New Wine in Old Wineskins

Abstract

This paper reviews the importance of historical studies within the theology curriculum and evaluates some of the perplexities and roadblocks that continue to beset efforts at writing or teaching a global Christian history. It argues that even though recent transformations within global Christianity have stimulated laudable efforts at constructing a new Christian historiography and produced fresh perspectives on non-Western Christianities, developing a global Christian history faces three formidable challenges: the entrenched metropolitan perspective of mission studies, a rigid and outmoded curriculum design, and Western intellectual hegemony. It concludes with a brief examination of credible solutions, including the need for new conceptual models and a new hermeneutic.M y discovery of history as a discipline came rather inadvertently and relatively late in my academic pilgrimage. Not until I took "church history" in college as a lowly divinity student did I discover a boundless fascination with the subject, which motivated me to pursue undergraduate study in general history. The study of history captured my imagination, and its functional elementsincluding the spirit of enquiry, the stimulating rewards of research, and the exciting challenge of probing the complex realities of human interactions, ideas, and events for meaningful insightsprovided fertile ground in which my particular interests and gifts easily flourished. My love affair with the discipline continues to this day; long after my early expectations that everybody else must surely appreciate its allurement had been rudely and repeatedly shattered.The majority of students I have encountered in history courses (at the undergraduate and graduate level) have a chronic aversion to the study of history. Most are firmly convinced that the subject essentially amounts to memorizing or mastering boring irrelevant details and dates, and many have a painful recollection of a history class that deadened rather than stimulated the imagination and had only a soporific Jehu J. Hanciles was born in Sierra Leone and is currently associate professor of mission history and globalization in the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. His current research focuses on migration and mission.

Seeing the World Through African Eyes: A Tribute to Andrew Walls

“…I discovered a deep love of historical study only when I got to college. 5 Historical research held a boundless fascination for me and, along with sociological study, provided deep intellectual fulfillment. Naturally, I was more than eager to explore the African experience.…”

“… 5. Jehu J. Hanciles, “New Wine in Old Wineskins: Critical Reflections on Writing and Teaching a Global Christian History,” Missiology: An International Review 34, no. 3 (2006): 361–82. …”