The New Shape of World Christianity

- 2010 Christianity Today Book Award winnerWith characteristic rigor and insight, in this book Mark Noll revisits the history of the American church in the context of world events. He makes the compelling case that how Americans have come to practice the Christian faith is just as globally important as what the American church has done in the world. Noll backs up this substantial claim with the scholarly attentiveness we've come to expect from him, lucidly explaining the relationship between the development of Christianity in North America and the development of Christianity in the rest of the world, with attention to recent transfigurations in world Christianity. Here is a book that will challenge your assumptions about the nature of the relationship between the American church and the global church in the past and predict what world Christianity may look like.



Mark A. Noll (Ph.D., Vanderbilt University) is Francis McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is advisory editor for Books Culture and subeditor for the new Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Noll's main academic interests concern the interaction of Christianity and culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Anglo-American societies. He has published articles and reviews on a wide variety of subjects involving Christianity in modern history. Some of his many books include The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, Is the Reformation Over?, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys and The Old Religion in a New World.

Tables and Figures


1 Introduction


2 The New Shape of World Christianity


3 Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Identity, Power and Culture as Anticipating the Future


4 Posing the Question


5 What Does Counting Missionaries Reveal?


6 Indictment and Response


7 American Experience as Template


8 American Evangelicals View the World, 1900-2000


9 What Korean Believers Can Learn from American Evangelical History


10 The East African Revival


11 Reflections


Guide to Further Reading


Index

"Noll remains one of the most important observers of the American evangelical scene."



"Noll offers a deft overview, filled with fascinating examples of world Christianity today. This book will help American readers begin to understand Christianity as a world religion and to examine the claims that it is a mere export of American evangelicalism."



"I heartily recommend The New Shape of World Christianity, especially to those who are not conversant with contemporary missiology. Noll opens for readers a door into an important discussion about mission practices and theology that could be of great consequence in an academic or congregational setting."



"This lively, readable narrative is highly recommended for students of global Christianity, indigeneity and contextualization, recent church history and missiology."



"This is an important and engaging book, not only for the serious question that Noll poses and explores, but also because it offers a richly textured look at global Christianity through an assortment of sources and from a variety of angles."



"Noll argues for a new historical perspective. With convincing interpretations of recent scholarship, he argues that the 'template' of American Christianity rather than its direct influence has been the main American contribution to world Christianity, especially in its evangelical and Pentacostal forms. Recommended."



"Noll has offered both a remarkable picture and a challenge. He offers keen insight into the new shape of world Christianity. And he has challenged others to tell the rest of the story."



"Noll's mix of interpretive insight and survey information makes this both an important book for church historians and a helpful book for Christians wanting to grow in their knowledge of the worldwide body of Christ."



"What happens when a superb scholar who studies both North American religious history and global Christianity decides to bring those fields together, to understand how each informs the other? The answer is The New Shape of World Christianity."



"A valuable contribution for those who would like an excellent introduction to a growing area of historical scholarship." weniger anzeigen expand_less