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 martyrs. 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 Christians 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 Christianity 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, Latin 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 theology 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 Roman law. 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 Historiography, 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 historian. What is required is no less insofar as the rewriting of church history 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 histories 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