The Missionary Movement from the West: A Biography from Birth to Old Age (Studies in the History of Christian Missions | SHCM)

by Andrew F. Walls

Publisher:

Eerdmans

, 2023

Overview

A long-awaited culmination of scholarship by a pioneer of missiology and global Christianity The history of the missions is complex and fraught. Though modern missions began with European colonialism, the outcome was a largely non-Western global Christianity. Highly esteemed scholar Andrew Walls explores every facet of the movement, including its history, theory, and future.

Walls locates the birth of the Protestant missionary movement in the West with the Puritans and Pietists and their efforts to convert the Native Americans they displaced. Tracing the movement into the twentieth century, Walls shows how colonialism and missionary work turned out to be essentially incompatible. Missionaries must live on another culture’s terms, and their goal—the establishment of churches of every nation—depends on accepting new, indigenous Christians as equals. Now that Christianity has become primarily an African, Latin American, and Asian religion rather than a European one, the dynamics of the church’s mission have transformed. Sensitive to this shift, Walls indicates new areas of listening to and learning from this new center of Christianity and speculates on the theological contributions from a truly global church.

Throughout his long and fruitful career, Walls told the story of missions as a dedicated Christian scholar, teacher, and mentor. Prior to his passing in 2021, he entrusted the editing of his lectures to his friends and students. The result of this labor of love, The Missionary Movement from the West is a must-read for scholars of missiology, world Christianity, and church history.

Key Features

• Explores new areas of theological contributions from a truly global church
• Locates the birth of the Protestant missionary movement in the West with the Puritans and Pietists
• A must-read for scholars of missiology, world Christianity, and church history

Contents

• Editor’s Introduction
• Foreword

I. Birth and Early Years

• 1. The Birth of the Western Missionary Movement
• 2. Puritan and Pietist Origins: Jonathan Edwards and the Missionary Significance of Native America
• 3. A History and Geography of Christian Obedience: Early Protestant Foreign Mission Initiatives from Europe and America
• 4. “Honour All Men”: The Humanitarian Strand in Early Protestant Missions

II. Towards the Middle Age of Western Missions

• 5. Reading the Bible: Theology and the Interpretation of Prophecy in Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions
• 6. Jerusalem and Antioch: Western Missions and non-Western Churches
• 7. “Made of One Blood:” Race, Culture, and Society in Western Mission Thinking
• 8. How Protestant Missionaries Got into China; and how China Got into the Missionaries

III. Mid-Life Crises: Western Missions in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

• 9. Protestant Missions Enter Middle Age
• 10. The World Missionary Conference and the First World War: Bright Visions, Dark Clouds, Hidden Happenings
• 11. The Missionary as Specialist: Healing and the Gospel
• 12. Before the Volcano Erupted: The Tambaram Meeting: Mission on the Eve of the Second World War

IV. The Second World War and the Old Age of the Western Missionary Movement

• 13. The Seventh Chapter of Daniel Continued: The Legacy of World War II and the Birth of the Indian Nation
• 14. Red Sky at Night, Judgment of God? Missions and the China Experience
• 15. Winds of Change and Latter Rain: Christianity and the New African Nations
• 16. The Theological Challenge of World Christianity

Praise for the Print Edition

A feast full of the wisdom, insight, and (yes) wit so characteristic of Andrew Walls’s landmark essays. . . . It is vintage Andrew Walls, and therefore a book to read, savor, ponder, and read again.

—Mark Noll, coauthor of Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia

Andrew Walls was a brilliant and influential interpreter of the history of Christianity as a worldwide movement. These essays demonstrate his deep knowledge, incisive prose, and lively faith. . . . [They] will keep Walls’s voice alive for another generation of readers and inspire scholars and practitioners alike.

—Dana L. Robert, Boston University

The Missionary Movement from the West is vintage Walls, bringing his remarkable perspective on the ebb and flow of Christian history into this fourth collection of his priceless writings. Those of us who studied under him remember his sharing these insights in the courses we had with him. Now they are published and available to all. The insights in this volume are, in many ways, the culmination of the breathtaking career of Walls who, arguably, stands as the pioneer of what is now known as ‘global Christianity.’

—Timothy Tennent, Asbury Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: The Missionary Movement from the West: A Biography from Birth to Old Age
• Author: Andrew F. Walls
• Series: Studies in the History of Christian Missions
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Print Publication Date: 2023
• Logos Release Date: 2023
• Pages: 271
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Missionaries › United States--History; United States › Territorial expansion
• ISBNs: 9780802848970, 0802848974
• Resource ID: LLS:MSSNRYMVMNTSHCM
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2023-10-04T20:24:27Z