Power, Violence, and World Christianity

Over the course of the last decade, Hong Kong has experienced a social and political transformation.  The city’s frayed ends have been pulled in every direction by a cacophony of competing global interests, unraveled by the strong arm of China’s central government, and set aflame by one of the world’s most restrictive COVID policies.  For many who have called Hong Kong home, these changes constitute a watershed crisis that have necessitated critical reflection and hard choices on the nature of the Hong Kong church in diaspora amidst a home that is disappearing. This study reports on a multi-phase theoogical action research project that is reimagining Hong Kong Christian identity and vocation in diaspora, a collaborative process of discerning lived theology, ecclesiology, and missiology among overseas Hong Kong scholars who are studying for advanced degrees in history, Christian ethics, systematic theology, and homiletics.  

Religious persecution has become a reality for religious minorities in India today, particularly Christians. Two major incidents of large-scale persecution acted as springboards to making this reality pervasive – persecution of Christians in Odisha (August 2008) and Mangalore (September 2008). This paper will focus on the latter and analyze two reports - Judicial Reports of the Somasekhara and Saldanha Commissions on the religious violence in Mangalore - as lenses to understand narratives of religious persecution and violence against religious minorities in Mangalore and in the broader theme of religious violence and World Christianity. This paper will analyze how Justice Somasekhara’s report strives to “other” Christianity as a "foreign-funded" and "foreign" religion. Secondly, it will survey the change in the geographical landscape of Hindutva's presence. Thirdly, it will analyze the two reports and their portrayal of vandalism of religious symbols. Fourthly, it will sieve through the terminologies employed by the two reports.

The fall of President Suharto from his long authoritarian regime in 1998 marks the beginning of the Reformation period that ushers in the “conservative turn” among Indonesian Muslims in politics, social, economic, and cultural realms. One of the most visible manifestations of it is the significant increase in church closing cases. Church closings refer to various phenomena, including various activities, from individual objections and demonstrations to physical attacks. This paper focuses on one case that has gained national and international attention in Bogor, West Java: The “Gereja Kristen Indonesia (Indonesian Christian Church) Yasmin” case. In April 2023, after more than a decade of struggle, the church was opened at a different location. The paper aims to analyze strategies employed by the congregation, ranging from public rituals as a form of resistance to cooperation with Muslim stakeholders and local government apparatus. The goal is to obtain a more nuanced picture of Christian-Muslim relations after the conservative turn in contemporary Indonesia. Far from passive and submissive, Indonesian Christians cultivate different modes of subsisting that allow them to negotiate their identity and roles in the larger society.

This paper explores how the Taiping Rebellion (1851-1864), a movement inspired by Protestantism, developed a demonology to dehumanize its targets of violence. Analyzing the Taiping documents, it examines three demon categories in Taiping theology: the Devil and his followers, humans deemed demons for violating Taiping rules, and the Manchu Qing government. Special attention is given to two key issues: perfect humanity and ethnicity within the Taiping theology. Regarding perfect humanity, the Taiping ideology made a dichotomous distinction between humans and demons, considering humans as children of God and inherently perfect. However, transgression against divine commands led to individuals being categorized as demons and subject to punishment. Ethnicity played a significant role in the demonization process, with the Taipings drawing a strict line between Han Chinese and the Manchus. Han Chinese deemed as demons were seen as potentially redeemable, while the Manchus were demonized from their very origins.

This article traces the history of the field of World Christianity, from the 1920s to the present. After examining two pivotal movements that shaped this discipline, the article argues that the initial Third World force subsequently lost its prominence. To restore its subversive power, it proposes possibilities for collaboration between World Christianity and Ethnic Studies, imagining new ways Ethnic Studies can invigorate the study of World Christianity. 

Afua Kuma's prayers and analysis presents a "woman of deep faith" in God with unmatched indigenous conception of the Bible, and creative translation of the interdisciplinary nature of World Christianity. Surprisingly, she is hardly classified as a theologian, rather, as an 'illiterate Ghanaian woman' and her works regarded as, ‘not academic, but deeply theological.’ Thus, the question: what is theology? who is a theologian? What makes her prayers non-academic in comparison to other theological primary sources? What is the role of indigenous epistemologies in understanding World Christianity? This paper explores the development of indigenous epistemologies in world Christianity as depicted in contemporary Christian songs, spoken words and prayers in African Christianity. It argues that Afua Kuma, as an embodiment of conceptual decolonization of African theological epistemology, has successfully used her indigenous intelligence to translate Christianity through tradition, art and religious imagination.