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[German Version] I. The term “Ethiopian Movement” encompasses Christian African congregations that separated from Euro-American missions at the end of the 19th century, initially in South Africa, then in other regions of colonial Africa, and who formed a new church organization under black leadership. The history of the African independent churches, which, with more than 33 million adherents ¶ (1985) definitively shape the picture of Christianity in black Africa today, begins with this movement. Wh…

[German Version] The New Tribes Mission (NTM), founded in 1942 by P. Fleming, is an interdenominational organization with headquarters in Sanford, Florida. It supports a worldwide network of more than 3,300 missionaries working among 182 ethnic groups, and operates its own flight program, NTM Aviation. Like the Wycliffe Bible Translators or the Summer Institute of Linguistics, it is dedicated primarily to the evangelization of ethnic minorities in the so-called Third World (“unreached peoples”). T…

[German Version] The term young churches (now outdated) refers to the overseas churches that emerged from the activity of Western missions (II) but – now nominally independent – remain in partnership with them. The term was introduced into discussion of missionary theology after the 1928 missionary conference in Jerusalem; to this day, it signalizes the unequal relationship between the churches sending the missionaries and their “offshoots” in the Third World (III), which are striving to free themselves from Western ¶ paternalism and find a Christian identity in their own c…

[German Version] arose c. 1930 in Jamaica under the influence of the Afro-American nationalist M. Garvey. It is a pan-African new religion that venerates the Ethiopian emperor (Ras Tafari [Haile Selassie]) as the messianic liberator of the black race. The world of the whites is rejected as evil (Babylon). Since the Bible is considered to have been falsified by white Christendom, the black diaspora develops new theological theories, and hopes for a return to Africa (Zion). Special importance is att…

[German Version] (EATWOT) represents the largest ecumenically oriented theological movement in non-European Christianity. Founded in 1976 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, it strives to disentangle theology from the Western tradition and to conceive an independent, indigenous theology (Indigenization). In it are gathered the most renowned representatives of Latin American liberation theology and contextual theologies (Contextual theology) from Asia, Africa, and the ethnic minorities of North America (African, Native American, Hispanic). Various strands of contextual lib…

[German Version] The Mission Academy at the University of Hamburg, since 1957 a foundation under civil law, is a unique scholarly institution in the Federal Republic of Germany, which is supported by the Evangelical Church of Germany (EKD), the Evangelisches Missionswerk, and the department of Protestant theology of the University of Hamburg. It promotes the research plans of theologians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In this way, it supports the regional theological education programs of i…

[German Version] I. History – II. Missiology I. History 1. Preliminary remarks As never before in its history, Christianity has become a “world religion.” Since the middle of the 1980s, the majority of the Christian population of the world no longer lives in the northern, but in the southern hemisphere. This development is the consequence of significant demographic shifts and of the differing growth dynamics of the churches of the North and the South. At the same time, most…