Read e-book online Missions and Unity: Lessons from History, 1792—2010 PDF

This learn is the 1st complete historical past of the effect of the fashionable missionary flow at the figuring out of and paintings towards Christian team spirit. It tells tales from all branches of the church: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant in its many sorts (conciliar, evangelical, Pentecostal, and independent).

Part 1, "Historical," highlights the contribution of recent missions to Christian harmony, from William Carey and his antecedents and friends to present-day missions.

Part 2, "Ten versions of Unity," takes an inductive method of historical past, asking no longer "how may still Christians cooperate?" yet "how has the missionary flow helped Christians to interact on the neighborhood, nationwide, neighborhood, and worldwide level?"

Part three, "Wider Ecumenism," broadens the facts to incorporate how the missions circulation has helped not just institutional church buildings but in addition broader society to have crisis for the team spirit of the complete human relatives. integrated here's the tale of the way the Protestant missionary circulation motivated the forming of the United international locations in addition to the drafting of the common statement of Human Rights. The examine additionally covers the movement's influence on Christian attitudes towards, and kinfolk with, individuals of different faiths.

Mission and solidarity is the normal reference paintings within the box for individuals learning glossy heritage, smooth church background, missions, and ecumenics.

"Flowing from a life of scholarship and activism, this well timed ebook on a vintage subject matter might in simple terms be written via Norman Thomas. His panoramic but thorough remedy of 'missions and cohesion' may help to revive this topic to the crucial position it merits in challenge praxis. this beneficial ebook belongs at the shelf of each person who cares concerning the persisted relevance of Jesus' visions for his followers."
--Dana L. Robert
Truman Collins Professor of worldwide Christianity and heritage of Mission
Boston collage tuition of Theology

"It is usually remarked that missionary paintings and efforts of Christian cohesion are vitally associated. What Norman Thomas has proven in those pages is how especially true this is often. i do not comprehend of the other resource that treats the subject of missions and team spirit with similar intensity, readability, and cautious scholarship. This books is a present to missiology."
--Stephen Bevans, SVD
Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD Professor of project and Culture
Catholic Theological Union

"Common participation in undertaking has regularly been the main strong solvent of the ancient divisions among church buildings. but Christians have often disagreed concerning the acceptable technique of undertaking, and should fight to agree even in regards to the objectives of undertaking. the dual subject matters of project and solidarity are therefore intertwined in complicated and ambiguous methods through the background of the Church. Norman Thomas's ebook is a well timed and useful reminder of that ambiguous but inescapable relationship."
--Brian Stanley
Professor of global Christianity
University of Edinburgh

"This ebook is quintessentially Thomas. i do know of not anyone extra aptly skilled or academically in a position to penning this immensely beneficial ancient evaluation of the interstices of global missions and the ecumenical flow. this can turn into a customary reference at the theme."
--Jonathan J. Bonk
Executive Director
Overseas Ministries learn Center

Norman E. Thomas is Professor Emeritus of worldwide Christianity at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, united states. he's the editor of vintage Texts in challenge and global Christianity (1995) and of the overseas project Bibliography: 1960-2000 (2003).