The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity: Quality of Roman Catholic mission

The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity: Quality of Roman Catholic mission: Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Led by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

This past week in our Global Christianity course we had the opportunity to hear from guest lecturer Father Vincent Machozi of Boston University on significant changes in Roman Catholicism over the last one hundred years. Father Machozi brought up some important points that stimulated our discussion. Among his points was expansion of the church in the global South, and with it a changing understanding of ‘catholicity’ as fullness of life. Father Machozi also brought attention to changes in the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council, particularly with the attention given to the church and social action.

We found Father Machozi’s point that catholicity understood as fullness of life has a profound impact on mission very interesting. Such an approach no longer sees mission as converting the whole world, and instead focuses on mission as quality of life. It shifts the evaluation of mission success away from quantitative convert head counts, to whether Christianity is qualitatively relevant and potent to deal with problems people face daily, such as poverty and injustice. We noted that the question of quantity vs. quality in Roman Catholic missions is very important in Latin America, where Catholics are a majority in most countries. If quality is not emphasized, then people might become Catholics in name or identity only, without Christianity having a significant influence on important activities and decisions.

The Roman Catholic Church’s emphasis on social action was an aspect that we found very interesting, especially since all of us came from Protestant traditions we thought failed to take global action seriously as church bodies. We discussed whether the centralized hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church allows Catholics to speak with tremendous power with a unified voice on important issues and stand up to such things as the debt of developing nations, poverty, and nuclear proliferation. We were left engaging with ideas on how Protestant churches might be inspired to take similar positions with resolve.

ajD's new home: Boston University

Hello from Boston everyone! It has now been a few months since I've moved from Thailand to Boston, MA in the US to continue my studies. The cultural shift into Boston has not been easy. I continue to deeply miss the people and places in the Land of Smiles. This is my first semester in the PhD program in religious studies through Boston University's Division of Religious and Theological Studies. B.U. is one of the best places to study World Christianity and Mission, especially Christianity as a global phenomenon outside the West, as well as inter-religious dialogue and comparative religion; B.U. is also quite interdisciplinary across history and the social sciences, and has all the resources of the 10 schools that make up the Boston Theological Institute. All that said, that's why I'm here. I'm an associate at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission. You can find my profile there along with other students studying Global Christianity and Mission. There is also a picture of me and colleague in the slideshow at the opening reception for the Division on the current student page. Photo above.

Recent and upcoming events:

Cross Cultural Partnerships at B.U.: "Cross-Cultural Partnerships is a program that brings together International and American students and professors in a small group setting for weekly

fellowship and exchanges of perspectives on various aspects of culture. The aims of this program are to help build relationships between persons from different cultural backgrounds, and to further understanding about the richness of culture and the complexity of reaching across cultural lines. This program also assists students in optimizing their academic performance during their time at Boston University School of Theology by deepening their understanding of the standards and expectations they will encounter at this institution." The photo above is from a luncheon ... we are quite multi-cultural! from the Caribbean, China, South Korea, USA, and Indonesia.

2010Boston: The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity. 2010Boston is one of the many conferences going on worldwide this year to commemorate 100 years since the Edinburgh 1910 World Missionary Conference. Celebrations are being held all over the Boston area, including Park St Church, B.U., Boston College and Harvard Divinity School.

Please check out the ongoing 2010Boston Blog. These blog's are written by doctoral students in Todd Johnson's Comparative Christianity: Global Christianity course. The blog posts are reflections from student groups on the rise of global Christianity and the significant changes within Christianity from 1910-2010. I am putting the discussions I summarize for the blog on The Red Connection each week, so look for previous and upcoming posts all fall.

The conference has a high degree of participation from students and there will be many student papers and workshops. On the 5th I will be presenting a paper for the "Mission in Context" panel on the rise of faith-based organizations and the transformation of mission and salvation. At the moment this work-in-progress is entitled "Salvation Now: Mission as Human Care and Development, the Case of Thailand."

In another surprising development (for me as much as for those who know I'm challenged with dyslexia and spelling!), aj.Daeng will be the official 'tweeter' for the conference. You can follow tweets @ 2010Boston_Conf.

The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity: Struggles in the Anglican Communion

The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity: Struggles in the Anglican Communion: Editor’s note: The following post arises from small group reflections from The Rise of Global Christianity, 1910–2010, taught by Dr. Todd Johnson at Boston University in the Fall of 2010. Led by doctoral students, the small groups discussed lectures given by Christian scholars in various disciplines, including significant changes that have occurred in global Christianity over the past 100 years.

In our Global Christianity course on October 27th, we had the opportunity to hear from Reverend Ian Douglas, now the Bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut within the Episcopal Church USA. Reverend Douglas is also a former faculty member at the Episcopal Divinity School right across the river from us at Boston University. He brought his academic and ministerial experience to the discussion of global Anglicanism.

The 38 episcopate structured churches and several extra provincial churches that share a common history are loosely connected as the Anglican Communion, which together is the 3rd largest Christian group after Orthodox churches and Roman Catholics. In Reverend Douglas’ discussion of the last 100 years of Anglicanism to the present, a common thread of tension arose: the struggle to maintain the integral unity of the Communion within the diversity of independently administered episcopate churches—between the particular and the universal, the local and the global.

Our discussion centered on some of the issues that cause tension within the Anglican Communion. Some of most divisive concerns center on gender and sexuality: the ordination of women, and the inclusion of gay and lesbian into the church, including the ordination of openly gay and lesbian men and women. We quickly noted that churches within the Anglican Communion, even within episcopates, sometimes move in completely opposite directions on these important issues: for example the ordination of Reverend Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire enflamed controversy both in the Episcopal Church USA, as well as in churches across the globe, particularly in Nigeria, home to a sizable proportion of the world’s Anglicans.

One of the participants in our discussion had regularly attended an Episcopal church in New England. He shared that his church was extremely conservative on the issues of the ordination of women and did not condone gay and lesbian partnerships. However, this church belongs to a diocese that is open and inclusive. When Reverend Gene Robinson was ordained, some in that church left the Communion altogether. They left not because of what was happening locally but because there was no way to enforce uniformity on the issue globally. The church that remained made a compromised to with the diocese to maintain a different theological perspective on gender and inclusion.

We discussants asked ourselves if the structure of Anglican administration allows for pragmatism and patience with regard to theological differences. Brad noted that pragmatism or compromise may not be able to stop large schisms, since defections over the issue of women and gay and lesbians are disproportionately large in the ‘global south.’

Despite bitter disagreement on the full inclusion of persons in the church because of varying views on gender, we discussed how Anglicans have come together to work against racism and Apartheid in South Africa, for example. The Reverend Desmond Tutu has said he had the whole of the Anglican Communion behind him in his struggle. We wondered if in our lifetimes we would see Anglicans rally so unanimously against sexism, or homophobia. We left reflecting on how the tension of diversity and unity play out along the important questions of who can be fully included in the body of Christ, not only for the Anglican Communion, but also for our own churches.