Donald M. Lewis - Global Evangelicalism: Theology, History and Culture in Regional Perspective

This edited volume is the product of years of collaboration involving an international group of scholars. The origins of the initiative can be traced back to conversations in the late 1980s between some of the leading historians of evangelicalism: Mark Noll (then professor of Christian thought at Wheaton College), Edith Blumhofer (then director of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton) and the late George Rawlyk, professor of history at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. A conference on Evangelicals, Voluntary Associations and American Public Life, sponsored by the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals, was held at Wheaton in June of 1991. Mark Noll drew together an initial core of historians to talk about how to advance the academic study of evangelicalism and to share the results of such research with a much wider audience. They included Mark Hutchinson from Sydney, Australia; J. W. (Hoffie) Hofmeyr from the University of Pretoria; John Wolffe of the Open University in England; Richard V. Pierard (then at Indiana State University); and Donald Lewis of Regent College in Vancouver, Canada. The group soon expanded to include many other experts. An initial conference was held in Sydney, Australia, in 1997, and resulted in the publication of A Global Faith: Essays on Evangelicalism and Globalization (Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, Sydney, 1998), edited by Mark Hutchinson and Ogbu Kalu.

In the late 1990s funding was secured for the Currents in World Christianity Project (CWC) based at Cambridge University and headed by Brian Stanley. The CWC went on to sponsor several key international consultations and conferences in England, New Zealand and South Africa. One of the initiatives of the CWC was aimed at producing a single volume of essays that would acquaint a wide international audience with the latest research on global evangelicalism, and it was hoped that this volume would be translated into a number of languages and help many audiences beyond the confines of Western academia to understand this movement. This is that volume.

Our thanks and gratitude must be expressed to the Pew Charitable Trusts of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for the funds that made the Currents in World Christianity Project possible, which in turn underwrote the costs of putting this volume together.

We also wish to express our sincere gratitude to Mark Hutchinson for his work in initially pulling articles together for this volume; in spite of his heroic efforts, after a few years of trying to complete the project he found himself overwhelmed with teaching and administrative duties, and as a result, we volunteered to see the volume to the finish line. There are a host of individuals who need to be thanked for their hard work in reading and critiquing the volume in various stages of its preparation: chiefly Doug Hills, whose administrative gifts were so helpful, but also to Hanna Dutko, Danae Yankowski, David Lewis, Laura Werezak, Tim Proudlove, Matthew Thomas and Paul Gutacker.

Thanks also needs to be expressed to Brian Stanley for his patience with us as we have endeavored to finish the editing process. Daniel Reid of InterVarsity Press has outshone Job in terms of patience with us; we are very much in his debt.

Donald M. Lewis and Richard V. Pierard