In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450-1990: A Documentary Sourcebook
  • Brian Stanley
A History of Christianity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, 1450–1990: A Documentary Sourcebook. Edited by Klaus Koschorke, Frieder Ludwig, and Mariano Delgado, in cooperation with Roland Spliesgart. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2007. Pp. xxxiv, 426. $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-802-82889-7.)

Syllabuses in ecclesiastical history are making slow progress toward the incorporation of the Christian histories of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. [End Page 741] Documentary sources for the church history of these continents have, however, remained comparatively inaccessible to students. The English edition of this excellent sourcebook, which was first published in German by Neukirchener Verlag in 2004, will therefore be welcomed by many university and seminary teachers.

The editors are to be congratulated on the range of the extracts selected. Each document or cluster of documents is prefaced by a brief contextual introduction and followed by bibliographical information and suggestions for further reading. The extracts vary in length from a few lines (such as the first document, which records the Italian Nicolò Conti's impressions of the "Nestorian" Christians of Malabar in the early-fifteenth century) to three pages (for example, Bernadino de Sahagún's account of the religious dialogue in 1524 between the twelve Franciscans of the Mexico mission and Aztec priests and noblemen). Inevitably, the reader wishes that some documents could be reproduced at greater length: as is the case of the brief extract from the Kairos document of 1985, which is so heavily punctuated with elisions that students will find it difficult to grasp the argument of these radical critics of apartheid. The sequence of documents is, however, frequently illuminating. Students of the genesis of liberation theology, for example, will be led from Camilo Torres to Populorum progressio, on to Medellín 1968, and then to Gutiérrez and Câmara.

A challenge confronting the editors was how to compensate for the overwhelming preponderance of male over female sources, especially in the earlier centuries. In this respect the selection is a little disappointing. The index of individuals includes only four female entries (excluding the Virgin of Guadalupe): Queen Isabella of Castile; Juana Inés de La Cruz, the seventeenth-century Mexican poet and defender of women's learning; Ranavalona I, queen of Madagascar and defender of Malagasy tradition against missionaries in the 1830s; and Gabriela Mistral, Chilean supporter of social Christianity in the 1920s. There is no room for Kimpa Vita (Beatrice), a controversial figure in the Bakongo Antonian movement in the first decade of the eighteenth century, nor for Alice Lenshina Mulenga, founder of the Lumpa Church among the Bemba in the 1950s. The terminal date of 1990 chosen for the volume largely, but not wholly, explains the nonappearance of African or Asian feminist theologians.

The selection of documents maintains an admirable ecumenical breadth, with the exception of the coverage of Pentecostalism in Latin America, which is allocated only two extracts (on Guatemala and Honduras) and introduced by a manifestly unsympathetic commentary, giving the reader the impression that Pentecostalism is of no significance for the liberation of the Latin American poor.

There are a number of mistakes. It is not the case that the East India Company before 1813 refused to allow all missionary activity in its territories (p. 56). Daniel Wilson, Anglican bishop of Calcutta, is referred to as "Henry" (p. [End Page 742] 63).Walter Medhurst was not American but English (p. 83). Henry Morton Stanley was not American but Welsh (p. 195). The Phelps Stokes Fund has become the Phelps-Stoke Institute, and A. G. Fraser has become Frazer (pp. 232–33). Gandhi's first name was Mohandas, not "Mahatma" (pp. 109, 425). There are occasional problems with cross-referencing and indexing: thus the index and the cross-references to Simon Kimbangu refer readers to the wrong documents. It is hoped that these and other errors can be corrected in a future edition, for this book deserves to have a long and useful life.

Brian Stanley
St. Edmund's College, Cambridge
...

pdf

Share