Transformation An International Journal of Holistic Mission Studies

This paper seeks to show how a missional reading of 2 Corinthians 5:11–6:2 provides support for NT Wright’s largely neglected reading of 2 Corinthians 5:21 and also creates greater immediate contemporary relevance. Instead of seeing the passage as purely polemical or apologetic, the passage is seen as functioning as an exhortation even as it conforms to an apologetic for Paul’s ministry.

C. S. Lewis' article addresses a critically important issue on which Howard Ahmanson comments. Professor Oliver O'Donovan addresses the same issue in a sermon in Christ Church Oxford on Trinity Sunday 1997. We publish the three articles together in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the independence of India and Pakistan and invite correspondence on the issues at stake. Eds.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Open University, 1997.

Before 1989, Christians and Muslims in Eastern European states were the objects of firm repression. Churches and mosques had been closed, scriptures were largely unavailable, clergy were either hopelessly compromised, or barred from carrying out their ministry. Mission, religious education and charitable outreach were banned. Since 1989, religion has been one of the first areas of life to be normalised. Enormous vigour has sprung up in all areas of church life. But some difficulties still remain – in particular the re-emergence of the alliance between church and state which pre-dated the period of suppression and the use of pornography to flood the press.

This paper offers a descriptive and critical retrospective of an initiative of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS) to create a co-operative international network of partnering institutions under the aegis of The International Fellowship of Mission Theologians (INFEMIT). It focuses on the years 1997–2007.

Christianity has recently undergone historic demographic and cultural shifts: it has expanded significantly in the global south while declining in the west. In an age of World Christianity, these changes bring diversity and competition, and renewed Christian witness. The global context for the faith reveals unavoidable tensions between missional expansion and the call to be one in Christ Jesus. Amid plurality and rapid changes in identity, Christians are challenged to re-appropriate the classic marks of the church – one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Engagement with all four marks, reframed for the contemporary situation, will help to maintain the creative tension between mission and unity, to connect Christians across geography and generations, and to forge a common vision of salvation in an interconnected world.

The practice of ‘diaspora missions’ is necessitated by the demographic change in the United Kingdom in the 21st century. In this paper, the ‘diaspora mission strategy’ (i.e. ministering to, through and beyond the diaspora communities) is proposed in response to such demographic change.

Far from being straightforward, as Jewish and Christian tradition might suggest, Abram’s call raises questions about the exact time it took place and was followed up. After surveying the solutions suggested so far, the current article looks into various evidence offered in the text to deliberate on this matter: Abram’s birth in relation to Terah’s genealogy, Abram’s family in relation to Terah’s death, the form of the ‘calling’ verb, the country Abram departed from, and the narrative art of the literary piece. We reached the conclusion that God called Abram to leave Ur in order to travel to Canaan, and he did that before Terah’s death, although he stopped on the way in Haran for a while. Abram’s example provides a model to obey God’s highest call over any other human duty and responsibility.

Len Bartlotti did his doctoral research on proverbs, Islam, and identity among Pashtuns (Afghans), and serves as Research Tutor at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. He served fourteen years in Asia and is founder and former Executive Director of the InterLit Foundation Publishers and Educational Consultants.

Non-Western Christian missionaries from a variety of backgrounds represent Europe as being in decline in terms of its religiosity and morals. Such evaluations are set against a backdrop of Christian demographic shift from the global North to the global South and secularization theory. The shift in demographics is, however, unfinished, as is the inversion of relations implied by the vocal, critical presence of Southern Christians in Europe. There is great religious variety within Europe, the West and the global South. Hence scholars are developing fresh theoretical lenses to take better account of contexts and connections in analyses, and further research into the relationship between rhetoric and reality is called for.

This paper makes some observations for assessing faith-based social services from a sociological perspective. More specifically, it examines internal factors like the theology of the group and external factors, the political context, for understanding a Pentecostal approach in the USA. Observations are made from the Los Angeles Dream Center, a Pentecostal ministry, which is also a model for other Dream Centers throughout the world. The central argument is twofold: Pentecostals offer a unique holistic approach to mission and second, a sociological approach which takes seriously the theology of a group as well as its social context provides an optic for assessing similarities and differences among faith-based social services.

The traditional approach of the academy to research requires the practitioner to locate their inquiries in an academic discipline, inevitably restricting the study to a limited aspect of the challenges of practice and requiring an objectivity that removes the researcher from the action. This paper describes a fresh response to this question – a Post-graduate Programme in Professional Practice. The programme, offered by the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, draws on work-based learning and reflective practice and facilitates a process of critical inquiry and transformative action in the scholar-practioner's own context.

This article, which illustrates the practical effect of caste in employment practices in India, is the first in the series announced in the editorial of October-December 1984. The series will describe models of involvement which illustrate the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility.

This paper is based on an open lecture given at OCMS on Tuesday 21 December 2004.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and University of Wales. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-141).

This article is reprinted with permission from the Journal of African Christian Thought vol. 4 no. 2, December 2001 published by the Akrofi-Kristaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology, PO Box 76 Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana, e-mailakrofi@africaonline.com.gh. We are grateful to the editor Dr Gillian Bediako.

Following the Washington Conference held from June 28-30 2002 on The Bible and the Ballot Box, the final conference of the Study Programme of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians (INFEMIT) on Evangelicals and Politics in Africa, Asia and Latin America, supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts, the project director, Canon Dr Vinay Samuel shared these reflections at a chapel service at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. See www.evangelicalsandpolitics.org. Summaries of the regional studies follow this reflection.

This paper demonstrates the importance of the use of indigenous languages in formal contexts for the future of Africa’s peoples. Inter-cultural communication using one language wrongly assumes that the unfamiliar can be expressed using familiar terms. This author argues that long-term immersion by a Westerner amongst a non-Western people is a singular means of acquiring insights about them. Long-term participant observation forms the basis of the research for this article. When communicated globally, anti- racism strategies are found to be problematic in their apparent denial of realities of non-Western cultures. The failure of many African communities to recognize and deal with the peculiarities of their own cultural contexts has potentially tragic consequences. Use of European languages (especially in Africa) is contributing to enormous dependence on the West and/or magic, and to gross under-development. Vulnerable intercultural exposure using non-Western languages and resources with concentrated efforts at understanding people’s theologies is advocated as the way forward.

Muslims and Christians have used the Bible and the Qur’an in their preaching and writing in order to convince each other of the unique truth of their own faith. Much of the writing has been produced in inexpensive booklets (tracts), whilst preaching takes place in public meetings using each others’ scripture. This paper examines the different Swahili versions of the Bible and the Qur’an and their reception. It then examines the use of the sacred texts of two world faiths, Christianity and Islam, using the local vernacular, Swahili, in East Africa.

This article is taken from a lecture to a convention of white Lutheran pastors who struggle to find their role in the present South African dilemma. The author hopes it will convey more of the actual atmosphere in one section of the community than a theoretical treatment could. Lutherans call their theology ‘evangelical’ because it is based on the gospel (the gift of God's grace) in contradistinction (the demand of God). His contribution to the discussion at a recent conference of the ecumenical ‘National Initiative for Reconciliation’ has been added at the end.

African Christians, not foreign missionaries, have been largely responsible for the spread of the Christian Gospel across the continent. African Initiated Churches were often formed in reaction to foreign control, especially where it involved cultural and colonial racism. The article challenges the prevailing idea in the ‘West’ of ‘mission’ being confined to professional missionaries. It draws on Ghana for examples of how indigenous churches, since 1970, have increasingly become sending agencies involved in both ‘cross-cultural’ and ‘reverse mission’. It concludes by asking churches in Africa, and in the ‘West’, to think critically about how Gospel mission can be promoted and sustained.

This paper analyses selected recent African theological works on the conceptual relationships between church and society. The author highlights what can be universally learned from the African writings with reference to debates about faith and its relationship to ideals of social and political justice. Some recent books by African theologians have taken up the challenge of directly confronting questions that arise from the relationships between Africa's religions and their wider social and political environment. The paper shows how according to these theologians the church in Africa must be judged by what it does and by what it does not do vis-à-vis the larger societies of which it is a part.

This paper is a further refinement of ‘A Manifesto’ recently published in the maiden issue of Studies in World Christianity (The Edinburgh Review of Theology and Religion);, vol. 1.1, 1995, pp. 51-67. In the present form it was delivered as the keynote address at the recent African Christianity Project conference held in March 1995 in Edinburgh and also at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies Summer School on Institutional Development, in June-July 1995.

Idioms of African religion have enabled African men and women to respond to Christianity and to place their hopes in it. The idioms and new ideas of missions had a tremendous influence on the prophetic, spiritual African churches, helping to ensure that they would emerge as Christian churches rather than as re-statements of African religion. Some African churches did advocate the performance of ancestral rituals but stressed the need for dignity and sobriety in worship on the one hand and the acknowledgement of the cen-trality of preaching and the Bible on the other hand. Noisy ill-disciplined enthusiasm was strongly disapproved and yet the historic mission churches were not averse to experimenting with new ideas of inculturation.

Roland Allen (1868–1947) emerged as an independent missionary and theologian within the Anglican Mission to North China from 1895 to 1903. For the rest of his life, he continued as a freelance missiological writer, debater and priest for some time connected to the interdenominational World Dominion Press. As a theologian and churchman, with a genuine incarnational ecclesiology as his foundation, he combined a Catholic view of Anglicanism with a deliberate concern for local Christian initiatives and the spontaneous expansion of local Christian communities within their own environment. Basic in his ecclesiology was his view of the Church as a sacramental body, a network of local fellowships celebrating the Sacraments. Therefore, these nurtured local Christian ‘Churches’ are to be regarded and treated as the proper agents of Evangelization. In order to implement this understanding of mission he encouraged experiments with ordination of local voluntary clergy to open up the access to a sacramental life, and, thereby, promoting growth and expansion in mission.

The Rev’d Roland Allen’s grandson ventures to speculate on the attitudes his grandfather might be expected to have adopted regarding several of today’s controversial issues. After rehearsing briefly Roland’s published and unpublished work, Hubert Allen reviews, both on the basis of Roland’s expressed opinions and by inference from remarks made by him or by members of his immediate family, how he believes his grandfather would have reacted to six matters of current or recent controversy, namely: Modern Translations of the Bible, The Role of Women in the Church, Homosexuality, Ecumenism, Inter-Faith Dialogue, and the proposed Anglican Covenant.

Roland Allen’s emphasis on the ministry in missionary churches opens the door to a number of ways in which the church can work to change society, and he makes some very important connections between the promises of the prophets, Jesus announcement of the coming kingdom, and Paul’s missionary methods. In doing so, he again invites the church to bring the good news of the Kingdom of God to the modern world.

The impetus toward an indigenous Church missiology in the 20th century was defined and defended within Roland Allen’s missionary ecclesiology. This paper attempts to understand Roland Allen’s missionary ecclesiology which emerged from his apostolic ecclesiology and evangelical faith.

This paper discusses various apostolic principles of indigenization located within the missiological writings of Roland Allen. It argues for a relevant application of these first principles within global Christian mission today. Attention will be given to aspects of ‘The Ministry of Expansion: the Priesthood of the Laity’, an unpublished work by Allen who in his day challenged certain western missionary methods which he believed were not apostolic in origin.

This paper explores theological education through the lens of the prophetic model and focuses on three aspects of the prophetic activity: (a) alerting the church to contemporary ‘fertility cults’, e.g. the subtle subjection of one’s faith to economic concerns, (b) exposing the church’s ‘doctrinal’ description of a reality which rather conceals and obstructs the understanding of the church’s actual life, and (c) appropriating the text in each context while remaining open to the challenge of other contextual readings.

Latin America is not one, but many. It exists in six different regions with differing forms of Catholicism. This Catholicism had acted from a position of power. The challenge of modernity and independence movements made people anti-Church if not anti-Christian. New missionary priests from North America and Europe changed the face of Latin American Catholicism after the second world war. Yet Catholicism is not deeply rooted in Latin America and thus has had to resort to political means for survival. In the pluralistic world of the future, Catholicism in Latin America will have to live with change.

The problem of religious freedom in Latin America is focused on the distinction between religious liberty and religious toleration. Religious freedom, by definition, must exclude the principle of toleration in religion. In most countries in Latin America, the power and prestige of the State is behind the Roman Catholic Church. Other beliefs and religions are merely tolerated to varying degrees. This and other factors are indications of religious coercion. God has not given any State the power to compel human beings to religious observance. Equal rights to all and special privileges to none is the ideal which, in Latin America, seems to be neither explicitly nor implicitly evident.

Our study “Towards an Evangelical Political Philosophy” (begun in Transformation July 1997) continues with two articles on the Anabaptist and Reformed Tradition. Eds.

The social sciences contribute in important ways to our understanding of current Christian realities, especially ‘newer’ or ‘emerging’ Christianities. Recent research by social scientists on contemporary Christian groups – in historical anthropology and more recently in the anthropology of Christianity – has yielded important insights into modes of Christian agency and identity. Those interested in the spread of Christianity today – including missiologists – should familiarize themselves with such anthropological and sociological research. For their part, those engaged in social-scientific research on newer Christianities should attend more closely to Christianity in its historical and communal dimensions by developing an historical sociology.

The article discusses the twin and, to a certain extent, reciprocal ideas of ‘Manifest Success’ and ‘Manifest Destiny.’ It argues that, as developed respectively by certain streams of thought within Islamic communities and religiously motivated political movements within the USA, they both display strong ideological characteristics in the negative sense. Apart from the historical evidence that contradicts their utopian aspirations, the sense of identity and destiny which they wish to inspire is politically dangerous for being illusory. Muslims and Christians need to be aware of the ideological instrumentalising of their faith traditions, in order to be able to repudiate the undesirable appropriation of their core beliefs.

J. Andrew Kirk’s book examines – and eventually agrees with – Samuel Huntington’s controversial claim that a dangerous ‘Clash of Civilisations’ today poisons the Western-and-Islamic relationship. Kirk then suggests ways for improving these relations, highlighting Islam’s need to reform itself through a re-embrace of its more eirenic, prophetic Meccan phase. While there is much that is admirable here, the review below suggests Kirk’s interpretation of the ‘prophetic’ relationship to government is too one-sidedly Anabaptist.

Those who want to make social issues a bigger part of the world evangelization agenda have “met with the opposition of evangelical forces that seem committed to pull the [missions] movement backwards, towards mission styles of the Cold War era and towards pushing the imperial marketing of theological and missiological packages created within the framework of North American society.” This article examines the Lausanne movement, including the landmark evangelization conferences of 1974 and 1989 and focuses on questions of social issues and the gospel. The major purpose is to identify and describe three missiological streams which must establish dialogue with one another if the task of world evangelization is to be accomplished. The “church growth” missiological school, “managerial missiology” “fails to appreciate those aspects of missionary work that cannot be measured or reduced to figures”.

This is the address given by Alan R Johnson, an alumnus of OCMS, to inaugurate the J. Philip Hogan Chair of World Mission. The Hogan chair represents a connection between Assemblies of God World Missions and the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary where in a proactive and catalytic fashion the process of engaging with subjects of missiological importance can be undertaken. The author argues that thinking about missions is a communal activity that requires continual reflection.

In the process of conversion, one of the greatest challenges faced by Arab Muslims who choose to follow a Christian faith is determining how to relate to their birth communities, especially their immediate families. They continue to identify with their family and desire to function within its communal system and expectations, but also desire to be true to their new faith. For most converts in the Middle East, ceasing to adhere to the Islamic creed per se is not an act of apostasy, but declaring that one has left Islam and chosen another faith is, and is seen as an act of rebellion by the community. The process of self-disclosure, or ‘coming out’, is complex, and many converts consider their decision about how to do this to be very important. There are various approaches converts may take, and various ways their families may respond, but one implicitly shared understanding between many converts and their families may be labelled ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, whereby converts speak openly about their changed beliefs without explicitly declaring they have converted, and their families respond in kind, deliberately not asking if they have converted, in order to maintain a strong relationship with their loved ones.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and University of Wales, 2001. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 385-400).

The development of Christian NGOs over the second half of the 20th century has been one of the great stories of the church. At a time when the evangelical church in the West had gone into reverse, away from a holistic gospel, emphasising personal salvation alone and leaving the social gospel to the more liberal and ecumenical branch of the church, individual Christians had responded to the needs of a suffering world by forming CNGOs to tackle the relief and development problems around the world. This paper outlines the background to the CNGO movement, from earliest biblical times, describes the growth of the movement, with special reference to Tearfund, and then discusses the issues and challenges currently being faced. It concludes that by working through the local churches the mission of CNGOs can be holistic, and bring hope to the world.

The article makes a brief survey of the movement of the Holy Spirit in various church traditions across the world. It begins by highlighting the various revivals in Christianity, including Pietism among Lutheranism and the Holiness movement. It shows these as the precursors to the emergence of Pentecostalism in the 20th century. The Latter Rain movement, which came out of the Pentecostal movement, is analysed as a contributing factor to the Charismatic renewal within world Christianity. The empowerment of the Holy Spirit, which is one of the distinctive emphases of the Charismatic renewal, is shown as providing the opportunity to build the kingdom of the Lord, by various denominations, in love and unity.

Three traditions have influenced the idea of the state in India – the Hindu Rajah, the Islamic View and the European Secular State. From biblical and theological considerations, Christians must reject the totalism and ego-centrism of modern states and work for greater accountability and decentralised decision-making.

Evangelicals have looked at interfaith dialogue with a degree of skepticism. To many of them it smacks of compromise and relativist universalization of Christianity. On their part, ‘liberal Christians’ appeared to Evangelical Christians to be intolerant of any sort of truth claims. A new paradigm of dialogue is, however, emerging which tries to find a middle way in embracing truth claims and acknowledging real differences between faiths. Evangelical support for the Common Word initiative is an evidence of changing attitudes. This means too that those still on the ‘conservative’ end of faith are working themselves into isolation even as fissures appear between Evangelical scholars of religions and non-scholars.

Includes appendices. Thesis (Ph.D) - Oxford Centre for Mission Studies and University of Wales, 2002. Includes bibliography (leaves 318-343) and bibliographical footnotes.

Defining the concept of “proselytism” from a Biblical viewpoint, the author attempts to distinguish between witnessing through life-style evangelism and the introduction of the word of God, and overt attempts to draw others away from their historic beliefs, sometimes through questionable methodologies and/or unethical inducements. He points out that when renewal and revival within a body of believers bring about a spontaneous desire to follow Biblical principles, and a different approach toward worship, individuals should have the freedom to make that choice.

First in a new series of teaching materials to enable groups to reflect on and discuss issues of Christian Social Ethics in concrete situations. The materials include the fictional sto y, background to the personnel, historical background and issues for discussion.

“Copts” are Oriental Orthodox of Egypt. The people described in this article are Oriental Orthodox of Ethiopia. They would not want to be described as Copts, just as Armenian Orthodox (also Oriental Orthodox) would not be properly described as Copts. I suggest the use of the term “Ethiopian Orthodox” or an older term “Abyssinian Orthodox.”

In the wider ecumenical movement, bearing witness to each other in true friendship is a creative gesture inspired by the Holy Spirit. It cuts across religious and denominational divides. The friendship between Gandhi and CF Andrews is invoked as an example of East and West bearing witness to each other. In ancient Asian religious context, mutual witnessing is extended to all sentient beings. From the Orthodox tradition three themes are highlighted as contributing to the Spirit-movement for mutual witness and healing of divisions, namely, Theosis or divinization, the Perfecting work of the Holy Spirit and the Eighth Day. Humanity and the whole creation are involved in the process of divinization. Our mutual relationship is defined by this journey together. The Holy Spirit is continually renewing the creation which is pneumatodynamic, or energized by the Spirit from the beginning to the eschaton. Human beings as leaders and priests of creation are to respond to and cooperate in the perfecting work of the Spirit. The more we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit, the more united and reconciled in Christ we become

In this paper the author explores the relationship between his research and his personal development. The author is part of a community of scholars at the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies that is passionate about translating faith and knowledge into practical action in culture and society. His work therefore has broader relevance. The paper highlights the need for recognising multiple identities and ‘inter-disciplines’ involved in research which can then lead to the development of the community as whole. The main question it seeks to intentionally address is: What kind of person-in-community am I becoming through research?