World Christianity Unit

Our contemporary world is currently being re-configured by violence in two catastrophic ways. First, we are witnessing the unprecedented movement of people driven by violence, armed conflict, civil wars, genocide and other forms of violence against specific communities or groups. Second, many countries in our world are grappling with the “destruction the climate crisis is wreaking on lives, livelihoods and infrastructure” (The Guardian Cop28: highlights and lowlights so far, 2023). In examining these twin calamities, two things come to the fore, one, many of the sites for the violence is located within the Global South; two, religion and particularly Christianity is involved in either fueling (theological interpretation and ideologies, etc.) these conflicts are or mitigating them (activism). Given Jin Y. Park’s Presidential Theme for 2024, “Violence, Nonviolence, and the Margin,” our unit is seeking to critically engage what it means to grapple with violence and nonviolence in marginal spaces and what is the role of faith in these processes.

 We invite proposals that will address the following distinct, even if overlapping, topics:

• Trajectories of violence and non-violence in Christian communities in the Global South;
• Migration, violence, memory, and home making - centering the importance of faith in this dynamic process;
• Violence and politics in World Christianity, especially with respect to issues of Christian violence and masculinity in relation to militarism and/or abuse in the church and the wider society;
• The intersection of World Christianity and climate devastation, specifically given attention to areas of activism and creation care

As a unit committed to cutting-edge research pertaining to the phenomenon of Christianity as a world religion, and to theory and methodology concerning the multidisciplinary field of World Christianity we also solicit methodologically-oriented papers addressing the role of “orthodoxies” in World Christianity. Orthodoxies are not just theological, but can be found in all disciplines (e.g. anthropology, history) and in sociopolitical expression (e.g. racism, nationalism, sexism). We are particularly interested in proposals that investigate the use of orthodoxies within the field, and the ways in which they have weakened or invigorated World Christianity discourse. How might our respective understandings of what constitutes methodological orthodoxy inform how we envision the ultimate goal(s) of our work as researchers and educators within the field?