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"From a mission field to a missions sender." These words capture the story of the Brazilian evangelical church, which has gone from receiving missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to becoming a movement that presently sends out more global laborers than the churches of England or Canada do. After narrating Brazil's missional shift, in this volume Smither addresses one fascinating element of the story--Brazilian evangelical efforts in the Arab world. How have Brazilians adapted culturally among Arabs, how have they approached ministry, and how have they cultivated a theology of mission in the process? Brazilian Evangelical Missions in the Arab World gives the reader insights from one emerging missions movement with an eye toward a more comprehensive view of the global church.
Indigenous peoples of Brazil have come to faith in Christ in large numbers in recent decades. As Christianity takes root in each culture, it may incorporate expressive forms of music and art, which can range from those identical to earlier cultural forms to those which are fully imported. But what happens when musicians and artists of a local indigenous community fuse elements from a variety of genres and create their own music? Are they just imitations of external forms? Or are they authentic creations from elements that have now become their own sounds, too? Christian musicians among the Xerente (pronounced Sheh-´ren-teh) have created their own fusion genre(s) to express their faith, comm...
Missiology permeated with theological reflection. This volume is the culmination of Van Engen’s teachings, but takes us to an even deeper level. Since mission is first and foremost God’s mission, theological reflection must be permeated by missiological understanding and our missiology must be permeated with theological reflection. Mission theology is an activity of the Church of Jesus Christ seeking to understand more deeply why, how, when, where, and wherefore the followers of Jesus may participate in God’s mission, in God’s world.
In the 1960s liberation theology addressed itself to the problems of a continent racked by poverty and oppression. Comprising a network of localized communities and pastoral organizations, it soon became something much more than a doctrinal current. Liberationist Christianity defined itself in a multitude of social struggles, particularly in Brazil and Central America.
How have those engaged in the mission of God been challenged to reinterpret Scripture through their experience? In what ways were the missionaries in the Bible challenged to reevaluate Scripture in their own time? Redford attempts to give shape to the nature of missional hermeneutics by examining Scripture, present-day cultural values, historical struggles, and the experience of those who are engaged in the mission of God. In order for missionaries to overcome the scientific polarization in Western hermeneutics, they must be able to perceive and learn from the overarching missional and spiritual hermeneutics found throughout Scripture so that they can balance missional, spiritual, historical-critical, and even unforeseen hermeneutical paths, providing increased confidence in biblical interpretation.
Christian Sacred Music in the Americas explores the richness of Christian musical traditions and reflects the distinctive critical perspectives of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music. This volume, edited by Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko, is a follow-up to SCSM’s Exploring Christian Song and offers a cross-section of the most current and outstanding scholarship from an international array of writers. The essays survey a broad geographical area and demonstrate the enormous diversity of music-making and scholarship within that area. Contributors utilize interdisciplinary methodologies including media studies, cultural studies, theological studies, and different analytical and ethnographical approaches to music. While there are some studies that focus on a single country, musical figure, or region, this is the first collection to represent the vast range of sacred music in the Americas and the different approaches to studying them in context.
As a contribution to the Fortress series on World Christianity as Public Religion, this volume delves into questions of religious alterity and justice in World Christianity. This volumeasks what histories, practices, or identities have been left invisible in the field of World Christianity, and emphasizes liberationist concerns to consider what the field has overlooked or misrepresented. It recognizes that World Christianity scholarship has elevated voices of marginalized Christians from the Global South and challenged Eurocentric modes in the study of religion, but scholars of World Christianity must also attend to the margins of the field itself. Attention to the overlooked "other" within ...
Over the past fifty years Brazil’s evangelical community has increased from five to twenty-five percent of the population. This volume’s authors use statistical overview, historical narrative, personal anecdote, social-scientific analysis, and theological inquiry to map out this emerging landscape. The book’s thematic center pivots on the question of how Brazilian evangelicals are exerting their presence and effecting change in the public life of the nation. Rather than fixing its focus on the interior life of Brazilian evangelicals and their congregations, the book’s attention is directed toward social expression: the ways in which Brazilian evangelicals are present and active in the common life of the nation.
Faith Seeking Conviviality traces the journey of a U.S. missionary into Brazil (and beyond), seeking to be faithfully present while also questioning the default settings of "good intentions." Taking Ivan Illich as the primary theological guide on that journey, Faith Seeking Conviviality narrates the discovery of a renewed imagination for Christian mission that arises as a response to two persistent questions. First, given the colonial history of Christian missionary expansion, on what basis do we go on fulfilling the "Great Commission" (Matt 28:16-20) as Christ's disciples? A second question, intimately related to the first, is: What makes it possible to embody a distinctively Christian presence that is missionary without being manipulative? In doing theology with and after Ivan Illich, Faith Seeking Conviviality does not offer a pull-off-the-shelf model for mission, but rather a framework for embodying the incarnational logic of mission that entails a "convivial turn"--delinking missionary discipleship from the lure of techniques and institutional dependence in order to receive and to share the peace of Christ relationally.