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[German Version] I. History – II. Missiology I. History Independent local forms of Christianity and the aspiration to be emancipated from the control of European missionaries appeared early on in the history of the emerging churches of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Examples include the movement initiated by the female African prophet D.B. Kimpa Vita in the Congo during the early 18th century, which temporarily thre…

[German Version] I. The Conference – II. Reception in Asia, Africa, and Latin America – III. Ecumenical Significance I. The Conference The “World Missionary Conference to consider…

[German Version] I. General – II. Latin America, Asia and Africa …

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Church History – III. Survey of the Christian Confessions – IV. Systematic Theology I. Religious Studies For an overview of Christianity at the end of the second millennium of its development, it is reasonable to give a comparative presentation against the background of the world of religion. It must be remembered, however, that “religion” is not an immutable, ahistorical quantity: it is variable and…

[German Version] I. Church History The policy of the state toward the church in National Socialist Germany had met with resistance since 1933, on the part of both Protestants and Catholics. As already demonstrated by the founding of the Pastors’ Emergency League in Berlin (by M. Niemöller), by the opposition to the National Socialist Deutsche Christen at the confessing synods of Barmen and Dahlem, and by the open criticism of the resolute faction within the Confessing Church (voiced in the position paper of the Second Provis…

[German Version] I. Concept, Presuppositions – II. Development – III. Middle Eastern Church History and Historiography – IV. Religious Education I. Concept, Presuppositions 1. Concept The concept of church history has not yet been studied sufficiently, but it is already clear that since antiquity extraordinarily different conceptions of Christian historiography have been in simultaneous competition over the interpretation of past, present, and future. Often the different methodological option…

[German Version] (Oct 6, 1873, Tillicoultry, Scotland – Jan 27, 1962, London), Scottish educationist, missionary, and ecumenist in southern Asia and western Africa. Fraser was born in India, where his father was a high-ranking colonial official. From 1904 to 1924, he was in the service of the Anglican Church Missionary Society in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) as Principal of Trinity College Kandy, and from 1924 to 1935 in Ghana as the founding rector of Achimota College, where, among others, Kwame Nkrumah wa…

[German Version] Christianity in Sri Lanka can look back over a remarkably long history. After a sporadic presence on the island since the 6th century and a continuous presence since the early 16th, it subsequently went through a development that was sometimes in step with the various stages of European colonial rule and at other times took a significantly different course. The earliest reliable evidence for the existence of Christian communities in Sri Lanka is a comment in the ¶ Christian Topography of the Nestorian merchant and writer Casmas Indicopleustes around the year 550. He reported Christian communities on the island of Taprobane, now Sri Lanka, as well as on the Malabar coast of southern India; these Christians belonged to the network of the Nestorian Apostolic Church of the East (Syria: V, 2.a) and recruited their clergy from “Persia.” Unlike their fellow Christians in southern India, these earliest Sri Lankan Christian communities did not endure permanently, …

[German Version] (also called Augustine Chong; 1760, Korea – 1801, Korea), Korean theologian and martyr. Yak-jong belonged to the pioneer generation of Confucian scholars around P.I.S. Hun who – long before the …

[German Version] Non-Christian religions have experienced repeated revivals, particularly after encounters with Christianity. The classic paradigm in the Early Church was the attempt of Julian the Apostate to restore pagan religiosity – an experiment that failed but was noteworthy because in many respects the revived spirit of “Hellenis…

[German Version] I. Europe – II. Asia, Africa, Latin America I. Europe 1. Concept The term “religious disputations” (or “[inter-]-religious conversations,” Ger.: Rel…

[German Version] (Madras). From the mid-19th century, there were repeated calls in Protestant India for a national church to which all Indian Christians would belong, irrespective of their confessional identity. Such efforts led, …

[German Version] I. General – II. History and Culture – III. Religious History – IV. History of Christianity I. General …

[German Version] I. General – II. The West – III. Theology and Practical Theology – IV. Orthodox Churches – V. Asia, Africa, Latin America I. General Churches are built to provide a physical setting for the Christian celebration of the Eucharist, in order to shelter it and also to give it a place of prominence set apart from the outside world. The Bible does not discuss the legitimation and need for churches as distinct structures; historically, church buildings made their first appearance at th…

[German Version] The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) arose in the mid-19th century as the response of the revival ¶ movements (Revival/Revival movements) to changing social conditions in rising industrialization. The assoc…

[German Version] (Apr 21, 1651, Sancoale, India – Jan 16, 1711, Kandy, Sri Lanka), Christian Brahmin, Goan priest and Oratorian. The spectacular resurgence of Catholicism in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) at the end of the ¶ 17th cen…

[German Version] (Aug 17, 1874, Vellalanvilai, South India – Jan 1, 1945, Dornakal), Indian church leader …

[German Version] I. Geopolitical Considerations, Concept – II. History of Religions – III. Modern Asian Religions outside Asia – IV. Christianity I. Geopolitical Considerations, Concept Culturally, economically, and politically, Asia is extraordinarily heterogene…

[German Version] I. 1st to 19th Century – II. 20th and 21st Centuries I. 1st to 19th Century 1. Early Church The concerns of the first centuries of the church were less with the establishing of fellowship than with its preservation – focused in the fellowship of the Lord's Supper – among Christians and congregations (Paul, Saint, Apostolic Council, Clement I (Romanus), Ignatius [Ignatian Epistles], Iren…

[German Version] The modern Western missionary movement led to an encounter with a multitude of non-European societies as well as different models for the resulting cultural contact. These have ranged from the various versions of a tabula rasa theory – which denied non-Christian cultures any intrinsic religious value – to understanding of the need for a culturally authentic interpretation of Christianity. Conceptions such as accommodation (II), indigenization, and contextualization (contextuality: I) display many similarities, but …