World Christianity Virtual Conference

The third international, interdisciplinary virtual conference organized by The World Christianity & History of Religions Program (Department of History & Ecumenics)

Recent decades mark a significant watershed in the study of world Christianity as an emerging field, its development into an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary endeavor in particular. Reflection on the complexity of Christianity as a pluricultural, global phenomenon has become robust. Framed loosely in terms of the seminal insights of Dale Irvin, who conceptualizes the study of world Christianity as a crossing of three borders — borders of culture, borders of confession, and borders of religion — our first two conferences (in 2018 and 2019) focused on historiography and ethnography, leaving other religions as the last of three major subfields still to be examined. This March, the World Christianity Virtual Conference will explore Christianity’s interactions with other faiths.

Delving into the premise that Christianity never emerges cross-culturally from a vacuum but always reciprocally in a variety of global contexts already conditioned by preexisting religions (whether African, Amerindian, Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, or Islamic, to mention but a few of the myriad possibilities), the conference seeks to reflect on the state of the field, critique past practices, and explore innovative approaches that push the edge on world Christianity scholarship. For attendees and speakers alike, the conference provides an interdisciplinary space for intellectual encounter and exchange.

Conveners
Afe Adogame, professor of religion and society
Raimundo Barreto, associate professor of world Christianity
Richard F. Young, associate professor of the history of religions

Program Highlights

The 2021 keynote speakers for the World Christianity Virtual Conference are Professor Emeritus Andrew F. Walls of The University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom and Professor Shobana Shankar of Stony Brook University in the United States.

• Shobana Shankar
• Andrew F. Walls

This year’s conference will include panels and presentations addressing a diverse range of topics. Panels include “Andrew F. Walls and the Making of World Christianity” and “Ogbu U. Kalu and the Shaping of World Christianity.” Individual paper presentations include:

• “Incurably Religious? Coming Out Atheist in ‘Africa’s Religious Mecca’”
• “Constructing Islam in German East Africa: Missionary Perspectives and a Misalignment of Discourses”
• “Multiple Religious Believing Without Multiple Religious Belonging?: Buddhist, Hindu, and Traditional Cosmology in Cambodian Christianity”
• “Protestant Christian Publishing for Muslims in Late Qing and Early Republican China”
• “The Middle East and the Margins of World Christianity: Interreligious Case Studies From Palestine”
• “Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus? The Case of the ‘Judaizing Evangelicals’ in Brazil”
• “’The Truth Will Set You Free’: Christianity, Politics, and Ideological Discourse in Contemporary Brazil”
• “Sustained by the Spirit: West African Religious Cosmologies and Practices, Afro-Jamaica Religions and the Making of a People”

Conference Details

REGISTRATION

Conference registration will end on February 15, 2021 (deadline extended).

Register

FEES

• $40.00 (faculty based in USA, Canada, and Europe)
• $25.00 (faculty based in the Global South, graduate students/retirees)