Wuthnow, Robert. 2009. Boundless faith: the global outreach of American churches. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Wuthnow studies the influence of American Christianity as part of the broader “transcultural church”. Wuthnow’s research question is “how have American churches influenced the world?” His focus is on the influence of American churches as well as how American churches are interconnected with the global Church.
Wuthnow’s critiques the Global Christianity paradigm popularized by Philip Jenkins, Andrew Walls, Samuel Escobar, Mark Noll, and others. Wuthnow summarizes the main tenants of this paradigm: “Christianity on a global scale has experienced significant growth during the twentieth century and this growth will continue. The majority of Christians now reside outside of the United States and Europe. The growth of Christianity in these other parts of the world has been exceptionally strong and will remain so. The growth is happening primarily through the efforts of indigenous Pentecostal and other Spirit-filled churches, and for this reason Christianity in the global South is especially vibrant and authentic. During this same period Christianity has been weakening in the global North and as a result countries in the South are now sending missionaries to the North” (p. 36). Wuthnow analyzes two forces which he believes have significantly shaped the Global Christianity paradigm: secularization and postcolonialism.
Wuthnow critiques the Global Christianity paradigm on the grounds that it is, in fact, not so “new”, that it oversimplifies the numbers, it speaks nothing to the issue of “influence” of different shapes of Christianity globally, and it avoids any mention of how the global Church is interconnected. Wuthnow wants to offer a more (in the words of Edward Said) contrapuntal approach to the study of global Christianity. In other words, the Global Christianity paradigm speaks of the globalization of Christianity only in terms of quantity concentrations and avoiding, ironically, analysis of the actual interconnectedness of global Christianity (the very essence of the flat world idea). This critique is worth mentioning, though perhaps too vehemently stated by Wuthnow. Rather than slamming the scholars of the Global Christianity paradigm for forsaking analysis of the interconnectedness of the church, it seams more reasonable to consider what has been written thus far (think: Jenkins, Noll, Todd Johnson, Walls, Barrett, etc.) as the first step in a broader, systematic analysis of the global church. After all, we can’t understand how the church is connected until we know that the church exists globally and some things about its many incarnations in the global south.
On another note, I find this statement very interesting and massively consequential:
“It is more likely that the new paradigm popularized by Jenkins, Walls, Escobar, and others gained popularity because it resolved — or appeared to resolve — underlying concerns about the fate of Christianity.”
This poses the general question on which I am currently writing: “What cognitive phenomenon shape Christian thought?”
No comments:
Post a Comment