Indigenous Christian Research Articles

A Chinese Christian Leader Revisited: The John Sung Papers at Yale Divinity Library

ABSTRACTJohn Sung (1901–1944) was a prominent Chinese Christian evangelist whose enduring influence is still recognized through China and Southeast Asia. His reputation has long been based primarily on his autobiography and excerpts from his diaries that his daughter Levi Sung selected and published. The correspondence, writings, and extensive diaries of Sung recently acquired by the Yale Divinity Library shed new light on his life and work. This article gives a detailed account of provenance, content, and format of all the materials included in the Sung papers. They are invaluable to the study and rediscovery of Sung's life, thought, and ministry as well as the history and development of indigenous Christianity and churches in China and Southeast Asia. This article also examines Sung's English diaries from the period of his hospitalization in a psychiatric facility to reveal complexities in Sung that have been less evident in published biographies and writings. Five additional original diary entries will be compared to their published versions to reveal alterations, deletions, and inaccuracies in the published extracts. The comparative study demonstrates that the diary extracts compiled by Levi, which are the most commonly-cited source on Sung, are in some cases problematic.

Felix Wilfred, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, xxi + 657 pp.

Felix Wilfred, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2014, xxi + 657 pp. The Oxford Handbook of Christianity in Asia is a comprehensive guide to Christianity in all its forms in a very diverse region. It is interdisciplinary in approach, and covers Christianity in its many expressions, from theology and spirituality to social and cultural studies and inter-religious interactions. Felix Wilfred and his five-person editorial board have recruited an additional 30 outstanding scholars to produce a multi-faceted handbook that will be useful for many years to come. Following a general introduction by the editor, the handbook is divided into five parts, each with its own introduction and five to nine chapters. In his introduction, Wilfred seeks to emphasize the agency of Asian Christians, as well as their complex ties with the West. In the transmission of Christianity to Asia, he writes, "Everywhere operative is the process of appropriation of the Christian faith and institutions according to the genius of the various peoples and societies of the continent." The relationship of Christianity to colonialism is analyzed in many places in this book. Wilfred writes, "Christianity was as much part of the colonial establishment as it was against it. It could germinate and grow with the explicit or tacit support of the colonial powers and bask under their protection; but it could also challenge the same colonial powers on a number of issues and take side with those dominated and exploited by those very forces. The legacy of Christianity in this respect is highly ambiguous and open to debate." From the introduction onward, the authors of this volume stake out contested positions and different approaches, rather than settling for bland summaries. This makes for interesting reading. Part I sets the stage with individual essays on regional descriptions of Christianity in West, South, Southeast, Central, and East Asia. The authors approach their subjects in different ways, with different emphases and with different degrees of thoroughness. Those dealing with the early period are more historical in nature, while others are thematic, and still others focus largely on the present. The section is useful, but as in all such handbooks, uneven. Part II goes beyond the geographical regions in its emphasis on "Cross-Cultural Flows and Pan-Asian Movements of Asian Christianity." The chapters on Asian theological trends, cross-textual hermeneutics, and the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements are outstanding. They are comprehensive and can function as brief introductions to their subjects for students and general readers. Other chapters on the ecumenical movement, missionary movements from Asia, indigenous Christianities, and issues related to gender, sexuality, and feminism are also useful, but not as authoritative. Part III is more thematic in nature, with nine chapters on "Asian Christianities and the Social-Cultural Processes." The emphasis throughout is on the social forces that have shaped Christianity, including modernity, colonialism, nationalism, and democratization, and Asian Christian responses to these movements. Some of the chapters are case studies, while others are broader in scope. The chapters are nuanced, with authors showing the complex ways in which Asian Christians adapted to, resisted, and negotiated with the broader social movements. …

Translated Illustration and the Indigenization of Christianity in Late Qing Chinese Christian Novels

“Intersemiotic translation” is categorized by Roman Jakobson as one of three types of translation. Translation of illustrations in the late Qing novels, either directly from verbal signs or visual signs, can also be regarded as a typical kind of “intersemiotic translation.” The present article studies illustrations in Chinese Christian literature in the late Qing period, especially those in the Chinese translations of John Bunyan’s works, The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Holy War . Questions to ponder are how inter-semiotic translation occurs between these illustrations—in either transferring or transplanting the meanings from one sign system to another—and how it establishes its legitimacy through religious negotiation, ideological conflict, and cultural integration. The illustrations in the Chinese translation versions of The Pilgrim’s Progress manifest the translators’ and illustrators’ manipulation of repertoires of Chinese religious signs, thereby indigenizing a foreign religion. These illustrations, nevertheless, are not only associated with Christianity, but also with the long-lasting visual signs of Chinese culture. Hence these translated illustrations could be considered as a type of “Translated Christianity.”

Introduction: Klaus Koschorke and the “Munich School” Perspective on the History of World Christianity

ABSTRACT This article takes a look back at the last twenty years of what some have called the “Munich School of World Christianity” and presents the research of this group of scholars, who are working or have worked at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. Its central focus lies on the career and scholarly work of the group’s spiritus rector, Klaus Koschorke, who held the chair for Early and Global History of Christianity in the Faculty of Protestant Theology from 1993 to 2013. In this way, the reader, on the one hand, is introduced to the most important scholarly concepts, studies, and international conferences of the “Munich School” and, on the other hand, is given an overview of recent research projects dealing with indigenous Christian elites in Asia and Africa.

Interview with Professor Philippe Denis

Prof. Philippe Denis is a Senior Professor in History of Christianity at the University of Kwazulu‑Natal. In the 1970s and 1980s, his research focused on the history of the Reformation in Germany, France and The Netherlands, and specifically on issues of confessional development, biblical exegesis, and cultural representations. Over the past two decades, his research focused primarily on the history of indigenous Christianity in southern Africa, along with an interest in oral history. The latter has encouraged him to reflect on issues of memory and resilience, and to found the Sinomlando Centre for Oral History and Memory Work in Africa.

Spanish-American Literature: The Colonial Period

Roberto A. Valdeon’s wide-ranging Translation and the Spanish Empire in the Americas, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 284 pp., is a reference text for curious readers and for scholars with a research interest in translation as a tool to evaluate other cultures, convert, conquer, and study colonial rivalries during the conquest and the colonial period in the viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru and the Caribbean. Chapter i deals with language and empire, speaking in particular of the dissemination of the Black Legend and other narratives, such as the Indian savage, through translation. Chapters ii and iii discuss the role of well-known interpreters like Malinche and Felipillo, but they also supply an overall view of interpreters and translators in the administration of the colonies and the judicial system, such as Gaspar Antonio Chi in Mesoamerica. Chapter iv focuses on the evangelization and the translation policies of the Catholic Church, looking, for instance, at Guaman Poma and Santa Cruz Pachacuti’s roles as interpreters of visitadores extirpating idolatries in the Andes. Chapters iv and v provide readers with an introductory approach to seminal works by writers such as Las Casas, Cieza de Leon, duran, Chimalpahin, and Titu Cusi Yupanqui, and their translation into some of the main European languages throughout the centuries. Angels, Demons and the New World, ed. Fernando Cervantes and Andrew Redden, CUP, 2013, 332 pp., redresses the imbalance between the widely-studied historical field of witchcraft and demonology and the much less so of angels. The three-part collection of essays focuses on the early modern representation of both angels and demons in the Hispanic world, exploring religious and cultural change, interaction, negotiation, and evolution of highbrow and popular mentalities following the European encounter with America. The first part, ‘From the old World to the New’, concentrates on the intellectual European background on angels and demons, such as Andrew Keitt’s chapter (15–39), which analyses superstition, medical humanism, and preternatural philosophy in Martin de Azpilcueta, Martin de Castanega, Pedro Ciruelo, and domingo de Valtanas’s works. The second part, ‘Indigenous Responses’, assesses the role that angels and demons played in the indigenous Christian cultures of New Spain and New Granada. Andrew Redden (146–70), for example, pieces together the multi-ethnic religiosity of the viceroyalty of New Granada, examining the merging of demonic forms with indigenous deities and the angelic and demonic representations after the arrival of the Jesuits in Santa Fe de Bogota. The third part, ‘The World of the Baroque’, sheds light upon angels and demons’ roles in spiritual and artistic forms. Ramon Mujica Pinilla (171–210) links the iconography of angels decorating Andean churches and monasteries with providentialist readings by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, and argues for angelology as a rhetorical device at the service of the Spanish Monarchy and for demonology as a discourse of acculturation, as seen in Pedro Cieza de Leon and Agustin de Zarate’s chronicles.

The Anatomical Perspective: Epistemology and Ethics in a Colonial Missionary Clinic

AbstractFor Dutch Calvinist missionaries in Central Java, two events bookended the radically transformative decade of the 1890s. The first, at the start of the decade, was the severing of relations with a charismatic Javanese leader named Sadrach, a decision that marked a redoubled commitment to suppress local Christian syncretism and to promote Calvinist orthodoxy in its stead. The second, at the decade's end, was the establishment of a modern clinic to serve as the flagship institution of a reformulated and reinvigorated missionary project. This article considers how these two seemingly disparate events are related. It suggests that much of what was troubling to missionaries about Sadrach and his indigenous Christian movement involved their understandings and uses of the body. I then consider how the mission attempted to use modern clinical experience and the anatomical perspective to address a range of ethical and epistemological problems posed by Sadrach and his followers' understandings of the body. The modern clinic would serve as a key pedagogical and disciplinary tool for the reordering of a vocabulary and syntax of bodies and souls, a grammar of religious and social expression.

Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives by Peter Tze Ming Ng

Reviewed by: Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives by Peter Tze Ming Ng D. E. Mungello (bio) Peter Tze Ming Ng. Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives. Leiden: Brill, 2012. xiii, 258 pp. Hardcover €108.00 ($144.00). isbn 978-90-04-22574-9. The history of Christianity in China since 1949 has been marked by deep divisions in both the Protestant and Catholic churches over the question of state control. This governmental control was initially part of a campaign to eradicate Western imperialism, but it has evolved in more recent times into a reassertion of a Chinese tradition of highly centralized political control over religious expression. China is a large country with many divergent segments and a fear of national disintegration (most recently experienced in the years 1912–1949) drives this control. This struggle for political control has manifested itself in the government-initiated Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) to control Protestant churches and the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association (CCPA) to control Catholic churches. However, because of resistance to the state control of the TSPM, [End Page 349] many Protestant groups have refused to register with the government and have continued to meet as unregistered “house churches” (jiating jiaohui 家庭教會). Likewise, Catholics who have maintained an ultimate loyalty to Rome rather than Beijing in spiritual matters have formed an underground church. Writings on the subject of Christianity in China since 1949 tend to express a sympathy for one or the other of these divisions, although few authors are explicit about their sympathy. The subject of this book by Peter Tze Ming Ng 吳梓明 is the historical evolution of Protestant Christianity in China from a missionary-imposed Western Christianity, which was resisted by Chinese as alien and foreign, to the development of genuine regional/local forms of Chinese Christianity which have thrived as a more authentically Chinese experience. Ng uses the neologism “glocalization” to describe this blending of global and local forces. The term was promoted at a conference “Glocalization and Christianity” sponsored by the government think-tank the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Research Institute of World Religions, Chinese Academy of Social Studies (CASS), Beijing, in December 2003 (p. 31-32). Although the term “glocalization” is new, the thesis is not, and it is well presented by Ng’s focus on several important figures in the idea’s evolution. The first was the evangelist Cheng Jingyi 誠靜怡 (C. Y. Cheng, 1881-1939). Ng presents Cheng as a pivotal figure in the development of an indigenous Protestant church. He was one of only three Chinese delegates to attend the 1910 Edinburgh Conference where at the youthful age of twenty-eight he gave two presentations in which he appealed for the development of indigenous Chinese churches (p. 79-80). Cheng helped to enunciate the idea that European Christianity, American Christianity and Chinese Christianity were all localized and indigenized parts of World Christianity. In 1922 the theologian Zhao Zichen 趙紫宸 (C. T. Chao, 1888-1979) echoed Cheng in calling for the removal of foreign, Western denominational divisions to create an indigenous Chinese Christianity (p. 87). Ng cites three “prophetic voices” (p. 111) to illustrate the relationship between global and local perspectives in the development of indigenous Christianity in China: Timothy Richard, David Paton, and K. H. Ting. Richard was a Baptist missionary who arrived in China in 1870 and would spend forty-five years there before retiring in 1914 (p. 114-116). He began by using the evangelistic methods of daily preaching and distribution of Bibles favored by the China Inland Mission, but over time modified these methods to a more accommodating approach. During the first decade of the twentieth century, Chinese officials charged Richard with the task of using Boxer indemnity funds returned by the United States government and several Protestant missionary boards to establish Shanxi University (p. 50-55). When he refused to use the university as a tool for evangelization, some missionaries complained. On the other hand, in the face of anti-Christian opposition from some Chinese officials and gentry, Richard insisted that teachers would [End Page 350] be free to offer Christian theology classes to students as elective rather than required courses. David...

From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics after the Arab Conquest by Maged S. A. Mikhail

Reviewed by: From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics after the Arab Conquest by Maged S. A. Mikhail Lev Weitz From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt: Religion, Identity and Politics after the Arab Conquest. By Maged S. A. Mikhail. [Library of Middle East History, vol. 45.] (London: I. B. Tauris; distrib. Palgrave. 2014. Pp. xiii, 429. $100.00. ISBN 978-1-848-85938-8.) Maged Mikhail’s From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt examines the transformations in Egyptian society, religion, and politics occasioned by the Arab-Muslim conquests of the seventh century. It is an ambitious undertaking. In twelve chapters spanning the seventh to the tenth centuries, the book seeks to examine an extensive range of historiographically significant subjects. These include relations between the conquerors and indigenous Christian elites; religious conversion; linguistic change; Muslim rulers’ reforms to the Byzantine administrative system; law and justice in the cities and countryside; the settlement and evolution of Egypt’s Muslim population; relations with the churches of Nubia, Ethiopia, and Syria; the reconstitution of ecclesiastical authority under Muslim rule; and the practical and discursive construction of Coptic, Melkite, and local Muslim religious identities. In many respects, the book succeeds in accomplishing its ambitious goals. Its greatest strength is its full use of the exceptionally wide range of textual sources Egypt has to offer—narrative texts in both Coptic and Arabic, as well as Greek, Arabic, and Coptic documentary papyri—in the service of its broad historical vision. The source material and historiographical debates related to Egypt are extensive enough that the subject of any of the book’s chapters could be a monograph of its own. Mikhail’s signal contribution is to bring such a diverse array of material together to offer both compelling and coherent syntheses of his chosen topics and a number of new arguments of his own. Chapter 9’s discussion of the Coptic Church’s relations with Nubia and Ethiopia is noteworthy; Mikhail ably makes the case that those relations fundamentally structured the Coptic hierarchy’s political position vis-à-vis the Muslim rulers back in Egypt. Although other provinces of the early Islamic caliphate have received treatments comparable in their breadth (Michael Morony’s seminal Iraq after the Muslim Conquest [Princeton, 1984] comes to mind), Egypt was surely in need of one. Mikhail has made an important contribution in this regard. From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt will be most readily accessible to specialists in late antiquity and early Islam. On the whole, its chapters tend to dive straight into historiographical debates; students or nonspecialists might want to read a more general history before engaging with Mikhail’s arguments. Certain limitations arise in the book’s approach to the formation of communal religious identities. Mikhail frequently and laudably objects to primordialist narratives of Egyptian history (although which contemporary scholars actually hold such views is not always clear), and tends to emphasize the constructedness of religious identities. Despite this framework, however, the book uses the terms Coptic and Melkite interchangeably with anti-Chalcedonian and pro-Chalcedonian throughout. This becomes problematic at times. For example, Mikhail justly argues that Coptic religious elites began to portray Byzantine rule as exclusively persecutory only in the [End Page 379] ninth century and that doing so was an effort to define the Church’s place in both the Egyptian past and the Islamic order (p. 36). It would have been useful, however, to consider whether indigenizing discourses like this played some role in producing the very idea of Coptic Christianity as a discrete religious tradition and in transforming anti-Chalcedonian Egyptians into Copts as an ethno-religious category. In this respect, the book’s terminological conventions sometimes obscure the cultural transformations it otherwise documents so well. These limitations are not an indictment of the book’s overall quality. It is a very impressive success to provide both broad syntheses and detailed examinations of a topic so vital to the history of the Middle East and Christianity. From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt is a welcome contribution to the historiography of the early Islamic world, Coptic Christianity, and late-antique and medieval Egypt. Lev Weitz The Catholic University of America Copyright © 2016 The Catholic University of America Press

THE MISSIONARY MOVEMENT IN AFRICAN AND WORLD HISTORY: MISSION SOURCES AND RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER

AbstractThis article is a revised and expanded version of my inaugural lecture as Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the University of Cambridge, delivered on 12 March 2014. It highlights the evolution of Ecclesiastical History to include the study of Christianity in the global south and shows how recent developments in the study of African and world history have produced a dynamic and multi-faceted model of religious encounter, an encounter which includes the agency of indigenous Christians alongside the activities of missionaries. Investigating the contribution of faith missionaries to the production of colonial knowledge in Belgian Congo, the article challenges stereotypes about the relations between Pentecostalism and modernity, and between mission and empire. Throughout, consideration is given to the range of missionary sources, textual, visual, and material, and their utility in reconstructing social differentiation in African societies, particularly in revealing indigenous African criticism of ‘custom’.

Choosing the Jesus Way: American Indian Pentecostals and the Fight for the Indigenous Principle

Amid a growing number of chronicles of Native American appropriation of Christianity, Angela Tarango's account of the Navajo Pentecostals in the Assemblies of God (AG) is a welcome addition. Her careful research, clear prose, and engaging story of the growth of Native Pentecostal church leadership of the last century helps to place American Pentecostalism alongside that of more fully explored mainline denominations. It is not a new story of indigenous Christians who usurp the rhetoric and practices of the denomination to achieve autonomy and leadership within the larger institution. However, Tarango's book supports much of the prevailing scholarship that points to the agency of American Indians in forging their own Christian and Native identity, despite paternalistic and colonialist pressures from mission boards and leaders. Choosing the Jesus Way provides a compelling narrative that supports her thesis that Navajo Christians in the AG, along with “a few liberal-minded white female missionaries,” used the AG's own “indigenous principle” to their advantage in challenging leadership at the top unwilling to give them a place at the governing table.

Language, Catechisms, and Mesoamerican Lords in Highland Guatemala: Addressing “God” After the Spanish Conquest

The textual sources of indigenous Christianities in Guatemala embody a complex articulation of native thought, European language ideologies, and the diachronic development of the Christianization of different areas of Mesoamerica. The evangelization of the K'iche' became a model for the construction of pastoral Q'eqchi'. In contrast, the evangelization of the Pipil demanded substantial modifications of Mexican Nahuatl doctrinal language. Mutual intelligibility was not the only requisite to persuade and convert the natives. The local organization of speech genres and the indexical associations they effected were equally crucial. Spanish imperial designs, including Christianization, were global, but the texts that mediated them were woven with local threads. The creation of Christian registers in indigenous languages in Guatemala illustrates the confluence of coercion, resistance, and creativity behind the emergence of colonial indigenous religions.

Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives by Peter Tze Ming Ng (review)

with much earlier notions of cultivation that had widespread and lasting influence throughout the twelfth to seventeenth centuries and indeed, up to present times. In addition to a rich assortment of texts, the volume includes a “Quanzhen Technical Glossary” (Appendix 1) with 171 terms. Chinese is not included but entries can be cross-referenced with what seems to be a comprehensive “Chinese Character Glossary” (pp. 383–416). Also a welcome feature is a wellorganized nineteen-page index and a substantial bibliography. The scope and volume of material offered in this anthology represent a considerable achievement on the part of the translator that should prove useful for non-specialists. Specialists too should find this a useful source for quickly orienting themselves to a broad swath of texts associated with individuals who shaped Quanzhen ideology, doctrine, and praxis. The work is a welcome addition to the growing list of well-translated texts constituting literary expressions of Chinese religiosity from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. PAUL CROWE Simon Fraser University PETER TZE MING NG, Chinese Christianity: An Interplay between Global and Local Perspectives. Religion in Chinese Societies, vol. 4. Leiden: Brill, 2012. xiii, 258 pp. e105, US$144 (hb). ISBN 978-90-04-22574-9 The title of Peter Tze Ming Ng’s recent book is both a statement and a description. Making a statement about “Chinese Christianity” is possibly presumptuous, and one could easily make a claim for the use of “Christianities” instead, and this is also mentioned in the book. However, such a description is also interesting, and with the global presence of Christianity, as well as the particularity of its Chinese manifestations, “global and local” perspectives should always be taken into account when writing about Christianity. Seeing the title, I was therefore curious to read the book to see what new might reveal itself. Starting to read, however, I found a collection of previously published articles and lectures from the last fifteen years, with an added self-reflective introduction by the author. Thefirstchapterdealswiththenotionsof“ChineseChristianity”and“Christianityin China,”andPeterNgpointstothenotionof“three-self”(sanzi三自)anditsimportance toChineseChristianityalreadyinhisintroductorychapter.“Three-self”ismentionedall throughthebook,especiallyinthechaptersonY.T.Wu(WuYaozong吳耀宗)andK.H. Ting (Ding Guangxun 丁光訓). Despite its importance for the development and recent history of Chinese Christianity, the notion and concept of “three-self” is not really critically analyzed, and Peter Ng seems to have more or less accepted the interpretations laid out by Ting and Wu, despite the apparent politicization of the “three-self” idea in China. The book obviously represents a personal reflection and standpoint, but some diversified comments on “three-self” would have been welcome. Other chapters reflect on the Boxer movement, and discuss indigenous Christian movements from the perspective of the Edinburgh conference of 1910. Professor Ng has also added a chapter on Christian education, a topic that he has taken particular interest in. The remaining seven chapters focus on individuals that Ng argues have made particular contributions in regard to the global and local perspectives of Chinese Christianity, including Timothy Richard, Francis Wei (Wei Zhuomin 韋卓民), BOOK REVIEWS 111 T. C. Chao (Zhao Zichen 趙紫宸), and K. H. Ting. Francis Wei, T. C. Chao, and C. Y. Cheng (Cheng Jingyi 誠靜怡) certainly deserve much more attention in the West, and in China, but unfortunately these chapters add little new to what is already available elsewhere. I was glad to see the chapter on Timothy Richard and his translation and understanding of Buddhism, as Richard was undoubtedly an important individual for the development of both China and Christianity. However, his work on Buddhism and role as translator was and is not without controversy. Richard also seems a little out of place in the company of Y. T. Wu and K. H. Ting, and their ideas of indigenization and adaptation. The Richard chapter is only one example of the difficulty to find a clear line for the whole of the book. Professor Ng poses interesting questions in the conclusive chapter (p. 246), such as “How the Chinese people became Christians?” and “Why did the Chinese often say: ‘One more Christian, one less Chinese’?,” and those questions would have better fit the introductory chapter, providing a starting point for the following. Instead of an initial chapter called “My personal...

Rebellious Christs the King, virgins and believers in the Mexican highlands (1765-1770)

In the years 1765-1770 a series of rebellions broke out in territories on the margins of the Kingdom of New Spain. The underlying causes were both religious –ordaining indigenous priests to direct religious practices– and political –aversion to the Spanish populationin nature. The leaders of those movements appropriated collective yearnings for vengeance that they coupled with a fervent belief in the coming of a new world; one in which the Indians would no longer be the van- quished but victorious, for God himself would descend to Earth to impose Divine Justice to their benefit. The central figures in those movements reflect reciprocal influences between autochthonous tradition (eg. shamanism, ingesting psychotropic plants, hallucinations, cults formed around magical individuals), and Christian theology (mass, administration of sacraments, belief in one true God, adoption of the names Christ and Juan Diego). The visionaries, those most intimate figures of subversion, behaved as mirrors of indigenous Christianity, but their mystical adventure reveals as well a collective identity in which cultural difference existed halfway between imitations of sanctity and the indigenization of Catholic practice. Hence, indigenous Christianity, as it was practiced in frontier territories, underwent a whole set of structural transformations the result of which was their confiscation in order to obtain political and religious autonomy.

Bathsheba as an Object Lesson: Gender, Modernity and Biblical Examples in Wang Mingdao's Sermons and Writings

Western and Chinese scholarship on Wang Mingdao has with good reason focused exclusively on the apologetic aspect of Wang's ministry, his polemics against modernist theology and his resistance to the Chinese Communist regime in the 1950s. Yet a significant, albeit smaller, portion of his writings and preaching emphasised practical Christian living. In Wang Mingdao Wenku, a seven-volume collection of Wang's sermons and writings, there are a total of twenty-one articles, sermons or allegorical stories dealing specifically with women, marriage or family relations: six from the 1930s, fourteen from the 1940s and one from 1950. They span Wang's most productive years, and some deal with issues specific to China's dramatic social changes in the Republican era, such as concubinage, widowhood and women's fashion. Many of these profound changes, especially changes in gender relations, were advanced by the May Fourth Movement. One sees in Wang's writings and sermons on marriage, women and family relations a concrete example of the indigenisation of Christianity in China, as this Chinese Christian leader wrestled with the implications of his Christian faith in a process complicated by China's encounter with Western modernity.

Dividualism and individualism in indigenous Christianity

The aim of the article is to intervene in one of the most interesting contemporary debates in the anthropology of Christianity, the issue of the relationship between dividualism and individualism, by exploring a specifically Amazonian configuration of this opposition through my own ethnographic research with the Wari’, an indigenous group of southwest Amazonia. My interest in this topic extends beyond the limits of the debate itself: I see it as a favorable environment for demonstrating the productivity of concepts originating from Amazonian ethnology—especially the Lévi-Straussian notions of “opening to the Other” and “dualism in perpetual disequilibrium,” as well as the perspectivism conceptualized by Viveiros de Castro – in more general discussions of cultural change, a topic on which I have been working over the last twenty years.

Methodists and their Missionary Societies 1760–1900. By John Pritchard. Ashgate Methodist Studies. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. xxiii + 293pp. $119.95 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Methodists and their Missionary Societies 1760-1900 . By John Pritchard . Ashgate Methodist Studies. Burlington, Vt. : Ashgate Publishing , 2013. xxiii + 293pp. $119.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesFor at least a generation, scholars interested in of Methodism in British Isles and United States have been treated to many high quality books that explore this religious movement with sensitivity and depth. Methodism outside North Atlantic world, however, has not benefited from same historiographical focus. As such, Pritchard's concise of British Methodist foreign missions in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is a welcome addition to an open field and will provide a helpful foundation for future scholarship.The bulk of Pritchard's book concerns early Methodist mission efforts and work of Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (WMMS). He also seeks to include work of other Methodist denominations that joined in Methodist Union of 1932 in his story. British Methodist missions in twentieth century are covered in a companion volume.As author notes in preface, there are detailed accounts of Methodist missions in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most published about a century ago. These sources are used, with other primary and secondary texts, to inform narrative. While Pritchard casts his own work as a much more concise and less comprehensive history than those earlier works in seeking to cover the same ground from a more distant vantage point, author's intent is actually more ambitious than he admits (xvii). He reframes story of Methodist foreign missions in light of more recent academic scholarship on of Christian missions. Among other objectives, this newer historiography has sought to reclaim importance of indigenous Christians in emergence of new Christian communities, recognizes centrality of missionary women in Protestant missionary movement, and rejects assumptions of European superiority that can pervade source material.Initial chapters detail background and foundations of Methodist missionary enterprise. This background includes brief service of both John and Charles Wesley as Society for Propagation of Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) missionaries, emergence of Methodist societies outside British Isles through colonial connections and migration, and dedicated, yet impulsive, endeavors of Thomas Coke. The year 1813 marks a transition point as it signaled beginning of new opportunities for Christian missions in India, launch of first auxiliary society to raise funds for missions, and Coke's departure for Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Methodist beginnings in North American and Australasia are briefly summarized up until formation of Methodist Episcopal Church in newly-independent United States and creation of autonomous conferences in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand/Aotearoa in mid-nineteenth century.The primary focus of book, however, is foreign, cross-cultural missions operated by British Methodists. Pritchard introduces this focus with three chapters that explore issues that span multiple contexts. …

ARTICULATIONS OF BELONGING: THE POLITICS OF ETHNIC AND RELIGIOUS PLURALISM IN BAUCHI AND GOMBE STATES, NORTH-EAST NIGERIA

ABSTRACTNorth-east Nigeria is an area of great ethno-linguistic diversity and religious pluralism, with Islam and Christianity both having a strong presence. The majority of the population is Muslim but there is also a substantial indigenous Christian minority, who form a majority in some local government areas. This paper draws on fieldwork by the authors in two north-eastern states, Bauchi and Gombe, to explore why, despite comparable religious demographics, there are marked differences in the levels of collective violence experienced in the two states. Although ethno-religious violence has increased across northern Nigeria since the 1980s, some areas have been more affected than others. To understand why this is, it is necessary to place ethnic and religious differences in their local historical and political contexts. This paper compares Gombe and Bauchi and argues that, although there are complaints of marginalization among different groups in both cases, Gombe State has developed a more inclusive system of government and local conflict management than Bauchi State. We explore what accounts for this difference in the articulation and management of belonging and whether the contrast is significant enough to explain differential levels of violence. In doing so, we consider how inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations have been shaped historically in the two cases and compare current forms of collective mobilization, considering different social and political spaces within each state. The paper also briefly outlines the impacts of the radical insurgent group Jama'at ahl al-sunna li'l-da'wa wa'l-jihad, nicknamed Boko Haram, in Bauchi and Gombe states.

The Zion Christian Church and Global Christianity: negotiating a tightrope between localisation and globalisation

South Africa's Zion Christian Church (ZCC) is a primary example of African Indigenous Christianity. This article discusses some of the ways in which a church such as the ZCC might be simultaneously understood as a localised indigenous group, a ‘constructed indigeneity’, as well as inherently belonging to a wider historical tradition of Global Christianity. The discussion proceeds alongside a critical engagement of the sociologist Robert Wuthnow's deconstruction of the ‘Global Christianity Paradigm’, as well as an appropriation of the phenomenologist of religion, James Cox's depiction of ‘indigenous religions’ as an empirically viable theoretical concept, which is demonstrated here as also useful for the purpose of elucidating the type of religiosity encountered in the ZCC. The article makes a plea for a wider acknowledgment of the value of normative approaches to the study of African Christianity and refers to the cultural impact of the theological idea of Incarnation to explain why.

Science and Charity: Rival Catholic Visions for Humanitarian Practice at the End of Empire

This paper explores the conflict between local expressions of Christian charity and new theories of scientific humanitarianism in the final years of French rule in Africa. Compassionate phenomena inspired by Catholic social organizing had transformed everyday life throughout French Cameroon's cities and villages in the interwar and postwar years, and yet, in 1950, poverty, crime, poor public health, and social tensions remained prevalent. Seeking a more deeply transformative approach to social rehabilitation, ecclesiastical leaders in the Catholic Church in Europe and French foreign missionary societies in Africa partnered with international medical and scientific organizations to invigorate charity with technical expertise. Revised ethics and practices departed sharply from preexisting models of collective social action, as European leaders lacked confidence in the intentions as well as the outcomes of African-led religious organizing. European humanitarian approaches conceived after World War II demanded a new focus on particular African subjects, namely the child and the family, which alienated indigenous Christian principals, who, along with large and diverse African Christian communities, had previously determined the direction of Catholic social action on the continent.