Christianity & World Cultures: A History of Contextualization

Taking each of the five continents in turn, this course looks at the significant missional achievements of their Christian pioneers (both cross-cultural missionaries and local communities of believers) in embodying Christian faith and practice in their cultural contexts. The course focuses on each continent’s unique cultural embodiments (such as texts, liturgies, visual arts, architecture, institutions, and social practices) that exemplified fruitful cross-cultural transmission of the gospel within their respective cultures. It examines the major church councils, synods, and ‘rites’ controversies that debated the possibilities and boundaries of those cultural expressions. The course will also consider how these missional breakthroughs impacted subsequent generations of local church communities, as well as the wider non-Christian societies in which they lived.