslimpresence locked in fierce competition withnon-Muslims, and Senegal, where theurban elite face acute economic collapseand rebellious youths. From the Horn ofAfrica they profile the Sudanese militaryrulers, who are embroiled in a costly waragainst the Christian south, where thecountry’s minerals are located. In easternAfrica, where 40 percent of the populationis Muslim, mostly Shi‘ites, the authorsfocus on Kenya, where a resentful minorityin the coastal towns chafes under politicaldomination by Christians. Finally, theylook at South Africa, where a Muslimminority, numbering about 4 million, issandwiched between Afrikaners and theindigenous people. The heterogeneousidentity of Islam is refracted throughcontrasting terrains, ethnicity, class,language, and relation to Sufism as it facesthe problem of adjusting to modernity.Overall, it fragments into four ideologicalcamps: secularists, progressives, tradi-tionalists, and fundamentalists.

The Quinns describe the rapid growthof Islam throughout Africa, with theattendant dysfunctional politicalconsequences. Instead of globalization,they highlight the “variety of localmanifestations and the importance of thenorth-south divide along the east-westaxis of the Sahara desert, as well as thepolitical implications of the contrastbetween Sufi and reformist beliefs andgenerational changes” (p. 7). Economiccollapse of African states, the failure tobridge the global-local divide, the use ofIslam as a collective identity signifier, anda perception of history that weaves mythsinto facts all combine to breed the rise ofIslamism, which is both an ideology and areligion of the dispossessed. The Quinnsconclude that the call for renewal andsocial justice by the proponents of ideologywill “over time appeal to many youngMuslims, especially if the economies ofAfrican states fail to improve” (p. 26).

The authors argue that Westerneconomic interests will benefit from theinternal divisions that neutralize the moresweeping aspects of the Islamist agenda.If the American experience in Iraq is anyindication, however, and if the defianceexhibited by Palestinian suicide bombersteaches us anything, this optimism maynot be warranted. The book, however, isreadable and sensitive, even as the subjectmatter is complex.

—Ogbu U. Kalu

Ogbu U. Kalu is the Henry Winters Luce Professorof World Christianity and Missions, McCormickTheological Seminary, Chicago. He is President ofthe Midwest Association of Professors of Mission.


Chinese Books and Documents inthe Jesuit Archives in Rome, aDescriptive Catalogue: Japonica-Sinica I–IV.

By Albert Chan, S.J. Armonk, N.Y.: Sharpe,2002. Pp. xliii, 626. $145.

Albert Chan, a Jesuit scholar, begancollecting Chinese books over sixty yearsago. He is renowned for assembling an80,000-volume library of Chinesematerials, now housed at the Ricci Institutefor Chinese-Western Cultural History atthe University of San Francisco. In 1970the director of the Jesuit Archives in Romeasked Chan to help catalog the Chinesebooks held in the Japonica-Sinica sectionof the archives. This volume, thirty yearsin the making, is the result; it was worththe wait.

Chinese books in the Jesuit Archivesconsist mainly of catechisms, prayer books,apologetics, and other religious tracts,many by Jesuit missionaries. The collectionalso holds works by Chinese lay Catholicsand non-Jesuit clergy. There are alsowritings, mostly philosophical, by non-Christians. (The very first work listed is aversion of the Xiaoxue [Elementarylearning] by the great thirteenth-centuryneo-Confucian philosopher Zhu Xi.)

This catalog comprises a list of thebooks and documents (xvii–xxxv), adescriptive catalog of these items (1–561),and indexes of titles, printing houses andpublishers, place-names, subjects, andnames of persons. The descriptive catalogentries provide bibliographic data,describe the format and condition of thebook, and summarize its contents. Theentries vary in length from a paragraph tothree or four pages.

The Jesuit Archives are a wonderfulresource for mission history. Chan’scatalog will greatly help those doingresearch in the archives on the Catholicmission in late imperial China.

—Robert Entenmann

Robert Entenmann, Professor of History at St. OlafCollege in Northfield, Minnesota, has written severalarticles and book chapters on Chinese Catholics ineighteenth-century Sichuan.

Handbook of Christianity in Japan.

Edited by Mark R. Mullins. Leiden: Brill,2003. (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Sec. 5Japan, 10.) Pp. x, 423. €99 / $124.

Christianity in Japan has had moreinfluence than its numbers would indicate.This Handbook of Christianity in Japan goesa long way toward explaining that

phenomenon. The editor, Mark R. Mullins,is a professor of religion in the Faculty ofComparative Culture, Sophia Univer-sity, Tokyo, Japan. He and the other seven-teen contributors to the volume have

all published works or completeddissertations previously in the area ofJapanese Christianity. Divided into threesections, the first traces the history ofChristianity in Japan; the second discussesthe influence of Christianity in Japanesesociety and culture; the final sectionprovides important information onarchives and resources in Japan for thestudy of Christianity.

Besides surveying the history fromthe first Roman Catholics in the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries to the advent of

85April 2004

I N T E RVA R S I T Y P R E S SAvai lable in stores or at www.ivpress.com.

GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY from InterVarsity Press

The Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective series, edited by David Smith with consulting editor John Stott, provides intercultural exposition of key tenets of Christian belief, written by leading international evangelical thinkers.

The New Global Mission: The Gospel from Everywhere to Everyone (Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective) by Samuel Escobar

“An insightful, careful, concise and passionate overview of the complex and constantly changing reality facing us all in the church’s mission today.”

Charles Van Engen, Professor of Biblical Theology of Mission, Fuller Theological Seminary

An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical & Contemporary Perspectives by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

“Professor Kärkkäinen continues his excellent theological cartography in this intelligent and illuminating survey of theologies of religions. Anyone who wants to explore this territory will find this map to be clear, compact and discerning—in short, invaluable.”John G. Stackhouse Jr., Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture, Regent College

Who Can Be Saved? Reassessing Salvation in Christ and World Religions by Terrance L. Tiessen

Terrance L. Tiessen reassesses the questions of salvation and the role of religions, offering a proposal that is biblically rooted, theologically articulated and missiologically sensitive.

(available March 2004)

192 pages, paper, 0-8308-3301-3, $13.00

372 pages, paper, 0-8308-2572-X, $29.00

511 pages, paper, 0-8308-2747-1, $27.00

all other Christian groups, the first sectionincludes chapters on imperialism andnationalism related to JapaneseChristianity, as well as theology in Japanand the history of Bible translations.Christian encounters with Buddhism andShinto open the second section, followedby Japan’s new religions as they relate toChristianity. Its influence on literature,education for women, social welfare, andpolitics fleshes out Christianity’s socialand cultural influence. Essays include

notes and a bibliography, allowing thereader to pursue each topic in more depth.

This handbook’s value lies in itssweeping nature with up-to-date sourcesfor a number of areas related to Christianityin Japan. After reading the work, onecomes away with a respect for the varietyand the deep roots of Japan’s Christianity.The reader also gains understanding ofthe difficulties the foreign religion posedat various junctures in Japan’s history. Itwill serve well as an introduction to the

broad topic of Japanese Christianity; thefine general bibliography along with thesources’ sites will lead researchers to theneeded materials.

—Ann M. Harrington

Ann M. Harrington, Associate Professor of Historyat Loyola University, Chicago, teaches Japanesehistory and Asian women’s history. Her publicationsinclude Japan’s Hidden Christians (Chicago,1993).

The Foreign Missionary Enterpriseat Home: Explorations in NorthAmerican Cultural History.

Edited by Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker.Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 2003.Pp. x, 332. $60.

These excellent essays chart significantchanges in the historiography of U.S. andCanadian missions, as historians growbold to correlate religious missions tolarger themes in social, diplomatic, andpopular cultural history, now freer to seemission personnel and their extendedfamilies as actors and agents in nationallife, beyond particular confessionaltraditions. Moving beyond the analysis ofmissions as ideology, these essays indicatedynamics too rarely acknowledged ascharacteristic of missions: self-criticism,doubt, and dissent, all due to the basictransformative nature of culturalexchange. These essays examine the broadeffect of missions on North America,whether involving those who raised funds,popularized, prayed, and sent loved onesabroad; those born on foreign fields; thoseconcerned with policy and politics; or thosewho heard what could be known and toldonly by those who had been abroad. Withwidening reach, the authors trace the manyways missions were employed, appro-priated, and interpreted “back home.” Formost North Americans, the wide worldwas known through immigrants andmissionaries.

Five essays are from the nationalperiod, six from the “high imperial” era,and four from the period since World WarII. Addressing topics spread worldwide,and crossing boundaries of race andconfession, these well-selected essays tellstories of growing complexity, deepeningambiguity, and continuous but changingpopular culture access and influence.

What remains is the continuing,enigmatic absence of current missionspersonnel. Tens of thousands currently inmissions remain as when John KingFairbanks described the missionary as “theinvisible man [sic] of American history.” If

it is true that the missionary must bemartyred or retired or remembered inorder to attain visibility, then we shouldhope the next generation of missionshistorians shows the skill and sophis-tication shown in these excellent essays,wisely funded by Pew and ably edited byDaniel Bays and Grant Wacker.

—Ken Sawyer

Ken Sawyer is Associate Professor of Church Historyat McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago.

The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ.Vol. 1.

Edited by Roman Malek, S.V.D. SanktAugustin, Ger.: Institut Monumenta Serica,2002. Pp. 391. €40.

This book is the first installment of aprojected four-volume account, chron-ologically arranged, of the widely differinginterpretations of Jesus in China from thesixth century to the twentieth. The ChineseFace of Jesus Christ is a fascinating collectionof value both to those interested in thehistory of China and to those concernedwith the current expansion of Christianityin Asia and Africa and in the inevitableinculturation and/or syncretism thatresults.

Roughly three-quarters of the book isdevoted to informative and fascinatingessays by specialists on medieval ChineseChristianity or Chinese religion, withpieces on Nestorian Christianity andManichaeism best illustrating how areceiving culture shapes a deliveredmessage. The remainder of the book

contains intriguing documents, such astwo Christianized sutras and a Nestorianhymn. However, the relevance to medievalChristianity of Livia Kohn’s excellentsummary of medieval Taoism is unclear,and it seems a stretch to read Christianallusions into a poem by the revered poetLi Bai.

The editor’s introductory essay isanalytically informative. In neither contentnor flavor, however, does it anticipate theenlightenment and delight awaiting thereader in the revelations provided in whatfollows. If the contents of the remainingvolumes are as consistently interesting asmost of the first, one hopes that the editorwill relax enough to share the joy in hissubsequent introductions.

The appearance of The Chinese Face ofJesus Christ at this moment in history is ofconsiderable importance. Christianity isgenerally declining in the West, but it isgrowing in most of Asia, including China.Beginning to learn of the earliest Christianorigins in China and what they led to is acritical step for those of us outside Chinain trying to grasp the full context of ChineseChristianity as it becomes increasinglyinfluential in the world church.

—Timothy Light

Timothy Light is Professor Emeritus of ComparativeReligion and Asian and Middle Eastern Languages,Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo,Michigan, and Chair of the Trustees, United Boardfor Christian Higher Education in Asia.

Freedom in the World, 2003: TheAnnual Survey of Political Rightsand Civil Liberties.

Edited by Adrian Karatnycky, Aili Piano, andArch Puddington. Washington, D.C.:Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Pp. 713. $75;paperback $29.95.

This volume is the thirtieth in FreedomHouse’s invaluable annual survey of


political liberties. We should all beencouraged by the positive trends thatthis report depicts. For the past manymonths we in the United States have beenliving with security as the highest value inour hierarchy of values, with all theattendant risks for loss of human rights.That said, however, it appears that tangibleprogress is being made worldwide.

There are inescapable problemsassociated with any such report. Specificsare sometimes lost in the need to becomprehensive. Verbal reports go directlyto numerical results, often without much,if any, analysis of the data. The ultimatenumbers, then, become something of ablunt instrument. The numbers assignedto political rights and civil liberties havebeen a trademark of this particularpublication. Their rationale has been asconsistent as the criticisms that are raisedagainst it. The process of quantifying thepreselected pieces of informationassembled in a coherent fashion is trickybusiness at best. The consistency withwhich this has been done over the lastthirty years, however, ameliorates at leastsome of the problems in this approach andoffers a credible assessment of what isactually taking place in the world. In otherwords, the “blunt instrument” might be anecessity of this kind of reporting andshould not unduly diminish ourappreciation for the Herculean effortneeded to assemble such a report.

This report differs from similarreports in the use of essays designed tocreate historical context before goingthrough the specific countries. This year’sessays, as in times past, are well-written,thoughtful pieces. I think, however, that amajor opportunity has been missed. At atime when new paradigms are beingconsidered, new rules are being called for,new challenges are being felt, the essayschosen are dated and disappointinglyunimaginative. Our world is goingthrough considerable upheaval with theconsequence that the issue of human rightsin general and in relation to religionspecifically figures much moreprominently in the geopolitical dynamic.Had the essays been more “cutting edged,”the report would have been improvedimmensely.

Freedom in the World, 2003 is acommendable contribution to thepermanent challenge of human rights. Asthe report itself suggests, this informationshould be used as one of many sources inapprising oneself of the human rightsreality in today’s world.

—Robert A. Seiple

Robert A. Seiple, formerly president of World Vision(1987–98) and the first ambassador-at-large forinternational religious freedom in the U.S. StateDepartment, is Chairman of the Board of the Institutefor Global Engagement, which he founded in 2000.

Who Are the Christians in theMiddle East?

By Betty Jane Bailey and J. Martin Bailey.Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. xii, 215.Paperback $20.

The Christians of the Middle East areprobably harder for outsiders tounderstand than Christians in any otherpart of the world, partly because of all thecomplexities and varieties created bytwenty centuries of Christian history

(including a great deal of involvement/interference from Europe and the West),and partly because of the political andreligious history of the region (includingIslam, the Crusades, and Zionism). Theauthors of this book, Betty Jane Bailey and

87April 2004

her husband, J. Martin Bailey, are ideallyplaced to write about the subject, since, asAmericans, they understand what peopleoutside the region need and want to knowand, as travelers who have visitedfrequently over many years, they haveworked hard to enter into the experienceof Middle Eastern Christians.

Part 1 deals with issues affecting thewhole region, while part 2 providesprofiles of all the different churchfamilies—Eastern Orthodox, OrientalOrthodox, Catholic, Evangelical

(Protestant), and Assyrian Church of theEast. Part 3 outlines the situation in eachcountry of the region, describing thecomposition of Christian communities, thehistorical background, contemporarycircumstances, and interfaith activities.There is a full index, and the cover carriesglowing commendations from DonaldWagner, Yvonne Haddad, Jonathan Bonk,and Kenneth Cragg.

This book is a worthy successor toNorman A. Horner’s RediscoveringChristianity Where It Began (1974). A flow

chart or diagram showing the relationshipof the different church families might havebeen a useful addition. Statistics arenotoriously difficult in the region, as thewriters acknowledge, and most of myChristian students in Lebanon wouldquestion the claim that “Christians nownumber just under 50 percent of the totalLebanese population of nearly threemillion” (p. 171); they would put the figurenearer to 35 percent. But this volume is asuperb service for all who want to knowabout Christians who have such a richhistory but face such a precarious anduncertain future. Those who can make thejourney to meet them in the flesh willenjoy exploring the human reality that liesbehind this perceptive and sensitiveintroduction.

—Colin Chapman

Colin Chapman has worked in the Middle East forseventeen years with the Church Mission Society.From 1999 to 2003 he was lecturer in Islamic studiesat the Near East School of Theology, Beirut, Lebanon.

Announcing the Kingdom: TheStory of God’s Mission in theBible.

By Arthur F. Glasser, with Charles E. VanEngen, Dean S. Gilliland, and Shawn B.Redford. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003. Pp. 400.Paperback $26.99.

“Evangelical missiology at its best.” Thuswrites former OMSC director and IBMReditor Gerald H. Anderson on the backcover of this volume. For many years adraft of this book was used at FullerSeminary’s School of World Mission (nowthe School of Intercultural Studies) as thetext for the course “Biblical Foundationsof Mission” (p. 14). Now with the help ofthree of Glasser’s former students andcolleagues, this draft has finally beenpublished. There certainly exist already anumber of biblical theologies of mission.Few, however, have the breadth and depthof Glasser’s study. This is clearly theproduct of a life’s work of reading,reflection, and prayer about the fact that“the whole Bible . . . is a missionary book”(p. 17).

Glasser guides the reader throughthe entire Bible, beginning with missionarymandates implicit in the creation narrativeand ending with Revelation’s vision that“God will triumph in history—finally andabsolutely” (p. 368). From start to finish,says Glasser, God is active in the worldcalling all creation into relation withGodself, calling Israel—and then theChristian community—to be partners inensuring that “all peoples on earth will be


blessed” (Gen. 12:3). As he expresses it:“Where Israel failed, the church is giventhe mandate. . . . Nothing is more importantin the divine order for the church thanmission into the world” (p. 26).

This book will be read with deepappreciation by evangelical Christians.Catholic readers, however, may encounterseveral difficulties. One will be Glasser’sacceptance of the historicity of the Genesisnarrative, particularly its first elevenchapters. Another may well be Glasser’ssincere and unabashed advocacy ofconverting the Jews. Such an attitudeCatholics would call supercessionist, onethat has been more finely nuanced byseveral recent Catholic documents andpapal actions. All Christians, however,will profit from the wisdom that is foundin these pages and from the convictionsarticulated by a scholar of evident faith.

—Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D.

Stephen B. Bevans, S.V.D., a contributing editorand a priest of the Society of the Divine Word(S.V.D.), is Louis J. Luzbetak, S.V.D., Professor ofMission and Culture at Catholic Theological Union,Chicago. He is coauthor of the forthcomingConstants in Context: A Theology of Missionfor Today (Orbis, 2004).

The Jesus Road: Kiowas,Christianity, and Indian Hymns.

By Luke Eric Lassiter, Clyde Ellis, and RalphKotay. Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2002.Pp. xii, 147. Paperback, including CD, $24.95.

Amid a growing number of studies ofNative American Christianity, The JesusRoad is a welcome look at the faith andexperience of the Kiowas of southwesternOklahoma. The collaborative effort ofLassiter, an anthropologist, Ellis, ahistorian, and Kotay, a Kiowa Christiansinger, makes this not only an informativeand readable text but also one that providesvaluable insight into the ways KiowaChristians have forged faithful andenduring communities that reflect boththeir Kiowa and their Christian identities.The history and life of Kotay’s homechurch, the Saddle Mountain Kiowa IndianBaptist Church, are set within the largerhistory of the Kiowas and theirmissionaries, who together shaped a“culturally flexible Christianity” (p. 54)empowered by native hymnody.

As in similar studies of other tribalnations, the longevity and vitality ofChristianity among the Kiowas is creditedto the use of indigenous leadership in thechurches, the reinforcement of Kiowavalues expressed in the language of thepeople and particularly native hymns, and

the central role of the church in fosteringcommunity identity. Kotay, whosecommentary and singing of Kiowa hymnson an accompanying CD are alone worththe price of the book, notes that the hymnsare seen as a word from God just forKiowas. He claims that the missionaries“brought us their songs with the Englishtunes, but they really didn’t catch on. Wehad our own way of singing. Actually, ourKiowa hymns are very similar to our GhostDance songs from way back” (p. 92). Thehymns are an indigenous expression of

faith that continues to link the singers totraditional Kiowa and Christian roots. Thisconnection raises interesting missiologicalissues concerning church revitalizationand the transmission and translation ofthe Gospel.

—Bonnie Sue Lewis

Bonnie Sue Lewis, Associate Professor of Missionand Native American Christianity at the Universityof Dubuque Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa,taught at the Inter-American School inQuezaltenango, Guatemala, from 1976 to 1979.

89April 2004

At your bookseller or direct:Visa/MC Order Online! www.maryknollmall.org

A World of Books that Matter

ORBIS BOOKSMaryknoll, NY 10545

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Diane B. Stinton

Jesus of AfricaVoices of Contemporary African Christology

Faith and Culture Series, Robert J. Schreiter, editor

“Should become standard reading of every student of African theology.” —JOHN S. POBEE

1-57075-537-X paper b/w photos $25.00

Laurenti Magesa

Anatomy of InculturationTransforming the Church in Africa

Examining inculturation in Scripture, cultural encounters from early Christianity to the present, and the practices of inculturation today, Laurenti Magesa explores how the church can root itself more intentionally in the African experience of God.

1-57075-529-9 paper $24.00

Stephen B. Bevans and Roger Schroeder

Constants in ContextA Theology of Mission for Today

American Society of Missiology Series

This historical survey of mission will help every Christian see their particular charism within the mosaic of historical witness to the Gospel. May.1-57075-517-5 paper $30.00

Joseph G. Healey

Once Upon a Time in AfricaStories of Wisdom and Joy

This inspiring collection of stories teaches the human heart about compassion, forgiveness, joy, peace, and unity: the relationship of human and non-human creation with the Creator. June.

1-57075-527-2 paper $15.00

MISSION IN AFRICA

Warriors of the Lord: The MilitaryOrders of Christendom.

By Michael Walsh. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,2003. Pp. 208. $30.

Michael Walsh, the librarian of HeythropCollege, London, is a distinguishedCatholic writer and broadcaster. In thisbook he first traces the theologicaldevelopment from a straightforwardpacifism among early Christians to thechurch’s support of a warrior class in the

high Middle Ages. This support was atfirst tempered by the desire to protectnoncombatants, to uphold the peacefulcelebration of holy seasons, and to forestallthe violation of holy places. The escalationof warfare in eleventh-century Europe,and in particular the attack on the Holy

Land by Zoroastrian Persians and MuslimTurks, led to the development of theconcept of the crusade, or holy war, for thedefense and extension of Christendom’sboundaries.

The military religious orders wereborn in the context of the Crusades. TheTemplars were founded to protect thepilgrims who visited Jerusalem after itsrecapture. The Hospitallers of St. Johnwere founded to provide hospitality andcare for poor pilgrims, later becomingKnights by a process of assimilation to theTemplars. Like the Hospitallers, theTeutonic Knights developed out of ahospice for the sick founded at Acre bycrusaders from Bremen.

After the siege of Acre and the fall ofthe Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, themilitary orders retreated to Europe andthe Mediterranean. The Teutonic Knightsextended Latin Christianity into the Balticcountries. The Templars and theirassociates became involved in thesuppression of European heresies and thereconquest of Spain from the Moors, whilethe Knights Hospitallers retreated toRhodes and Malta, being involved in landand sea battles to wrest control of theMediterranean from Islam. The Templarswere brutally suppressed in the fourteenthcentury. The Teutonic Knights fragmentedinto a religious society with Catholic andProtestant branches. The Knights of Maltabecame a medical and charitableassociation, with an Anglican counterpart.

Walsh helpfully lists the various otherreligious military orders but fails to includeCardinal Lavigerie’s Armed Brothers ofthe Sahara, the bizarre final project of thegreat missionary strategist in 1891–92. Thebook is popular narrative history, wellresearched and well illustrated. Its sizeand the number of its illustrations make itan attractive coffee-table book.

—Aylward Shorter, M.Afr.

Aylward Shorter, M.Afr., is Principal Emeritus ofTangaza College in the Catholic University of EasternAfrica, Nairobi, Kenya, and former president of theMissionary Institute, London.

U.K. Christian Handbook.

Edited by Peter Brierley. London: ChristianResearch, 2003. Pp. 176. £20.

Veteran Christian statistician PeterBrierley begins this helpful researchpublication by stating that this “is not abook to read straight through!”Nonetheless, this slim volume contains awealth of information on Christianity inthe United Kingdom. This is largely thanksto the British government’s decision to

Investing Your SUMMERin Research and Writing?

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(minimum of two weeks) at the

Overseas Ministries Study CenterNew Haven, Connecticut

Our accommodations, conveniently located across from YaleDivinity School and its renowned Day Missions Library, vary insize from efficiencies tocomfortable three-bedroom apartments. Adiscount is offered formembers of theAmerican Society ofMissiology, theAssociation ofProfessors of Mission,the InternationalAssociation for MissionStudies, and theInternational Associationof Catholic Missiologists.

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Interior of a one-bedroom apartment (below) in OMSC’s Great Commission Hall (above).


include a question on religion in the 2001census (after 150 years of no such question).The main value of this book lies in itsmeticulous unpacking and analysis of thatcensus data and its intersection withinformation gathered directly from thechurches. In particular, new informationon the churches of Scotland is presentedboth in tabular form and in full-color maps.For context, the editors begin the volumewith comparative demographic andreligious statistics related to EuropeanUnion countries (and a special pagededicated to Malta). An added value isfound in the section “Religious Trends,”where many variables are examined overtime. This volume is the fourth in theReligious Trends series and, so far at least,unmistakably the best.

The researchers were clearlysurprised by some statistics (72 percent ofthe population describe themselves asChristians) and discouraged by others,particularly low church attendancefigures. Astute readers will have to decidefor themselves what the numbers actuallymean for the future of Christianity andreligion. Between the snapshot this volumeoffers of religion in the United Kingdomand the many trends that are analyzed,this volume is a must for anyone whowants quantitative evidence to weigh themany qualitative prognosticationscurrently in vogue about religion inEurope.

—Todd M. Johnson

Todd M. Johnson, Director of the Center for theStudy of Global Christianity, Gordon-ConwellTheological Seminary, South Hamilton,Massachusetts, is coauthor of World ChristianEncyclopedia, 2d ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001),and World Christian Trends (William CareyLibrary, 2001).

Enlarging the Story: Perspectiveson Writing World ChristianHistory.

Edited by Wilbert R. Shenk. Maryknoll, N.Y.:Orbis Books, 2002. Pp. xvii, 142. Paperback$16.

In 1800 fully 87 percent of professingChristians lived in Europe or NorthAmerica. Now only some 40 percent havetheir homes in those regions. Christianityhas changed from being a Western to beinga non-Western religion. The editor of thisvolume, Wilbert R. Shenk, professor ofmission history and contemporary cultureat Fuller Theological Seminary, hasassembled a short collection ofprogrammatic essays, the fruit of a 1998symposium, in an attempt to grapple with

the implications of this shift for churchhistory.

The burden of the message isconveyed, eloquently and elegantly, byAndrew Walls in the first paper. How, heasks, can the history of Christianity bepurged of the impression that the religionis a phenomenon of the Western world?Part of the remedy lies in recognizing thatWestern dominance was only a phase,lasting less than five centuries. There wasa time when the faith spread just as rapidlyeastward as westward from its base in

Palestine, putting down roots in thePersian Empire as well as in the RomanEmpire. Accordingly, the church historysyllabus must be revised so as to recognizethat Africa and Asia have protractedChristian pasts. The message is reinforcedin essays written by specialists on India(A. Mathias Mundadan), China (PhilipYuen-Sang Leung), and Africa (LaminSanneh). A further essay (by Gerald J.Pillay) urges that any specific events inparticular places should be seen againstthe backdrop of the universal sweep of

)

Christianity’s World Mission would be less intimidating and more manageableif everyone spoke the same language, followed the same customs and

viewed life the same way. That idyllic world, however, is not the world Christcalls us to engage.

The real world features at least a dozen major cultural families and morethan 2,000 religions, 6,000 languages and 30,000 distinct societies and cul-tures. There are also an unknown (and shifting) number of sub-cultures,counter-cultures and peoples with their own distinct name, history and iden-tity. Furthermore, secularization has transformed Western nations into “mis-sion fields” once again.

Several fields of knowledge prepare the effective missionary to “exegete”the biblical text and people’s cultural context. These literatures are as neces-sary, and as sophisticated, as the literatures that prepare physicians to makesense of an epidemic, or astronomers of a galaxy. Asbury’s ESJ School willprepare you to understand the historical, cultural and religious contexts ofthe field of mission to which Christ has called you, and to serve, communi-cate and help grow the indigenous Church in that place.

So if you are interested in making sense of a piece of the world, and in help-ing its people make sense of the Christian gospel, call the admissions office todayat 1-800-2-ASBURY or e-mail us at [email protected].

Darrell WhitemanDean, Anthropology,

Indigenous Christianity

Ron CrandallEvangelism, Small Churches,

Church Planting

Eunice IrwinPrimal Religions,

Contextual Theology

George HunterChurch Growth,

Communication, Leadership

Howard SnyderHistory of Mission,Theology of Mission

Mike RynkiewichAnthropology

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Terry MuckWorld Religions,

Buddhism & Christianity

Russell WestLeadership Education

91April 2004

Christian history, a solution echoed in aconcluding essay that reflects a paneldiscussion.

The challenge of this volume needs tobe heeded. Over several years down to2001 a global project called Currents inWorld Christianity tried to wrestle withthese issues. This project filled a vital role.Will its like be seen again?

—David W. Bebbington

David W. Bebbington is Professor of History at theUniversity of Stirling, Scotland.

Frontiers of African Christianity:Essays in Honour of Inus Daneel.

Edited by Greg Cuthbertson, Hennie Pretorius,and Dana Robert. Pretoria: Univ. of SouthAfrica Press, 2003. Pp. xxii, 313. Paperback$18.80.

Part 1 contains eight short essays reflectingon the life and work of Inus Daneel. Bothhis academic colleagues and his Shonapartners of the African IndependentChurches (AICs) of Zimbabwe rightly

acclaim him as the preeminent AIC fieldresearcher in Africa. They appraise histhirteen books on independency andAfrican religion in Zimbabwe as “thequintessence of all AIC studies today” (p.118). Especially acclaimed is his creativepartnership with both traditional spiritmediums and Christian prophets in the1990s to replant the trees and restore theland.

Part 2 contains ten essays on AICstudies and African religions by Daneel’sacademic colleagues and former students.Together they provide a kaleidoscope ofcurrent scholarship in southern Africa.Stan Nussbaum argues that as self-founding or self-initiating churches, theAICs critique the old missionary three-selfformula—self-government, self-support,and self-propagation. Allan Andersoncompares healing in the Zion Christianchurches of South Africa and in those ofZimbabwe, the latter researched byDaneel.

Tinyiko Maluleke, Daneel’s successorat the University of South Africa, identifiesa “general crisis in theology” inpostapartheid South Africa, expressed as“uncertainty about the relevance oftheology to ordinary people” (p. 173).Maluleke reviews research on the AICsand other grassroots communities, mainlyby white researchers, including Daneel,and calls for a rapprochement betweenAfrican theologians and AIC researchers.

Frontiers also includes vistas inshadow. Notably absent from the volumeare contributions by Zimbabweans fromoutside the AICs. Why was a prophetictheology missing from the trainingprogram of the AICs? What changes tookplace in the roles and leadership ofwomen? How was leadership affected bythe infusion of large funding fromoverseas? These questions remainunanswered.

Pioneers in Zimbabwe endured theperils of war and drought to mine gold. Acentury later a pioneer researcher, amidwar and famine, mined human gold—thevitality of African independency. Visuallyenhanced by his photographs, this book isa fitting tribute to mudavanhu (the onewho loves the people).

—Norman E. Thomas

Norman E. Thomas, Vera B. Blinn ProfessorEmeritus of World Christianity, United TheologicalSeminary, Dayton, Ohio, formerly served as amissionary teacher and scholar in Zimbabwe.

RESCUING THE MEMORYOF OUR PEOPLESArchives Manual

Compiled byMartha Lund Smalley, YaleUniversity Divinity School, NewHaven, and Rosemary Seton,School of Oriental and AfricanStudies, London

Published in 2003 by the Interna-tional Association for Mission Stud-ies, copies are available for US$10each. Send your request to:

Overseas Ministries Study Center490 Prospect StreetNew Haven, CT 06511 USA

To purchase with a credit card and for other OMSC missionresources, visit: www.OMSC.org/books.htm


When you place or renew a subscription

for four years to the

IIIIInternational Bulletinnternational Bulletinnternational Bulletinnternational Bulletinnternational Bulletinof Missionary Researchof Missionary Researchof Missionary Researchof Missionary Researchof Missionary Research

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Biographical Dictionary ofChristian Missions

Gerald H. Anderson, Editor

2,400 original signed biographies by350 authors from 45 countries.

$126 value for only $76Add $4.00 for shipping & handling.Shipped when payment received. Limitedoffer while supply lasts. U.S. addresses only.

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Dissertation NoticesAdeleru, Joseph Bamidele.“Beginnings, Contacts, and Encounters:Christianity and Traditional Religionsin Egypt and Yorubaland.”Ph.D. Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ., 2002.

Ahn, Heui Yeol.“The Influence of the Niagara BibleConference and Adoniram JudsonGordon on Malcolm Fenwick andKorean Baptist Missions.”Ph.D. Fort Worth, Tex.: SouthwesternBaptist Theological Seminary, 2002.

Ahonen, Tiina.“Transformation ThroughCompassionate Mission: David J.Bosch’s Theology of Contextualization.”Ph.D. Helsinki: Univ. of Helsinki, 2003.

Bainomugisha, Lambert.“The Role of the Lay Christian Faithfulin the Mission of the Church inMbarara Archdiocese (Uganda) inLight of Its First Synod.”Ph.D. Ottawa, Ont.: Univ. of Ottawa, 2000.

Ballew, Christopher.“The Impact of African-AmericanAntecedents of the Baptist ForeignMissionary Movement.”Ph.D. Fort Worth, Tex.: SouthwesternBaptist Theological Seminary, 2002.

Chai, Teresa Mei Lian.“A Scripture-Focused and Media-Based Adult Literacy Program inBangladesh, with Principles ofAdaptation for Other Contexts.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Cilliers, Jacobus Lodewicus.“Christians and Muslims at the Capeof Good Hope, 1652–1795: A Study ofInter-religious Relations and TheirPower-Based Dynamics.”D.Th. Bellville, South Africa: Univ. of theWestern Cape, 1998.

Cuellar, Rolando Wilfredo.“The Influence of Spiritual andEducational Formation on theMissionary Vision and Programs ofFour Hispanic Churches in the UnitedStates of America.”Ph.D. Deerfield, Ill.: Trinity InternationalUniv., 2002.

Essamuah, Casely B.“Genuinely Ghanian: A History of theMethodist Church, Ghana, inMissiological Perspective, 1961–2000.”Th.D. Boston: Boston Univ. School ofTheology, 2003.

Eze, Herbert Maduchukwu.“Felt Needs in Mubi, Nigeria, inRelation to the Three Dimensions inContextualization.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2002.

Goto, Nathan Frank.“Indigenous and Western MissionaryPartnership in the Propagation ofChristianity: The Methodist EpiscopalChurch in Manyikaland, Rhodesia(Zimbabwe), 1897–1939.”Th.D. Boston: Boston Univ. School ofTheology, 2003.

Guimaraes, Sebastio Lucio.“A Model for Missionary Training in aTwo-thirds World Context: A Study ofCampinas Baptist Bible College(FTBC), Brazil.”D.Th. Bellville, South Africa: Univ. of theWestern Cape, 1997.

Headrick, Robert.“Pauline Principles for ConfrontingAnimism in the Church, with SpecialReference to Corinth and Ephesus.”Ph.D. Fort Worth, Tex.: SouthwesternBaptist Theological Seminary, 2003.

Kovacs, Abraham.“History of the Free Church ofScotland’s Mission to the Jews inBudapest and Its Impact on theHungarian Reformed Church,1841–1914.”Ph.D. Edinburgh: Univ. of Edinburgh, 2003.

Lee, Jang-Ho.“Traditional Medicine, ModernMedicine, and Christianity: A Study onthe Realities of Sickness as Describedby Balinese Christians in the GerejaKemah Injil Indonesia in Bali.”Ph.D. Deerfield, Ill.: Trinity InternationalUniv., 2001.

93April 2004


Little, Christopher Reese.“Mission in the Way of Paul: WithSpecial Reference to Twenty-First-Century Christian Mission.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Mackman, Toshiko.“The Tambaram Conference 1938 andthe Japanese Delegates’ Response.”Ph.D. Birmingham, Eng.: Univ. ofBirmingham, 2003.

Millikan, Joyce.“Isolation and Mutuality: MissionThrough the Church as a RelationalSystem.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Muktar, Abdella Usman.“Integration of Evangelism andDevelopment: A Case Study inAntsokia Valley, Ethiopia.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Mung’oma, Stephen Masette.“Revitalization in the Church: A Studyof Leadership in the Anglican Dioceseof Kampala, Uganda.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Petrusic, Christopher George.“‘I Could Not Bear to Be Beaten byDifficulties’: Exploring DavidLivingstone and Questions ofManliness, Race, and Colonialism inNineteenth-Century Africa andBritain.”Ph.D. Ottawa, Ont.: Carleton Univ., 2002.

Pokki, Timo.“America’s Preacher and His Message:Billy Graham’s View of Conversionand Sanctification.”Ph.D. Helsinki: Univ. of Helsinki, 1999.

Rodriguez, Augusto.“New Apostolic Churches in GreaterLos Angeles: Renewal, Mission, andGrowth.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Rutz, Michael A.“The British Zion: Evangelization andthe Politics of Dissent in Britain andthe Empire, 1790–1850 [SouthernAfrica].”Ph.D. St. Louis, Mo.: Washington Univ., 2002.

Sanguma, Mossai T.“Toward a Mission Theology ofReconciliation in an African Context ofEthnic Conflict.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Shen, Peter H.“Life of Grace: Tu Wei-ming, Luther,and Rahner in Dialogue in the Contextof Chinese Catholic Spirituality.”Ph.D. Cambridge, Mass.: Weston JesuitSchool of Theology, 2003.

Simon, David Xolile.“Transforming Witnesses: Strangersand Hosts at the Interface BetweenWorship and Mission.”Th.D. Cape Town: Univ. of the WesternCape, 2000.

Suico, Joseph.“A Study of Social Responsibility /Social Action in the Filipino-Pentecostal Context.”Ph.D. Oxford: Oxford Centre for MissionStudies / Univ. of Wales, 2003.

Thomas, Alex.“A Historical Study of the NorthKanara Mission of the Mar ThomaChurch, 1910–2000.”Th.D. Boston: Boston Univ. School ofTheology, 2003.

Thomas, Harold Robert.“Cultural Themes, WorldviewPerspectives, and Christian ConversionAmong Urbanizing EvangelicalAymaras.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Vähäkangas, Mika.“In Search of Foundations for AfricanCatholicism: Charles Nyamiti’sTheological Methodology.”Ph.D. Helsinki: Univ. of Helsinki, 1999.

Varughese, Vazhayil Sakariah.“Religion, Renaissance, and Protest:Sanskritization and Protestantizationin Kerala, 1888–1936.”Ph.D. Princeton: Princeton TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Whitmer, Linda F.“The Father Metaphor of God: Shonaand Biblical Implications for Missionsin Africa.”Ph.D. Pasadena, Calif.: Fuller TheologicalSeminary, 2003.

Wilson, James Arthur, Jr.“The Untold Story: Kikuyu Christians,Memories, and the KikuyuIndependent Schools Movement,1922–1962 [Kenya].”Ph.D. Princeton: Princeton Univ., 2002.

Correction (January 2004):Griffith, Herbert.“The Impact of African CaribbeanSettlers on the Seventh-day AdventistChurch in Britain, 1952–2001.”Ph.D. Leeds, U.K.: Univ. of Leeds, 2003.

Gordon-ConwellSeminaryNew Ad

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The Doctor of Ministry inComplex Urban Settings atGordon-Conwell TheologicalSeminary can transform yourthinking and practice in reachingthe world for Jesus Christ.

September 7–8Orientation for residents. Orientation beginsTuesday morning. Dr. Jonathan J. Bonk, OMSCexecutive director. A public reception to welcomethe 2004–05 OMSC international community ofresidents will be held Wednesday at 4:00 p.m. All areinvited.

September 9–10U.S. Churches Today. Rev. Geoffrey A. Little,pastor, St. James Episcopal Church (New Haven) anddirector of the Church Mission Society U.S.A.,provides an overview with a guided tour of churchlife and churches in New Haven, Connecticut. Thereis no registration fee for this seminar.

September 13–17How to Develop Mission and Church Archives.Ms. Martha Lund Smalley, research services librarian,Yale University Divinity School. Eight sessions, $145.

September 20–24The Internet and Mission: Getting Started.Mr. Wilson Thomas, Wilson Thomas Systems,Bedford, New Hampshire, and Dr. Dwight P. Baker,program director, Overseas Ministries Study Center,New Haven, Connecticut. Eight sessions, $145.

October 11–15Doing Oral History: Helping Christians Tell TheirOwn Story. Dr. Jean-Paul Wiest, research director,Jesuit Beijing Center, visiting professor ofChristianity, Tsinghua University, and former directorof the Maryknoll history project, all in Beijing, China,and Dr. Jan Bender Shetler, assistant professor of

history, Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana. Eightsessions, $145.

October 18–22Nurturing and Educating Transcultural Kids.Dr. David C. Pollock and Ms. Janet Blomberg,Interaction International, Houghton, New York. Eightsessions, $145.

October 25–27Leadership, Fund-raising, and Donor Developmentfor Missions. Mr. Rob Martin, director, First Fruit,Inc., Newport Beach, California. Five sessions in threedays, $145.

November 8–12Missions and Consequences. Professor Andrew F.Walls, honorary professor, University of Edinburgh,former director of the Centre for the Study ofChristianity in the Non-Western World, and emeritusprofessor of religious studies, University of Aberdeen.Eight sessions, $145.

November 15–19The Nature and Mission of the Church After 9/11.Mr. Patrick Johnstone, author of Operation World,21st Century Edition (2001), former director ofresearch, WEC International, Buckinghamshire,England, and OMSC senior mission scholar inresidence. Eight sessions, $145.

December 6–10Peacemaking as Mission. Dr. Richard Deats, editorof Fellowship, The Fellowship of Reconciliation,Nyack, New York. Eight sessions, $145.

WITNESSES TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH

MissionSeminars

Fall2004

Overseas Ministries Study Center490 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511 USA

(203) 624-6672, Ext. 315 [email protected] Register online at www.OMSC.org

Book NotesBalling, Jakob.The Story of Christianity: From Birth to Global Presence.Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. x, 294. Paperback $26.

Brownson, James V., Inagrace T. Dieterich, Barry A. Harvey, and Charles C. West.Storm Front: The Good News of God. The Gospel and Our Culture Series.Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Pp. xii, 129. Paperback $18.

Chow, Ivan.Chow Chee Yee: Formed by Providence.Singapore: Landmark Books, 2003. Pp. 143. Paperback $7.95.

Corbitt, J. Nathan, and Vivian Nix-Early.Taking It to the Streets: Using the Arts to Transform Your Community.Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003. Pp. 286. Paperback $19.99.

DeBerri, Edward P., and James E. Hug, with Peter J. Henriot and Michael J. Schultheis.Catholic Social Teaching: Our Best Kept Secret. 4th rev. ed.Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2003. Pp. xiii, 238. Paperback $20.

Ellwood, Robert.Cycles of Faith: The Development of the World’s Religions.Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press, 2003. Pp. viii, 215. Paperback $24.95.

Fahlbusch, Erwin, Jan Milic Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Lukas Vischer,eds., with Geoffrey W. Bromiley, trans. and English-language editor, and David B.Barrett, statistical editor.The Encyclopedia of Christianity. Vol. 3: J–O.Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Leiden: Brill, 2003. Pp. xxix, 884. $100 / £65 / €113.

Kobia, Samuel.The Courage to Hope: The Roots for a New Vision and the Calling of theChurch in Africa.Geneva: WCC Publications, 2003. Pp. xi, 218. Paperback SFr28 / £11.95 / €19 / $16.95.

Ma, Wonsuk, and Julie C. Ma, eds.Asian Church and God’s Mission: Studies Presented in the InternationalSymposium on Asian Mission, in Manila, January 2002.Hopetown, N.J.: Mountain World Mission, 2003. Pp. iii, 280. Paperback $12.

Mgadla, P. T.A History of Education in the Bechuanaland Protectorate to 1965.Lanham, Md.: Univ. Press of America, 2003. Pp. xviii, 231. Paperback $49.

Murphy, Edward P., S.J., ed.A History of the Jesuits in Zambia: A Mission Becomes a Province.Nairobi: Paulines Publications, 2003. Pp. 504. Paperback $10.

Ndungane, Njongonkulu.A World with a Human Face: A Voice from Africa.London: SPCK, 2003. Pp. xii, 130. Paperback £11.99 / €18.

Nurminen, Anja.Lutheran Cooperation and Confrontation in Pakistan, 1958–1962: Church-Mission Relations from the Perspective of the Finnish Missionary Society.Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, 2003. Pp. 347. Paperback. No price given.

Shenk, David W.Journeys of the Muslim Nation and the Christian Church: Exploring theMission of Two Communities.Scottdale, Pa., and Waterloo, Ont.: Herald Press, 2003. Pp. 283. Paperback $14.99 /Can$23.49.

Thirumalai, Madasamy.Sharing Your Faith with a Buddhist.Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003. Pp. 208. Paperback $12.99.

Vadakumpadan, Paul, S.D.B., and Jose Varickasseril, S.D.B.Apostle of Christ: Essays in Honour of Archbishop Stephen Ferrando, S.D.B.Shillong, India: Vendrame Institute Publications, 2003. Pp. x, 348. Paperback Rs 300 / $25.

ˆ

In ComingIssuesTime to Give Up on the Idea ofChristian Mission to Muslims? SomeReflections from the Middle EastColin Chapman

The Church in North Korea:Retrospect and ProspectHyun-Sik Kim

Said’s Orientalism and the Study ofChristian MissionHerb Swanson

Beyond Bosch: The Early Churchand the Christendom ShiftAlan Kreider

The Religious Worldview of theIndigenous Population of theNorthern Ob’ as Understood byChristian MissionariesAnatolii M. Ablazhei

John Howard Yoder as MissionTheologianJoon-Sik Park

Pre-Revolution Russian Mission toCentral Asia: A ContextualizedLegacyDavid M. Johnstone

In our Series on the Legacy ofOutstanding Missionary Figures ofthe Nineteenth and TwentiethCenturies, articles aboutNorman AndersonThomas BarclayGeorge BowenHélène de ChappotinFrançois E. DaubantonJohn DuncanNehemiah GorehPa Yohanna GowonHannah KilhamRudolf LechlerLeslie E. MaxwellLesslie NewbiginJames Howell PykePandita RamabaiElizabeth RussellBakht SinghJames StephenPhilip B. SullivanJohn V. TaylorJames M. ThoburnM. M. ThomasHarold W. TurnerJohannes VerkuylWilliam Vories

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