The Majority-World Paradigm Shift in Theological Education

Mission and the Church-Academy Rift [4]

Series: Mission and the Church-Academy Rift

1. Chapter Preview: “Mission between Theory and Practice”

2. The Lay of the Land in Twenty-First-Century Missiology

3. Implications of the American Theological Higher Education Crisis

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After anti-intellectualism and the crisis of American theological higher education, the third pressure that underlies the church-academy rift is the rise of world Christianity.¹ For a variety of reasons, some conservative missiologists insist on a conceptual and even a disciplinary distinction between missiology and world Christianity. So I should state my assumption that world Christian studies are a primary locus of twenty-first-century missiology, not least for the obvious reasons of (1) the world Christian movement’s roots (though I do not say origin) in the world missions movement and (2) the missional nature of the church that world Christianity presently exhibits in many astonishing ways.

My principal claim here, however, is more limited: the world Christian movement significantly complicates the relationship between church and academy. I should also state that I do not reserve the term academy for its Western manifestations (which are not themselves homogeneous), though the Western academy is prominent in the history of Christianity and looms large in my imagination.