A Global Modern Reformation

I thought I had almost finished writing my children’s book Church History when I discovered a brand-new world. As many had realized long before me, most books on the history of Christianity have focused on Europe and America, neglecting the rich account of God’s work in the rest of the world. Whenever continents like Africa, Asia, and South America were mentioned, it was only in the context of European or American missions.

Most books recognize that Christianity began and spread outside of Europe. Some of the greatest theologians of the first few centuries AD (such as Augustine, Tertullian, and the Cappadocian Fathers) were from North Africa and Asia Minor, and Christianity found its first expressions within their cultures. But textbooks are usually quick to shift their focus to Europe, forgetting the interesting work of theologians, poets, and missionaries such as Ephrem of Syria or the seventh-century missionaries from the Church of the East who went as far as China.

Additionally, while the stories of “forerunners of the Reformation” such as Jan Hus and John Wyclif have been told and retold, few know about Estifanos of Gwendagwende, who attempted a similar reformation of the Ethiopian Church during the same period. And yet Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon were aware of God’s work in Ethiopia and placed great value on their personal exchange with the Ethiopian deacon Michael.

Accounts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries abound in stories of Western missionaries to Asian and African countries. While these missionaries’ contributions were certainly crucial, little is known about the hundreds of locals who furthered their work, preaching the same gospel and founding lasting churches.

This lack of information might be one reason why many Americans and Europeans are oblivious to the astoundingly rapid expansion of Christianity in today’s so-called Global South or Majority World—the vast continents of Africa, Asia, South America, and Oceania. But as Christians in these continents are swiftly surpassing their Western brothers and sisters in number, their voices are becoming increasingly important on a wider scale. This is a reality that any attempt at furthering a modern reformation cannot ignore.

At long last, many scholars and organizations are turning their attention to these issues. But why should the ordinary Christian bother? Don’t we have more pressing matters to attend to closer to home?

God’s Church

The first thing I realized when I began to study the global history of Christianity is that the church is God’s work. Of course, most of us would readily admit this without further study. But reading the accounts of how God has preserved and continues to preserve his church across the globe counteracts our widespread Western tendencies to pessimism (“Christianity is dying”) and triumphalism (“We are the depositors of true Christianity”).

We find a clear example of God’s preservation of his church at the time of the decolonization of Africa (from the mid-1950s to 1975). As country after country began to reject many of their adopted Western customs in a rediscovery of their own heritage, several observers predicted that Christianity would also be discarded. Instead, the number of Christians in Africa continued to grow, largely under local pastors and elders. According to historian Adrian Hasting, these numbers escalated from about 25 million in 1950 to about 100 million in 1975. And the Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimates that there are over 734 million Christians in Africa today.

There are similar statistics for Asia, South America, and Oceania. And there are similar stories of churches that continued to preach the gospel after Christianity was banned and foreign missionaries were forced to leave. These reports can only lift our hearts in praise to the One who is faithful to his promise of building a church that hell’s gates will never be able to withstand (Matt. 16:18).

A Universal Church

But our knowledge of the global church is not just profitable for our own encouragement. As the Nicene Creed teaches, we are a catholic (universal) church—a truth we must not forget. As such, we are called, among other things, to “count others more significant than” ourselves and to look “not only to [our] own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3–4). This includes listening to one another, learning from one another, and appreciating our differences.

As fallen humans, we share a tendency to be self-absorbed and wrapped up in comfortable echo chambers. We need voices from other times and other countries to bring into fuller perspective our vision of reality. Just as C. S. Lewis talked about a “chronological snobbery,” which he defined as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age,” we can also recognize a geographical snobbery that can be described as the uncritical acceptance, even in Christian circles, of the assumptions and conclusions typical of our culture. This is a danger that a humble and honest exchange with our brothers and sisters in the Majority World can correct.

Even common issues that we like to discuss among ourselves lose their familiarity and predictability when discussed in a different context—be it historical or geographical—and lead to deeper reflection. Often, the simple fact that other cultures have not created some of our familiar labels can help us to detach the same issues from our emotions and review them with greater impartiality.

Can Festo Kivengere’s I Love Idi Amin, written in exile after many of his friends had been tortured and killed, teach us anything about loving our enemies? Can the reflections of the South African church during and after decades of apartheid teach us how to overcome our social divisions and sinful racist tendencies? Can the letters of Chinese Christians, written under persecution, echo the forgotten exhortations to patience of the early church? Can the search for the national identity of the African churches teach us how to view our own identity without falling into the common trap of syncretism? Can we glean answers from the ongoing discussion of the widespread problem of violence against women in much of the Global South? And can we contribute to their discussions with humility and empathy, drawing from our own experiences and (often hard-learned) lessons?

Reading the Bible through the eyes of people who live in cultures similar to those of biblical times can jolt us out of our familiarity and bring us to a deeper understanding not only of one another but of Scripture. As Kenyan theologian Musimbi Kanyoro recognizes, “Those cultures which are far removed from biblical culture risk reading the Bible as fiction.”

For example, the stronger emphasis on communal life and keener perception of the spiritual world that are typical of African culture can help us correct our individualism and hyper-rationality as we examine the Scriptures and our life together as Christians.

The dire challenges faced by many of our brothers and sisters in the Majority World may help us resize our problems and worries. My daily concerns disappeared when a friend from Nigeria told me how her pastor barely missed a bullet shot through his window and was later kidnapped (and providentially freed) by a band of locals.

Opening our lives and minds to our brothers and sisters in other cultures will take some effort. We feel a natural pull toward those who are like ourselves, and our present reality always seems compelling. But at a time when Christianity seems plagued with divisions and when social media amplifies our fears of having our suppositions questioned, recognizing that we are all living stones, built up together—with all of our differences—into the same spiritual house of God (1 Pet. 2:5) seems more urgent than ever.

We don’t have to overhaul our whole lives. Just recognizing that God’s work is larger than the space in which we like to limit him; keeping abreast of news from other countries and keeping those local churches in our prayers; reading a few books on global Christianity; including a greater variety of voices in our current discussions; and welcoming into our circles people who come from other cultures can enrich our lives and thoughts, lower some unnecessary protective instincts, and create a habit of openness and a humble disposition to learn from others.

Our Common Firm Foundation

At the same time, we who treasure the heritage of the Protestant Reformers should keep our feet firmly in the gospel that they recovered. Nigerian theologian Byang Kato warned against the tendency to lose sight of the objective, otherworldly nature of the gospel:

The inspired, inerrant Word of God gives us the Gospel and its working power in a nutshell in 1 Corinthians 15:1–4. It is not a part of any people’s culture. It is not indigenous to any soil. It is revealed propositionally and must be declared accordingly. The Jews did not have it. The Germans, the Americans, the Africans, the Europeans needed to get it through a messenger.

Kato was a proponent of contextualization, which is an important tool to allow the gospel to be understood in different cultures. But he knew where to draw the line. So did Chinese pastor Wang Mingdao, when he saw that the gospel imposed by the state-supported church under the guise of a more Chinese form of Christianity was not the story of Christ but the progress of the Chinese nation. “They do not come out into the open and deny the doctrines; they simply interpret them in a hazy and ambiguous way. . . . We take our stand on Christian doctrine.”

Other Christians on different continents have come to the same conclusions, reiterating the lessons learned by past reformers. As we forge forward in God’s exciting work of a modern global reformation, our basic question must be: How can we, the church universal, encourage each other to stay faithful to the gospel? The unity of the global church—as that of any local church—depends on this foundation.