Abstract
In this volume, Andrew Walls gives us a ‘biography’ of western missions ‘from birth to old age’ (as in the title), masterfully telling the story as he would the life of an old friend. Contrary to his other three volumes of collected essays, the purpose of this book is to tell a single, continuous story—that of the missionary movement from the West, Catholic and Protestant together, but focusing on the latter from the 18th century on. By so doing, he maps out the ebb and flow between center and margins in the unfolding of World Christianity as a global movement in the last five hundred years.
Walls captures the western missionary movement in four periods: its birth and early years (16th to 18th centuries), middle age (19th century), midlife crises (late-19th and early-20th centuries), and old age (1930s to 1960s). The earliest pioneers were radicals such as the Puritans and the Pietists who responded to the call to mission out of a sense of biblical obedience. The link between the anti-slavery impulse and missions is clearly demonstrated in the story of the first missionaries from North America to Africa—Black loyalists and emancipated slaves like George Liele and David George who settled in Sierra Leone.
The creation of the voluntary society opened the floodgates for Protestant missions by shifting power dynamics to the laity. Mission theorists such as Rufus Anderson, Henry Venn, and Thomas Fowell Buxton gave the movement strategies and methodologies but with limited success. Only later did western missions heed the lessons learned from painful failures that forced a redefinition of the ‘missionary’ and ‘mission.’ As indigenous agency increased and western missionaries decreased, missions became multi-directional. And now, the margins-to-center shift is almost complete: visionary church and mission leadership comes from the Global South—India has blazed the way for church union and ecumenical collaboration, China for church growth sans missionaries, Africa for evangelization and indigenous Christian identity. Walls closes by calling for a new theological agenda from the Global South that will enlarge the conversation, develop a new ecumenism, and engage with Islam.
Throughout the historical narrative, Walls underlines the theological implications at each new stage. He uses biography to reflect on human successes and failures. The writing is accessible and lively—reflecting the lectures on which the book is based. The text is replete with the thematic gems of world christian history, missiology, and classic origin stories. This skillfully edited volume is vintage Walls, and would make an excellent textbook for a course in missions or world Christianity.