Vol. 24, No.2 nternattona• April 2000 ettn• Global Christianity 2000: Expansion, Shift, and Conundrum he twentieth-century expansion of the global Christian but as Robert challenges us, it is going to take diligent study and Tcommunity is widely noted and celebrated-from half a analysis if we are to appreciate just how all the parts fit into the billion people in the year 1900 to two billion in 2000. It is not as impressive whole. This is a task alike for historians, theologians, readily recognized that this remarkable expansion nonetheless and the practitioners of the world Christian mission. fails to translate into an increased percentage of the world's population. In his latest annual statistical table (see the January 2000INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN) contributingeditorDavidB.Barrett calculates the Christian community as 33 percent of world popu­ lation, little changed from what it was a hundred years earlier (actually slightly less). On Page More remarkable than numerical expansion is the demo­ 50 Shifting Southward: Global Christianity Since graphic shift in the global Christian community. In 1900 Chris­ 1945 tians in Europe and North America accounted for more than 80 Dana L. Robert percent of the world Christian community, but at the end of the century these erstwhile Christian heartlands contributed less 54 Millennium Meditation than40percent. Todayit is the non-Westernworldthatboaststhe Graham Kings majority-more than 60 percent of the globe's Christian popula­ 58 Lesslie Newbigin's Contribution to Mission tion. Theology In "Shifting Southward," the lead article of this issue, con­ Wilbert R. Shenk tributing editor Dana Robert lays out the dimensions and the dynamics of the new concentration of Christian communities in 62 Noteworthy regions formerly served by Western missions. 66 150 Outstanding Books for Mission Studies Professor Robert also attends to a peculiarity of this other­ wise welcome phenomenon: even as the Christian faith has 71 My Pilgrimage in Mission surged around the world, establishing what one would like to Paul E. Pierson think of as a truly universal religion, close observers detect more 75 The Legacy of Timothy Richard fragmentation than ever. If mission leaders once worried about P. Richard Bohr the divisiveness that Western denominations brought to their ministries in non-Western lands, what are we to think today 81 The Legacy of Ingwer Ludwig Nommensen when distinctives between Christian communities are further Lothar Schreiner multiplied. as indigenization plays itself out around the globe? 86 Book Reviews As Robert writes, "What at first glance appears to be the largest world religion is in fact the ultimate local religion." 96 Book Notes In terms of the statistics Barrett has compiled over the years, therewere fewer than 2,000Christiandenominations in 1900,but 20,000in 1980and nearly 34,000today. It is only right and fitting that we should rejoice at the global extent of Christ's followers, of issionary Research Shifting Southward: Global Christianity Since 1945 Dana L. Robert rom December 12 to 29, 1938, the most representative shiftsouthwardbeganearlyin the century, and the 1938mission­ F meeting of world Protestantism to date took place in ary conferencewasvivid proofof powerfulindigenous Christian Tambaram, India. Under the gathering storm clouds of World leadership in both church and state, despite a missionary move­ War II, with parts of China already under Japanese occupation, ment trapped within colonialist structures and attitudes. But Hitler triumphant in the Sudetenland, and Stalinism in full after World War II, rising movements of political and ecclesias­ swing, 471 persons from 69 different countries met at Madras tical self-determination materially changed the context in which Christian College for the second decennial meeting of the Inter­ non-Western churches operated, thereby allowing Christianity national Missionary Council. to blossom in multiple cultures. After examining the changing For the first time, African Christians from different parts of political context in which the growth of global Christianity took the continent met each other. The African delegation traveled place, this essay will give examples of the emerging Christian together for weeks on a steamer that proceeded from West Africa movement and then comment on the challenge for historians to Cape Town, and around the Cape of Good Hope to India. posed by the seismic shift in Christian identity. China, besieged by Japan and torn asunder by competing war­ lords, nationalists and Communists, sent forty-nine official del­ Christianity and Nationalism egates, of whom nearly two-thirds were nationals and only one­ third were missionaries. The women's missionary movement, Besides laying waste to Europe, North Africa, and western Asia, then at the height of its influence, pushed for full representation the Second World War revealed the rotten underbelly of Euro­ by women at Madras. Their persistence was rewarded with sixty pean imperialism. In the new postwar political climate, long­ women delegates sent by their national Christian councils, and simmering nationalist movements finally succeeded in throwing anotherten womenin attendanceby invitation. Europeanswhose off direct European rule. With the newly formed United Nations countries would soon be at war worked together in committee, supporting the rights of peoples to self-determination, one coun­ as common Christian commitment overrode the tensions among try after another reverted to local control. In 1947 India obtained Belgians, Danes, French, Germans, British, Dutch, Norwegians, its freedom from Britain, beginning a process of decolonization and others. that continued with Burma in 1948, Ghana in 1957, Nigeria in The central theme that drew so many to India at a time of 1960, Kenya in 1963, and on around the globe. British policies of multiple global crises was lithe upbuilding of the younger indirectrule promoted orderly transitions in someplaces,butleft churches as a part of the historic universal Christian commu­ open sores in others, for example in Sudan, where the Islamic nity."! With Protestant missions bearing fruit in many parts of north was left to govern the traditionalist and Christian south in the world, the time was ripe for younger non-Western churches 1956. Having introduced Western democratic institutions, the to take their places alongside older Western denominations in United States released the Philippines in 1946. Colonial powers joint consideration of the universal church's faith, witness, social such as Holland, France, and Portugal resisted the nationalist realities, and responsibilities. The roster of attendees reads like a tide, ultimately to no avail. The Belgians were so angry at losing who's who of mid-twentieth-century world Christianity.' their colonies that they literally tore the phones off the walls in Yet the 1938 1MC conference was a gathering of visionaries, the Congo, leaving the colonial infrastructure in ruins. The for the global Christianity it embraced was a skeleton without French departed Algeria after six years of fighting the indepen­ flesh or bulk, a mission-educated minority who were leading dence movement. Only a coup d'etat in Portugal finally per­ nascent Christian institutions. At the beginning of the twentieth suaded the Portuguese to free Angola and Mozambique in 1975, century, Europeans dominated the world church, with approxi­ which, like many countries, erupted into civil war once the mately 70.6 percent of the world's Christian population. By 1938, Europeans had departed. Different ethnic and political groups on the eve of World War II, the apparent European domination that had previously cooperated in opposition to European impe­ of Protestantism and Catholicism remained strong. Yet by the rialism now found themselves fighting over control of nations end of the twentieth century, the European percentage of world whose boundaries, size, and even political systems had been Christianity had shrunk to 28 percent of the total; Latin America created by foreigners. The success of anti-imperialist indepen­ and Africa combined provided 43 percent of the world's Chris­ dence movements, with subsequent internal struggles for con­ tians. Although North Americans became the backbone of the trol in dozens of fledgling nation-states, was the most significant cross-cultural mission force after World War II, their numerical political factor affecting the growth of non-Western Christianity dominance was being overtaken by missionaries from the very in the decades following World War II. countries that were considered mission fields only fifty years To understand why decolonization profoundly affected the before. The typicallate twentieth-centuryChristianwasno longer state of Christianity in the non-Western world, one must explore a European man, but a Latin American or African woman.' The the priorambiguous relationship betweenWestern missions and skeleton of 1938 had grown organs and sinew. European imperialism. On the one hand, although missionary This article paints in broad strokes the transformation of workoftenpredatedthe comingofWesterncontrol,imperialism's world Christianity since the Second World War-a massive arrival inevitably placed missions within an oppressive political cultural and geographic shift away from Europeans and their context that they sometimes exploited for their own benefit. In descendants toward peoples of the Southern Hemisphere.' The China, for example, the unequal treaties of 1842 and