Copyright holder: Tyndale University, 3377 Bayview Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M2M 3S4 Att.: Library Director, J. William Horsey Library Copyright: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Copyright license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Citation: Faught, C. Brad. Review of Twentieth-Century Global Christianity, edited by Mary Farrell Bednarowski. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008. (People's History of Christianity, volume 7). Anglican and Episcopal History 78, no. 1 (2009): 127-129 ***** Begin Content ****** TYNDALE UNIVERSITY 3377 Bayview Avenue Toronto, ON M2M 3S4 TEL: 416.226.6620 www.tyndale.ca Note: This Work has been made available by the authority of the copyright owner solely for the purpose of private study and research and may not be copied or reproduced except as permitted by the copyright laws of Canada without the written authority from the copyright owner. Faught, C. Brad. Review of Twentieth-Century Global Christianity, edited by Mary Farrell Bednarowski. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008. (People's History of Christianity, volume 7). Anglican and Episcopal History 78, no. 1 (2009): 127-129. 127 BOOK REVIEWS Twentieth-Century Global Christianity. Edited by Mary Farrell Bednarowski. A People's History of Christianity, vol. 7. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008, Pp. xx, 439. $35.00.) Of the writing of compendia of Christianity there seems to be no end. From massive encyclopedias to multivolume histories, in recent years 128 ANGLICAN AND EPISCOPAL HISTORY publishers have not been reluctant to produce weighty tomes on the long and complicated history of the Christian Church. Accordingly, when introduced to the book under review here—the final volume of seven in a newly-published history of Christianity—my first question was whether or not such an enterprise was really worth the time, effort, even the paper stock, necessary to bring it off. Happily, when I read it, I was pleasantly surprised. The four-hundred-plus pages devoted to the Christian experience of the century just ended cover a wide variety of topics, locations, denomi- nations, and peoples in a multi-authored attempt to provide insight into the ever-changing panoply that is modem Christianity. Recognizing the “multiplicity and ambiguity” (1) of contemporary expressions of the Christian faith, the book is divided into three large sections, the better, one assumes, to deal with the sheer breadth and scope of the religious experiences under examination. In the first section, “The Authority of New Voices,” such things as the explosive growth of populist Christianity in the Philippines is probed, as is the increasingly indispensable contribution made to indig- enous theology by African women. In the heavily religious Philippines, popular observance is inherently syncretic. Nevertheless, central to the mass Christian experience there is the pervasive representation of the Suffering Christ—a naturally powerful image in a land of grinding poverty and widespread dispossession—and an equally popular devo- tion to Christ’s mother, Mary. Meanwhile, in Africa, the Circle of Con- cerned African Women Theologians has emerged, dating from a powerful conference held in Ghana in 1989 organized around the theme, “Daughters of Africa Arise.” And, according to one such daughter, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, in the succeeding twenty years or so, arise they have. In the form of telling their own stories, of occu- pying pulpits, of mentoring and writing, of challenging the age-old pri- macy of men in positions of theological and institutional authority, African women, argues Oduyoye, have fundamentally changed the face of Christianity throughout Africa. No mean feat, it might be added, in the place in the world where Christianity is growing even faster than Islam. In the second section, “Traditions and Transformations,” the various authors point out the exceptional faces of Christianity in various parts of the world, particularly with reference to the old analytical chestnut of continuity and change. They are especially strong on change and do so in the context, for example, of Latin American Pentecostalism 129 BOOK REVIEWS and, even more so, in the remarkable story of the expansion of Roman Catholicism in China. The older, better known and always politically charged (especially in the United States) narrative of evangelicalism in North America forms a part of the discussion, as does a penetrating examination of the less well understood post-modern variety of Chris- tianity and religiosity in Sweden. The eclectic nature of the essays pre- sumably is intentional—perhaps even inevitable—and the reader cannot but be impressed with the kaleidoscope of experience that is contempo- rary Christianity. The third and final section of the book, “Innovation and Authen- ticity,” continues with the eclecticism of the earlier sections while focusing explicitly on the main battlegrounds of today’s Christianity. Ecumenism and orthodoxy, wealth and social justice, sexual ethics and gay marriage, euthanasia and technology, these are among the highly charged issues of our day and they are examined closely in six densely packed chapters. What becomes even more apparent in this section is the prevailing nature of the authors themselves; that is to say, unlike many volumes of its type where the authors are leading scholars from prominent universities, the authors here—in the main— come from less well known places and often from single-issue driven institutions. The immediacy of their connection to the things of which they write is undeniably a strength and accounts in part for their populist leanings. But it points also to what is arguably the beset- ting weakness of the volume, which might be described best as a polemical insistence that runs through the essays. One could, it seems clear, come away from having read this volume holding the distinct im- pression that traditional orthodox Christianity—whether in the form of how that may be found in the Roman Catholic Church or the Angli- can Communion, for example—is of no consequence in the mod- ern world or to contemporary Christianity, which, it hardly need be pointed out, is simply unhistorical and unreflective of today’s Christian landscane. That said, however, Global Christianity provides a highly readable and critically informative compendium of the state of Christianity at work in the world today. And for Europeans and North Americans especially, who, it may be argued, need occasional reminding, the book provides ample proof that that the so-called Global South has assumed the ini- tiative for Christianity as a world-historical force. C. Brad Faught Tyndale University College ***** This is the end of the e-text. This e-text was brought to you by Tyndale University, J. 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