Religion on the Move! New Dynamics of Religious Expansion in a Globalizing World

Abstract

This important collection begins with questions about Christian missions in Africa and the more recent phenomena of reverse missions within the African Diaspora, and it moves both empirically and theoretically beyond those questions. The conversation expands to include other instances of religion on the move, including Islam and Hinduism in Africa and the African Diaspora and also relevant comparative cases in other locales. The first section of the book presents the project of “Decentering the Center.” These essays complicate simple arguments about “Christianity moving south” and go beyond the idea of reverse missionizing by asking who is served in what contexts and what we mean by “north” and “south.” The second section of the book is titled “Everywhere to Everywhere.” This is a theme that carries through the entire book. The chapters present careful case studies of transnational missions across many different locales and taking on many different forms. The reader encounters the following: U.S. conservative Anglican congregations with sister churches in Rwanda; Missionaries from African countries (Nigeria and Kenya) in Britain; Christian Samurai at the Kumamoto Band in Japan; Hinduism among Africans in Ghana; Organizations for enhancing Islam in Ghana (with Saudi support) and Kenya (from India); Koreans missionizing in the United States, and many more. In reading this set of case studies, the reader is able to share in an important conversation about how religions take shape and change as they move across time and space under current conditions of globalization and localization.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 28 citations exist upstream.