‘Ecumenism’ and ‘independency’ suggest two distinct impulses in the history of Christianity: the desire for unity, co-operation, connectivity, and shared belief and practice, and the impulse for distinction, plurality, and contextual translation. Yet ecumenism and independency are better understood as existing in critical tension with one another. They provide a way of examining changes in World Christianity. Taking their lead from the internationally acclaimed research of Brian Stanley, in whose honour this book is published, contributors examine the entangled nature of ecumenism and independency in the modern global history of Christianity. They show how the scrutiny afforded by the attention to local, contextual approaches to Christianity outside the western world, may inform and enrich the attention to transnational connectivity.
Alexander Chow is Senior Lecturer in Theology and World Christianity in the School of Divinity, University of Edinburgh, and is co-director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity. He is co-editor of the journal Studies in World Christianity (Edinburgh University Press) and is editor of the Chinese Christianities Series (University of Notre Dame Press). He is author of two books, most recently Chinese Public Theology: Generational Shifts and Confucian Imagination in Chinese Christianity (Oxford 2018).
Emma Wild-Wood is Senior lecturer in African Christianity and African Indigenous Religions and co-director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh. Previously she taught in DR Congo, Uganda and Cambridge, UK. She is co-editor of the journal Studies in World Christianity and co-editor of the book series Religion in Transforming Africa published by James Currey. Her latest book is The Mission of Apolo Kivebulaya: Religious Change in the African Great Lakes, c. 1870-1835 (James Currey 2020).
& Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Ecumenism and Independency in World Christianity
Emma Wild-Wood
1 Brian Stanley: Scholar of World Christian History
David Bebbington
Part 1: Studying World Christianity 2 1899–1900: Ecumenism and Independency in the Emerging World History of Christianity Mark Noll
3 Independency in Ecumenical Christianity David M. Thompson
4 Mission: Integrated or Autonomous? Implications for the Study of World Christianity Kirsteen Kim
5 Evangelical Revivals in Twentieth Century Christianity: Reflections on the East African Revival in the Light of Revivals in East Asia Kevin Ward
6 Creation Care in Latin America: Lessons from Catholics and Evangélicos Allen Yeh
Part 2: Christians Working Together 7 The Missionary Concerns of Brunswick Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, Leeds, in the Victorian Era David Bebbington
8 Baptist Students in Cambridge: Denominational and Ecumenical Identities, from the 1920s to the 1940s Ian Randall
9 ‘You are old, Father William’: Generational Abrasiveness in the Missionary Movement Andrew F. Walls
10 Field Workers and Mission Leaders in Tension: Practical Ecumenism in the Shanxi Mission Andrew T. Kaiser
11 The Advance of Pentecostalism in China, 1907–1937 Rolf Gerhard Tiedemann
12 Sacred Music and Christian Transnationalism in 1920s-1930s China and Japan Dana L. Robert
Part 3: Pluriform Christianity 13 China, Social Ethics and the European Enlightenment Stewart J. Brown
14 ‘The Lutheran AggressionControversy’: Caste and Class Conflict of Christians in 19th Century South India Robert Eric Frykenberg
15 Edinburgh 1910 Onward: Cheng Jingyi, Vedanayagam S. Azariah and the Ecumenical Movement in Asia Marina Xiaojing Wang
16 Revolutionary or Reforming? Christian Engagement in Politics during Military-Backed Governments Sebastian C. H. Kim
17 Urbanisation, Diaspora, and the Tenacity of Chinese Evangelicalism Alexander Chow
Afterword: Ecclesiological Considerations for Ecumenism and Independency Alexander Chow
Bibliography of Brian Stanley’s Writings
Index
Academic libraries and institutions where World Christianity, contextual theology, or ecumenics are taught.