The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Introducing World Christianity
1. Andrew Walls and The
Missionary Movement in
Christian History [1996]:
Introducing World Christianity
to Church History
Jeremy Hegi
Walls, Andrew F. The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the
Transmission of Faith. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996. 266 pp.
Introduction
In 1957, fresh from Oxford with his PhD in Patristics, Andrew Walls arrived at Fourah
Baye College in Sierra Leone for his first teaching assignment. The young Scot had the
responsibility of teaching church history to individuals training for ministry. Like many
of his contemporaries, Walls believed that his task was to disclose the accumulated
wisdom of the older Western, churches to the “young churches” of Africa.1 As he
continued his course of teaching in Sierra Leone and later in Nigeria, however, he
discovered that his attitudes and assumptions about church history were wrong. Walls
was not merely teaching his students about the second century church; he was living in
the midst of one. He began to recognize how closely the practices of the churches in
Sierra Leone and Nigeria mirrored those of early Christianity. Moreover, he began to
realize that the church in Africa was not a carbon copy of the Western Church, but that
African churches had a history of their own that merited critical investigation. As he put
it, “The life, worship and understanding of a community in its second century of
Christian allegiance was going on all around me. . . . The experience changed this
academic for life.”2 The final phrase in the previous quote is characteristic of the
understated Walls. Not only did his realization change his life, but it fundamentally
changed the study of church history: Christianity was never just a religion of the
Western world, and by the 1950s its vital centers began appearing outside of the West.
Walls exposed the inadequacies of a Eurocentric reading of church history and planted
the seeds for a new academic discipline: world Christianity.3
Walls never published a book. Over the next forty years, however, it seemed that with
every article he wrote, he broke new ground and brought new insight and further clarity
to the study of church history and missions. Moreover, during this time he also trained a
new generation of scholars who would become leaders in their respective fields and
spurred the preservation of numerous materials from missionaries and churches.4 He
was among the first to recognize the shift of the center of Christianity to the Global
2. South—a development whose implications churches and scholars the world over are still
struggling to grasp.5 In short, Walls’s career is rare and extraordinary in its range and
impact. This is no less true for his book, The Missionary Movement in Christian
History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith. Part history and part theology, The
Missionary Movement in Christian History is a collection of previously published
articles and lectures that span a significant portion of Walls’s extraordinary career
(1971–1994). These essays both represent his most important scholarly contributions
and, in this collected edition, have quickly become a classic in church history, missions
studies, and world Christianity.6 The purpose of this article is to revisit this classic work,
consider its legacy, and discuss its continuing relevance to current scholarship.
Translation and Serial Progression
The Missionary Movement in Christian History is divided into three parts with an
autobiographical introduction that helps the reader understand how what Walls calls “a
collection of fragments” connects with each other.7 In part one, “The Transmission of
Christian Faith,” he focuses on the nature of the Christian faith through its historical,
geographical, and temporal transmission. He argues that the survival of Christianity
depends on the transmission of faith through an act of translation that leads to the
inculturation of the gospel and that this process ought to be the central focus of church
history. In part two, “Africa’s Place in Christian History,” Walls discusses the
transmission of faith in the context of Africa as he explores the Southern continent’s
place in the history of Christianity. In part three, “The Missionary Movement,” he
considers how this process of transmission affects both sides of those involved in the
process as he examines the Protestant missionary movement from Western Europe,
notably the United Kingdom, and North America. Each section of the book has essays
that make significant contributions to the study of church history.
In the first essay of the collection, “The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of Culture,”
Walls engages in a helpful thought experiment that demonstrates the core contributions
of his work.8 Tipping his hat to Henry Van Dusen’s “visitor from Mars,” he imagines a
long living extraterrestrial who is a “Professor of Comparative Inter-Planetary
Religions” who can visit Earth every few centuries to study Christianity.9 Over a period
of centuries, the scholarly visitor encounters a diversity of expressions of Christianity.
He witnesses the Jewish roots and context of the early church, the first Council of Nicea
and medieval Irish monasticism, and the height of the Western Protestant missionary
movement in London and the vibrancy of indigenous African Christianity in
Nigeria.10 What is Walls’s “Professor of Comparative Inter-Planetary Religions” to make
of this Earth religion called Christianity?
This bird’s eye view of Christian history illustrates the two assertions that constitute the
central themes of The Missionary Movement in Christian History. First, Walls argues
that translation lies at the core of the Christian faith and is key to its survival across
geographic and cultural boundaries.11 His argument begins with the assertion that the
incarnation is the paradigmatic act of translation.12 Human beings cannot be separated
from their cultural and social networks any more than a person can lift a bus while
3. standing inside of it. Therefore, when God became a human being, God did not just
become a “general” human being but was a person in a particular location, in a specific
ethnic group, and in a specific time and place. God became a Jewish male in first-
century Palestine. This act of translation, however, was not a one-way process but a
dynamic interaction that took place between God and humanity. As the divine entered
into first-century Jewish Palestinian culture, the people in that cultural-temporal
location had to rely on pre-existing language and cultural conventions to comprehend
this new element. In doing so, they had to take the existing structures of their language
and culture and reorient them toward the divine. In this way, the gospel became rooted
in the mental habits and cultural forms of that first-century society for a distinctive
Christian mind to be formed and a unique Christian fellowship to be built on the core
principles of the religion.13Christianity grew out of the grassroots of human culture and
came to expression in a distinctively Jewish way.
Walls takes this theological argument and views Christian history through the lens of
translation. As the gospel entered into new contexts, it was as if the incarnation
happened all over again in each different setting. The Word became vernacularized
among a new people. As they oriented their language, customs, and social networks
toward the gospel, however, they raised new questions and concerns significant to their
contexts that previous Christians had not.14 Recall our Professor of Inter-Planetary
Religions who observed the Christian faith situated in a Jewish context, expressed in
terms of Jewish ritual and concerns. Three hundred years later when he observes the
Council of Nicea, he witnessed a Christianity enmeshed in Grecian philosophical
framework concerned about metaphysics and theology that, in many ways, seemed
disconnected from its earlier Jewish context. Fast forward yet another 300 years and
Walls showed us another cultural shift—metaphysics had been set aside for the
earthiness of the Celtic Irish and their focus on developing a spirituality through the
crucible of penitential discipline. A little over a thousand years later we witnessed the
excitement of Christians gathered in London who, rather than seeking to be apart from
society like their Irish ancestors in the faith, displayed intense activism that they
brought to bear on every aspect of their society. Finally, by 1980 our space professor saw
that for the Aladura churches of Nigeria, power as revealed through preaching, healing,
and personal vision, is paramount.15
As the gospel was transmitted from one context to the next, new concerns arose for it to
address. This transmission led to a diversity in the expressions of Christianity across
time and space. Yet, Walls avoids a deconstructive postmodern relativism as he points
out the coherence that unites these disparate Christian communities across the
centuries: (1) they all worship the God of Israel, (2) they place ultimate significance in
Jesus Christ, (3) they believe that God is active where believers are, and (4) believers are
a part of God’s people, a community that transcends time and space.16 For Walls, this
paradoxical dynamic of “indigenizing” and “pilgrim” principles lies at the heart of the
Christian faith and its transmission.17 On the one side, human beings cannot escape
their cultural and social networks, so the gospel must become indigenized, or expressed
through these cultural norms. On the other side, as God’s interactions with human
beings begin in their particular contexts, God reorients them and begins to transform
them into what God desires. With this dynamic in view, Paul’s assertion that every knee
4. would bow before Jesus in Philippians 2 and John’s vision of all the nations gathered
around God’s throne in Revelation 7 take on new significance and meaning. These
images become realized in the tremendous diversity of human life and culture as it
expresses the gospel and becomes reoriented toward God. The kingdom is fulfilled in
diversity, not homogeneity. This theological point coupled with a historical survey of
Christian history reveals one of Walls’s significant contributions to church history:
translation lies at the heart of Christian faith, and the history of the religion is best
understood through its translation and transmission across time and space.
The second theme that becomes a significant contribution to the study of church history,
and is closely related to the first, is Walls’s concept of “serial progression.”18 Again,
consider Walls’s space professor’s journey through Christian history. He witnessed
Christianity as a Jewish sect in the first century. He saw Christianity transformed into a
non-Jewish Greek speaking religion in the fourth century. He observed medieval Irish
monks’ spiritual practices in the seventh century. He attended a gathering of British
activist evangelicals in the nineteenth century. Finally, in the late twentieth century, he
watched Nigerian Christians claim God’s power through healing, preaching, and
personal vision. In each case what was once the periphery of a center of Christianity
became a new heartland for the religion as the old passed away. For example, in the first
century, the Gentiles were on the peripheries of Jewish Christianity, but by the fourth
century, the center of Christianity was among non-Jewish Greek-speaking peoples with
a northern European barbarian frontier. The Christian faith, throughout its history, has
not progressed steadily onward, claiming new territory and maintaining its hold on
places it has been. Instead, as new Christian centers emerge old ones die away. First-
century Palestine, fourth-century Constantinople, seventh-century Ireland, nineteenth-
century Britain, and twentieth-century Nigeria have all become heartlands of
Christianity in their time, and they have all (except Nigeria) ceased being so. Indeed, as
Walls shows, if it were not for the process of cross-cultural transmission that lies at the
heart of the Christian faith, the religion would have died out long ago.19Growth takes
place at the edges and frontiers of Christian areas, even as the previous Christian center
experiences decline.
Walls’s concept of the serial progression of Christianity is significant, not just for the
study of Christian history but also for the present and future of world Christianity. Areas
that had once been heartlands for the Christian faith, namely Europe and North
America, have been experiencing a massive decline in adherents to Christianity just as
new centers of the religion have emerged in what had once been peripheries of the faith:
Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America. It seems that the future of Christianity is in
the Global South, and, as Walls asserts, Christianity’s encounter with Southern cultures
will be “as determinative for the future shape of Christianity as was the encounter with
the Greek world.”20 Taken in light of Walls’s argument that translation lies at the core of
the Christian faith, the concept of serial progression has significant implications not
only for the study of Christian history but also for the contemporary study and practice
of Christian missions and theology as both disciplines are conceived of in the West.
While it is outside of the scope of this essay to explore those implications in detail, one is
clear: business as usual for Western missionaries is over. This does not mean that
Christians from North America or Europe should stop seeking to practice missions.
5. Rather, in light of the historical developments and arguments highlighted by Walls,
Westerners ought to reevaluate the assumptions, methods, and theology that undergird
their participation in the mission of God.21
Contemporary Scholarship
While The Missionary Movement in Christian History represents numerous
contributions that Walls has made to the study of world Christianity, Christian history,
and missions studies, there are places where this collection of essays falls short and
where scholarship has moved beyond his work.22 Walls’s work in this volume leaves
Roman Catholicism and Pentecostalism out of the analysis. While there are chapters
that explore Christianity through the medieval period, he fails to investigate the role that
Roman Catholic mission and expansion played in the global transmission of Christianity
in the early modern period.23 Moreover, the contemporary role that Roman Catholicism
plays in the mosaic of world Christianity, especially in its charismatic forms, is essential
to understanding the religion in the Global South.24 In the same way, the rise of global
Pentecostalism and its missionary roots are essential for understanding the emergence
of world Christianity in the twentieth century. More than any other form of Christianity,
Pentecostal and charismatic movements are sweeping through the Global South.25
Another feature of world Christianity that is essential to understanding contemporary
Christianity is its gendered nature. In her book, Christian Mission: How Christianity
Became a World Religion, Dana Robert shows that the ratio of female to male
Christians is roughly two to one. She argues that since women significantly outnumber
men as practicing Christians, Christianity is a women’s religion.26 Since the majority of
public leaders in Christianity’s past and present have been men, however, the crucial
role that women have played in the history of the religion has long been buried. Scholars
like Robert, who are doing the work to uncover these stories, recognize the groundwork
that Walls laid by drawing attention to the traditional margins of Eurocentric Christian
history.
No work of scholarship is immune to the passage of time, and The Missionary
Movement in Christian History is not an exception. As mentioned above, there are
areas of Christian history and world Christianity that this collection misses. Such
criticism, however, does not undercut the value of Walls’s enduring contributions. The
breadth of his analysis over the span of Christian history, his range of knowledge, and
his ecumenical sympathies give this collection of essays a significance that will last for
years to come and inspire generations of readers.
Conclusion
The Missionary Movement in Christian History is a classic for good reason. A veritable
“who’s who” of scholars, from Mark Noll and Philip Jenkins to David Bebbington and
Kwame Bediako, publicly recognize how Walls’s work has impacted and influenced their
scholarship.27The themes of “translation” and “serial progression” as Walls introduces
6. them in this volume challenge the very way we study and understand the history of
Christianity, Christian mission, and world Christianity. Scholars are still coming to grips
with the implications of the shift of Christianity from the West to the Global South for
their work, and those who ignore this change do so at their peril. There is still much that
Walls has to teach us, and we are fortunate that we have this collection of essays to
return to as we evaluate our respective situations in light of the changing face of world
Christianity.
Jeremy Hegi is a PhD candidate at the Boston University School of Theology in Church
History and World Christianity. Prior to matriculating at Boston University, he received
his MA and MDiv from the Abilene Christian University Graduate School of Theology.
Jeremy’s research interests focus on the intersection of American religious history, the
history of missions, and women’s history.
1 Walls, The Missionary Movement, xiii.
2 Ibid.
3 World Christianity, as an academic discipline, provides a framework for studying
Christianity that focuses on local, indigenous expressions of Christianity as these
expressions relate to and are embedded in transnational networks. Joel Cabrita and
David Maxwell’s recently published Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary
Studies in Universal and Local Expressions of the Christian Faith provides the best
overview and discussion of world Christianity as an academic discipline. See Joel
Cabrita and David Maxwell, “Introduction: Relocating World Christianity,”
in Relocating World Christianity: Interdisciplinary Studies in Universal and Local
Expressions of the Christian Faith, eds. Joel Cabrita, David Maxwell, and Emma Wild-
Wood (Boston: Brill, 2017), 1–44. Following Lamin Sanneh’s lead, I prefer the term
World Christianity to Global Christianity. The latter term implies a replication of
Christian forms and patterns developed in Europe while the former term is more in line
with Walls’s thought. For a more in-depth discussion see Lamin Sanneh, Whose
Religion is Christianity? The Gospel Beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2003), 22–23.
4 For more information on the impact of Walls’s work through his students and
establishment of repositories for missionary materials, see Jonathan Bonk, “Changing
the Course of Mission and World Christian Studies,” in Understanding World
Christianity: The Vision and Work of Andrew F. Walls, ed. William R. Burrows, Mark
R. Gornik, and Janice A. Mclean (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2011), 61–78.
5 As Walls was writing about African Christianity as a new and vibrant center of World
Christianity, David Barrett was in the process of gathering demographic data and
publishing the first edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia that corroborated
Walls’s assertions. Barrett and Walls were the first scholarly voices to recognize the shift
of the centers of Christianity from the West to the Global South. For more information
on Barrett’s life and work see Gina Zurlo, “ ‘A Miracle From Nairobi’: David B. Barrett
7. and the Quantification of World Christianity, 1957–1982” (PhD diss., Boston University,
2017).
6 While the essays in this volume reflect Walls’s most significant contributions, he
published one of his most important and impactful articles, “Eusebius Tries Again:
Reconceiving the Study of Christian History” after the publication of The Missionary
Movement in Christian History. See Andrew Walls, “Eusebius Tries Again:
Reconceiving the Study of Christian History,” International Bulletin of Missionary
Research 24, no. 3 (July 2000): 105–11.
7 Walls, The Missionary Movement, xiii.
8 Ibid., 3–15.
9 Henry Van Dusen established the first American seminary professorship in the field of
World Christianity in 1945. His definition of the field, however, reflected his context. He
envisioned “World Christianity” as the inevitable worldwide unity and cooperation of
Protestant Churches. Thus, contrary to Walls’s “Professor of Comparative Inter-
planetary Religions,” his Martian visitor witnesses a self-conscious interconnected
religious movement toward Christian Unity. See Henry P. Van Dusen, World
Christianity: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1947),
46. See also Walls, The Missionary Movement, 3.
10 Walls tells this story in the first part of “The Gospel as Prisoner and Liberator of
Culture.” See Walls, The Missionary Movement, 3–7.
11 Walls most clearly discusses this point in ch. 3, “The Translation Principle in Christian
History.” Ibid., 26–42. Lamin Sanneh similarly emphasizes the centrality of translation
to the Christian faith in his masterful, Translating the Message. See Lamin
Sanneh, Translating the Message: The Missionary Impact on Culture (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1989).
12 Walls, The Missionary Movement, 27.
13 Ibid., 28.
14 Ibid., 10.
15 Ibid., 3–5.
16 Ibid., 24.
17 Ibid., 7–9.
18 Though this is a theme that repeatedly appears throughout the book, Walls explores
this concept most thoroughly in chapter 2, “Culture and Coherence in Christian
History.” Note that this chapter was delivered as a speech in 1982, the same year David
8. Barrett published his World Christian Encyclopedia. Walls, The Missionary Movement,
16–25.
19 Ibid., 22.
20 Ibid., xviii.
21 Walls begins to explore the implication for Western missions in this volume as well.
See ch. 11, “Structural Problems in Mission Studies”; ch. 17, “The American Dimension
of the Missionary Movement”; ch. 18, “Missionary Societies and the Fortunate
Subversion of the Church”; and ch. 19, “The Old Age of the Missionary Movement.”
Ibid., 143–59, 221–61.
22 Outside of the two themes I outlined above, The Missionary Movement in Church
History represents many more scholarly contributions that Walls has made over the
years, especially in African Studies.
23 For an in-depth exploration of early-modern Catholicism from the perspective of
World Christianity, see Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist, History of The World
Christian Movement, vol. 2, Modern Christianity from 1454–1800 (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 2012).
24 See the discussion of Roman Catholicism and world Christianity in Scott W.
Sunquist, The Unexpected Christian Century: The Reversal and Transformation of
Global Christianity, 1900–2000 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 103–12.
25 For an excellent survey of the missionary roots of Pentecostalism, see Allan
Anderson, Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early
Pentecostalism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007).
26 Dana L. Robert, Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World
Religion (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 118.
27 For more on Wall’s influence, see Bonk, “Changing the Course of Mission,” 61–78.