Tracking World Christianity
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Vol. 29, No. 1 January 2005 Tracking World Christianity o mark this journal’s fiftieth anniversary, Robert T. TCoote—then assistant editor—told the story of the IN- TERNATIONAL BULLETIN OF MISSIONARY RESEARCH in his article “Fin- On Page ger on the Pulse: Fifty Years of Missionary Research” (IBMR 24 [2000]: 98–105). Evolving from R. Pierce Beaver’s mimeographed 2 Radical Mission in a Post-9/11 World: Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary Research Library, launched Creative Dissonances in 1950, the IBMR is among today’s most trusted and widely Norman E. Thomas circulated sources of mission-related information and analysis. 8 Christian Missions and Islamic Da‘wah: In January 1985 David Barrett’s inaugural “Annual Statisti- A Preliminary Quantitative Assessment cal Table on Global Mission” appeared in the IBMR. Coauthored Todd M. Johnson and David R. Scoggins with Todd M. Johnson since 1998—joined this year by Peter F. 12 Shifts in the North American Protestant Crossing—this feature has now appeared in twenty-one con- Full-time Missionary Community secutive January issues. Robert T. Coote With some frequency over the past two years, journalists 14 Enabling Encounters: The Case of Nilakanth- from major newspapers have requested information on the Nehemiah Goreh, Brahmin Convert number of Christian missionaries engaged in mission to Mus- Richard Fox Young lims. Thanks to the article by Todd M. Johnson and David R. 16 Noteworthy Scoggins, we are now able to venture a response: an estimated 21 Religious Studies and Research in Chinese 57,300 Christian missionaries work in countries that are pre- Academia: Prospects, Challenges, and dominantly Muslim or that have significant numbers of Mus- Hindrances lims. Conversely, some 141,630 Muslim missionaries work in Jean-Paul Wiest countries that are predominantly Christian. Both groups of mis- 27 Missiometrics 2005: A Global Survey of World sionaries, surprisingly, seem to focus most of their efforts and Mission resources on fellow believers. David B. Barrett, Todd M. Johnson, and Peter F. Tallies do not tell the whole tale of world Christianity, of Crossing course. Ideas, scholarship, books, and archives are also an inte- 31 2004 Forum for World Evangelization: A Report gral part of the Christian story, making absolutely essential the Wilbert R. Shenk kind of institutions and activities described in the articles by 32 The Archives on the History of Christianity in Jean-Paul Wiest and Kylie Chan. China at Hong Kong Baptist University Everyday human life must be lived in contexts over which Library: Its Development, Significance, and we have little or no control. Swept along like flotsam on geopo- Future litical, economic, and social tidal waves, not even the most Kylie Chan powerful human being can control the nature, direction, speed, 35 My Pilgrimage in Mission or impact of these overwhelming and often destructive forces. In Thomas Hale, Jr. such a world, Christian missionaries—insofar as they resist 38 The Legacy of Ernest Oliver being drawn into the maelstrom of competing, aggressively self- Richard Tiplady serving nationalisms, choosing rather to live Christianly in con- 42 Book Reviews texts of hatred and turmoil—will be radical in Norman E. Thomas’s 43 Fifteen Outstanding Books of 2004 for Mission instructive sense of that word. The IBMR deems it high honor Studies indeed to play its part in tracking the radical movement that 54 Dissertation Notices continues to turn the world upside down. 56 Book Notes Radical Mission in a Post-9/11 World: Creative Dissonances Norman E. Thomas ill mission in the twenty-first century be “business as sion what is radical in this sense points us toward the mission Wusual”? Will the tried-and-true models for mission of models of the apostolic church. the late twentieth century provide sufficient creativity and vital- Effective mission in the twenty-first century will require ity for the new century now dawning? Respected missiologists creative approaches to the dissonances in our world. Here I answer No. “The missionary movement is now in its old age,” consider five of the most sobering dissonances currently facing declares Andrew Walls. “What is changing is not the task [of us in this new century.6 world evangelization] but the means and the mode.”1 Wilbert Shenk, in the final chapter of his Changing Frontiers of Mission, Reconciliation vs. New Forms of Violence probes deeper: “Christendom as a historical reality is finished,” “God . entrusting the message he concludes. “The conditions that made it possible in the past no of reconciliation to us” (2 Cor. 5:19) longer exist.”2 Instead, we should expect creative dissonances. “The road to hell” is the way Robert Rotberg, director of Harvard Radical Changes “turning the world University’s Program on Intrastate Conflict, describes the esca- upside down” (Acts 17:6) lating levels of violence in today’s world. Wars since the early 1990s in and among failed nation-states have killed close to eight When did the twenty-first century begin? According to the million people and made refugees of an additional four million. Gregorian calendar it began January 1, 2001. Historians may give Hundreds of millions have been left impoverished, malnour- a different answer. How about September 11, 2001? Now into the ished, and deprived of fundamental needs for security, health fifth year of the new century, is it possible that more than the care, and education. Some violence, especially in Rwanda and Twin Towers fell on 9/11? Are we now in a permanent state of western Sudan, involved the genocide of whole ethnic groups. war against terrorism that will define this century? Failed states, including Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, and Somalia, What about the church and its mission? Do we also face a have been not only “breeding grounds of instability, mass migra- world with radical changes from the past? Wilbert Shenk, a tion, and murder” but also reservoirs and exporters of terror.7 respected missiologist teaching at Fuller Seminary, says, Yes. He How shall churches in mission respond to such escalations writes, “Renewal will not come by way of incremental revisions of violence? Humanitarian aid to the victims is one ongoing of structures and liturgies inherited from the past.”3 Lyle Schaller, response—from the refugee camps of the Congo to the violated a noted North American church consultant, concurs. In Twenty- women of Kosovo and the Sudan. Another is the World Council one Bridges to the Twenty-first Century, Schaller contrasts the of Churches’ Decade to Overcome Violence (2001–10), an effort, relatively modest degree of change of a century ago with the through the use of nonviolent tactics, “to overcome the violence increasingly sudden and discontinuous changes that the church of division in our societies and to respond to the yearning for now faces in the new millennium.4 peace and a life of dignity for future generations.”8 Another is the Doug Nichols, international director of Action International South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Originally Ministries in Bothell, Washington, warns of the folly of a “busi- a secular response to the scars of apartheid, the commission ness as usual” approach to missions. “If missions are not care- became a Christian effort against injustice under the leadership ful,” he writes, “they may become like the old empty cathedrals of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. in Europe.” He feels that putting first the care of missionaries One growing form of violence is religious persecution, with (salaries, retirement benefits, insurance, housing, etc.) could martyrdom as a frequent outcome. Barrett and Johnson estimated detract from the primary mission of taking the Gospel to the that there would be 167,000 Christian martyrs in 2004, with an masses. The consequence, he fears, would be that missions will increase to 210,000 per year by 2025.9 In their encyclopedic become “a shell, possibly with lots of activity, but no life.”5 survey of world Christianity, they judged martyrdom to be “the What a contrast with Paul’s model for mission! When syna- most significant and far-reaching of all the modes and method- gogues barred their doors, house churches were formed. Jails ologies of evangelization.”10 Martyrdom in Christian witness is were no longer places of confinement but of witness. Women not victimization. International missiologists have judged it to be took their place as early leaders. So transforming was the first “the experience of being uncompromising in the choice of mis- Christian missionaries’ witness, by word and deed, that in sion, including the mission of the people of the Church. Witness Thessalonica they were known as “people who have been turn- in martyrdom is incumbent on both the individual and the ing the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). community. It is a choice for the God of justice and righteousness My thesis is that creative twenty-first-century mission will and it rejects the God of exploitation and oppression.”11 require a radical response to the creative dissonances of our age. The Reconciliation will be a missionary task amid the violence of term “radical” is pregnant with meaning. I am interested here, this century. Robert Schreiter develops five understandings of not so much in its common usage (referring to something ex- the Christian message of reconciliation. First, it is God who treme), but in the sense closer to its derivation from the Latin initiates and brings about reconciliation. We, both victims and radix, “root,” referring to what is fundamental or basic. In mis- oppressors, are invited by God to cooperate in God’s reconciling ways. Second, reconciliation is more a spirituality than a strat- Norman E. Thomas is the Vera B. Blinn Professor Emeritus of World Christian- egy. It needs to become one’s vocation or way of life, not just a set ity at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.