April 2002

Globalization, Mission, and

the Coming Kingdom 

Professor Dana L. Robert, a contributing editor, breaks new ground in this issue with �The First Globalization.� She suggests that the Anglo-American Protestant missionary movement between the two world wars contributed to what was then labeled internationalization and which can be seen today as an early form of globalization. 

Internationalization and globalization can be sought along political lines, as in the 1920s and 1930s, and along commercial and technological lines, as is the case today. The world Christian movement is committed to another option: the kingdom of God. At their best, both liberal and conservative expressions of the missionary task have sought �globalization� in the form of the kingdom, even if we are not agreed as to how it is to come. How can Christians hope and pray for anything less when the First Missionary taught us to pray, �Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven�? Are we to discount his vision of this world�s future? 

Premature claims of the kingdom�s arrival dot the historical record. On Whitsunday in May 1862, King George Tupou I of the Friendly Islands (now Tonga), announced to his people a new charter of government, based on Christian precepts, whereupon his subjects confidently broke out with �Jesus Shall Reign Where�er the Sun.� Robert�s article traces the thinking of Daniel Fleming, one of the most prominent of mainline mission leaders between the wars, as he moved from a vision of world unity through Christian impact on the political order to a more cautious vision for global unity expressed through the church of Jesus Christ. Unity even on that level proves elusive. 

But the vision remains. As Robert states in her introduction, �The global vision intrinsic to Christianity�one world, one kingdom of God under Jesus Christ�has been the motive and purpose behind much missionary fervor.� Robert quotes Tissington Tatlow, England�s longtime Student Christian Movement secretary: �There rose for me a vision of men of every kindred and tribe and race in one fellowship worshipping God.� 

Without such a vision, those pursuing mission today would have to ask (rephrasing Paul of Tarsus [1 Cor. 15:29�30]), �Now if there is no kingdom coming, why do we endanger ourselves every hour?� Some years ago in this journal, John V. Taylor, a mission spokesman from the generation following the Second World War, and for many years general secretary of the Church Mission Society, reflected on the ambiguous role of human effort in the coming of God�s kingdom  (�My Pilgrimage in Mission,� April 1993, p. 60). Speaking of �all our planning and patience, our fighting and faithfulness, our longing and loss,� he concluded, �We shall not build the Kingdom of Heaven in this world; nevertheless God will give it to us.�

April 2002

The First Globalization: The Internationalization of the Protestant Missionary Movement Between the World Wars
Dana L. Robert 

The �Jesus� Film: A Contribution to World Evangelism
Paul A. Eshleman 

My Pilgrimage in Mission
Ion Bria 

The Legacy of Shoki Coe
Ray Wheeler 

The Story of the Dictionary of Asian Christianity
Scott W. Sunquist 

Taking Stock: Theological Education in South East Asia
Gerald H. Anderson

In Coming Issues

Brazil: �Evangelized� Giant Committed to Liberating Evangelism
Sherron K. George

Keeping Faith with Culture: A Study of Zoroastrian Converst of the Nineteenth Century
Farshid Namdaran

Pre-Revolution Russian Mission to Central Asia: A Contextualized Legacy 
David M. Johnstone

The Lesslie Newbigin/Konrad Raiser Dialogue on Mission
Michael Goheen

What the Baila Believed About God: A Study in Cultural Clues to Evangelization
Dennis G. Fowler

�Blessed Reflex�: Mission as God�s Spiral for Renewal
Kenneth R. Ross

In our Series on the Legacy of Outstanding Missionary Figures of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, articles about

Norman Anderson
Thomas Barclay
Rowland V. Bingham
George Bowen 
H�l�ne de Chappotin
Fran�ois E. Daubanton
John Duncan
James Gilmour
Robert Reid Kalley
Hannah Kilham
George Leslie Mackay
Lesslie Newbigin
M. D. Opara
Constance E. Padwick
Peter Parker
Julius Richter
Elizabeth Russell
Johannes Sch�tte, S.V.D.
Bakht Singh
Mary Slessor
James Stephen
John V. Taylor
James M. Thoburn
M. M. Thomas
William Cameron Townsend
Johannes Verkuyl
William Vories