Friday, April 25, 2008

Top 5 Books on World Christianity

My Top 5 Books on World Christianity
By Martin E. Marty, author of The Christian World: A Global History (Modern Library) posted 4/22/2008 08:49AM

A World History Of Christianity
Edited by Adrian Hastings
The fourteen historians who contribute to A World History of Christianity do what no single historian could do with much detail: write about Christianity in places far from Europe and North America, while doing justice to the places that have engrossed most historians of Christianity.


Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity
Lamin Sanneh
Gambia-born Sanneh, now teaching at Yale, does important work to place the story of Christianity in the Southern world in the minds of Westerners. Disciples of All Nations is the kind of comprehensive work that informed Christians and the community of historians can use as a guide.

The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, Revised and Updated
Philip Jenkins
Jenkins is the exemplar of the "new kind" of church history, which deals with the background to the way the church is "going South." Like Sanneh, Jenkins dramatizes and, some say, over-dramatizes the meanings of this epochal shift in Christian locations and energies.

The Story of Christianity from Birth to Global Presence
Jakob Balling
Balling, a Danish historian, spends as much time reflecting on the story as he does writing his narrative. Sometimes sociological concepts crowd out elements of The Story, but his work will no doubt prompt others to take new looks at power relations in the churches, and help them assess their direction.

Christianity: A Short Global History
Frederick W. Norris
Norris knows where the Christian power shift is taking the church, and helps account for it. For Norris and many other historians (including Balling), the global story in the last two centuries is preoccupying. They provide charters for those who will bring new curiosity to the longer, wider Christian story.

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3 comments:

  1. Never heard of any of these books! :-( I am so behind ... can't catch up with the proliferation of knowlwedge!Not even able to keep in touch with names of books and authors! :-(

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  2. hi Paul,

    I didn't this list to be discouraging but to alert us to the many good and great books out there. Personally I have only read 2 out of the 5 but am greatly blessed by them.

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  3. I know the posting was not meant to be informational and not discouraging.

    Just a personal sense of being overwhelmed by so much that is happening in the world ... which is a good reminder of our need to be humble and realsie we need each other. All the more reason why networking and sharing of information must not be neglected -so thanks!! :-)

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