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The Missionary Movement from the West: A Biography from Birth to Old Age (Studies in the History of Christian Missions
The Gospel Coalition Book Award in Missions & the Global Church (2023)
The long-awaited work of 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.
The long-awaited work of 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.
389 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 26, 2023
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About the author
Andrew F. Walls
17 books11 followersA former missionary to Sierra Leone and Nigeria, Andrew Walls taught for many years at the University of Aberdeen before founding the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh. The Andrew F. Walls Centre for The Study of African and Asian Christianity has recently been founded in his honour at Liverpool Hope University. In 2007 he received the Distinguished Career Award of the American Society of Church History.
Honorary Professor in the University of Edinburgh and Professor of the History of Mission at Liverpool Hope University, and Professor in the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture, Akropong, Ghana.
Honorary Professor in the University of Edinburgh and Professor of the History of Mission at Liverpool Hope University, and Professor in the Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture, Akropong, Ghana.
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January 15, 2024
The missional history of the Christian tradition is complicated. Christianity spread across the globe becoming the largest religious tradition. Over time it has ebbed and flowed. For a moment in time, several centuries its center was to be found in Europe. Today, Christianity is on the decline in Europe and even North America. Yet, it is thriving in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. Not so long ago Korea was a new mission destination, while today South Korea is a mission-sending nation. There is good and there is bad when it comes to the story of Christian missions, especially the missionary movements that originated in the West, that is Europe and North America.
Although I was never a missionary, nor had any inkling to be one, my missions professor in college planted a seed of interest in Christian missions. I even took his History of Christian Missions, in part because it was a history class and I wanted to add another history class in my senior year. The interest has remained with me to this day, especially in light of my interfaith engagement. Understanding the history of Christian missions is helpful in understanding the perspectives of my Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish friends.
Andrew Walls's "The Missionary Movement from the West: A Biography from Birth to Old Age" offers the reader a helpful historical overview of the complex nature of the missionary movement as it originated in Europe and spread across the globe. The book itself is part of the "Studies in the History of Christian Missions" series published by Eerdmans. The author, Andrew Walls, who passed away in 2021, was one of the leading mission historians. He was both a participant in mission and an observer. As such he has a good understanding of the complex nature of the missionary movement. This volume is based on lectures given in several locations, including the Overseas Ministries Study Center located in New Haven, Connecticut, between 2005-2008. They were given orally from handwritten notes, which were then transcribed from recordings and edited to create this volume after his death by Brian Stanley.
As the editor notes, except for the first chapter of the book, Walls says little about Catholic missions and less about Orthodox missions. Thus, it is a largely Protestant narrative that focuses on mission efforts that extended from Europe, especially the United Kingdom, and North America (especially the United States). He locates much of the expansion of missional efforts after the Reformation to European migration. That was true of both Catholic and Protestant missions. Since the book is based on lectures delivered over fifteen years ago, the editor notes that there have been changes in perspective since the lectures were presented, thus he has noted any qualifications of Walls' perspective in the footnotes.
Walls lays out his history of the Western missionary movements in four parts. He begins in Part One with the "Birth and Early Years." The chapters in this section focus on the origins of Western missionary efforts. It is here that he starts with Catholic missions and the extension of Christendom through the "Great European Migration." This migration began around the fifteenth century and reached its peak in the twentieth century when it began to recede. He shares later in the book that as the migration ended from Europe, migration into Europe and North America began to take place, as we've seen of late. He quickly moves forward in time to the Puritan and Pietist origins of Protestant missions in the eighteenth century, including Jonathan Edwards's engagement in missionary efforts among Native Americans (chapter 2). From there we move to "A History and Geography of Christian Obedience" in Chapter 3. In this chapter, we see how the early strands of missions began to take hold as Protestant mission efforts got underway, largely as a response to a rediscovery of the Great Commission. The focus is on European and American efforts, especially in Africa. This chapter includes discussions of a variety of mission efforts, some denominational and others voluntary, such that more nondenominational efforts emerge. The next chapter (4) focuses on the importance of the abolitionist movement to missions and the addition of other humanitarian efforts.
After laying out the foundations of Western mission efforts in Part One, we move in Part Two to "Middle Age," with a focus on the nineteenth century. The chapters in this section include discussions of the interpretation of biblical prophecy as it is connected with Protestant missions (chapter 5). There is a chapter titled Jerusalem and Antioch that explores the relationship between missions and non-western churches, recognizing the connection between colonialism and mission efforts, as well as the development of the "Three-Self Principle," which involved in certain sectors of the production of self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating" missions. As we'll see there were often conflicting efforts as missions at times sought to create churches with indigenous leadership and at others restricting leadership to Western missionaries. Chapter 7 is titled "Made of One Blood," a chapter that explores the role that race, culture, and society play in Western missionary efforts. One of the issues that emerged in the nineteenth century was the expansion late in the century of colonialism, such that missionaries found themselves more often dealing with Western governments rather than local leaders, especially in Africa. This led to a reduction of local leadership. Following this discussion Walls focuses on the missionary efforts in China, which was largely resistant until Western powers began to make colonial inroads into China, leading to significant complications (Chapter 8).
Part 3 is titled "Midlife Crises: Western Missions in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries." Here Walls discusses the maturing nature of Protestant missions with its attending challenges (chapter 9), leading to a discussion of the "The World Missionary Conference" of 1910, which was a major ecumenical effort that would lead to other ecumenical efforts. The important thing to note here is that while it was an important milestone, as missionaries from across the Protestant world gathered, it was largely a European and North American gathering, with few leaders from outside the West present. Not long after that, World War I began complicating these efforts, and also beginning the stage for independence movements. Chapter 11 introduces the beginnings of missionary specialization, especially medical missions. Interestingly, it was medical missions that enabled missionaries, who once focused solely on evangelism to gain entrance to places like China. Chapter 12 signals the beginnings of change and the movement into what Walls calls "Old Age." The setting for this conversation is the Tamaram International Mission Conference that took place in Madras India in 1938. It is here that more non-Western leaders made their presence known and Western missions began to enter their twilight years. Note that is conference takes place before World War II and the independence from British rule of India that took place shortly after the war's end. With it would come the decolonization of the church that would continue into the present day. Walls writes that with the end of the European migration and the beginnings of decolonization, "With its return to being a non-Western religion, Christianity has reverted to type" (p. 191). Indeed!
The final section, "Old Age" focuses on the period running from World War II to the present and its impact on the Western missionary movement. He begins in Chapter 13 using the depiction of the rise and fall of empires in Daniel 7 to explore the legacy of World War II, which planted the seeds of the demise of empire and the birth of the Indian nation. This is an important chapter that helps us understand the impact of British imperialism in India and its demise on the church in India. This followed in Chapter 14 with a look at missions in China, noting the hopes and dreams of mission efforts, especially since Chiang Kai-Sheck was a professing Christian, and the fall of the National control over China and the emergence of Communist rule and the expulsion of Western missionaries. Then in Chapter 15, Walls looks at the nature of Christianity in Africa as independence movements took shape and the role missions and Christianity would play in the emergence of these new nations. The final chapter invites us to consider the theological questions raised by these changes to World Christianity. One of the important insights made in Chapter 16 is that Western theological concepts don't fit the new reality. Thus the need for theological contributions from these emerging non-Western churches. He also sees, hopefully, a transformation of the nature of the ecumenical movement, such that with the return to a truly global church, we have the possibility of "realizing a single world Christian community" where all the parties are equal elements of that church. He writes, "Perhaps the great ecumenical test, the litmus test of the church in this century, will bless the relations of what we call churches than the ability of African and Indian and Chinese and Korean and North and South America and east and west European Christians to work, to share meaningfully, within the body of Christ." (p. 246).
The value of a book like this is that it gives us insight into the development and expansion of the Christian faith across the globe, with all of its ups and downs, good and bad elements. Missionary movements made many bad choices, often in partnership with colonial governments and the migration of Europeans across the globe. Nevertheless, we now live within a newly emerging global Christian context that spans the globe. The question for now is what this might look like. What will this new reality require of us as the body of Christ? To fully understand where we are as we move forward, we need to understand how we got here. As a participant and an observer, Andrew Walls provides that needed context, making this a must-read for Western church leaders.
Although I was never a missionary, nor had any inkling to be one, my missions professor in college planted a seed of interest in Christian missions. I even took his History of Christian Missions, in part because it was a history class and I wanted to add another history class in my senior year. The interest has remained with me to this day, especially in light of my interfaith engagement. Understanding the history of Christian missions is helpful in understanding the perspectives of my Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish friends.
Andrew Walls's "The Missionary Movement from the West: A Biography from Birth to Old Age" offers the reader a helpful historical overview of the complex nature of the missionary movement as it originated in Europe and spread across the globe. The book itself is part of the "Studies in the History of Christian Missions" series published by Eerdmans. The author, Andrew Walls, who passed away in 2021, was one of the leading mission historians. He was both a participant in mission and an observer. As such he has a good understanding of the complex nature of the missionary movement. This volume is based on lectures given in several locations, including the Overseas Ministries Study Center located in New Haven, Connecticut, between 2005-2008. They were given orally from handwritten notes, which were then transcribed from recordings and edited to create this volume after his death by Brian Stanley.
As the editor notes, except for the first chapter of the book, Walls says little about Catholic missions and less about Orthodox missions. Thus, it is a largely Protestant narrative that focuses on mission efforts that extended from Europe, especially the United Kingdom, and North America (especially the United States). He locates much of the expansion of missional efforts after the Reformation to European migration. That was true of both Catholic and Protestant missions. Since the book is based on lectures delivered over fifteen years ago, the editor notes that there have been changes in perspective since the lectures were presented, thus he has noted any qualifications of Walls' perspective in the footnotes.
Walls lays out his history of the Western missionary movements in four parts. He begins in Part One with the "Birth and Early Years." The chapters in this section focus on the origins of Western missionary efforts. It is here that he starts with Catholic missions and the extension of Christendom through the "Great European Migration." This migration began around the fifteenth century and reached its peak in the twentieth century when it began to recede. He shares later in the book that as the migration ended from Europe, migration into Europe and North America began to take place, as we've seen of late. He quickly moves forward in time to the Puritan and Pietist origins of Protestant missions in the eighteenth century, including Jonathan Edwards's engagement in missionary efforts among Native Americans (chapter 2). From there we move to "A History and Geography of Christian Obedience" in Chapter 3. In this chapter, we see how the early strands of missions began to take hold as Protestant mission efforts got underway, largely as a response to a rediscovery of the Great Commission. The focus is on European and American efforts, especially in Africa. This chapter includes discussions of a variety of mission efforts, some denominational and others voluntary, such that more nondenominational efforts emerge. The next chapter (4) focuses on the importance of the abolitionist movement to missions and the addition of other humanitarian efforts.
After laying out the foundations of Western mission efforts in Part One, we move in Part Two to "Middle Age," with a focus on the nineteenth century. The chapters in this section include discussions of the interpretation of biblical prophecy as it is connected with Protestant missions (chapter 5). There is a chapter titled Jerusalem and Antioch that explores the relationship between missions and non-western churches, recognizing the connection between colonialism and mission efforts, as well as the development of the "Three-Self Principle," which involved in certain sectors of the production of self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating" missions. As we'll see there were often conflicting efforts as missions at times sought to create churches with indigenous leadership and at others restricting leadership to Western missionaries. Chapter 7 is titled "Made of One Blood," a chapter that explores the role that race, culture, and society play in Western missionary efforts. One of the issues that emerged in the nineteenth century was the expansion late in the century of colonialism, such that missionaries found themselves more often dealing with Western governments rather than local leaders, especially in Africa. This led to a reduction of local leadership. Following this discussion Walls focuses on the missionary efforts in China, which was largely resistant until Western powers began to make colonial inroads into China, leading to significant complications (Chapter 8).
Part 3 is titled "Midlife Crises: Western Missions in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries." Here Walls discusses the maturing nature of Protestant missions with its attending challenges (chapter 9), leading to a discussion of the "The World Missionary Conference" of 1910, which was a major ecumenical effort that would lead to other ecumenical efforts. The important thing to note here is that while it was an important milestone, as missionaries from across the Protestant world gathered, it was largely a European and North American gathering, with few leaders from outside the West present. Not long after that, World War I began complicating these efforts, and also beginning the stage for independence movements. Chapter 11 introduces the beginnings of missionary specialization, especially medical missions. Interestingly, it was medical missions that enabled missionaries, who once focused solely on evangelism to gain entrance to places like China. Chapter 12 signals the beginnings of change and the movement into what Walls calls "Old Age." The setting for this conversation is the Tamaram International Mission Conference that took place in Madras India in 1938. It is here that more non-Western leaders made their presence known and Western missions began to enter their twilight years. Note that is conference takes place before World War II and the independence from British rule of India that took place shortly after the war's end. With it would come the decolonization of the church that would continue into the present day. Walls writes that with the end of the European migration and the beginnings of decolonization, "With its return to being a non-Western religion, Christianity has reverted to type" (p. 191). Indeed!
The final section, "Old Age" focuses on the period running from World War II to the present and its impact on the Western missionary movement. He begins in Chapter 13 using the depiction of the rise and fall of empires in Daniel 7 to explore the legacy of World War II, which planted the seeds of the demise of empire and the birth of the Indian nation. This is an important chapter that helps us understand the impact of British imperialism in India and its demise on the church in India. This followed in Chapter 14 with a look at missions in China, noting the hopes and dreams of mission efforts, especially since Chiang Kai-Sheck was a professing Christian, and the fall of the National control over China and the emergence of Communist rule and the expulsion of Western missionaries. Then in Chapter 15, Walls looks at the nature of Christianity in Africa as independence movements took shape and the role missions and Christianity would play in the emergence of these new nations. The final chapter invites us to consider the theological questions raised by these changes to World Christianity. One of the important insights made in Chapter 16 is that Western theological concepts don't fit the new reality. Thus the need for theological contributions from these emerging non-Western churches. He also sees, hopefully, a transformation of the nature of the ecumenical movement, such that with the return to a truly global church, we have the possibility of "realizing a single world Christian community" where all the parties are equal elements of that church. He writes, "Perhaps the great ecumenical test, the litmus test of the church in this century, will bless the relations of what we call churches than the ability of African and Indian and Chinese and Korean and North and South America and east and west European Christians to work, to share meaningfully, within the body of Christ." (p. 246).
The value of a book like this is that it gives us insight into the development and expansion of the Christian faith across the globe, with all of its ups and downs, good and bad elements. Missionary movements made many bad choices, often in partnership with colonial governments and the migration of Europeans across the globe. Nevertheless, we now live within a newly emerging global Christian context that spans the globe. The question for now is what this might look like. What will this new reality require of us as the body of Christ? To fully understand where we are as we move forward, we need to understand how we got here. As a participant and an observer, Andrew Walls provides that needed context, making this a must-read for Western church leaders.
January 22, 2024
Summary: A history of the last five hundred years of Christian mission efforts from the Europe and North America.
Andrew F. Walls was perhaps the dean of mission scholars until his death in 2021. In this volume, we have his final work, a survey of mission efforts from Europe and North America over the past five hundred years. Missions historian Brian Stanley edited this work drawing upon recordings of Walls lectures, and one has the sense that we are listening to Andrew Walls.
The book is organized on a developmental theme from birth, marking the decline of Christendom, following European migrations to North America, Africa, and the East, to mid-life and the high water mark of the world Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, to old age following the Second World War, the end of colonial empires and the rise of world Christianity. He begins with tracing the transition from crusade to colonization, and with that the missions, both Catholic and Protestant that accompanied commercial efforts and European migrations. Gone was the conversion of whole peoples under Christendom but rather efforts of preaching and evangelization. Walls also sees these migrations as the beginning of an increasingly secularized Europe, signaling the death of “Christendom.”
In succeeding chapters, he covers the early mission efforts of Puritans and Pietists with native peoples in North America, focusing particularly on Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd. He recounts the rise of early missionary societies in England, the Church Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society, and the early efforts of William Carey in India. It was striking that many of the early workers were drawn from working classes, unlike the beginnings in North America in the university student movement that traces from the Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806 at Williams College. Walls also notes the strong humanitarian impulse connected with Christian missions in this period, particularly the influence of Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect on abolishing slavery and addressing other social reforms.
The second period Walls addresses might be called “early adulthood to midlife.” He looks at nineteenth century Bible reading and growing concerns around end time prophecy and how this mobilized missionary efforts toward world evangelization. He introduces many of us to the work of Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. We learn of the early vision from Henry Venn of the idea of the national church and the first expression of the Three Self Principle–that churches be self-governing, self supporting, and self propagating. Missions forced grappling with race, culture, and society, and led to the rise of language and culture studies, particularly in the context of African mission. This was likewise true in early mission efforts in China, where it was recognized that it was not enough for the missionary to get into China. China had to get into the missionary–sometimes to the disapproval of sending boards. Walls profiles Robert Morrison, a Scot who pioneered medical missions.
The third period is the “midlife crisis period. It begins on a triumphal note with the great missionary conference of 1910 at Edinburgh, a thorough-going effort to delineate what was entailed in the “evangelization of the world in our generation.” Access to nearly every country was possible–it was simply a matter of mobilizing a missions movement–still from the West. Then in just four years came the First World War. Nevertheless, many doors were open and medical missions led the way, but became increasingly costly to mission boards with advances in medical care. Walls then features the International Missionary Council in Tambaran, India, and the signs of rising indigenous churches and strainings to shed dependence on the West that would become full-blown following the Second World War.
The final part of the book covers the movement into Old Age, exploring in successive chapters the growth of the church in a time of transition from Western mission efforts in India, China, and Africa. The book concludes with the rise of world Christianity and the movement of Christians to the West, even as the West becomes increasingly secularized.
The narrative Walls provides traces a story arc that ties a number of developments into a fascinating account. Along the way, he introduces us to the contribution of key mission leaders. He offers a thoughtful account that recognizes both the ways the mission movement was implicated at times in colonialism and at times struggled against it in thoughtfully contextualized efforts designed to foster indigeneity.
I was surprised by the absence of treatment of the Lausanne movement which certainly represented a transition from western to global Christianity. Likewise, there was no coverage of efforts centered at Fuller Seminary around missions mobilization and church growth, nor was there coverage of more recent student missions movements continuing the tradition of the Student Volunteer Movement through the series of Urbana Missions Conventions beginning in Toronto in 1946. All of these reflected the changes in understanding of the role of the West in global Christianity–although not into senescence, perhaps, but into a new paradigm of new wineskins.
Nevertheless, this may be forgiven because Walls covers something less familiar to many Western Christians–the rise of Christianity in Latin America, Africa, and both South and East Asia, where he has traced developments throughout. Walls helps us understand the role of the West in reaching our present moment, offering inspiring models and salutary lessons worth heeding by global Christian leadership.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
Andrew F. Walls was perhaps the dean of mission scholars until his death in 2021. In this volume, we have his final work, a survey of mission efforts from Europe and North America over the past five hundred years. Missions historian Brian Stanley edited this work drawing upon recordings of Walls lectures, and one has the sense that we are listening to Andrew Walls.
The book is organized on a developmental theme from birth, marking the decline of Christendom, following European migrations to North America, Africa, and the East, to mid-life and the high water mark of the world Missionary Conference in Edinburgh, to old age following the Second World War, the end of colonial empires and the rise of world Christianity. He begins with tracing the transition from crusade to colonization, and with that the missions, both Catholic and Protestant that accompanied commercial efforts and European migrations. Gone was the conversion of whole peoples under Christendom but rather efforts of preaching and evangelization. Walls also sees these migrations as the beginning of an increasingly secularized Europe, signaling the death of “Christendom.”
In succeeding chapters, he covers the early mission efforts of Puritans and Pietists with native peoples in North America, focusing particularly on Jonathan Edwards and David Brainerd. He recounts the rise of early missionary societies in England, the Church Missionary Society and the London Missionary Society, and the early efforts of William Carey in India. It was striking that many of the early workers were drawn from working classes, unlike the beginnings in North America in the university student movement that traces from the Haystack Prayer Meeting of 1806 at Williams College. Walls also notes the strong humanitarian impulse connected with Christian missions in this period, particularly the influence of Wilberforce and the Clapham Sect on abolishing slavery and addressing other social reforms.
The second period Walls addresses might be called “early adulthood to midlife.” He looks at nineteenth century Bible reading and growing concerns around end time prophecy and how this mobilized missionary efforts toward world evangelization. He introduces many of us to the work of Rufus Anderson of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. We learn of the early vision from Henry Venn of the idea of the national church and the first expression of the Three Self Principle–that churches be self-governing, self supporting, and self propagating. Missions forced grappling with race, culture, and society, and led to the rise of language and culture studies, particularly in the context of African mission. This was likewise true in early mission efforts in China, where it was recognized that it was not enough for the missionary to get into China. China had to get into the missionary–sometimes to the disapproval of sending boards. Walls profiles Robert Morrison, a Scot who pioneered medical missions.
The third period is the “midlife crisis period. It begins on a triumphal note with the great missionary conference of 1910 at Edinburgh, a thorough-going effort to delineate what was entailed in the “evangelization of the world in our generation.” Access to nearly every country was possible–it was simply a matter of mobilizing a missions movement–still from the West. Then in just four years came the First World War. Nevertheless, many doors were open and medical missions led the way, but became increasingly costly to mission boards with advances in medical care. Walls then features the International Missionary Council in Tambaran, India, and the signs of rising indigenous churches and strainings to shed dependence on the West that would become full-blown following the Second World War.
The final part of the book covers the movement into Old Age, exploring in successive chapters the growth of the church in a time of transition from Western mission efforts in India, China, and Africa. The book concludes with the rise of world Christianity and the movement of Christians to the West, even as the West becomes increasingly secularized.
The narrative Walls provides traces a story arc that ties a number of developments into a fascinating account. Along the way, he introduces us to the contribution of key mission leaders. He offers a thoughtful account that recognizes both the ways the mission movement was implicated at times in colonialism and at times struggled against it in thoughtfully contextualized efforts designed to foster indigeneity.
I was surprised by the absence of treatment of the Lausanne movement which certainly represented a transition from western to global Christianity. Likewise, there was no coverage of efforts centered at Fuller Seminary around missions mobilization and church growth, nor was there coverage of more recent student missions movements continuing the tradition of the Student Volunteer Movement through the series of Urbana Missions Conventions beginning in Toronto in 1946. All of these reflected the changes in understanding of the role of the West in global Christianity–although not into senescence, perhaps, but into a new paradigm of new wineskins.
Nevertheless, this may be forgiven because Walls covers something less familiar to many Western Christians–the rise of Christianity in Latin America, Africa, and both South and East Asia, where he has traced developments throughout. Walls helps us understand the role of the West in reaching our present moment, offering inspiring models and salutary lessons worth heeding by global Christian leadership.
____________________
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.
December 12, 2024
The book offers an in-depth exploration of the Protestant missionary movement's historical, theological, and cultural dimensions. Walls, a preeminent scholar of global Christianity, presents the missionary movement as a "biography," tracing its birth, evolution, maturity, and eventual old age. Through this structure, he illuminates the dynamic interplay between missions, colonialism, and the emergence of non-Western Christianity as the dominant force in the contemporary Christian world.
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