By Dr Hugh Morrison

CCCW-DIVFAC SEMINARS 2023-2024

28 November 2023, 4-5.30pm, Runcie Room, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

This paper marks a reflective end point for a project focused on the historical lives of British-world Protestant missionaries’ children, from the 1870s to the 1950s. While large in number, their voices were seldom heard and their lives until recently largely untold. This current study takes a more broadly comparative approach (using Scottish and New Zealand Presbyterianism as examples), focusing particularly on the early twentieth century. As such it utilises a range of published and unpublished sources, including oral history and written memoirs.

More information here.

By Dr Heike Raphael-Hernandez

CCCW-DIVFAC SEMINARS 2023-2024

21 November 2023, 4-5.30pm, Lightfoot Room, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

The talk will focus on the complex and, at times, contradictory encounters of Moravian missionaries, a Protestant group from Saxony, with enslaved Africans. The early period of Moravian missionary presence—between the 1730s and 1760s—differed from subsequent periods because later periods lost the original attempts to establish spiritual equality. A close reading of the various documents allows one to detect forms of active protest and creative agency on the part of enslaved people that were fostered, wittingly or unwittingly, by the Moravian missionaries.

More information here.

by Dr Daryl Ireland

CCCW-DIVFAC SEMINARS 2023-2024

31 October 2023, 4-5.30pm, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

For the past seven years, the Center for Global Christianity and Mission (CGCM) has embarked on a remarkable journey to recover and preserve a significant aspect of China’s religious history. They have successfully tracked down and digitized more than 700 Chinese Christian posters carried out of China by missionaries and refugees. This invaluable digital archive is poised to revolutionize our understanding of Chinese Christianity during the first half of the 20th century.

The CGCM, under the leadership of Daryl Ireland, has taken a pivotal step in unearthing a rich visual history that was previously lost to time. On Tuesday, 31 October 2023, Dr Daryl Ireland, the director of the Chinese Christian Posters project, will present a selection of these extraordinary prints. During the presentation, he will delve into why these posters are rewriting the narrative of Chinese Christianity in the early 20th century.

More information here.

Prof. David Bebbington, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Stirling, will be speaking on ‘Evangelical Theology in the English-Speaking World during the Nineteenth Century.’

Register at centre@cccw.cam.ac.uk.

*No 5*

Janet Parsons’ background includes many years in Southern Africa but also teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages in Asia and the UK.  In 2009-2011, she trained in South Africa and the U.K. for cross-cultural work in mission.  In 2013, she joined CMS as a self-supporting worker and moved to Africa to teach at Bishop Barham, constituent college of Uganda Christian University. 

Read post *No 1* here.

Read post *No 2* here.

Read post *No 3 here.

Read post *No 4 here.

Please note that during August the Library will be open from 9.00am – 1.00pm only.

In September, our regular operating hours will resume.

Public Lecture by The Revd Prof. John Barton

How far translations of the Bible should adjust the original text to the culture it’s being read in, and how far they should challenge that culture by refusing to adjust it? This is the dilemma familiar to all translators of any text: formal equivalence or functional equivalence. But biblical translators have discussed it more than most, because the stakes are so high. Good translations of the Bible are after all a tool for evangelism (thus Eugene Nida, the father of modern Bible translations), and must therefore be very accurate, yet also read very idiomatically – an almost impossible goal to achieve.

Register to join, please email: centre@cccw.cam.ac.uk

Book Launch

“Georgina Gollock was one of the most influential women in the formative period of twentieth-century World Christianity. In this volume by Ian Randall, she finally becomes visible. Hidden in plain sight, her life of service to the expanding Protestant mission put her in the centre of the major historical developments of the era through to the 1930s. She held major leadership roles in organizations dominated by men, including male clerics. In a colonial context of British imperialism, colonialism, and trusteeism, Georgina Gollock offered a counter-narrative by emphasizing the leadership of men and women in what we now call the Global South.”

‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’. (Matthew 28.18-19a).

Reflection

A few days ago, a business leader told me that, when he began his career working for an international mission organization, he was often prayed for at church. But when he later decided to go into business, those prayers stopped. While his decision was faith-filled, his career change meant his fellow churchgoers lost the motivation to pray for him.

My friend’s story had a familiar ring, from the many similar stories I had heard. The implicit message they carry is that seeking to live out your faith in the contemporary workplace, in a familiar culture, is of less interest to God than you becoming a mission professional in an unfamiliar culture, preferably overseas. Explicit grounds for this notion are often found in Jesus’ words cited above: the so-called Great Commission.

This commission deserves the epithet ‘great’. Its weight is signalled by it coming from the mouth of the resurrected Son of God, as his final words at the climactic end of Matthew’s gospel. It is also signalled by it having inspired Christian mission from the days recounted in the Book of Acts until today.

Yet this final commission echoes the first commission – the charge God gives to human beings at the start of Genesis to use their creative abilities as God’s image-bearers to exercise responsibility and stewardship over the world and its resources (Gen 1.26-28; 2.15; 9.1). Just as the final commission has inspired centuries of global evangelism, the first commission (sometimes called the Cultural Mandate) has inspired centuries of global cultural engagement and transformation.

This evangelism and engagement have, moreover, been most effective when carried out in observance of a third great commission. This is the so-called Great Commandment: to love God with our whole selves, and to love our neighbour as ourselves (Mk 12.30-31).

Through his business career, my friend has had significant spiritual and social impact. This serves as a warning to avoid the trap his fellow churchgoers had fallen into, of allowing our love for the Great Commission to be more evident than our love for the Cultural Mandate and the Great Commandment. We need to love all three.

Response

The spheres that constitute human culture include science, the arts, education, politics, healthcare and business. If these spheres have been radically impacted by individuals and groups responding to the first and final great commissions, in keeping with the great commandment, how will this be reflected in our life decisions, and in our work and leisure this week? 

Prayer

Here I am, Lord, send me. Send me to witness, to engage, and to love. Let me do so amongst my neighbours, both far and near.

Written by Peter Heslam, CCCW Senior Research Associate, and Director of Faith in Business

Published also at Faith in Business