Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Review of Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith

Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2007) Available at Amazon


Andrew F. Walls has been a lay Methodist preacher for over fifty years and served as missionary to Sierra Leone and Nigeria. He is the founder of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World. He is also a Professor Emeritus at the University of Edinburgh. He helps to guard the collections for the Afroki-Christaller Memorial Centre for Mission Research and Applied Theology in Ghana. He received a BA and MA from Oxford University with an emphasis on both theology and church history. The Missionary Movement in Christian History, his first book, was named one of the hundred most influential Christian books in the twentieth century.
Andrew Walls’ two books are both complementary as well as continuous. The Missionary Movement in Christian History was his first contribution of nineteen essays laying the groundwork for a supposition that the world’s center of missiological influence has shifted from the West to the South. He divided his book into three sections. Each section has its own flavor and uniqueness, but the thought does flow logically with the one building upon the argument of the former.
            Entitled “The Transmission of Christian Faith,” his first section deals with a historical overview of missions. In six essays he posits that missiological expansion was really only an episode in Christian history, a blip on the screen. But instead of downplaying its importance, Walls conversely highlights both the diversity and universality of Christianity as expressed in this movement. In one of the essays, the process is displayed in six phases moving from the apostle Paul to Europe and then on to Africa. He deals largely with the interaction between the spread of the gospel and how it transforms culture, so he hints at Africa’s importance in this section.
            In the second section he makes a transition to a clear emphasis on Africa. He interacts with the primal religions of Africa as well as with African Christianity in this section. He identifies exponential growth patterns and charismatic cultural tendencies that now characterize the African Christian Church. However, most interesting is his insistence in making a distinction between the history of the African Church and the history of Christian missions there. Whereas missions in Africa was historically led by Europeans, Walls argues that the evangelical revival in the African church was truly indigenous.
            Part three sets the stage for missiology. Walls believes there is a new era in Christian theology that is largely due to the demographic shift in global Christianity. He sees theology being shaped more by southern Christians than western ones. Issues like non-western art, scholarship, medicine and organizational methodology highlight the generational and gradual shift in values in southern countries. Walls believes that “Christians outside Africa will have to make some responses to the questions raised in the African arena” (146).   
The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History, his second book contribution and continuation of the first, is divided into three parts as well. The first section is four chapters long and deals with a historical survey of how Christianity expanded in the West over the last twenty centuries and then declined. Relying heavily on Latourette’s History of the Expansion of  Christianity, the book culminates with an emphasis on the declining influence of Christianity on the European continent by the end of the last century. This section concludes with an essay entitled “The Ephesian Moment” wherein Walls arguably makes his most significant theological statement and identifies the current situation as yet another blending of cultures to experience Christ.  
            The second part is more non-Western focused with a special emphasis on Africa, Walls’ locale of missionary service. Describing a shift in the missions center of gravity from the West to the South, this section is also somewhat of a historical survey of the African continent. Walls’ main thrust in this section is what he calls a shift of influence from the North and West to the southern hemisphere. With this observation he also posits that mainstream Christian theology will be greatly influenced by African theologians in the coming years. He never identifies Africa as third world, but he predicts a future missiological climate change that will place greater emphasis on these southern continents that have typically grouped into that category. He includes three noteworthy essays that detail how Christianity engaged Islam in Africa during the nineteenth century.
            The final portion of his book returns to the western scene to survey the history of missions involvement in Europe and America. He highlights the volunteer movement, the introduction of laity to missions, the emergence of missions associations and the shift to protestant leadership in missions. Walls then ends this section with an article by David J. Bosch that summarizes the preceding emphases by bequeathing the title missiology to this study of Christian history.
Walls’ books have great merit for missiology and specifically for missiological historical studies. Although at times his books seem to be a haphazard collection of his essays from various time periods, Walls makes no apology. In fact, he readily admits at the outset that his books may seem repetitive and unyielding. Collected and lectured over a number of years, the essays cover a wide range of topics. Perhaps the three greatest emphases from his essays are the ebb and flow of missions progression, the distinction between foreign and indigenous conversion and how culture is transformed by the gospel. The several other unique emphases that Walls makes give the books academic value as well as practical worth, but it is these three that arguably yield the greatest contribution to missiological dialogue.  

Non-Western View of Missions History
Walls views missions history in a unique way. To Walls, Christian history is not a linear progression from Paul to the present but waves of victorious expansion and unfortunate recession. At times missions succeeds and Christianity does in fact progress, but at other times there is a waning aspect to whatever progress was made. This non-sequential aspect to Walls’ understanding of the missionary movement places him in a category by himself. Whereas Latourette shows a progressive expansion of Christianity from Pauline origins, Walls’ emphasis on the ebb and flow of this progression identify clear shifts in geographic and political power. Therefore his historical survey is not divorced from the social aspect of cultural change, neither internally nor externally.
Walls expands his notion of this non-linearity to describe new centers of Christian witness that in time also influence the next stages of Christian development. He builds upon this theme in defense of his ultimate thesis that the center of missions history is now in Africa. Walls is brazenly supportive of Africa. For him, Africa is representative of the Copernican shift that has taken place in Christianity. The world’s Christian population has relocated from a western center of influence up to the early twentieth century and dramatically transferred to the southern hemisphere.
Given the nature of this global shift in Christianity, the emphasis Walls places upon Africa is understandable. However, his books seem slightly unbalanced as they place an entire section of the emergent African theology without representing Latin America at all. He does nod slightly at the theological development within India, but this appears to be more in conjunction with the necessary interaction between Eastern Christianity and Islam throughout the Middle East. Unfortunately this omission creates a noticeable vacancy in the larger picture.
He tips his hand though in his last chapter as he hails David Bosch at the “greatest theologian of the twentieth century” without any apparent connection to the rest of his book. Granted Bosch was a great thinker, but his only connection with Walls’ thesis is that he came out of South Africa, a geographic location that could be argued is still more western in culture than southern. Walls’ thesis that a Copernican revolution in Christianity has replaced the influence of the West with that of the South, most notably African, is a challenge. Perhaps that is why he relies so heavily on African theology as almost a case study for the nonlinear argument.
Non-Western Conversion
Another significant observation is that Walls’ books are both historical and theological in nature. He often brings the two spheres into dialogue, but at times he seems to blur the two. Walls strongly asserts that Christendom no longer exists, and he is critical of the western notion of superiority with its idea of being chosen for missions expansion. Moreover, this non-western historical bias is displayed specifically in the theological understanding of conversion.
            Whereas the West has placed an emphasis on conversion as an intellectual decision to turn from a former life to a new one in Christ, Walls challenges the western notion that conversion is equivalent to proselytizing. For the West conversion implies a change in culture and finding Christ outside the cultural experience. Walls instead argues that a non-western understanding of conversion would be that of finding Christ already within the culture itself.
            This difference in theological understanding is, for Walls, “of fundamental importance” (68) and one of “the great issues of twenty-first-century Christianity” (69). This theological stance entails a more ecumenical approach to ecclesiology, but it also affects missiology. According to Walls, if there is to be “cooperation between native and foreign workers” (70), the West must allow for these non-western theologies to have equal footing on mission fields.
Walls’ books could truly be considered a survey of Christian missions but with a twist. His goal is to make the West aware of the coming non-western influence. He cites the Irish revival for its influence upon evangelicalism much in the same way that Luther impacted European Protestantism.
He challenges the reader to offer that same influential seat to African theology today. In doing so he drafts the missionary movement from its earliest post-Pauline endeavors to lay the groundwork for his predictions that today is the day of the African missionary movement. When Walls deals with the new emerging Ephesians moment, he attaches considerable significance to some potential pluralistic elements. Comparing the historical theological development as Greeks interacted with Jews to create new categories for Christ, Walls states openly that theologies, including those that detail how we understanding doctrines like atonement, will be drastically altered by the emerging influence from the South.

Non-Western Translation of Culture
Walls argues that Christianity evolves or morphs when transferred from one culture to another. The idea of cultural transformation by the gospel is not new. However, Walls capitalizes on this accepted fact to capitulate that the culture also transforms what is defined as good news. In doing so, he makes room for liberation theology among other ideas.
            Specifically, he creates a roundtable discussion for cultural nuances and their interplay with evangelism. He identifies several African cultural elements that have shaped evangelism, namely demons, ancestor veneration and objects of power. He admits that the relationship between ancestor veneration and evangelism “has been ill-defined and sometimes uneasy one, with theory and practice sometimes in tension and different inferences drawn from similar premises” (127). However, this is exactly what he considers to be the problem. These tensions cannot be ignored. Instead, he suggests it requires “a degree of reorientation from the missionary model of Christianity” (122), a clear judgment on the side of culture.
            Perhaps the most startling statement about cultural transformation is his personal observation that “the principal evidence of the ongoing life of traditional African religion is within African Christianity” (120). This is case in point that the gospel and the culture have already merged. When Africans deal with questions like the fate of their unevangelized ancestors, for example, they theologize in ways that westerners would have never imagined. Thefore, Walls commits this insight into non-Western theology as a study of the way the gospel translates the culture and thereby translates theology.

Missiological Implications
The aforementioned issues that Walls raises in his books have some serious missiological implications for both historical studies and theological dialogue. Although his essays deal with a wide range of topics, his emphases on nonlinearity, conversion and cultural transformation are specifically important in missiological settings where Christianity has to deal with other world religions. The several other unique emphases that Walls makes give the books academic value as well as practical worth, but it is these three that arguably yield the greatest contribution to interfaith dialogue. 
For example, Walls’ article on the history of Christianity’s dialogue with Islam in Africa in the nineteenth century is insightful and could rightly inform the current situation in Europe where the demographics are swiftly shifting to a greater influx of Muslims. As in the cases where Samuel Agayi Crowther of Yoruba and Harry Alphonso Ebun Sawyerr of Sierra Leone wrestled with Islam, Walls asserts that it is the indigenizing principle that “ensures that each community recognizes in Scripture that God is speaking to its own situation” (12). If Christian missionaries are ever to fully embrace a dialogue with Muslims, they must also deal with the very issues that Walls raises.
It is helpful to understand the historical gains and advances from a missiological perspective, but equally helpful is the humility that is expressed in such an approach. This attitude will only benefit a roundtable discussion. For too long, western missionaries have approached missiological history as a conquest or crusade rather than an organic move of God. 
It is also helpful to understand how Muslims can find conversion to Christ a matter of biblical transformation of their own culture rather than a conversion to western culture. Although this idea can be dangerous when taken to the extreme, a theology of conversion that is both consistent with Scripture and benevolent to Middle Eastern culture provides a more robust forum for intercultural dialogue. Viewed in this light, Walls’ position on another Ephesian moment is warranted.
Complementary to indigenous conversion, the idea of cultural transformation is still being discussed by theologians and missiologists. What constitutes cultural transformation and what indigenous elements of a culture are neutral or even positive are issues that have been on the forefront of missiological dialogue for many years. Walls’ theology of cultural transformation can indeed inform missiology as new strategies are drafted for evangelism and as missions agencies attempt to create exit strategies for their presence in Islamic locations. 

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