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Discourse surrounding the topics of migration, diaspora, and transnationalism continues to spark a wide range of interdisciplinary interests, both in the academy and at large. However, despite the interdisciplinary nature of World Christianity, the field still lacks adequate theoretical and empirical insights concerning such discourse, specifically in the intersectionality of migration, diaspora, and transnationalism pertaining to the global spread of Christianity. With Christianity’s center of gravity having shifted from the global North to the global South, the emergence and proliferation of global South Christianities in the last few decades, particularly in Europe and the North American diaspora, have occasioned the remapping of old Christian landscapes. Thus, the expansion of global South Christianities through international ministries and networks marked a watershed in the multidirectionality of missions—an epochal shift in the trade winds of Christian history. Among other factors, this shift is also attributable to migration: a crucial factor determining a religion’s mobility and demographic expansion. Through both mission and migration, immigrant and diaspora Christian communities did not merely emerge as outposts in new cultural contexts, but rather became institutions integral to European and American civic life. Reverse missions and South-South links and religious networks, as instances of religious transnationalism, break the stereotype that places the global North at the center of Christianity’s discourse. Transnational religious networks and social dynamics in the global South, but also with their various diasporas deserve further scholarly attention.
Thus, new forms of religious transnationalism have emerged between Christian communities in the global North and global South, carrying significant religious, cultural, economic, political, and social import worldwide. Likewise, the nature of a globalizing world marked by the rise of global capitalism and its need for large urban conglomerates, industrialization, and technological revolution have drastically changed the speed of communication and interconnectivity. These, along with climate change, political and economic crises, ethnic and religious conflicts, and the proliferation of armed conflicts, have created new migration and diaspora patterns both regionally and globally. Furthermore, Christians increasingly live in religiously pluralizing contexts and new realities, often needing to negotiate and reinterpret their faith traditions in complex cultural and multireligious settings. Whereas new forms of interfaith/inter-religious and intercultural relations have proliferated in such contexts, these encounters have also led to the rise of conflicts, cultural misunderstandings, and identity crises contributing to the rise of renewed forms of xenophobia, fundamentalism, and religious nationalism.
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