A GLOBAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY — Introduction
What is a global history of Christianity? Traditional Church history books are effectively the history of the European Church or a global history of specific Church traditions. In the recent years, historians have begun to write geographically specific histories of the Church in Asia (Samuel Moffett), in Africa (Elizabeth Isichei) and in Latin-America (Enrique Dussel). Others have attempted sweeping surveys of Christianity around the world (Kenneth Latourette, John McManners, and Adrian Hastings). Still others have offered evolutionary accounts of Christian thought (Jaroslave Pelikan). This prompted me to think of the Christian experience as a global rather than a local phenomenon. As for the choice of using the word Christianity over the word Church, I wanted to write about the events and experiences of people who identified themselves as Christians, whether or not their detractors thought they were legitimately part of the Church.
I have set out to capture a history of Jesus’ followers across the world in four movements, set approximately 500 years apart. My thesis is that significant geohistorical changes fueled by economic pressures, political considerations, scientific inferences, missional impulses and emerging technologies in the 5th, the 11th, the 16th and the 21st centuries shaped the trajectory and self-understanding of Christians. My academic training in the history and philosophy of science and theology, where I also studied the world’s great religions alongside the history of doctrine, have led me to ponder many unanswered questions. This global history of Christianity does not seek to be comprehensive but to identify and appraise the influences that shaped the forces of belief in Jesus Christ around the world.
In the first 500 years, Christianity was shaped by the birth pangs of a new faith, from the near ashes of several Palestinian Jewish sects. In time, as the oral faith of Israel was expanded to include Gentiles, the imperative for a written text resulted in the Christian Bible.
The second 500 years were influenced by the cooperation and competition between Church and State as divine religious authorities met the exertions of secular political power. The Christian faith was now represented by at least three theological traditions describing the nature and character of the historical Jesus, the Chalcedonian, the Miaphysite and the Dyophysite.
During the third 500 years, mercantile, missionary and military activities worked together for common gains. The European quest for spices from the East by the sea route led to maritime missions. Many missionaries relied on the might of gunboat diplomacy to gain access to closed doors. They relied on merchant shipping for safe transportation. International trade relied on sea-power and the moral approval of the Church. The military found suitable purposes in the trade and mission mandates. A fourth tradition, the Eastern Orthodox, gained its influence as the Oriental Orthodox Church declined.
Finally, in the past 500 years, we witness the triumph of scientific technology and medicine as the important challenges as well as correctives to Christian theology. By the 16th century, a fifth tradition arose, Evangelical Protestantism. The first three circumnavigations of the globe in the 16th to 18th centuries, the inventions of the camera, radio chronometry and the discovery of microbes all forced major rethinking of theological doctrines.
Today, significant doctrines are due for major rethinking as we learn more and more about the world we live in and especially about the brain by which we think of and worship God.
