Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0028646045 ISBN 13: 9780028646046

Verlag: Macmillan Library Reference, 1997

Inhaltsangabe

Book by Anderson Gerald H

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Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions

By Gerald H. Anderson

MacMillan Reference Books

Copyright © 1997 Gerald H. Anderson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780028646046

Preface

The history of Christian missions is indebted to the persons who have served in various ways to facilitate the extension of the church and the faith that it proclaims. Since the time of Jesus, it is estimated that ten million persons have served as foreign missionaries or cross-cultural home missionaries. Many millions more at the home base have worked and prayed and given to support the missions.

The Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions includes articles on 2,400 of these persons in the post-New Testament history of Christianity down to the present, representing Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, Pentecostal, independent, and indigenous churches. In consultation with more than fifty scholars around the world from diverse church traditions, persons included in this work were chosen because they made a significant contribution-often a pioneering role-to the advancement of Christian missions. Nearly one hundred were martyrs. Not all those included were missionaries. Some were involved at the home base in promotion, recruitment, administration, missiology, teaching, writing, prayer, funding, "the diffusion of intelligence," and other forms of missions advocacy.

Despite our best efforts, women are not adequately represented because, until the late nineteenth century, women were often "invisible" participants in missions. Their significant role and contribution (often even their names) are not well documented in the records. Similarly, non-Western workers, while represented here, will be more fully recognized in years to come, as scholars discover accounts of their work. Therefore, the persons included here serve only as representatives of a vastly larger number of outstanding persons in the history of Christian missions.

The importance of this project is twofold. First, today there are approximately two billion Christians-or 33 percent of the total world population in 1997-and this global community of believers has come about in considerable measure as a result of the missionary enterprise. Second, the place of biography in Christianity is biblical and pivotal to the faith, yet there has never been a major biographical reference tool for Christian missions. An important reason for producing this work is that it has never been done before and its availability now will facilitate an understanding of the worldwide extension of the church. The names included here comprise a virtual Who's Who in the history of the expansion of Christianity.

Like most works of scholarship, we have built on the work of those who have gone before us. Nearly all of the articles have a bibliography for further study. Some of the most important standard works are not included in the bibliographies since doing so would involve much unnecessary repetition. Instead, they are listed after this Preface and recommended as valuable sources for further information....

The elaborate appendix and index will be of special interest and will greatly facilitate the efforts of readers who wish to explore particular regions of work, types of work, and periods of missionary service. In addition, the appendix lists martyrs, women, non-Western personnel, and the largest groups represented in this work. The endpaper maps are another useful tool to facilitate the study of where these persons worked; the front map shows the world around 1914 and the back one is current. To read the articles gathered in this dictionary is not only informative and inspiring, but humbling. They are profiles of faith, courage, and sacrifice-testimonies to the work of the Holy Spirit in earthen vessels. Today there is a misconception that the era of Christian missions is over. Actually, there are far more missionaries working today than ever before in history (403,000 in 1997). The difference is that a great many of these missionaries are now sent out from churches in the non-Western world. This great new fact is itself a result, in part, of the missionary enterprise up to the present.

In his 1991 encyclical Redemptoris Missio (The Mission of the Redeemer), Pope John Paul II envisioned-on the eve of the third millennium-"the dawning of a new missionary age," with God "preparing a great springtime for Christianity." Anticipating the twenty-first century as another century of missionary expansion, we recall the injunction of Adoniram Judson, the pioneer Protestant missionary to Burma, "The future is as bright as the promises of God." That is the missionary spirit.

Gerald H. Anderson

Continues...

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Macmillan Library Reference
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0028646045
• ISBN 13: 9780028646046
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 845
• Herausgeber: Anderson Gerald H.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar