29. OB 8, no. 8 (August 15, 1957). 1968). 30. OB 8, no. 9 (October 18, 1957). 38. Robert T.Coote, "GoodNews,Bad News: NorthAmericanProtestant 31. OB 11, no. 1 (January 20, 1960). Overseas Personnel Statistics in Twenty-Five-Year Perspective," 32. OB 11, no. 6 (July 15, 1960). International BulletinofMissionary Research 19, no. 1 (January1995):6­ 33. OB 13, no. 1 (January 1962). 13; and Coote, "Twentieth-Century Shifts in the North American 34. OB 17, no. 1 (January 1966). Protestant Missionary Community," ibid. 22, no. 4 (October 1998): 35. Ibid., p. 3. 152-53. 36. Frederick S. Downs, "Mission Boards and Indigenous Churches," 39. The statistical data that IBMR readers most frequently inquire about OB 19, no. 3 (March 1968). For a similarly strong critique of concerns . The January2000 issue sets the average number of conservative evangelical missions, see Kenneth Strachan's 1954 Christian martyrs per year at 165,000 (p. 25, line 27). Readers who article in the OB. Strachan highlighted the relative weakness of wish more information should consult Barrett's 1990 publication indigenous churches planted by evangelical missions as compared Our Globe and How to Reach It (Birmingham, Ala.: New Hope). On with churches planted by mainline societies. He employed statistics page 18 (diagram 5) it becomes clear that Barrett employs a broad provided by the 1952 World Christian Handbook to show that the definition regarding the circumstances under which may relatively greater emphasis on leadership training by mainline be classified as martyrs. The category is seen in fuller perspective missionaries had produced stronger and larger churches 'with when one notes that he reports almost twice as many Muslim indigenous leaders as compared to national churches that resulted martyrs through the centuries as Christian martyrs. from the conservative evangelicals' stress on evangelism, with 40. Braaten, "Who Do We Say...?" Occasional Bulletin of Missionary relatively little attention given to education ("New Emphasis in Research 4, no. 1 (January 1980): 3. Missions," OB 5, no. 13 [November 12, 1954]). 41. Ibid., pp. 3-7. 37. Beaver, "The Missionary Research Library," OB 19, no. 2 (February

Eusebius Tries Again: Reconceiving the Study of Christian History Andrew F. Walls

he most striking feature of at the end of the istic forms of Christianity. But in the coming century we can T second millennium is that it is predominantly a non­ expect an accelerated process of new development arising from Western religion. On all present indications, the numbers of Christianinteractionwiththe ancientculturesof Africa andAsia, inhabitants of Europe and North America who profess the faith an interaction now in progress and with much further to go. are declining, as they havebeenfor some time, whilethe churches The fact that Christianity, after being a Western religion for of the other continents continue to grow. Already more than half centuries, has now become a non-Western one is especially the world's Christians live in Africa, Asia, and Caribbean striking for the suddenness and rapidity of the transition. Ken­ America, and the Pacific. If present trends continue, at some nethScott Latourette spoke of the nineteenth century as the great point in the twenty-first century, the figure could be two-thirds. century of missions, but it is the twentieth that has been the most It seems that the representative Christianity of the twenty-first remarkable for the transformation of Christianity. One has to go centurywill be thatof Africa, Asia, LatinandCaribbeanAmerica, back many centuries to find such a huge recession in one part of and the Pacific. It is at least possible that the Christianity of the world paralleled by such a huge simultaneous accession in Europe maybecome increasingly a matter of historical reference. another, producing the radical shift in the cultural and demo­ The events that, for its weal or for its woe, will shape the graphic composition of the Christian church that has occurred Christianity of the early centuries of the third millennium are since 1900. It took Christianity a long time to become a Western those already taking place in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. religion, let alone the Western religion. It did not begin as a We have long been used to a Christian that was Western religion (in the usual significance of that word), and it shaped by the interaction of Christian faith with Greek philoso­ took many centuries to become thoroughly appropriated in phy and . We are equally accustomed, though not Europe. It was still later that Christianity became so singularly usually so conscious of its origins, to ecclesiology and codes of associated with Europe and Europe alone as to be thought of as practice shaped by Christian interaction with the traditional law a European religion. Indeedit was notuntil comparatively recent and custom of the Germanic and Slavic tribes beyond the Roman times-around the year 1500-that the ragged conversion of the frontiers. These forms have become so familiar and established last pagan peoples of Europe, the overthrow of Muslim power in that we have come to think of them as the normal and character- Spain, and the final eclipse of Christianity in central Asia and Nubia combined to produce a Europe that was essentially Chris­ tian and a Christianity that was essentially European. Paradoxi­ AndrewF.Walls isProfessor Emeritus in theCentre fortheStudy ofChristian­ cally it is just at this point, when Europe and Christianity were ity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh and Guest more closely identified with each other than ever before, that the Professor ofEcumenics andMissionin Princeton Theological Seminary. He is impact of the non-Western world upon the Western became acontributing editoroftheINTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH. Thisarticle is excerpted froma longer essaygiven as a keynote address at the critical. In the very era in which Western Christianity became Consultation ofGlobal Christian , Fuller Theological Seminary, fully and confidently formulated, the process that was to lead to April30, 1998; it will bepublished in theforthcoming consultation volumeand its transformation or supersession had begun. is usedhere by permission. I speak deliberately of the impact of the non-Western world

July 2000 105 upon the West, rather than the other way round. I do so because the task of the global church . What is required is no less insofar as the rewriting of is concerned, that is the than the reconception of the taskof the Christian historian. more important aspect of the story. New church history writing mustdealwiththe interactionbetweena Christianityformulated Reconception of Resources in relation to Western needs and conditions and a Christianity formulated by a whole series of other cultures with of What conceptions govern the present study and teaching of their own. If church history writing is to recount the whole story Christianhistory,andto whatextentdoes the Christianhistorian's of the faith of Christ, it must explore how that story since the understanding of the contemporary situation of Christianity call sixteenth century has been determined, directly or indirectly, by for adjustment or replacement? the worlds thatfirst burstuponWestern Christian consciousness It is difficult here to avoid intruding an autobiographical at that time. Not until the twentieth century did it become clear note. Three episodes come particularly to mind. The first oc­ how substantial that impact had been. And the task of catching curred in West Africa while I was in my early thirties. I had been up with that development academically has hardly yet begun. appointed to teach church history. My training for the purpose could be counted impeccable; what better exposure could the Shifting Boundries in Scholarship younger churches (as they were called in those days) have than to the ripe experience of the older churches, and especially of When I began academic work relating to Africa some forty years their oldest period? I had done my graduate work in patristics, ago, religion was a marginal area of African studies. The primal and in Oxford, a temple of patristic study, and under the great F. religions of Africa were still largely considered to be the domain L. Cross, its high priest. What I lacked, however, was something of the anthropologist. A place could be allowed for Islamic studiesas a specializedarea, butas regardsChristianityin Africa, only African Independent Churches, as they were then begin­ If we are to know the whole ning to be called, could be regarded as properly African. The rest of African Christianity could be subsumed under the heading story, we must explore a "missions," and any study of missions was likely to be about Christianity formulated by external influences on Africa. Thus, for example, one of the distinguished studies published in the 1950s is entitled The a whole series of cultures Missionary Factor in East Africa. with histories of their own. That period of academic study saw the beginning of decolonization and the emergence of the new African states. It was, and is, recognized that "the missions" influenced these all my students alreadypossessed: the actual experienceof living events through the organizational and leadership structures of in a second-century church. the churches and through the education of the elite who led the My early life as a teacher, seeking to impart the lessons of movementto independence. In general,however, the undoubted early church history, was somewhat frustrating. My rich com­ Christian influences on the -African revolution of the 1950s pensation came from developing acquaintance with the local and1960s-aperiodwhenthe studyof Christianityin Africa was church and society. The students, of course, wrote down all I largely the study of "missions"-were indirect, often uncon­ said; it was part of the ritual transfer of knowledge. Yet all the scious, and sometimes unintentional. while they possessed keys that might have opened new doors A generationlater, in the late 1980sand early1990s,a second into such vexed questions as apostolic tradition, whereas I had pan-African revolution took place, as dictators and military only secondhand accounts of earlier versions of those questions. regimes in different parts of the continent were overthrown and IdoubtifIdidmuchgoodin my first five years as a churchhistory a new South Africa emerged out of Africa's seemingly most teacher in Africa, but I am everlastingly grateful that I learned intractable situation. In this second revolution, in country after there that second-century Christianity (and third-century, and country the churches were vehicles of change or catalysts in even first-century) can still be witnessed and shared in. times of transition, or they acted as umpires on behalf of society. A saying of F. L. Cross, my revered teacher, brought further Time after time the churches of Africa preserved a viable form of illumination. "We know next to nothing about the ante-Nicene civil society when other forms had collapsed or had been sup­ church." He was right, as he usually was. But we now have better pressed. The phenomena can be observed in countries as differ­ resources for understanding the patchwork of fragments of ent as Benin and Zambia: even in an overwhelmingly Muslim Christian literature that survive from before the age of the great setting such as Mali, a Christian acted as keeper of the councils. We will find that by examining the recent histories of national conscience. Political scientists in the African field found the churches of Africa and Asia we will discover more than the that knowledge of church structures was a necessary part of Bodleian or the Vatican libraries can yield. The same themes, their equipment. It is now clearly the case that Christianity has often the same media, occur. When we look at post-Apostolic, become so much a part of the fabric of sub-Saharan African life anti-Nicene materials, we find earnest, but rather turgid, moral that scholars in a wide variety of disciplines who want to homilies (much of Romans 12-16, little of Romans 1-8); eloquent undertake serious study of Africa need to know something episcopal letters displaying equally autocratic temper and mov­ about Christianity. ing self-sacrifice; apocalyptic visions of the fate of church mem­ The converse is equally true; anyone who wishes to under­ bers who behave badly; guidance on discerning the spirits (a take serious study of Christianity these days needs to know whose "word from the Lord" is to order a meal for something about Africa. It follows that the student of Christian himself is a false prophet, one who outstays reasonable hospital­ history not only must know something about Africa but also ity is a false prophet); cheerful fictional correspondencebetween must consider the part that Africa plays in the total story of the and a local king, showing how early this particular locality faith. The issue is much wider than Africa; it goes to the heart of accepted the ; decisions of determining who had

106 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH what relations with which now-discredited government offi­ twentieth-century church, of which Scottish Christians were a cials; regulations about exorcising the water prior to baptism; part? What mental space was there to take in the idea of a world with bigger and better than the canonical ones. church in which Scotland was on the outside edge? Everything These ante-Nicene snapshots are found among heart-moving in ministerial training conspired to promote the idea that Scot­ testimony and muckraking scandal, coded utterances, gnomic land was at the center. But the students following the course, memorials, and thought-provoking graffiti. And all readily find preparing for the ministry, were aware that the Church of Scot­ analogies, and sometimes replications, in the recent and contem­ land was a church in recession, losing members every year since porary history of the churches that are now in their first and 1950. By devoting its ultimate focus to Scotland, the teaching of second centuries of existence! church history implicitly emphasized decline-a glorious past, I yield to no one in desiring that the theological libraries of but an uncertain future. What hope would Scottish congrega­ Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific be equipped to bear tions so served ever have of learning the full truth about the the responsibilities in Christian scholarship that are theirs. But church? the scholars of those areas will have resources in their own The traditionalScottishchurchhistorysyllabusof thatday­ experience, and in the present and recent experience of their a rather blatant example of the genre-exhibited in conception churches, that may provide deeper insight than we have yet had and design the general features of most Western church history into the surviving literature of ante-Nicene Christianity. The syllabuses. These provide a selection of topics designed to ex­ whole delirious mixture includes the proliferation of local vari­ hibit a particular tradition. Usually that tradition is partly geo­ eties, the official and popular faces of the church, its moderates graphic-that is, the selection represents influences bearing on a and its radicals, its bridge builders and its pacesetters, and its particularlocality, suchas Scotland,Germany,or NorthAmerica. interaction with the mind-sets of the synagogue and the acad­ The geographicalbias startsearly. Churchsyllabuses tend to emy, the club and the street corner. lose interest in the Greek-speaking church-though it was still Latter-day Protestants, nourished on the legacy of the six­ the largest sector of Christianity-after the great creedal contro­ teenth-century , are sometimes puzzled by the tran­ versies. There are two reasons for this bias. The first is that sition from the Apostle of the Gentiles to the . Scottish, German, and AmericanChristianitywere more directly How is it that leaders of churches associated with Paul, who affected by events in the Latin-speaking area. And in this case, as treasured his words and revered his memory, people to whom in others, the geographic bias reinforces a linguistic and cultural we owe the very preservation of the Pauline letters-and who one. knewGreekbetter thanwe do-seemto have no idea of whatwe The second reason is simply that the main principle of think Paul means by justificationby faith? Scholars coming from selection is confessional: the church that is the subject of church the new second-century churches will probably see no puzzle at history is implicitly defined as the church we ourselves know­ all. ourtradition as it has developed. In principle, there is no harm in The first aspect is thus to reconceive the resources available this focus, provided we know what we are doing, and provided for the study of the history of world Christianity. There are rich also we do more than this. It is natural and right to seek to possibilities in rereading earlier history in the light of the living understand one's own tradition; it means to know who one's experience of the churches of the southern continents.. ancestors are. But there are lurking dangers, both historical and theologi­ Church History, or Clan History? cal. One is that we think by study of our own tradition we are doing church history. We are not-we are doing our church The second aspect is suggested by another personal experience. history. If this is the only lens through which we study Christian After almost a decade teaching church history in Africa, I was history, we have bypassed the story of the whole people of God again teaching church history, but this time in the theological in favor of clan history. Such an approach reduces the area in faculty of an ancient Scottish university, in a course designed which we look for the works of God, whereas the promises of principally for candidates for the ministry of the Church of God are to all who trust them. The Lord of Hosts is not to be Scotland. The course was solidly planned and executed, de­ treated as a territorial Baal. manding three years' study. The first year was devoted to study The second danger arises from inertia: There is little internal of the early church (a concept that we must examine in a mo­ compulsion to review the construction of one's historical frame­ ment). The second year was concerned with the Reformation, for work as conditions change. This was the case with the Scottish the Church of Scotland is a Reformed church. (Notice how example mentioned earlier, a framework that fairly interpreted effortlessis the transitionfrom Augustine to Luther,howcursory the tradition around 1910no longer did so sixty years later. As a the consideration of the intermediate period in which Scotland, result, the students, and the congregations beyond them, were and most of northern Europe, became Christian. Very few West­ actually being prevented from understanding their own church ern theologians get much idea about the origins of Western history. They were part of a larger, more dynamic Christian Christianity from their church history course.) The third year movement than they could ever realize from their education. was devoted to Scotland. There could hardly be a clearer state­ ment of the purpose of a degree course in church history: it is to Reconception of the Syllabus gain an understanding of Us As We Are. The general scope of this course, reflecting and incorporat­ There is a third danger. Not only may we think we are engaged ing the work of very formidable scholars, had probably changed in churchhistorywhenit is onlyclan history,butourversionmay little over the twentieth century. What had changed over that be copiedby peoplewho have different ancestors. My mostvivid time, however, was the shape of the Christian constituency. A recollection of this danger comes from my involvement a few person following that course could gain an excellent grasp of years ago with a group of seminary teachers from various part of how the Church of Scotland came to be what it was. But what India. We were engaged in a workshop on the teaching of church hope would one have of understanding the true nature of the history. It soon became clear that those present were using

July 2000 107 versions of syllabuses originating in Europe or, more often, Empire? Supposewe look not only at the well-knownmovement North America. Most were also trying to teach some Indian, or westward from but at the eastward movement as well? sometimes Asian, churchhistorywhich in most cases was taught The little buffer state of Osroene, on the Roman imperialfrontier, as a separate course. That is, there was church history, and there was the early base of a remarkable Christian movement. In was Asian church history. And (it was an entirely Protestant , its capital, are the remains of the oldest church building gathering) the latter, after the obligatory reference to St. Thomas, yet discovered, built at a time when no such thing was possible began in 1792with William Carey. Church history was a given; in the RomanEmpire. Edessa,indeed, oftendoes appearon maps the course offered for study was a seamless robe into which Asia of the early church. Unfortunately, it is usually at the eastern could not readily be sewn. extremity of the map, yielding the idea that it represents the The striking thing about that gathering in India was that eastern extremity of a Christianity centered on the Mediterra­ everyone seemed to realize that what they were doing was dire, nean. If,however, we place Edessa at the western end of the map, that both the teachers and the students were bored with the and pigeonhole the for a while, we can observe a process of transmitting and receiving an assemblage of facts that remarkable alternative Christian story. were completely unrelated to anything that actually excited any Early Christianity spread down the Euphrates valley until Indian Christian of today. But both must persevere; their task the majority of the population of northern Mesopotamia (i.e., was theological education and church history was a constituent modern Iraq) was Christian. It spread through the Arab buffer of theological education. And how could theological education, states, so that a third-century poet could announce that the social continue without one of its principal constituent disciplines? customs of the desert Arabs had changed. It moved down to If the traditional Western church history syllabus is defec­ Yemen and was adopted by the royal house. It moved steadily tive and obscuring for Western Christians, how much more into Iran proper, into the Zoroastrian heartland of Fars, and stultifying is it for African and Asian Christians? The problem is northward to the Caspian. (It had previously moved west of the not so much that it does not contain African or Asian church Caspian; the first nation to adopt Christianity as its state religion was not the Roman Empire but the Kingdom of Armenia.) This eastern Christianity that grew up in the Persian Empire had much in common with the form of the faith that was If the Western church developingin the same period in the Greco-Romanworld,butits history syllabus is defective cultural milieu was quite different. Like the earliestchurch of all, it was Semitic in language and in cast of thought and retained and obscuring for Western some of the features of that earliest church that were lost in the Christians, how much more development of Hellenistic Christianity. Its immediate milieu so for African and Asian was not solely Hellenistic, and its earliest leaders show little interest in the issues that so exercised those who were trying to Christians. translate the Gospel and the convictions associated with it into Greek terms. caused hardly a ripple. With much less need to work with the categories and methods of philosophical dis­ history, but that it provides no framework in which either can be course, these Christians had to take account of a range of indig­ considered as part of the whole Christian story. enous and Easternreligious influences, includingthe effect of the If the first aspect of our task is the reconception of resources, Zoroastrian influence in local culture. There emerged a religion the second must surely be the reconception of syllabus. There is of intense moral seriousness, of spiritual athleticism, that spoke no way in which African and Asian church history can be to a community marked by the eternal conflict of the principles incorporated within a traditionalWestern-type syllabus, nor can of Lightand Darknessandby the realities of deathand judgment. they be treated as appendages to Western church history. A literature developed that gloried in displaying Christ'svictory over death and evil, rich poetic theology, and striking imagery, Reconception of the Early Church such as we find in Ephraem's magnificent taunting songs about the defeat of humanity's two discredited enemies, Death and A more fundamental issue affects the teaching of church history Satan. in any setting. If Christianity is principally a non-Western reli­ Like their fellow Christians in the Roman Empire, the Chris­ gion, why should its Western period the approach to tians in the Persian Empire fell foul of the principalities and its history? powers. The persecutions under Decius and are a How great is that dominance can be divined if we examine well-known feature of the story of Christianity of the Roman more closely the assumptions underlying the standard forms of Empire; the Christians of the Persian Empire knew still fiercer, syllabus that have been exported all over the world. For instance, and more sustained, pressure. In one forty-year period of the the majority of academic institutions provide courses on the fourth century, no less than 16,000Christians were put to death history of the early church. It is safe to assume that in most cases by the Persian emperor Sapor II. The cause for this particularly "early church" means, substantially, the church in the Roman savage attack on Christians was a direct response to the increas­ Empire. Undoubtedly, Western Christianity, Catholic and Prot­ ing favor shown by Constantine to Christians. Anything so estant (and for that matter Greek and Russian Orthodox too), appealing to the Roman state as Christianity had now become were shaped by events that took place in the church's interaction could hardly appeal to Rome's perennial enemy. The critical with Hellenistic civilization and the Roman state. As Eusebius, difference between the story of Christianity in the Persian Em­ the first historian recognized, the conversion of pire and that in the Roman Empire is that the Persian Empire Constantine marks a turning point, a turning of the tide, a new neverhada Constantine. EasternChristianityneverknewsteady epoch. imperial favor or predictable political security. That factor in But supposewe look at earlyChristianityoutsidethe Roman itself makes it a story worth studying along with that of its

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There are geopolitical forces that tie Eastern Christianity reached China is also often recognized; the whole continent together. In our own day Islam has become those interested in synchronous parallels might note that the the focus of those forces. It is worth recalling that Christianity missionary whose Chinese name was Alopen was puttingChris­ once had a similar role in African history. tianitybefore the ChineseEmperorin 635,muchthe sametimeas The ChristianityofEgyptandRomanAfrica normallyreaches the faith was put before the king and council of Northumbria in the standard syllabus. But equally significant for Africa is an northern England. Indeed, if we are thinking in terms of geo­ aspect of early African church history that rarely does: the graphic extent, the eastward spread of the Christian faith across Christian movement in Africa outside the Roman Empire. With Asia is still more remarkable than the westward spread across all the uncertainties and deficiencies of the sources, we neverthe­ Europe. less have enough material (with archaeology providing much Its spread was sustained through a period that in Western that was not available to our predecessors) to illuminate one churchhistoryis substantiallyone ofloss anddecline. The arrival chapter of African Christian history that lasted nearly a millen­ of the Muslim Arabs in Egypt and Syria, the eastern provinces of nium and another that has continued to the present. The thou­ the Roman Empire, marks the beginning of a period of eclipse­ sand-year chapter is that of Nubia. This Christian community in Latourette's "thousandyearsofuncertainty." Furthereast, Chris­ what is now Sudan antedated the rise of Islam by five hundred tianity was allowed a new period of flowering, so that the tenth years and for further five centuries held a unique place as a century began a time of Christian growth. Right up to the Christian state on the borders of the Islamic world. The continu­ fourteenth century the expansion of the faith went on among the ing story is that of Ethiopia. That story begins with the Syrian shamanistic Turkic peoples who surrounded the Chinese Em­ brothers Frumentius and Aedesius, deflected from their original pire. It is a period little understood, and the sources are difficult purposewhenstrandedin Aksum, in whatis nowTigre, entering of access; yet if we could understand it better, we might gain the service of the king and eventually seeing not only a church some clues to developments of muchlater periods-perhaps, for emerging but the conversion of the king. Again the archaeologi­ instance, some features of Korean Christianity, which also has a cal sources illuminate the story; King Ezana's inscriptions show shamanistic background. One striking feature of the period is his progress from polytheist to monotheist to Christian. that during it Christianity became the faith of nomadic peoples. The continuation of the story has many other surprises and Many of the Turkic peoples were pastoralists on the move. We many mysteries. In Ethiopia a tradition of Christianity grew up hear of appointed to such peoples who had no fixed in the heart of Africa, in daily contact with the realities of African capitalbut moved with their communities. In the modern period worldviews, thatwasrecognizablypartof the GreatChurch, and of missionary endeavor it is hard to find examples of nomadic yet quite unlike anything that developed elsewhere. Ethiopian communities who embraced the Gospel and remained nomadic. Christianity has incorporated the to a degree If we look at the eastward as well as the westward Christian unusual among Christians, and its peoplehave often lived under movement, and look at it on the grids of the Persian and Chinese conditions reminiscent of those of the Old Testament. Yet Ethio­ Empires as well as on that of the Roman Empire, it is evident that pia, for all its distinctiveness and all its long years of isolation, there was almost a millennium and a half of Christian history in never entirely lost contact with the church outside. The founda­ Asia before ever Western Christian missions to Asia began. It is tion story makes the point clear: Frumentius went to the nearest equally evident that the early Christian history of Asia is not a center of the Great Church to ask for a bishop for the church he marginal or ephemeral one, but substantial. The ancestors of had founded. The patriarch sent him back as bishop. That patri­ modern Asian Christianity exist, but their names are not being archwas Athanasius. Centuryaftercenturyafterward, the Ethio­ called. And both Western and Asian Christians will remain pianchurch drew its bishop-itsonlybishop-fromAlexandria, impoverished by this omission until the work of reconception of thereby recognizing the universality of the church, even in its the syllabus progresses. very particularcircumstances. The significance of Ethiopiafor all African Christians-as symbol of Africa indigenously, primor­ Reconception of Early African Church History dially Christian, and as symbol of a Christian tradition com­ pletely independent of the West-has been seized all over the African church history is equally distorted by attempts to make African continent. To this meaning countless churches and soci­ it an appendage of a general church history that is really a form eties across the breadth and depth of Africa bear witness by of European clan history. Africa has a continuous Christian taking "Ethiopian" as part of their title. historysince subapostolictimes, a historythatantedates notonly Western missions to Africa but also the Islamic presence there. It Catholic and Protestant, Mission in Common is important for African Christian consciousness that this heri­ tage be reflected in the syllabus. Even the part of African Chris­ If the new situation calls for reconception of the object and tianity that lay within the Roman Empire has its ongoing impor­ content of the syllabus, it calls also for reconception of the tance, not least because, in Egypt, it has continued to the present significance of some elements within it. A single example must day. The sheer luxuriance of early African Christianity is worth suffice. For Western Christians, the sixteenth-century Reforma­ noticing. It was the source of such seminal figures as , the tion (perhaps it would be better to say ) is of first systematic theologian, and Tertullian, the first theologian of defining significance, a watershed. But in the total history of . It was the birthplacealike of vernaculartheology Christianity its significance may be different and not necessarily and of Western theology through the African lawyer-theolo­ so defining. Certainly it continues to determine the outside

110 INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH affiliationsandthe church-consciousnessofChristiansacrossthe permanent modes: Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox. world, but for some historical purposes the differences between These categories, however, reflect events in Western history; in the varioustypesof WesternChristianshavebeenless significant the West they have a significance that they cannot have in the than the similarities. This fact may be particularly true in tracing non-Western world. They will continue to be valid outside the the place of Western Christianity in the non-Western world. West as indicators of organization and affiliation, but they will From the point of view of Africa and Asia, the missionary likely become less and less useful as descriptors. A large segment movement-Catholic and Protestant-has been a single story of African Christianity, for instance, cannot be called either since the sixteenth century, the Catholic Reformation and the Catholic or Protestant in any meaningful sense: it is simply Evangelical Revival alike necessary to it. Protestants as much as African. Furthermore, its features are to be found among thou­ Catholics owe the conception of a missionary movement, based sands of African believers whose affiliation is Catholic or Protes­ on people sent to persuade and commend but unable to coerce, tant. There are "traditions" in the Christian world community to the first encounter of Western Christians with the non-West­ today that reflect modes of Christian existence in the same way ern world. The missionary movement emerged from the realiza­ as the labels "Catholic," "Protestant," and "Orthodox" have tion that Asia and Africa could not be won for Christ by the hitherto done. It seems likely that, if we are to acquire historical methods used to extend Christendom in Mexico and Peru. understanding of Christianity as a non-Western religion, the In the West it is possible to recount Catholic and Protestant reconception of the categories by which Christians have been histories separatelyfrom one another. In many parts of the world described will be required. it is not; the stories interlock. The first Protestant missionary in The situation of the global church at the end of the second China owed his initial grounding in Chinese to the presence in millennium calls us to a reconception of the task of the Christian the British Museum and the Royal Society of a translation of the historian and offers a new to direct the study, teaching, Gospels and a Chinese-Latin dictionary made by Jesuit mission­ and writing of Christian history. The task of research will be aries of an earlier century. He owed his first breakthrough in immeasurably expanded beyond what has ordinarily been in China to the assistance of Chinese Catholics. There is a single view, and vastunexplored sourcesare alreadyat hand to support Christian story in China from the sixteenth century; nay, even that research. The church historian's task will now need more that story needs its prologue in the movement that began nine than a simple, natural evolution from current practice. It will centuriesearlierwhenAlopenand his Syriac-speakingcolleagues require a new breed of church with all the skills and reached the emperor's court by way of central Asia. virtues nourished in the older school but with a range of others There is another reason why we may need to reconceive the as well, skills and virtues demanded by the new environment of historical significance of the Reformation. We havebecome used Christianity in the southern continents. It is time for the recom­ to the assumption that Christianity exists in three more or less missioning of church historians.

Evangelicalism, Islam, and Millennia! Expectation in the Nineteenth Century Andrew N. Porter

reat Britain's nineteenth-century imperial expansion whichis to be ... the Easternkingdoms finding theirway to Christ, G paralleled the growthof the modern Christianmission­ is now fulfilling in the exsiccation and absorption of the Moham­ ary movement. Of special interest to evangelical supporters of medan power as a political and ruling power.... Certainly it is a Christian missions was the fact that Britain had emerged as the sign of the times that the Crescent is waning before the Cross .... power having the most extensive control in Muslim lands. These Surely, then, the conversionof Mohammedansshouldbe a special subject at missionary conferences.' developments, intertwined as they were, prompted speculation about the future of Islam and Christianity. For example, at a Two decades later, in Edinburgh, James Stewart, the 1902 Church Missionary Society (CMS) prayer meeting in the early Duff Missionary Lecturer, highlighted the ambiguity of the 1880s,the vicarof Farehamoffered this far-reaching observation: situation: "TakingMohammedanismas a whole, withits strange Many of you, probably, have come to the same conclusion that I and wonderful career, the difficulty is how to fit that career, as an have, that the fifth horn in the vision of the ram and the he goat in event permitted by God, into the progress of the world, or into the eighth chapter of Daniel is a symbol of the Mohammedan the evolution of its spiritual history, and how to understand the power, and that its time for practising and prospering against the purpose it was meant to serve."? Here, in other words, was one Prince of princes is now coming to an end. And many of you, of the continuing great questions of the age. Like most great probably, consider that the drying up of the River Euphrates questions, it was an open one; as Stewart acknowledged, "No predicted in the sixteenth chapter of Revelation, the effect of theory seems fully to explainthe subject." CMS secretary Eugene AndrewN. Porter is theRhodes Professor ofImperial Historyin theUniversity Stock contributed his own rather inconclusive views on the ofLondon. His essay, here somewhat shortened, wasoriginally delivered at the subject.' Consistent with his well-known sensitivity to evangeli­ North Atlantic Missiology Project Symposium, Boston University, June 21­ cal concerns, Stock at least knew that the questions about the 24,1998, which wassupported by agrant from thePewCharitable Trusts. future of Islam needed to be acknowledged.

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