Includes bibliographical references (pages 421-448) and index.
Contents:
Migration in human history: a conceptual overview -- Migration and the globalization of religion: understanding conversion -- Theologizing migration: from Eden to exile -- Christianization of the Roman Empire: the immigrant factor -- Frontier flows: the faith of captives and the fruit of captivity -- Minority report: from the church in Persia to the Persian church -- Christ and Odin: migration and mission in an age of violence -- To the ends of the East: the faith of merchants -- Gaining the world: the interlocking strands of migration, imperial expansion, and Christian mission -- Beyond empire.
Summary:
A magisterial sweep through 1500 years of Christian history with a groundbreaking focus on the missionary role of migrants in its spread. Human migration has long been identified as a driving force of historical change. Building on this understanding, Jehu Hanciles surveys the history of Christianity's global expansion from its origins through 1500 CE to show how migration--more than official missionary activity or imperial designs--played a vital role in making Christianity the world's largest religion. Church history has tended to place a premium on political power and institutional forms, thus portraying Christianity as a religion disseminated through official representatives of church and state. But, as Hanciles illustrates, this "top-down perspective overlooks the multifarious array of social movements, cultural processes, ordinary experiences, and non-elite activities and decisions that contribute immensely to religious encounter and exchange." Hanciles's socio-historical approach to understanding the growth of Christianity as a world religion disrupts the narrative of Western preeminence, while honoring and making sense of the diversity of religious expression that has characterized the world Christian movement for two millennia. In turning the focus of the story away from powerful empires and heroic missionaries, Migration and the Making of Global Christianity instead tells the more truthful story of how every Christian migrant is a vessel for the spread of the Christian faith in our deeply interconnected world.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.