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Noteworthy October 2006 Announcing The International Conference on Christianity and the State: Complicity and Conflict, to be held in Singapore, January 10–12, 2007, will consider questions such as, In an increasingly globalized world, what does it mean to be Christian in contemporary Asia? and, What social and political position does Christianity occupy in regional perspective? The Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore is organizing the gathering. Details may be found at www.ari.nus.edu.sg/conf2007/christianity.htm. A workshop on short-term missions to be hosted by the Ph.D. Program in Intercultural Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois, March 22–24, 2007, will feature Robert J. Wuthnow, director of the Center for the Study of Religion and chair of the Department of Sociology at Princeton University, as a key presenter. Robert J. Priest, organizer, invites Ph.D. students with research focused on short-term missions, as well as senior scholars, to participate. Participants will be invited to present papers at a wider conference on short-term missions in the summer of 2008 and to participate in a collaborative publication. Cosponsored by the North Central Region of the Evangelical Missiological Society, funding is available for twelve scholars, including three from outside the United States. Apply by November 30, 2006; for details, contact Priest at rpriest@tiu.edu. The Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity, meeting June 28–30, 2007, at Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut, will address the topic “Liberty, Slavery, and Christian Missions.” The questions discussed will include, What were the impact and consequences of the involvement of New World Africans in the campaign for abolition on the course of the missionary movement? What role did freed slaves and freed captives play in the drive against domestic slavery and related institutions? How did slavery affect relationships between missionaries and governments? “Yet the theme of liberty and slavery also has relevance well beyond the slave trade that became illegal in 1807. Our theme also provides room for investigation of the intertwined themes of liberty and liberation that have given rise to missionary involvement across the world in issues of social justice, the defense of indigenous rights, the advancement of women, and so forth,” according to a statement from conveners Lamin Sanneh and Andrew F. Walls. The seminar is cosponsored by the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh, Yale Divinity School, and the Overseas Ministries Study Center. For details, visit www.library.yale.edu/div/yaleedin.htm. A conference, “Christian Missions in 19th and 20th Century Southern Africa: Passing Review and Breaking New Ground,” will be hosted July 8–11, 2007, by the History Department of Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa. Forward inquiries to Alan Kirkaldy (a.kirkaldy@ru.ac.za); proposals for papers should be received by November 1, 2006. A wide range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches are welcome. The International Association for Mission Studies (www.missionstudies.org) will hold its twelfth assembly in Budapest, Hungary, August 16–22, 2008. The IAMS secretariat seeks brief proposals for papers, the abstracts of which are due by March 31, 2007, on the assembly’s topic, “Human Identity and the Gospel of Reconciliation: Agenda for Missionary Churches in the Twenty-first Century.” Address correspondence to Jan van Butselaar at butselaar@antenna.nl. In May 2006 the Missionary Training Service, the World Evangelical Alliance, members of the International Commission for Evangelical Theological Education, Trainers of Pastors International Coalition, and others launched the Evangelical Training Database, a multilingual online listing of training courses. Training organizations may post entries and church leaders may access the database at www. trainforchrist.org. For details, visit www.missionarytraining.missionorg/news.htm or contact Ian Benson, coordinator, Missionary Training Service, coord@missionarytraining.org. The first one-volume commentary on all the books of the Bible “written in Africa by Africans and for African churches” was launched in July 2006, according to SIM’s Web site. Written in English by seventy contributors from twenty-five countries, the Africa Bible Commentary aims to explain the Bible from an African perspective. The commentary, published by Zondervan and edited by Tokunboh Adeyemo, general secretary of the Association of Evangelicals in Africa, Nairobi, Kenya, contains local proverbs and folklore to help interpret the Scriptures, and it addresses contemporary issues such as HIV/AIDS, female genital mutilation, refugees, ethnic conflict, and witchcraft. A French edition is to be released in 2007, with other language editions to follow. Blackwell Publishing plans to produce a three-volume Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization in 2008. With 900 entries, it will be “one of the largest encyclopedias defining Christian faith, legacy, experience and culture,” says the editor, George T. Kurian. Scholars interested in writing entries for the encyclopedia may contact Kurian, coeditor of the World Christian Encyclopedia (Oxford University Press, 2001), at gtkurian@aol.com. Anne-Marie Werner of the East Asia Institute of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has created a database with a chronology of cultural relations between China and the West from 1245 to 2000. The indexed themes include history, religion, and the history of missions. For details, visit www.unizh.ch/ostasien. WorldCat, a database that describes 1.3 billion items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide, is now available for free at http://worldcat.org/. See more information about WorldCat at http://worldcat.org/whatis. Note that though the Search Box says, “Enter a title, subject or person,” keyword searching works fine, too. For example, you can search for missions and tanzania and german (46 results). Personalia Cardinal Ivan Dias, 70, archbishop of Bombay since 1996, now leads the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. In May 2006 Pope Benedict XVI named Dias, a native of Mumbai who had worked in a variety of diplomatic posts from 1964 to 1996, to head the mission body when Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe became archbishop of Naples. The University of Notre Dame appointed Mark A. Noll, McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College and author of numerous books, including America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), as Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, effective with the fall 2006 semester. In 2005 Time magazine named Noll one of America’s twenty-five most influential evangelicals. He will succeed George Marsden, author of Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2d ed. (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006). Marvin J. Newell has been appointed executive director of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association of North America (IFMA), Wheaton, Illinois, (www. ifmamissions.org), effective January 1, 2007. A missionary with TEAM for twenty-one years and a former professor at Erikson-Tritt Bible College and Seminary, Irian Jaya, Indonesia (1979-93), Newell for the past seven years has been professor of missions and chair of the Intercultural Studies Program at the Moody Bible Institute Graduate School, Chicago. He replaces John H. Orme, who has been executive director since 1991. Trustees of New York Theological Seminary elected historian of world Christianity Dale T. Irvin as NYTS’s eleventh president, effective August 1, 2006. Formerly academic dean at the seminary and vice president for academic affairs, Irvin had been acting president since January 1, when he replaced Hillary Gaston, Sr. Irvin, coauthor with Scott W. Sunquist of History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453 (Orbis Books, 2001), will continue as professor of world Christianity. July 2006 Announcing On April 28, 2006, the inaugural lecture for New York Theological Seminary’s recently launched Center for World Christianity, entitled “World Christianity and Christian Mission: Are They Compatible? Insights from the Asian Churches,” was presented by Peter C. Phan of Georgetown University. Dale T. Irvin, professor of world Christianity, is acting president of NYTS. For details on the center, visit www.nyts.edu. The third annual Symposium on the theme Social Scientific Study of Religion in China will be held July 15–17, 2006, at Renmin University of China, Beijing. A prospectus for the Symposium can be found at www.cla.purdue.edu/sociology/religion/index.htm. “In Search of Common Identity: Peace and Reconciliation in the Korean Peninsula and Other Contexts” is the theme for the International Conference on Peace and Reconciliation, August 15–18, 2006, at York St. John University College, York, England. For details, contact Sebastian Kim, s.kim@yorksj.ac.uk. The Association Francophone Oecumenique de Missiologie (AFOM) will host the Third European Missiology Conference in Paris, August 24–28, 2006, with the theme “Europe After the Enlightenment: Daring to Practice Mission in a Europe Still Trying to Construct Itself.” Cosponsors include the British and Irish Association for Mission Studies, the Central and Eastern European Association for Mission Studies, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Missionswissenschaft, and the Nordic Institute of Mission and Ecumenical Research. Further information is available at www.missionstudies.org/3e_Conference_%202006.htm. The annual meeting of the Evangelical Missiological Society (EMS), held in conjunction with the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA), will focus on the theme “Missions in the Context of Violence,” September 28– 30, 2006, in Orlando, Florida. Visit www.missiology.org/ems for details. Sophia University, Tokyo, will hold a conference on the theme “Integration and Division Between Universalism and Localism in the Jesuit Mission Reports and Histories, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Century” and a symposium addressing the topic “The Process of Cultural Hybridization in History,” December 9–10, 2006, as part of the university’s Xavier Jubilee Project. Contact Shinzo Kawamura, S.J., shinzo-k@hoffman.cc.sophia.ac.jp, for details. Personalia The Foundation for Theological Education in South East Asia has appointed Henry S. Wilson as executive director– elect. Wilson has served as director of the Board of Theological Education of the Senate of Serampore College, Serampore, India; executive secretary of the theology department of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, Geneva; director of the Center for Global Theologies at Wartburg Theological Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa; and director of the Multicultural Mission Resource Center at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Wilson, who will be based in India, succeeds Marvin D. Hoff, who retires at the end of December. Philomena Mwaura, senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya, has been elected president of the International Association for Mission Studies. A Roman Catholic, Mwaura also teaches at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa and the Jesuit School of Theology. Darrell Whiteman of The Mission Society—A World Wesleyan Partnership was the former IAMS president. Lalsangkima Pachuau has been appointed associate professor of history and theology of mission by Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky, effective July 1, 2006. He is editor of Mission Studies, the journal of the International Association for Mission Studies. A minister of the Presbyterian Church of India (Mizo Synod), Pachuau was associate professor of mission and ecumenics at the United Theological College, Bangalore, India. He is author of Ethnic Identity and Christianity (Peter Lang, 2002) and editor of Ecumenical Missiology (United Theological College, 2002). He replaces Howard Snyder, professor of history and theology of mission since 1996, who has retired. Died. Arnulf Camps, O.F.M., 81, a Dutch Roman Catholic missiologist, March 5, 2006. Born in Eindhoven, Netherlands, February 1, 1925, he entered the Franciscan Order in 1943. As professor of missiology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, Netherlands (now called Radboud University of Nijmegen), 1963 to 1990, Camps supervised thirty dissertations and more than one hundred master’s theses. He published eight monographs, edited seven volumes, and wrote more than 340 articles. An adviser to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, he was president of the board (1981– 91) of the Interuniversity Institute for Missiological and Ecumenical Research, Utrecht, Netherlands. He was a cofounder of the International Association for Mission Studies and served as IAMS president (1974–78). Died. Wenzao Han, 83, Protestant church leader in China, February 3, 2006, in Nanjing. Born in Shanghai in 1923, he was vice director of the Institute of Religion of Nanjing University and, from 1982 to 2001, vice president of Nanjing Union Theological Seminary. In 1980 Han was also appointed vice general secretary of the Chinese Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement Committee. He worked closely with K. H. Ting in establishing the Amity Foundation in 1985 as an organization that would enable international ecumenical sharing of the resources of Christians together with Chinese Christians to join in the construction of China and its social welfare. They arranged a joint venture with the United Bible Societies to establish the Amity Printing Company and commence largescale printing and distribution of Bibles in mainland China. Han served as executive vice president of the board of directors and general secretary for the Amity Foundation from 1985 to 2002 and was president of the China Christian Council from 1997 to 2002, when he retired. Died. Diana Witts, 69, former general secretary of the Church Mission Society (CMS), March 19, 2006, at home in Kew, Surrey, England. The first woman to hold the post, Witts led the CMS through an exacting period of its history. Under her leadership (1996–2000), CMS marked its bicentenary in global mission and clarified its commitment to evangelistic mission. Never claiming to be a missiologist, Witts nonetheless had a profound grasp of the implications of the cross of Christ on her own life, and for humanity in general. Teaching at the Scottish public school Gordonstoun (their first female teacher), serving the Masai of Kenya, traveling in war-torn Congo and Sudan, and in leadership at CMS, she was courageous in her judgments and generous in her relationships. After retirement, Witts continued to travel and teach until struck down by cancer. In 2005 she published Springs of Hope, her autobiography. April 2006 Announcing Verein zur Förderung der Missionswissenschaft (Association for the Promotion of Missiology), Immensee, Switzerland, will publish a missiological yearbook under the name Forum Mission. To appear in English, German, Spanish, and French, it will promote "international and ecumenical exchange of research and experience on missiology and related fields." See www.forummission.ch. The Multicultural Mission Resource Center of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Department for Global Mission are cosponsoring a conference on the "Future of Mission": 300th Anniversary Commemoration of Lutheran/Protestant Mission by Batholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau, June 1-2, 2006. For details, visit www.ltsp.edu/mmrc/events/event_02_seminar.htm. The Coalition on the Support of Indigenous Ministries, a fellowship of evangelical organizations with a common interest in strengthening developing-world ministries, will hold its tenth annual conference June 12-14, 2006, at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois. Go to www.cosimnet.org for details. The annual meeting of the American Society of Missiology, to be held June 16-18, 2006, at Techny Towers, Techny, Illinois, with the theme "Pentecostalism and Mission: From Azusa Street to the Ends of the Earth," will feature a keynote address by Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., author of The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement (Nelson, 2006), and a presidential address by Steven Bevans, S.V.D., entitled "The Church as Creation of the Spirit." For details, visit www.asmweb.org. The Association of Professors of Mission will hold its annual meeting June 15-16, 2006, at the same location, with "Missiology and Theology of Religions: Disciplinary Cross-Currents" as its theme. Presenters include Terry C. Muck of Asbury Theological Seminary, "Theology of Religions After Knitter and Hick: Beyond the Paradigm," and David B. Burrell, C.S.C., of the University of Notre Dame, "Christians, Muslims (and Jews) Before the One God: Jean Daniélou on Mission Revisited." Visit www.asmweb.org/apm. Richard Fox Young, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Selva Raj, Albion College, are seeking papers for a panel "Syncretism,' Christianity, and India's Religious Traditions: Squaring Texts, Practices, and Rituals with Terms, Concepts, and Cases" as part of the European Association of Modern South Asian Studies conference, June 27-30, 2006, at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. For further information, e-mail sraj@albion.edu. The Mylapore Institute for Indigenous Studies invites proposals by May 31 for papers on the theme "Beginnings of Protestantism in South Asia" for a symposium July 5-6,2006, in Chennai, India. For details, contact the convenor, Abraham Peddiny, miis@dharmadeepika.org, or check www.dharmadeepika.org/miisnu/miishome.html. Personalia Appointed. Patrick Fung as general director of OMF International, December 5, 2005. Fung, 46, who is Chinese, is the first Asian to lead the mission formerly known as China Inland Mission. Fung and his wife, Jennie, both of whom are physicians, joined OMF in 1989, serving in a Muslim context. In 1996he was appointed director of OMF Hong Kong, and in 2001 as OMF international director for mobilization, based in Singapore. Fung replaces David Harley, who has been general director since 2001. For further information, visit www.omf.org. Appointed. Janet Blomberg, executive director of Interaction International, Colorado Springs, Colorado. She has served as director of educational services for Interaction since1991. From 2001 to 2005 she was also interim director of the Asia Education Resource Consortium. Interaction International (www.interactionintl.org) is concerned with the welfare of "third-culture kids" and of missionary families serving cross-culturally. It was cofounded in 1968 by David Pollock. At its International Council meeting, held at the German Evangelical Alliance retreat center in Bad Blankenburg, November 28-December 1, 2005, leaders of the World Evangelical Alliance (www.worldevangelical.org) asked international director Geoff Tunnicliffe to extend his term of service through May 2010. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Mass., named Moonjang Lee as associate professor of world Christianity, beginning in September 2006. A former pastor from Korea, Lee has taught at Trinity Theological College, Singapore, since 2001. He is author of How to Read the Bible: An Asian Hermeneutic (Jire, 2003). Appointed. F. Albert Tizon as assistant professor of evangelism and holistic ministry at Palmer Theological Seminary, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, effective July 1, 2006. A Filipino-American, he served in the Philippines as a missionary with Action International Ministries (1989-98). Died. Donald E. MacInnis, 85, November 11, 2005, at home in Brunswick, Maine. He was director of the National Council of Churches China Program, director of the Midwest China Resource Center in Minnesota, and for ten years head of a China research project for the Mary knoll Fathers and Brothers. MacInnis, his wife, Helen, and their children served in Taiwan as Methodist missionaries from 1953 to 1966. He wrote Religious Policy and Practice in Communist China (Macmillan,1972) and Religion in China Today: Policy and Practice (Orbis Books, 1989). Following retirement in 1990 he taught English and journalism for a year at a teacher's college in China. Died. A. Jack McAlister, 81, founder and longtime president of World Literature Crusade, January 12, 2006, in Ventura, California. McAlister founded the ministry now operating as Every Home for Christ International, Colorado Springs, Colorado (www.ehc.org), as a radio ministry in his garage in Saskatchewan in 1946. In 1952 McAlister moved World Literature Crusade to California, where WLC developed the Every Home method of saturation literature distribution in 1953.Since then, campaigns have been conducted in 192 nations. Died. Charles W. Spicer, Jr., 75, cofounder of Overseas Council International, Indianapolis, Indiana, on December 13,2005. Beginning in 1967, Spicer first served with OMS International for 19 years in various leadership roles. In 1974, he and several business leaders organized Overseas Council, which he served as founding president, resigning from OMS in 1986to work full time with OCI. Under Spicer's leadership, OCI raised funds to underwrite thousands of student scholarships and 71 major building projects. Retiring from OCI in 2004, but with a strong lifetime call to missions, he then founded Facilitators International, which focuses on training men and women from evangelical churches in the developing world who want to be missionaries. In his service as a ministry leader, he visited some 195 countries and traveled millions of miles in behalf of the Great Commission. January 2006 Announcing The American Society of Missiology will hold its annual meeting June 16–18, 2006, in Techny, Illinois, addressing the theme “Pentecostalism and Mission: From Azusa Street to the Ends of the Earth.” The annual meeting of the Association of Professors of Mission will be held at the same location on June 15–16. For details, visit www.asmweb.org. The Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity will hold its 2006 meeting June 29 to July 1 at the University of Edinburgh. Speakers will discuss the theme “Sight, Sound, and Touch: Visual, Musical, and Material Aspects of Christian Mission.” The study group is cosponsored by the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World at the University of Edinburgh, Yale Divinity School, and the Overseas Ministries Study Center. Visit www.library.yale.edu/div/yaleedin.htm. The Institute of Historical Research, University of London, will hold its Anglo-American Conference July 5–7, 2006, on the theme “Religions and Politics.” For details, e-mail Richard Butler at richard.butler@sas.ac.uk. The second Missionary History Conference at Australian National University, Canberra, is scheduled for August 25–27, 2006. The conference will focus on the Asia-Pacific region and the contributions of people from within the region. Proposals for papers are due by May 30, 2006. For details, contact Ian Welch at ian.welch@anu.edu.au. The Global China Center, Charlottesville, Virginia, is preparing to launch the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity, a “broadly interconfessional, historically descriptive, and nonproprietary” online database intended eventually to “cover the whole of Chinese Christianity from earliest times to the present and in every country where Chinese communities are found.” To be published electronically, and based on the Dictionary of African Christian Biography, developed by Jonathan Bonk, Overseas Ministries Study Center executive director and IBMR editor, the BDCC project is being managed by Yading Li, a senior associate of the Global China Center, who is working this year from an office at OMSC. The BDCC project coordinator is Carol Lee Hamrin, and the administrator is G. Wright Doyle. For details, e-mail bdcc@globalchina.org. Personalia The United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia appointed Patricia Stranahan as president, effective January 1, 2006, succeeding Richard J. Wood. Most recently, the new president was a research associate at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University. Previously she was provost and dean of the faculty of Hobart and William Smith Colleges (Geneva, N.Y.), interim vice president for academic affairs at Chatham College (Pittsburgh, Pa.), director of the Asian Studies Program and professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, and executive director of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee for Scholarly Communications with China. The United Board, a nonprofit agency with offices in both New York and Hong Kong, supports a Christian presence in Asia’s academic communities, both Christian and secular. Visit www.unitedboard.org for details. The Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia, Singapore, announces that Samuel Ngun Ling, director of the Judson Research Center, Myanmar Institute of Theology, will be the first CSCA visiting fellow. From January to April 2006 he will research the topic “A History of Christian-Buddhist Encounter in Myanmar.” Michael Nai Chiu Poon is CSCA director. Appointed. Darrell L. Whiteman as vice president and missiologist in residence by the The Mission Society—A World Wesleyan Partnership, formerly the Mission Society for United Methodists (www.msum.org), effective December 1, 2005. Whiteman was professor of cultural anthropology and had been dean of the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. He is president of the International Association for Mission Studies. Whiteman was editor of Missiology, 1988–2003. Died. John Richard Gray, 76, pioneer historian of Africa, August 7, 2005, in London. He was born in Weymouth, Dorset, and was educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge University. In 1951 he began his Ph.D. research into African history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His doctoral thesis on the history of southern Sudan, published in 1961, became the standard work on the subject. In 1955 Gray converted to Catholicism and two years later married Gabriella Cattaneo of Bergamo, Italy. In 1961 he joined the history department at SOAS, where he successively became lecturer, reader, and professor of African history, retiring in 1989. He began to research Italian sources for African history, particularly those in the Vatican Library and Archives and those of the missionary orders and congregations in Rome. With David Chambers, he compiled a guide entitled Materials for West African History in Italian Archives (London, 1965). His interests and research increasingly turned to the religious history of Africa, and he wrote Black Christians and White Missionaries (New Haven, 1990) and The Papacy and Africa in the Seventeenth Century (Vatican City, 1997). Died. Kwesi A. Dickson, 76, professor emeritus, University of Ghana, Legon, October 26, 2005, in Accra after a brief illness. He also led the university’s religious studies department and was dean of students, dean of the faculty of arts, and director of the Institute of African Studies. Dickson delivered the 170th anniversary lectures of the Methodist Church in Ghana, which he served two terms as president. In the 1990s he also was chairman of the Christian Council of Ghana and president of the All Africa Conference of Churches (www.aaccceta.org). He had been a visiting professor at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and his alma mater, Mansfield College, Oxford. A fellow and former president of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dickson published widely in the fields of church history, Christian mission, and African theology. His book Theology in Africa (London, 1984) is one of the most authoritative in the field. He wrote Uncompleted Mission: The Christian Faith and Exclusivism (Maryknoll, N.Y., 1991; repr. Nairobi, 2000).
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