Hanciles does yeoman work in part one synthesizing studies on the impact of globalization, revealing that its outcomes will likely not be determined by the Euro-American heartlands that sparked this movement. Instead, in parts two he shows that migration in general is having an enormous effect on shaping a new world order, and in part three, "Mobile Faith," he advances the case for the migration of Christians as carrying within it the seeds of renewal for the whole church and also the potential to reshape church-state and religion and culture relations globally.
Solidly theological, amply historical, thoroughly ecumenical, and remarkably current, Orlando Costas' 'Christ Outside the Gate' is the most succinct, yet comprehensive analysis of the missiological issues facing the church and the churches that has appeared in many years."" --Alan Neely, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest Learning and passion come together in Christ Outside the Gate to make it an outstanding contribution to missiology."" --Gabriel Fackre, Abbot Professor of Christian Theology, Andover Newton Theological School You have in your hands a new way of seeing missions--North America as a receiving country, the marginalized as the subject as well as object of missions, world evangelization with one foot in Melbourne and one foot in Pattaya. Few authors blend together so effectively so many worlds--evangelism and scholarship, northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere, sociology, and theology."" --Harvie M. Conn, Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia Costas may well be or is on his way to becoming the ablest missiologist alive."" --Jorge Lara-Braud, Director, Council on Theology and Culture, Presbyterian Church in the U.S. Costas writes from the background of an Hispanic Evangelical, but goes far beyond the normal concerns of that tradition. In a series of far-ranging essays, he deals with virtually every aspect of the contemporary missiological debate in a manner that is usually balanced and always provocative. While some readers will violently question his views at certain points, all will be stimulated and challenged to think more deeply and participate more effectively in the total world mission to which God has called His Church."" --Paul E. Pierson, Fuller Theological Seminary 'Christ Outside the Gate' offers us a perspective of missions that focuses on the transition from paternalism to the contextualization of the Gospel."" --Oscar I. Romo, Director, Language Missions Division, Southern Baptist Convention Costas writes from the viewpoint of those who live on the periphery of society. He challenges Christians of all denominations to a renewed understanding of the Christ who 'suffered outside the gates.'"" --John T. Boberg, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago Orlando E. Costas is also the author of 'Liberating News', 'The Integrity of Mission', and 'The Church and Its Mission'.
A magisterial sweep through 1500 years of Christian history with a groundbreaking focus on the missionary role of migrants in its spread. Human migration has long been identified as a driving force of historical change. Building on this understanding, Jehu Hanciles surveys the history of Christianity’s global expansion from its origins through 1500 CE to show how migration—more than official missionary activity or imperial designs—played a vital role in making Christianity the world’s largest religion. Church history has tended to place a premium on political power and institutional forms, thus portraying Christianity as a religion disseminated through official representatives of church and state. But, as Hanciles illustrates, this “top-down perspective overlooks the multifarious array of social movements, cultural processes, ordinary experiences, and non-elite activities and decisions that contribute immensely to religious encounter and exchange.” Hanciles’s socio-historical approach to understanding the growth of Christianity as a world religion disrupts the narrative of Western preeminence, while honoring and making sense of the diversity of religious expression that has characterized the world Christian movement for two millennia. In turning the focus of the story away from powerful empires and heroic missionaries, Migration and the Making of Global Christianity instead tells the more truthful story of how every Christian migrant is a vessel for the spread of the Christian faith in our deeply interconnected world.
This is a print on demand book and is therefore non- returnable. Though buffeted on all sides by rapid and at times cataclysmic social, political, and economic change, the medieval church was able to make adjustments that kept it from becoming simply a fossil from the past rather than an enduring institution of salvation. The dynamic interaction between the medieval church and society gives form to this compelling and well-informed study by Adriaan Bredero. By considering medieval Christianity in full relation to its historical context, Bredero elucidates complex medieval realities -- many of which run counter to common modern notions about the Middle Ages. Bredero moves beyond the usual treatment of history by framing his overall discussion in terms of a fascinating and relevant question: To what extent is Christianity today still molded by medieval society? The book begins with an overview of religion and the church in medieval society, from the early Christianization of Western Europe through the fifteenth century. Bredero counters earlier romanticized assessments of the Middle Ages as a thoroughly Christian period by arriving at a definition of Christendom, not in its original sense as the empire of Charlemagne, but rather as "the countries, people, and matters which stood under the influence of Christ."
In 1507 Martin Waldseemuller created a remarkable Early Modern world map loaded with religious symbols. The cartographer depicted the papal keys, which according to the map's companion text, the Cosmographiae Introductio, enclosed almost the whole of Europe for the Western Church. However, beyond the boundaries of Europe's Christendom, the map pictured Nestorian churches in China and the legendary Christian ruler Prester John in India. His subsequent Carta marina (1516) amplified the descriptions of these religious traditions. Waldseemuller's maps, like almost every other world map of the era, featured legends of Christian communities positioned outside of Christendom. Christianity Beyond Christendom explores this religious tension -- the diversities of globally scattered Christian traditions and the more rigid notion of a homogenous Christendom -- as a component of cartographical developments from the eighth to the sixteenth century. It argues that throughout this era Western Christian thinkers and mapmakers used the mappaemundi and subsequent printed maps of the world to sustain notions of a broadly based Christian oikoumene, even as the reality of that assertion diminished. Moreover, cartographers incorporated various apostolic and ancient legends, furthering these with new myths, to provide increasingly sophisticated methods for understanding more distant and isolated Christian communities in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The book considers a vast array of medieval world maps and later atlases, ranging from manuscripts of Beatus of Liebana's commentary on the Apocalypse to the maps in Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia and Abraham Ortelius's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, to trace the legacy of these scattered traditions.
How did the movement founded by Jesus transform more in the first seventy-five years after his death than it has in the two thousand years since? This book tells the story of how the Christian movement, which began as relatively informal, rural, Hebrew and Aramaic speaking, and closely anchored to the Jewish synagogue, became primarily urban, Greek speaking, and gentile by the early second century, spreading through the Greco-Roman world with a mission agenda and church organization distinct from its roots in Jewish Galilee. It also shows how the early church's witness can encourage the church today.
This tenth anniversary revised edition of the authoritative text on Christianity's first thousand years of history features a new preface, additional color images, and an updated bibliography. The essential general survey of medieval European Christendom, Brown's vivid prose charts the compelling and tumultuous rise of an institution that came to wield enormous religious and secular power. Clear and vivid history of Christianity's rise and its pivotal role in the making of Europe Written by the celebrated Princeton scholar who originated of the field of study known as 'late antiquity' Includes a fully updated bibliography and index
Case studies upon the use of concepts like feminization and masculinization in relation to christianity. Since the 1970s the feminization thesis has become a powerful trope in the rewriting of the social history of Christendom. However, this 'thesis' has triggered some vehement debates, given that men have continued to dominate the churches, and the churches themselves have reacted to the association of religion and femininity, often formulated by their critics, by explicitly focusing their appeal to men. In this book the authors critically reflect upon the use of concepts like feminization and masculinization in relation to Christianity.
Brett Whalen explores the compelling belief that Christendom would spread to every corner of the earth before the end of time. During the High Middle Ages—an era of crusade, mission, and European expansion—the Western followers of Rome imagined the future conversion of Jews, Muslims, pagans, and Eastern Christians into one fold of God’s people, assembled under the authority of the Roman Church. Starting with the eleventh-century papal reform, Whalen shows how theological readings of history, prophecies, and apocalyptic scenarios enabled medieval churchmen to project the authority of Rome over the world. Looking to Byzantium, the Islamic world, and beyond, Western Christians claimed their special place in the divine plan for salvation, whether they were battling for Jerusalem or preaching to unbelievers. For those who knew how to read the signs, history pointed toward the triumph and spread of Roman Christianity. Yet this dream of Christendom raised troublesome questions about the problem of sin within the body of the faithful. By the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, radical apocalyptic thinkers numbered among the papacy’s most outspoken critics, who associated present-day ecclesiastical institutions with the evil of Antichrist—a subversive reading of the future. For such critics, the conversion of the world would happen only after the purgation of the Roman Church and a time of suffering for the true followers of God. This engaging and beautifully written book offers an important window onto Western religious views in the past that continue to haunt modern times.
