2024 Publications on Methodist Mission and Evangelism

As the year winds down, we are taking a moment to review scholarship on Methodist mission and evangelism from 2024. The following is a list of books and articles published since the beginning of the year by scholars in the Association of Methodist Professors of Mission, friends of the blog, and other scholars about topics related to Methodist mission and evangelism. Readers are encouraged to consult these sources for the latest in scholarship about Methodist mission and evangelism.

Peter J. Bellini, “John Wesley, the Almost Charismatic,” in Heirs of Pietism in World Christianity: The 19th to the 21st Centuries, edited by Wendy J. Deichmann & Scott T. Kisker (Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, 2024).

Brian J. Chalmers, Methodist Revivalism and Social Reform in the Paradise of Dissent 1838-1939 (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, “Charles Wesley and the “Peaceable Reign” of Christ,” Holiness 9 (2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, Cultivating Christlikeness: Loving as Jesus Loved (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, The Fullest Possible Love: Living in Harmony with God and Neighbor (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, The Quest for Love Divine: Select Essays in Wesleyan Thought and Practice (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2024).

Paul W. Chilcote, “Songs of renewal: The language of renewal in the hymns of Charles Wesley,” The Journal of Religious History, Literature and Culture 10:2 (2024).

Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, An Historiography of Twentieth-century Women's Missionary Nursing through the Lives of Two Sisters: Doing the Lord's Work in Kenya and South India (New York: Routledge, 2024).

Taylor Denyer, “Ecclesiastic Empires: American Conflict and the UMC in Africa,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Norma Dollaga, “The Diaconal Spirituality of Activism in the Philippines,” in Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America, edited by Craig L. Nessan and Darryl W. Stephens (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

David N. Field, “Engagements with Non-British Cultures,” in The Routledge Companion to John Wesley, ed. by Clive Murray Norris and Joseph W. Cunningham (London: Routledge, 2024).

Benjamin L. Hartley, “John R. Mott amidst the students: Historical and missiological gleanings for today,” Missiology: An International Review (2024).

Benjamin L. Hartley, “The Problem and Promise of the Diaconate,” in Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America, edited by Craig L. Nessan and Darryl W. Stephens (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

Arun W. Jones, “From courtesan to King: The conversion of Farzana,” Nidān: International Journal for Indian Studies 9:1 (2024).

Filipe Maia, Decolonizing Wesleyan Theology: Theological Engagements from the Underside of Methodism (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024).

David L. McKenna, Seeing All Things Whole My Calling to Fulfill (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024).

Martin Mujinga and Onias Chagudhuma, “Meaning beyond symbols!: A theological interpretation of the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe’s logo,” Pharos Journal of Theology 105 (2024).

Eben Kanukayi Nhiwatiwa, By the Grace of God: My Life as an African Bishop (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Joon-Sik Park, “The Worldwide Nature of The United Methodist Church: A Historical and Missiological Reflection,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville, Abingdon, 2024).

Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell, “Popular Catholicism Puerto Rican Style: The Virgin of Rincón, Human Agency, and Miracles,” Religions 15 (2024).

David W. Scott, “American Power in the Global Church in Ecumenical Methodist Perspective,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

David W. Scott and Filipe Maia, eds., Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

David W. Scott, “Review of Dana L. Robert, Allison Kach-Yawnghwe, and Morgan Crago, Creative Collaborations: Case Studies of North American Missional Practices,” Missiology, 52:1 (2024), 118-119.

Howard A. Snyder, Consider the Lilies: How Jesus Saves People and the Land: The Theology and Ecology of Salvation (Wilmore, KY: First Fruits, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens, “Developing a Trauma-Informed Diaconal Praxis,” in Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America, edited by Craig L. Nessan and Darryl W. Stephens (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens and Craig L. Nessan, eds., Diaconal Studies: Lived Theology for the Church in North America (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens, “A Global Ethic for a Divided Church,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Darryl W. Stephens, Reckoning Methodism: Mission and Division in the Public Church (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024).

Darrell L. Whiteman, Crossing Cultures with the Gospel: Anthropological Wisdom for Effective Christian Witness (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2024).

Darrell L. Whiteman, Forward to Jerusalem Burning: The Terror and Promise of the "Wrath of Love," by Robert L. Canfield (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2024).

Philip Wingeier-Rayo, “The Autonomous Process of Latin American Methodism: A Critical Review,” in Methodism and American Empire: Reflections on Decolonizing the Church, ed. by David W. Scott and Filipe Maia (Nashville: Abingdon, 2024).

Philip Wingeier-Rayo, “Latin America and the Caribbean,” in The Routledge Companion to John Wesley, ed. by Clive Murray Norris and Joseph W. Cunningham (London: Routledge, 2024).

Philip Wingeier-Rayo, “Review of In the Hands of God: How Evangelical Belonging Transforms Migrant Experiences in the U.S. by Johanna Bard Richlin,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 25 (2024).

2023 Publications on Methodist Mission and Evangelism

As the year winds down, we are taking a moment to review scholarship on Methodist mission and evangelism from 2023. The following is a list of books and articles published since the beginning of the year by scholars in the Association of Methodist Professors of Mission or by other scholars about topics related to Methodist mission and evangelism. Readers are encouraged to consult these sources for the latest in scholarship about Methodist mission and evangelism.

Bellini, Peter J., Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and the Image of God: Can Machines Attain Consciousness and Receive Salvation? (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023).

Bellini, Peter J., Thunderstruck: The Deliverance Ministry of John Wesley (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2023).

Chilcote, Paul W. "Mapping Global Methodist Theology," Holiness 8 (Aug. 2023), 76, https://doi.org/10.2478/holiness-2023-0011.

Chilcote, Paul W. Multiplying Love: A Vision of United Methodist Life Together (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 2023).

Dharmaraj, Glory E., "Sisterhood and 'Sistering': Restating Relationships in the Cartography of Missional Collaborations – Dallas Bethlehem Center, A Case Study," in Creative Collaborations: Case Studies of North American Missional Practices, edited by Dana L. Robert, Allison Kach-Yawnghwe, and Morgan Crago (Oxford: Regnum, 2023).

Gordon, Sarah Barringer, "Staying in Place: Southern Methodists, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, and Postwar Battles for Control of Church Property," The Journal of the Civil War Era 13 (2023), 281, https://doi.org/10.1353/cwe.2023.a905166.

Leffel, Gregory P., Charles J. Fensham, George R. Hunsberger, Robert A. Hunt, William N. Kenney, Gregg A. Okesson, Hendrik R. Pieterse, "What We Mean by Public Missiology," Missiology 51 (July 2023), 268, https://doi.org/10.1177/00918296231176757.

Kim-Cragg, David Andrew, "'We Take Hold of the White Man’s Worship with One Hand, but with the Other Hand We Hold Fast Our Fathers’ Worship': The Beginning of Indigenous Methodist Christianity and Its Expression in the Christian Guardian, Upper Canada circa 1829," Religions 14:2 (2023), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020139.

Park, Joon-Sik, "The Missional Implications of the Theology of H. Richard Niebuhr," International Bulletin of Mission Research 47 (July 2023), 380, https://doi.org/10.1177/23969393231168540.

Pedlar, James E., British Methodist Revivalism and the Eclipse of Ecclesiology (London: Routledge, 2023), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003224327.

Robert, Dana L., The Dutch Reformed Women's Missionary Movement from the Cape and the Mt. Holyoke Connection (Mzuzu, South Africa: Luviri Press, 2023).

Robert, Dana L., "Introduction," in Restoring Identities: The Contextualizing Story of Christianity in Oceania, edited by Upolu Lumā Vaai and Mark A. Lamport (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2023).

Robert, Dana L., Allison Kach-Yawnghwe, and Morgan Crago, editors, Creative Collaborations: Case Studies of North American Missional Practices (Oxford: Regnum, 2023).

Robinson, Elaine A., Leading with Love: Spiritual Disciplines for Practical Leadership (Minneapolis: 1517 Media, 2023).

Santiago-Vendrell, Angel, and Misoon (Esther) Im, "The World Was Their Parish: Evangelistic Work of the Single Female Missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, to Korea, 1887-1940," Religions 14:2 (2023), 262; https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14020262.

Smith, Ronald E., Henry Clay Morrison: Remember the Old Paths (Wilmore, KY: Francis Asbury Institute, 2023).

Teasdale, Mark R. "A Bias for the Gospel," International Bulletin of Mission Research 47 (Jan. 2023), 69, https://doi.org/10.1177/23969393221100770.

Von Gonten, Kristen, "Emma Stone Poteet Pilley and Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Missions to Asia," Methodist History 61 (Apr. 2023), 13, https://doi.org/10.5325/methodisthist.61.1.0013.

Whiteman, Darrell L., "The Conversion of a Missionary: A Missiological Study of Acts 10," Missiology 51 (Jan. 2023), 19, https://doi.org/10.1177/00918296221117711.

Whiteman, Darrell L., "Foreword" to Laura Heikes, Finding God: Discovering the Divine in the Gritty and Unexpected (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2023).

Whiteman, Darrell L., "My Pilgrimage in Mission," International Bulletin of Mission Research 47 (July 2023), 536, https://doi.org/10.1177/23969393231173853.

Whiteman, Darrell L., "Remembering the American Society of Missiology 1973–2023: Remarks at the 50th Anniversary Banquet Celebration," Missiology 51 (Oct. 2023), 378, https://doi.org/10.1177/00918296231190918.

The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism

Today’s blog post is adapted from the introduction of The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends from Everywhere to Everywhere, edited by David W. Scott and Darryl W. Stephens. The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism, initially published by Routledge in 2021, is newly out in a more affordable paperback version.

Why do we need another book about Methodist mission? Methodist and Wesleyan understandings and experiences of global mission have undergone significant changes in the past decade. We live in a world context much different than previously imagined. Much has shifted, with increased migration and nationalism, a growing recognition of impending environmental catastrophe, increased secularism in the West, and the continued growth of the church in the Majority World. These factors have reshaped the church and the world in which it is in mission.

The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends from Everywhere to Everywhere contributes to the ongoing development of Methodist mission by offering global perspectives on the theology and practice of mission and evangelism within a changing world context. A contemporary missiology must engage these new conditions in the world. There is a great need for new scholarship on mission and evangelism that brings together Methodist and Wesleyan voices from around the world to address pressing current topics in mission that transcend national borders.

This is an ambitious title for one volume. The word “practice” signals attention to the activities involved in mission, not just the theories behind it. Yet there are many forms of mission, from evangelism to health care, women’s empowerment to creation care, theological inculturation to education, and beyond. The term “global Methodism” signals a similarly wide purview. Methodism is present in some form on all six inhabited continents and across dozens of countries, cultures, and languages. This emphasis is reinforced by the phrase “from everywhere to everywhere” in the book’s subtitle. A frequently-used slogan at Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church, this phrase indicates that missionaries can come from any context and any context can be a site of mission. Significantly, the qualifier “emerging” signals the constructive, forward-looking orientation of this volume.

This book explores emerging trends within Methodist mission practice in four areas: global relationships, contextual engagement, education and formation, and discernment about the future of Methodist mission. These four areas structure the book into four sections, while overarching themes such as decolonization, the growth of Christianity in the global South, holistic mission, Wesleyan theology, evangelism, culture’s impact on theology, and the significance of collaborative relationships are addressed throughout. Other topics are present in two or three essays, such as women’s mission work, migration, creation care, peace, justice, health and healing, ecumenism, economic development, political engagement, and students and youth.

This volume begins with Part I, Cultivating Global Relationships. Among mission leaders and practitioners from the global South and East, mission scholars around the world, and mission practitioners in the global North, relationships are characterized by both collaborations and tensions. Global connections make new forms and levels of mission collaboration possible across countries, cultures, and denominations. Increasing divisions within global connectivity pull global mission relationships in different directions. Several chapters address economic, cultural, theological, political, and economic divisions impacting the practice of Methodist mission and attempts to work together across these differences.

The nature of global relationships raises a host of questions regarding the nature of mission partnerships among Methodists around the world. How is it possible to foster mutuality in mission? How can Methodists from the global West and North use their resources to support and not to dominate partners from the global South and East? How can partners from the global South and East and those from the global West and North learn from and appreciate the gifts of the others and not overly value their own? How can these (and other) groups best work together to further the mission of God?

Part II, Practicing Contextual Engagement, is the largest section of the book. Scholars and practitioners address how Methodists around the world practice mission in its many forms and many contexts, including those shaped by colonial legacies. In the colonial era, Methodist evangelistic mission often went hand-in-hand with the construction of schools, hospitals, and clinics. These missional practices of evangelism, healing, and education remain as popular as ever among Methodists around the world. Moreover, practices such as social service, justice seeking, peace building, and economic development that have more recent pedigrees—dating perhaps to the past century or so—have also continued to be important practices of Methodist mission in the twenty-first century. Therefore, it is important to understand mission holistically and to be able to identify the connections between these various forms of mission work.

Part III, Educating for Missional Formation, combines intellectual formation with spiritual formation, skills development, and organizational planning. Methodists educate each other about mission through theological, spiritual, and practical preparation, including evangelism as a form of mission. How should Methodists pastors, seminarians, lay people, and youth educate themselves to live into a faithful vision of Methodist mission? How can they be encouraged to see the interconnections between different forms of mission as parts forming a holistic understanding? How can they learn from the resources of the faith and learn about the world in which mission occurs?

The final section is Part IV, Discerning the Future of Mission Together. God’s word abides even as our understandings of mission, the contexts in which we practice mission, and the people involved in mission are always changing. These changes call for the exercise of Christian discernment in mission practice. How is God calling us to articulate the gospel anew so as to connect with the world as it is and as it is becoming? How can we encourage new people, especially youth, to listen carefully to God’s calling to mission? How can we better understand God’s calling by listening to the voices of those different from us? The collective work of discernment is an essential component of mission practice.

This book aspires to enable faithful and effective Methodist mission in the twenty-first century. The authors open creative avenues for dialogue and engagement, furthering the conversation that is our collective responsibility as scholars and reflective practitioners of mission. Challenges facing Methodist mission arise from a desire for mutuality amidst the reality of global inequities; local expression of Methodism confronting lingering, systemic patterns of colonialism; and reciprocal learning despite xenophobic and tribalistic tendencies. How shall Methodists in mission promote partnership across cultures, rootedness within cultures, and exchange among cultures that are themselves in flux? Each contributor to this volume brings a distinctive viewpoint on these issues as they offer descriptions of and prescriptions for the practice of mission in global Methodism.

This book is designed for students, scholars, and practitioners of mission, both within Methodism and ecumenically. It is written for practitioners, scholars, and students in the fields of missiology, evangelism, world Christianity, and Methodist studies and will be of particular interest to those studying contemporary global Methodism and its understandings of mission and evangelism. Readers of many disciplinary backgrounds, including theology, ethics, history, and the social sciences, will find a rich, multidisciplinary conversation in these pages.

We hope the conversation included in this book will give rise to many more conversations among scholars and practitioners, as together we continue to improvise and innovate in the practice of Methodist mission.

The volume includes contributions from the following:
Hendrik R. Pieterse
Taylor Walters Denyer
David W. Scott
Carmen C. Manalac-Scheuerman and Akanisi Tarabe
K. Kale Yu
Nelson Kalombo Ngoy
Stephen J. H. Hendricks
Andrea Reily Rocha Soares
Sheryl Marks-Williams
Mark R. Teasdale
Darryl W. Stephens
Jenny Phillips
Elmira Sellu, Flory Atieno, Sara Jalloh, Jaka Joice, Rose Musooko, and Evelyn Ann Ouma
Jeffrey A. Conklin-Miller
Sam Kim
Mande Muyombo
Stephen Skuce
Joy Eva Bohol

Recent Publications on Methodist Mission and Evangelism

The following is a list of books and articles published within the last six months by the Association of Methodist Professors of Mission or by other scholars about Methodist mission and evangelism. Readers are encouraged to consult these sources for the latest in scholarship about Methodist mission and evangelism.

Paul W. Chilcote, The Quest for Love Divine: Select Essays in Wesleyan Theology and Practice (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022).

Paul W. Chilcote, “Perfect Love Restored: The Language of Renewal in the Hymns of Charles Wesley,” Holiness 7 (October 2022), 113.

Luís Wesley de Souza, “Mission and Evangelism,” in Christianity in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Kenneth R. Ross, Ana María Bidegaín, and Todd M. Johnson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

Benjamin L. Hartley, “The 1921 Founding of the International Missionary Council in the Life of John R. Mott,” International Review of Mission 111 (November 2022), 253.

Benjamin L. Hartley, “Missions,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism, edited by Jonathan Yeager (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

Arun W. Jones, “Hybridity and Christian Identity,” Missiology 50:1 (2022), 7.

Younghwa Kim, “Book Review: The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends from Everywhere to Everywhere,” Wesley and Methodist Studies 14:2 (2022), 227–229.

Ian Randall, “Mutuality in Methodist Mission: Murray and Olive Titus in India, 1910–1951,” Wesley and Methodist Studies 14:2 (June 2022), 146-168.

Dana L. Robert, “‘Make Jesus King’ and the Evangelical Missionary Imagination, 1889–1896,” in Global Faith, Worldly Power: Evangelical Internationalism and U.S. Empire, edited by John Corrigan, Melani McAlister, Axel R. Schäfer (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022).

Dana L. Robert, “Pierson, Arthur Tappan (1837-1911),” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 4th edition, edited by Andrew Louth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022).

Dana L. Robert, “Conversion and Mission History: a Review of David W. Kling’s A History of Christian Conversion,” Pastoral Psychology 71 (July 2022), 789.

Dana L. Robert, “Dana Robert Responds to Mark Teasdale: ‘Extending the Metaphor: Evangelism as the Heart of Mission Twenty-Five Years Later’” Methodist Review 14 (2022).

David W. Scott and Hendrik R. Pieterse, “Soundings Towards an Intercultural Identity for The United Methodist Church: Some Historical and Theological Resources,” Methodist Review 14 (2022).

Mark R. Teasdale, “Extending the Metaphor: Evangelism as the Heart of Mission Twenty-Five Years Later,” Methodist Review 14 (2022).

Douglas D. Tzan, “Book Review: Of Merchants and Missions: A Historical Study of the Impact of British Colonialism on American Methodism in Singapore from 1885 to 1910,” Methodist History 60:2 October 2022), 305.

Darrell L. Whiteman, “The conversion of a missionary: A missiological study of Acts 10,” Missiology (2022).

Philip Wingeier Rayo, “Book Review: The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends from Everywhere to Everywhere,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 46:4 (June 2022), 611–612.

Recommended Reading: Soundings Towards an Intercultural Identity for The United Methodist Church

The journal Methodist Review recently published another article that may be of interest to UM & Global's readers. It draws on history and theology to comment on the intercultural nature of The United Methodist Church. Hendrik R. Pieterse and David W. Scott wrote "Soundings Towards an Intercultural Identity for The United Methodist Church: Some Historical and Theological Resources." The piece can be found for free, with registration, on Methodist Review's website. A full abstract for the piece is below.

 

Hendrik R. Pieterse and David W. Scott, "Soundings Towards an Intercultural Identity for The United Methodist Church: Some Historical and Theological Resources"

The United Methodist Church today is in an identity crisis rooted in the role of culture, power, and agency in the negotiation of denominational identity. To confront these challenges, the UMC must recognize the extent to which white American understandings of Methodism have functioned as normative in debates over Methodist identity. To illustrate the intercultural dynamics at stake, we analyze the history of Italian and Japanese immigrants’ struggle to find a place within American Methodism in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These case studies show that Methodism flourished when there was room for intercultural conversation about its nature. Thus, United Methodists need an alternative understanding of our collective identity that evolves out of intercultural conversations that remain alert to the role of culture, power, and agency in identity formation. We suggest that one promising resource in this task is the Methodist practice of conferencing or dialogue.

Recommended Reading: Ulrike Schuler Farewell Lecture on Connectionalism

Dr. Ulrike Schuler retired as Professor of Church History, Methodism and Ecumenical Studies at Reutlingen School of Theology at the end of July. Reutlingen is the seminary for German (and sometimes other European) United Methodists. As is the tradition in German academia, Schuler concluded her service with a farewell lecture. The title of her address was, in English, "Staying connected: a Methodist model of life and church." The lecture touched on several themes of interest to this blog: connectionalism, mission, the nature of Methodism, and current reform efforts in The United Methodist Church. The EmK website published a summary of Schuler's address (here in the original German and here in a Google translation into English), and video of the lecture (in German) is available as well.

Recommended Readings: On Evangelism as the Heart of Mission

The journal Methodist Review recently published an article and a response that may be of interest to UM & Global's readers. Both concern the relationship between evangelism and mission. Mark Teasdale wrote "Extending the Metaphor: Evangelism as the Heart of Mission Twenty-Five Years Later," in which he commented on Dana L. Robert's 1997 essay, "Evangelism as the Heart of Mission." Dana Robert then wrote a response to Teasdale's essay. Both pieces can be found for free, with registration, on Methodist Review's website. Full abstracts for both pieces are below.

Mark Teasdale, "Extending the Metaphor: Evangelism as the Heart of Mission Twenty-Five Years Later"

In 1997, Dana Robert published “Evangelism as the Heart of Mission” to provide a conceptual framework to resolve the theological debate within The United Methodist Church about the relationship of evangelism to mission. She did this by using a heart-and-body metaphor that demonstrated that each was distinct from yet interdependent with the other, appealing to the example of John Wesley’s holistic ministry. Drawing on developments in the field of evangelism and in scholarship related to Wesley’s understanding of inspiration that have taken place in the twenty-five years since Robert’s work was published, her metaphor can be clarified and extended in ways that will allow it to remain a helpful missiological framework for Methodists to think about both their evangelistic outreach and their life together as a community of believers in Jesus Christ.

 

Dana L. Robert, Response to Mark Teasdale

In a recent issue of Methodist Review, Mark Teasdale revisited Dana L. Robert’s image of “evangelism as the heart of mission.” In this response, Robert reflects on the historical setting in which she proposed the idea, focusing on events within The United Methodist Church and academic associations of professors of evangelism and mission. She then interacts appreciatively with aspects of Teasdale’s reframing, specifically his rejection of narrowing evangelism to a practice of the church, and his call to focus more strongly on the Holy Spirit. She concludes by exploring Methodist D. T. Niles’s reflections on the Spirit in mission.

Thomas Kuhn, Missiology, and World Christianity, Part III

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

Over the past two weeks, I have described the emergence of the current dominant paradigm within the academic field of missiology, its relationship to the field of World Christianity, and some reasons why there may be a paradigm shift on the way in missiology, in part because of developments within World Christianity. In this post, I will reflect on what it would mean for missiology to undergo a paradigm shift.

First, a paradigm shift represents a time of crisis for an academic field, but not necessarily the end of that field. When the colonial mission paradigm collapsed, it threatened to discredit the field of missiology as a whole, and indeed the field lost a good deal of prestige, funding, and positions. But missiology adopted a new paradigm and reemerged into another very productive period of scholarship, helping give birth to World Christianity. Thus, it is important to make a distinction between a field and its reigning paradigm, though there are of course tight connections between the two.

If it is true that missiology is facing a paradigm shift, some might wonder what comes next? Honestly, I do not know. I have yet to see anything that is a clear contender for a new paradigm for missiology. I can think of some possibilities, but I have no confidence that any of these would achieve a level of dominance within the field.

The first such possibility is that a new paradigm of missiology would emerge not from the Western academy but from the Majority World. While the inculturation paradigm was developed and advanced in part by missiologists from the developing world (such as Lamin Sanneh), it had its roots in responding to crises in Western Christianity related to the collapse of the colonial paradigm. Perhaps a new way of thinking about mission that responds primarily to the needs and self-understanding of the church in the Global South will become dominant in the Global North as well.

Another possibility is that new technology or new research techniques will open up new possibilities for missiological research, leading to a new paradigm. If this comes to pass, the Boston University Center for Global Christianity and Mission China Historical Christian Database might be a representation of the sorts of big data computing approaches that would allow for new types of research addressing new questions and yielding new assumptions about missiology. It is important to distinguish between new tools and new assumptions about the field, but the former can influence the latter.

A third possibility is that the increasingly severe environmental crisis caused by global climate change will force a significant re-thinking of Christian mission and its study. In this possibility, a new paradigm of missiology would emerge that sought to distance itself from eco-recklessness and instead centered care for God’s creation (human and non-human). This would parallel the breakdown of the colonial mission paradigm, which was unable to reckon with the historic harm caused by colonialism, and the emergence of the inculturation paradigm, which crafted a vision for Christian mission that affirmed all cultures.

Moreover, there is also the possibility that no new paradigm will emerge, or at least no single dominant paradigm. While missiology is a relatively small discipline, large disciplines like anthropology and history have room within them for multiple intellectual paradigms.

There is also the possibility of the withering of the field of missiology in the face of challenges to its current paradigm. Areas of human knowledge and academic disciplines are not guaranteed to continue.

In the English-speaking world, the field of philology has largely (though not entirely) been supplanted by linguistics, which continues some of the insights of philology but goes beyond them as well and has become a much larger field within academia. It is possible that World Christianity could supplant missiology in the same way.

Another analogy might be the field of geography, which continues, but in a diminished state from the level of attention, prestige, funding, and positions it enjoyed in the early 20th century. Missiology could similarly continue, but with less general interest in its work.

Ultimately, questions about the future of missiology and its dominant paradigm come down to two:

First, does the field continue to generate interesting conversations?

Continuing a paradigm involves both fidelity to core assumptions and the ability to apply those assumptions in new, interesting, and innovative ways. At the ASM conference this year, a friend remarked of a presentation, “That’s the same old thing I’ve been hearing for 30 years.” Normal science is productive when it extends the insights of an intellectual paradigm and applies them to help make sense of more phenomena. A sense that a paradigm is “played out” would diminish it.

Boredom is one threat to a paradigm. Confusion is another. According to Thomas Kuhn, paradigms break down when they no longer effectively serve as framing devices to make sense of the data. In this way, missiology would no longer generate interesting conversations if the assumptions of its dominant paradigm could no longer make sufficient sense of what Christians experience of the church, the world, and the relation between the two. That is essentially what happened at the end of the colonial paradigm, and that collapse threatened the field of missiology as a whole. Such confusion makes interesting conversations difficult.

Second, are there the resources to sustain the people and places (physical and intellectual) committed to having conversations enabled by the paradigm?

That cast of people may change, the places they work may shift, and as the past two and a half years have shown us, even how they have conversations may take new forms. But conversations don’t happen without people and a way to connect them.

For an academic field to be vibrant, it needs a critical mass of people to carry it forward. Those people need employment in positions related to the field. Such positions might extend beyond the academy, as is especially true in missiology, but it is hard to have a vibrant academic field of hobbyists. The people engaged in that field also need conferences, publications, lecture series, and the like to exchange ideas and research funding, libraries, and other resources to generate new ideas.

Of course, it is easy to catastrophize and to see in every change tremors of an on-coming disaster. But changes do matter, and changes in the world, in the church, and in the academy do impact disciplines such as missiology and their reigning intellectual paradigms. Asking where the field is going and how to keep it healthy are a useful exercise for academic disciplines.

Thomas Kuhn, Missiology, and World Christianity, Part II

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

In my last post, I described the emergence of the current dominant paradigm within missiology, which I called the inculturation paradigm, and the ways in which it has been tied to the rise of World Christianity as a field of studies, with inculturation paradigm missiology serving as both midwife and beneficiary of the rise of World Christianity.

In this post, I would like to explore four reasons why change may be welling up within missiology and World Christianity. I will reflect on the significance of these four reasons in a future post.

Generational change
It has now been a half century since the emergence of the inculturation paradigm within missiology and a third of a century since the emergence of World Christianity as a field of study. Academics often have long work lives, but given the amount of time that has passed, it is perhaps not surprising that many of the founding figures in these movements have died or retired, several within just the last few years.

This year’s Yale-Edinburgh Conference made special note of the recent deaths of Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls, founders of that conference. It felt tragically significant that the president of ASM this past year, Sister Madge Karecki, passed away just a couple weeks after the annual conference.

Looking to publications, the volume Landmark Essays in Mission and World Christianity came out in 2009, and a quarter of the authors included had already died at that time. In the 13 years since, all but a couple of the authors included have retired and/or died, several of them hitting those milestones in just the past two years.

Generational change does not necessarily mean a paradigm shift. Normal science can continue with members of younger generations and often does. Still, each new generation poses new questions. New generations of scholars will not have had the same intellectual and life experiences that shaped the perspectives of previous scholars. And younger scholars have the luxury of taking for granted insights that had to be hard won by previous generations. All these factors can set the ground for a paradigm shift.

Change in global social context
If there have been changes in personnel, there have also been changes in the broader historical contexts in which missiological and World Christianity scholarship proceeds. The inculturation paradigm of missiology was deeply shaped by the rise of postcolonialism in the 1960s. World Christianity burst onto the scene at a time when secular interest in globalization and connections across difference was high. Both these scholarly paradigms bear the mark of the era in which they were born.

While the world is still shaped by the legacies of colonialism and still operates in many ways on the infrastructure of globalization, the global context has also changed. It is hard to say where exactly the world is heading, but the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism in many contexts over the past decade, the disruptions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the ever-growing existential threat of climate disaster make this historical moment unique from that of 30 or 60 years ago.

I do not pretend to have insight into how exactly these developments will shape the future of World Christianity studies or missiology, but it would be surprising if they did not do so in significant ways.

Evolutions within World Christianity
When World Christianity first arose as a field, available information was limited on Christianity in non-Western contexts. This made it relatively easy for early scholars in the field to compile surveys of Christianity around the world or to work across contexts, since the amount of available information to do so could be digested by a single person.

As World Christianity has grown as a field, however, the amount of available information on Christianity in specific contexts has increased significantly to the point where it is quite difficult for a single scholar to be well-versed in even the major scholarly works on Christianity in multiple contexts. Robert Frykenberg has opined that the histories of Christianity just in India alone are too complex and varied to address comprehensively in one book.

In light of this profusion of scholarship, the tendency in recent years has been for World Christianity to function increasingly as a collection of Christian area studies. Chinese Christianity studies is one such significant example, as noted at the Yale-Edinburgh conference this year. The study of Chinese Christianity is both connected to World Christianity and also an increasingly distinct field in its own right.

This trend towards area studies creates a tension, though. World Christianity has always had a comparative element do it. The scholars originating the field were committed to the notion that there are commonalities of the Christian tradition across contexts worth investigating and speaking of, that there is still such a thing as Christianity and not just discrete Christianities.

As scholarship on individual contexts proliferates, what is the coherence of World Christianity as a discipline that operates across contexts? This question was raised more than once at the Yale-Edinburgh Conference this year.

While such questions get at fundamental commitments within the field of World Christianity, I think they represent the normal development and maturing of an academic field, though that process of maturation may give rise to new paradigms of thinking about the study of World Christianity.

Yet as the field seeks to understand itself anew, it raises the question: Does World Christianity need missiology anymore? World Christianity got its start through the commitments of missiologists to both Christian universality and cultural particularity. If those two commitments are balanced in new configurations in the field of World Christianity, what implications will that have for missiology? And what is missiology if it is no longer midwife to and beneficiary of World Christianity?

Challenges in the organizational ecology of missiology
Academic fields and paradigms within those fields flourish when they have the resources (including positions, funds, and publication opportunities) to produce a vibrant amount of scholarship. They decline in tandem with a decline in such resources.

In this regard, the general decline of Christianity in North American portends poorly for the future of North American missiology as an academic field rooted in the church. Fewer North American Christians means fewer resources for the study of missiology, whether that’s because there are fewer seminary positions decided to missiology, fewer persons working in mission and also conducting academic research, or a smaller audience for missiological work.

Academic publishing across the board has become more difficult in many ways, but that applies also to publishing within missiology. There are expanded publication opportunities with newer presses such as Wipf and Stock or William Carey, but some established presses such as Orbis are not doing nearly the number of books related to missiology they were 20 years ago. While the total number of books across publishers might be the same, there are implications for the prestige of the field and therefore the ability of scholars working within it to get tenure.

Examining the American Society of Missiology’s membership gives another perspective on this trend. While the total membership of ASM is up relative to what it was a decade ago, that masks shifts within its membership. The number of independent Protestant (e.g., evangelical) members is up, but the number of Catholic participants has dwindled significantly, and the number of conciliar (e.g., mainline) Protestants is flat at best. Catholic and mainline missiology did not collapse in the 1970s and 80s, but that collapse may only have been delayed.

Even within the world of evangelicalism, there are signs of a reduced organizational ecology to support missiology. There are declining enrollments, even in some evangelical seminaries, or at least in their programs related to missiology. Programs, even at flagship schools, have been renamed or reshuffled, some of which reflects the ever-changing nature of higher education administration, and some of which represents declining or at least shifting interest among students.

The question of student interest hearkens back to the first point about generational change: Are new generations continuing to find the current paradigm and discipline of missiology a fruitful approach to satisfy their questions about the world?

Recent Publications from the Association of Methodist Professors of Mission

This blog is a project of the Association of Methodist Professors of Mission (formerly United Methodist Professors of Mission), and it is important to engage with each other's scholarship. Thus, below is a list (including links where available) of recent missiological publications written by members of the Association of Methodist Professors of Mission. My apologies to anyone whose publications I have inadvertently omitted.

Several members contributed to the edited collection The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends From Everywhere to Everywhere, edited by David W. Scott and Darryl S. Stephens. Among those contributing were Taylor Walters Denyer ("Decolonizing Methodist mission partnerships"), Hendrik R. Pieterse ("The challenge of intercultural theology for Methodist theology in a global context"), and David W. Scott ("The economics of international mission"). Dana L. Robert contributed a foreword to the book. Philip Wingeier-Rayo has published a review of the book in the International Bulletin of Mission Research.

Peter J. Bellini published two books, The Cerulean Soul: A Relational Theology of Depression and The X-Manual: Exousia—A Comprehensive Handbook on Deliverance and Exorcism. He also contributed a chapter, "A global movement," to The Next Methodism: Theological, Social, and Missional Foundations for Global Methodism, edited by Kenneth J. Collins and Ryan N. Danker.

Paul W. Chilcote published Fill My Heart with Love: 30 Days of Prayer with Methodist Women. He also contributed a foreword to James A. Harnish's Finding Your Bearings: How Words That Guided Jesus through Crisis Can Guide Us.

Glory Dharmaraj published an article, "Social Change as Mission and Intersectional Sisterhood as Reflexive Influence: A Twin Story of United Methodist Women," in Methodist History.

Benjamin L. Hartley published an article with Robert A. Danielson and James Krabill in Missiology entitled "COVID-19 in missiological and historical perspective." He also published a review of Douglas D. Tzan's William Taylor and the Mapping of the Methodist Missionary Tradition in Methodist History.

Jack Jackson published a chapter, "Evangelism is crucial in the new Methodism," in The Next Methodism: Theological, Social, and Missional Foundations for Global Methodism, edited by Kenneth J. Collins and Ryan N. Danker.

Arun W. Jones published an edited collection, Christian Interculture: Texts and Voices from Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds. He also had a chapter, "The virtues of mission," appear in Methodist Mission at 200: Serving Faithfully Amid the Tensions by David W. Scott and Thomas Kemper.

Luther Oconer published a chapter, "A World Tour of Evangelism: Henry Clay Morrison’s Radical Holiness meets “Global Holiness,” 1909-10," in Holiness and Pentecostal Movements: Intertwined Pasts, Presents, and Futures, edited by David Bundy, Geordan Hammond, and David Sang-Ehil Han.

Hendrik R. Pieterse, in addition to his above-mentioned article in The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism, published a review of Context, Plurality, and Truth: Theology In World Christianities by Mika Vähäkangas in the journal Exchange.

Dana L. Robert published a chapter, "Mission Studies and World Christianity," in The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies, edited by Kirsteen Kim, Knud Jørgensen, and Alison Fitchett-Climenhaga. She published the chapter "World Christianity as a revitalization movement" in World Christianity: History, Methodologies, Horizons, edited by Jehu Hanciles. Her article "From Missions to Mission to Beyond Missions: The Historiography of American Protestant Foreign Missions Since World War II" was chosen for inclusion in the second volume of Critical Readings in the History of Christian Mission, edited by Martha Frederiks and Dorottya Nagy.

David W. Scott, in addition to his above-mentioned involvement in The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism, published Methodist Mission at 200: Serving Faithfully Amid the Tensions, co-written with Thomas Kemper and including a contribution from Arun Jones. He also co-edited, with Daryl R. Ireland, Grace Y. May and Casely B. Essamuah, Unlikely Friends: How God Uses Boundary-Crossing Friendships to Transform the World, a festschrift in honor of Dana Robert.

Darrell Whiteman published two book reviews, one of Cultural Insights for Christian Leaders: New Directions for Organizations Serving God’s Mission in the International Bulletin of Mission Research and one of Brian Macdonald-Milne's Seeking Peace in the Pacific: The Story of Conflict and Christianity in the Central Solomon Islands in Missiology.

Recommended Reading: William P. Payne on Irish Religion

United Methodist Professor of Mission and UM & Global contributor Rev. Dr. William P. Payne has recently published an article entitled "Report of Survey Completed for Irish Evangelical Leaders" in Witness: Journal of the Academy for Evangelism in Theological Education. As the title suggests, the article unpacks the results of a survey of the Irish population that Dr. Payne conducted in 2018.

The survey was intended to explore whether disgruntled and disaffiliating Irish Catholics might be receptive to Irish evangelicalism as an alternative Christian tradition. However, what the research found instead was that, for a variety of reasons, evangelicalism was not seen as an attractive alternative. Instead, former Catholics overwhelmingly became de-traditioned (i.e.,"nones"), instead of converting to an alternate Christian tradition.

As Dr. Payne notes in an email, "Even though the results of this survey only apply to Ireland, the implications show that the growth of secularism is a threat to all forms of Christian faith in America. Evangelicals, progressives, and Roman Catholics must find a positive way to respond to this ideological challenge if they desire to remain a popular option for future generations."

Dr. Payne's research can help further understanding of the important question of why religious change in the modern West is primarily (though not exclusively) a movement away from organized religion rather than movement across religious traditions.

Call for Papers: Methodism and American Empire Project

From the start of North American colonies of European powers, empire has characterized the American experience. The role of empire in shaping the United States extends far beyond its origins as an imperial hinterland itself or its turn-of-the-20th-century heyday of possessing its own colonies. Empire as concentrated, top-down power that seeks to control others for the sake of its own agendas is a constant within US history. Empire goes beyond particular political parties, presidential administrations, or theological groupings. The impulses and perspectives of Empire have characterized and continue to characterize American politics, economics, culture, and religion in a thorough-going way. US imperialism has functioned and continues to function both within and beyond the territorial boundaries of the United States as a nation-state. Empire is a basic strategy by which those with power in the United States have sought to unite larger groups for the sake of asserting power over others, even as those within these in-groups often act against their own interests by participating in such imperial projects. Thus, empire is a technique of exploitation of those within and beyond the empire, especially those on the margins.

Scholars in postcolonial and decolonial theologies as well as recent developments in political theology have insisted that empire shapes religious traditions and imaginaries. In the case of the United States, the entanglement between imperialism and US Christianity runs deep in the powers and principalities of this world. The impact of empire on US Christianity has been most evident among those closest to its levers of power—historically speaking, straight, white, male citizens of the dominant class. Though the impact of imperialism is not limited to this group, the work of resisting imperial Christianity requires attention to communities that stand on the underside of US imperialism.

As significant expressions of US Christianity, Methodist and Wesleyan traditions in the United States have been and are shaped by the imperial practices and mindsets of their US members, even when they aspire to be “global” denominations. US empire has shaped other expressions of Methodism as well, even those that are not historically connected to the United States. Methodism’s relationship with empire is at times ambiguous, and there are ambiguities and ambivalences in how Empire has played out historically. Those on the margins of empire have appropriated the openings created by empire for their own purposes. Nevertheless, the exploitation and injustice that are inherent to empire go against basic tenets of Christianity, especially in its Wesleyan expressions.

Writing from within Methodist traditions, the authors in this volume provide testimonies of a “theological surplus,” as Joerg Rieger has termed it, in the tradition: while imperial forces seek to control everything, God’s work exceeds the grasp of empire. This volume will include historical and theological reflections that elevate these experiences and that showcase Methodism as a denominational tradition that has historically resisted US imperialism even as it often times succumbs to it.

This volume therefore suggests that resistance to empire is a biblical imperative. The Bible makes it clear that God’s power does not stem from domination over but from identification with God’s interactions with God’s creation. These interactions are marked by love, justice, service, and freedom. This biblical depiction of God inspires us to our own work of resisting empire and crafting alternatives to it, especially within the church. These alternatives to empire are indeed the first fruits of God’s new creation. By so doing, we join in partnership with God and others in the work of doing God’s will on earth as in heaven, and we open ourselves to the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, who helps us grow in our love for others.

Given the impact of Empire on the American church and on Methodism as a historically and predominantly American denominational tradition, and given the Christian imperative to resist any system that identifies a Lord other than Christ, we intend to develop a book project that will serve as a resource for the work of resisting Empire. We intend that this resource will be primarily geared toward a popular audience, rather than a scholarly one. The goal is to bring along people for whom a critique of Empire does not come naturally but who recognize on some level the problems of imperial Christianity and who are open to trying as Christians to live in a new way.

We envision a collection of writings that draw upon a variety of disciplines: biblical studies, theology, history, missiology, etc., that will help readers better understand how the forces of empire have impacted Methodism (in its various expressions) and its practices and how the church can move towards a non-imperial manner of being and acting. To do so, we anticipate that authors will explore different forms of empire—not just political and military might, but also economics, culture, media, and other forms of “soft” empire. Moreover, we recognize that imperial power is not static but grows, fluctuates, and declines over time. We also anticipate that authors will explore the ways in which empire interacts with other categories of analysis such as race, class, nation and nationalism, geography (rural/urban, for instance), sexuality, the environment, and the body. Again, the goal of this analysis is not primarily to advance conversations in the academy but to use the resources of the academy to help educate and equip the church broadly. Finally, recognizing that the ills of empire cannot be fully cured solely by those at the centers of the imperial system, we hope for contributions from Methodists around the world.

Themes
We invite contributions for essays or resources that relate to the following themes:  

1.    Historical essays tying Methodist missionary activity and the expansion of United States foreign interests. Case studies could include US missionaries in Puerto Rico, Western Africa, the Philippines, the impact of US expansions on the church in the United States, and international structures of Methodism, etc.
2.    Theological and ethical reflections on Wesleyan theology, Empire studies, and political theology.
3.    Liturgical, worship, and ministry resources (sermons, liturgies, litanies, biblical studies, Sunday school lessons, etc.) for church communities to engage in anti-imperial reflections.
4.    Practical resources on activism, advocacy, and mission focused on Methodist communities and contexts.

Timeline
Essay proposals are due August 31, 2021. Proposals should include 300–400-word description of the project and ought to be submitted as an email attachment to the editors, David Scott (dscott(at)umcmission.org) and Filipe Maia (fmaia(at)bu.edu). Accepted proposals will be communicated to authors by September 30, 2021.

The Perils and Promises of Economic Analysis of Religion

Today's post is by UM & Global blogmaster Dr. David W. Scott, Mission Theologian at the General Board of Global Ministries. The opinions and analysis expressed here are Dr. Scott's own and do not reflect in any way the official position of Global Ministries.

One of the distinctive aspects of my writing, both on this blog and elsewhere, has been a focus on the economic aspects of mission and church. Whether that's exploring the impact of different financial models of mission in the early 20th century, determining the relative significance of American vs. indigenous economic support of church work, giving an overview of the assets of The United Methodist Church, or detailing how Methodist mission in Malaysia handled shipping of goods and monetary remittances, attention to the business of mission and church has been a frequent focus of mine.

I am not alone in following this "business turn" in religious studies. While not nearly as significant as the "cultural turn" in the 70s, attention to the intersection of religion, business, and economics has become a noticeable focus for many scholars in the past 5-10 years.

I want to give an account of what I think is at stake in such an approach to the study of religion, at least for me as a scholar. I will do so through two pairs of perils and promises--or, in other words, potential pitfalls and potential payoffs.

One potential pitfall of taking an economic approach to the study of religion is that it become reductionist in nature. While saying that money matters, one must be careful not to imply that money is the only thing that matters when it comes to moving the levers of history or driving people's engagement with religion. Nor is it just Marxist approaches that can make such a mistake. The cultural logic of late stage capitalism can be just as reductionist by seeing events and people only in terms of their economic value or capacity. Such an approach erases people's fundamental humanity and ignores the power of ideas and other forces that shape history.

Yet, while focusing exclusively on economic understandings of religion prohibits a full understanding of religion and humans, so does ignoring the economics of religion. It is easy to assume that religion is all about ideas, or perhaps about ideas, culture, and power, while ignoring the very real economic considerations that go into the practice and propagation of religion. Thus, one promise of including an economic analysis of religion is that it gives us a fuller picture of how people are religious rather than an idealized or sanctified picture that ignores such "grubby" considerations as money. Money is a real consideration, even for the devout, and it must be acknowledged as such.

A second potential pitfall is related to the above remark about the cultural logic of late stage capitalism. There has been an increasing tendency over the past several decades for economic language and economic logic to take over all aspects of life. Even how we think about such things as friendship, citizenship, love, and art has become increasingly structured by a logic of quantified loss and gain articulated through a series of economic metaphors. I think such totalizing of economic reasoning is ultimately destructive of our full humanity. And when we use economic language figuratively in our analysis of religion, such as when I compared mission stations to franchises, we risk furthering this trend of being able to think only in economic terms.

The corresponding payoff, though, of highlighting the economic logic people bring to religion, even when that logic is used in figurative ways, is that by highlighting it, it makes that logic seem less inevitable. If we become aware of how capitalism has shaped our thinking, even about religion, then we are closer to being able to think about religion (and the rest of the world) in other terms. It is made clear that such language and logic is a choice, and we could choose to see the world differently.

Ultimately, my participation in the business turn in religious studies is motivated not by a high valuation or appreciation of what money can do but rather by a suspicion of the distorting and corrupting influences that money can have, whether on individuals, organizations, or cultures.

The cultural turn in religious studies did much to focus scholars' attention on the ways in which power was accumulated and deployed within the practice of religion. This style of analysis is at times a useful tool in understanding religion and highlights important moral and ethical questions. Yet, it tends to ignore the interaction between money and power by focusing instead on culture and politics.

The business turn has the potential to provide a similarly useful tool by raising similar questions about who benefits and why with regard to the economic practices associated with religion. It is not the only tool scholarship needs, but it is an important one to include in the scholarly toolkit.

Recommended Reading: Nordic Perspectives on Methodism

The third book in the series Nordic Perspectives on Methodism has been released, and unlike previous issues, which were print-only, this one is available as a reasonably-priced e-book on Amazon. The title for this entry in the series is "The Younger Generation and their Walk with God." (Previous entries looked at the nature of Methodism and perspectives on diakonia and service.)

The book was edited by Christina Preisler, an elder in the Denmark Annual Conference. It contains articles by authors from throughout the Nordic and Baltic Episcopal Area, including Anne Thompson, Meeli Tankler, and Maria Thaarup. A fuller description of the book is available both on Amazon and in this book release announcement (in Danish) from the Denmark AC. While containing scholarship from Europe, the book is in English.

Often, it is difficult for those in the United States to access scholarship and other discussions about the church that occur in the central conferences. With its use of the English language and its publication as an e-book, this volume represents one of the more accessible opportunities for US United Methodists to learn how other United Methodists outside the US are thinking about ministry.

UM & Global Update: Online Resources

Astute readers of UM & Global will recognize something new about the site today: I have added additional pages. These pages contain lists of links to resources relevant to the topic of the blog.

There are four new pages as follows:

UM News: Contains links to various official and unofficial news sources focused on The United Methodist Church from the US, Europe, and Africa. News sources are in a variety of languages.

UM Scholarship: Contains links to freely available, publicly accessible scholarly material related to The United Methodist Church.

UM Mission News: Contains links to a variety of publications related to mission from Global Ministries, UMW, and theological schools with United Methodist connections.

Mission Scholarship: Contains links to freely available, publicly accessible scholarly material related to the study of mission across all denominational traditions.

In addition, I have continued our "About" page, and a click on the banner image at the top of any page will take you back to the home page where the regular posts are located.

While I have included all of the relevant links of which I am aware, the Internet is a large place, and there may well be other sites worth including. If you know of such material, please send me a link and a brief explanation, and I will continue to update the pages as needed.

Recommended Reading: World Growth of the United Methodist Church in Comparative Perspective

For those of you looking for resources in thinking about The United Methodist Church as a global denomination, the Methodist Review, the online-only Methodist academic journal, provides a number of helpful resources.  Among these are an article written by Dana L. Robert and David W. Scott two years ago entitled "World Growth of the United Methodist Church in Comparative Perspective: A Brief Statistical Analysis."  In this article, the two authors compare the growth rates of the UMC, independent Methodist churches, other Wesleyan churches, and Anglicans churches on a country-by-country basis.  As the study notes, "These comparisons show that population figures give serious cause for concern about the UMC’s performance globally" (38).  The authors suggest several possible reasons for that poor performance.  The authors examine sociological, structural, cultural, and theological reasons, raising questions for further research.

The article is available freely online, though accessing it does require the creation of a login for the Methodist Review's site.  To see the article, go to www.methodistreview.org/index.php/mr/article/view/48.  For other articles by the Methodist Review, see www.methodistreview.org/index.php/mr/issue/archive.

Recommended Reading: "To Reconcile Us to His Father"

A recent article by Helmut Renders in the Methodist Review raises questions about how language and translation can have unexpected results, both in The United Methodist Church and our sister churches, the autonomous Methodist Churches.  Follow the link below to read the article!

"To Reconcile Us to His Father”: A Unique Translation of the Second Article of Religion of the Methodist Church in Brazil and Three Other Lusophone Countries by Helmut Renders: https://www.methodistreview.org/index.php/mr/issue/view/12 

The Methodist Review requires a free sign-up.