The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith

by Mark Noll

Publisher:

IVP Academic

, 2010

Overview

With characteristic rigor and insight, in this book Mark Noll revisits the history of the American church in the context of world events. He makes the compelling case that how Americans have come to practice the Christian faith is just as globally important as what the American church has done in the world. Noll backs up this substantial claim with the scholarly attentiveness we’ve come to expect from him, lucidly explaining the relationship between the development of Christianity in North America and the development of Christianity in the rest of the world, with attention to recent transfigurations in world Christianity. Here is a book that will challenge your assumptions about the nature of the relationship between the American church and the global church in the past and predict what world Christianity may look like.

Key Features

• Revisits the history of the American church in the context of world events.
• Offers a deft overview, filled with fascinating examples, of world Christianity today.
• Finds the most effective means to spread the gospel with or without American aid.

Praise for the Print Edition

The best teachers are also learners, and this book is eloquent testimony to Mark Noll’s stature as both wise teacher and continuing student. His thesis is simple: that similarity of historical conditions, rather than direct influence, is what links (white) American evangelicalism with much of non-Western Christianity today. One need not agree with all his arguments to recognize that Noll’s nuanced approach is a very important counter to ideologues of both the left and the right.

--Vinoth Ramachandra, author of Subverting Global Myths

Here is a book that both critics and supporters of missions must read. Noll helps us move beyond the simple praise and blame associated with Western missions to see the complexity and glory of the growth of Christianity, and, in the process, opens up new frontiers of understanding and new lines of research.

--William Dyrness, professor of theology and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary

This book provides deep insight into the relationship between American evangelicalism and the growth of Christianity around the world. Master historian Mark Noll argues that American experience provides the template for much of world Christianity today. Readers will enjoy these thoughtful reflections written with Noll’s typical clarity and creativity.

--Dana L. Robert, Truman Collins Professor of World Mission, Boston University

Product Details

• Title: The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith
• Author: Mark Noll
• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Print Publication Date: 2010
• Logos Release Date: 2018
• Pages: 212
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Christianity › United States--Influence; Missions, American › Developing countries--History; United States › Church history; Developing countries › Church history
• ISBNs: 9780830878819, 0830878815
• Resource ID: LLS:9780830878819
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-06T20:55:02Z

About Mark Noll

Mark A. Noll (PhD, Vanderbilt University) is Francis McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Noll’s main academic interests concern the interaction of Christianity and culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Anglo-American societies. He has published articles and reviews on a wide variety of subjects involving Christianity in modern history. Some of his many books include The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Is the Reformation Over?, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys, and The Old Religion in a New World.