From Times Square to Timbuktu
The Post-Christian West Meets the Non-Western Church
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the last century, amazingly, world Christianity's center of gravity has effectively moved from Europe to a point near Timbuktu in Africa. Never in the history of Christianity has there been such a rapid and dramatic shift in where Christians are located in the world.
Wesley Granberg-Michaelson explores the consequences of this shift for congregations in North America, specifically for the efforts to build Christian unity in the face of new and challenging divisions. Centers of religious power, money, and theological capital remain entrenched in the global, secularized North while the Christian majority thrives and rapidly grows in the global South. World Christianity's most decisive twenty-first-century challenge, Granberg-Michaelson argues, is to build meaningful bridges between faithful churches in the global North and the spiritually exuberant churches of the global South.
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PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Granberg-Michaelson says the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, which reformed immigration law in America, has had far-reaching spiritual impact on the world. He examines it as one of several examples of geopolitical events that he argues have unleashed a wave of non-Western migration in which every Christian migrant is a potential missionary. He says modern Western cultures are witnessing a major non-Western missionary movement in the world . . . as the West becomes post-Christian, non-Western Christianity is coming to the West. He reviews statistics on world migration and puts these movements in the context of Christian witness, with implications for worldwide Christianity, unity, and practice. Calling for ethnic unity, he gives examples of successful multi-ethnic churches. Also prescribes action steps for churches to live out the mercy and justice of God that will leads to more multi-ethnic churches. His ecumenism will ultimately include not only diverse denominations but all ethnicities. With 40,000 Christian sects and thousands of them claiming to be the true and pure church, such religious chauvinism makes an utter and ludicrous mockery of Christian witness. Granberg-Michaelson, former general secretary of the Reformed Church in America and a former official with the World Council of Churches, leaves no doubt that he believes the world is changing radically, backing it with research, church council opinions, personal experiences, and case studies. Churches will either wake up to this reality or be out of touch as the new Non-Western church meets the Post-Christian West.
