Since the year 2000 – the final date of this survey – dramatic changes have taken place in many places. Unforeseen events have hit the global community. These lines, for example, are being written in December 2023, in the midst of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A new global Cold War is threatening. Civil wars and religious conflicts are raging around the globe. In Nagorno Karabakh, for example, more than 100’000 Armenians have been forced in September 2023 by the Azeris to flee their centuries old homeland within one week. The long-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020/22 have not yet been overcome. It has affected the countries in the global South much stronger than those in the northern hemisphere.

Manifold changes and new developments can also be observed in other areas. The worldwide flow of refugees continues to swell, with growing sealing off by the post-industrial societies of the North. At the head of the Roman universal church, the Argentine Jorge Mario Bergoglio has become in 2013 the first non-European pope since the 9th century (with the brief pontificate then of the Syrian Gregory III). By programmatically adopting the papal name Francis, he emphasized the church’s solidarity with the poor and marginalized. In various Latin American societies, however, the Christian religious right is on the rise, often with great affinity for authoritarian regimes. In a country like India, Hindu fundamentalists are currently in power, and they are increasingly discriminating against religious minorities (such as Muslims and Christians). In China, on the other hand, religious life is increasingly being regulated and strangled by the state across all religions. At the same time, however, decentralized growth and the spontaneous formation of new Christian communities continue here as elsewhere. Overall, the religious landscapes have become more complex locally and globally, and the picture more diffuse.

Precisely in view of this growing confusion, however, an ecumenically and globally oriented history of Christianity has become increasingly important. It should provide orientation and contribute to the development of a worldwide culture of remembrance of Christianity. For church history and ecumenism are two sides of the same coin, as my academic teacher Alfred Schindler once put it. Ecumenism refers to the current diversity of world Christianity, while church history – as an academic discipline – has the task of analyzing the different stages and historical learning experiences on the way to this current plurality. Schindler himself related his observation primarily to various projects of an ‘ecumenical church history’ in the 1960s and 1970s, which sought in particular to do justice to the confessional plurality of Christianity (in its main strands of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Orthodoxy). His dictum, however, is equally relevant with regard to the cultural and contextual diversity of Christianity as a global movement in the 20th and 21st centuries.

For it is necessary to preserve and share the different experiences of Christians from heterogeneous contexts. At the same time, a growing awareness of a common past should also help to shape the vision of a shared future – in the midst of a dramatically changing world. This can only happen in dialogue, in conversation with people from different regions, cultures and faith traditions. The days are long gone, by the way, when the various forms of World Christianity could simply be divided among different geographical zones. Philippine Catholics, Nigerian Aladura Christians, Brazilian Pentecostals, Chinese Lutherans or Egyptian Copts are no longer to be found only in their respective countries of origin. Increasingly, they are also encountered locally, in the migrant communities of European metropolises or lecture halls of American colleges, each with their own stories, experiences and identities.

The goal of a search for shared experience and unifying hope cannot be the expectation of a quasi-monolithic World Christianity. Rather, I find myself echoing the words with which Kirsteen and Sebastian Kim conclude their book on ‘Christianity as a World Religion’:

We do not expect a single world Christianity, a world church or a global theology, but we hope for ongoing conversations between Christians, Churches and theologies from around the world.¹

In the last days of 2021, former Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu (b. 1931; see Figure 54) passed away. A national hero in the fight against apartheid and highly respected internationally, Nelson Mandela’s companion was also one of the most prominent faces of World Christianity at the end of the second millennium. Tutu was significant not only as a “moral compass and conscience of the nation,” as South African President Cyril Ramaphosa paid tribute to him in his eulogy at St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town. His voice was also heard internationally in the fight against racism, social injustice and climate change. Tutu played a decisive role in South Africa’s peaceful transition to a multiethnic “rainbow nation” (the term he coined) and headed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 1996 to 1998. This commission sought to heal the wounds of apartheid by openly acknowledging the injustices committed – in this a model for similar undertakings also in other former dictatorships and autocracies. For Tutu, faith was the source of social commitment. “We are prisoners of hope,” his words were recalled at the Cape Town funeral service. “We must always, always hope. And if we do not hope, there is no possibility of change in our hearts, and no possibility of change in the world.”