Prof. Brian Stanley MA PhD
Prof. Brian Stanley: Professor of World Christianity
Brian.Stanley@ed.ac.uk
+44 (0)131 650 8934
Introduction
- Professor of World Christianity
- Director of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity
My research and teaching interests derive from my conviction that Christianity is most true to itself when engaged in the risky business of mission. A historian by training and inclination, I am fascinated by the processes of change which take place whenever Christianity crosses cultural frontiers - which involve the way in which Christians understand and define their faith as well as the diverse and ambiguous responses which Christian missions have provoked in host societies. I have taught in a variety of theological institutions, and hence my teaching combines the interdisciplinary perspectives of the modern historical profession with the foundational questions which arise from theological inquiry.
Much of my work has been on Protestant missions from Europe and North America in the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Creative interpretation of this controversial movement demands sensitivity to the intellectual frameworks of the missionaries themselves and careful empirical analysis of the complexities of missionary engagement with the various embodiments of European imperialism. I view with a measure of critical distance the various ideological 'isms' which shape much current scholarship in the field of European interactions with indigenous societies. Nevertheless, I regard the emphasis which has surfaced in recent writing on viewing missionary encounters from the perspective of the indigenous receptors as an entirely welcome one.
As the process of the global diffusion of Christian mission becomes de-centred from its former bases in Europe and North America, new intellectual challenges are being posed: the phenomenon of 'world Christianity' is a current reality which presents theologians, social scientists and historians with a series of intriguing and far-reaching questions.
General (Teaching) Competence
World Christianity, the theology and history of Christian mission, contextual theologies, modern British and American church history, ecumenism.
Specialised/Research Areas
The history of Protestant missions from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries; the World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910; modern global evangelicalism; the transition in the early twentieth century from race to culture as a category for describing and interpreting human difference.
Additional Academic Interests
The impact of the Enlightenment on Christianity; movements of Christian revival and renewal; approaches to the study of conversion to Christianity.A fuller publication list is available.
Selected Publications
- The World Missionary Conference: Edinburgh 1910 (Eerdmans, 2009)
- Joint editor with Sheridan Gilley, and contributor of two chapters, of volume 8 of The Cambridge History of Christianity, World Christianities, c. 1815 - c. 1914 (CUP, 2006)
- Editor of Missions, Nationalism, and the End of Empire (Eerdmans, 2004)
- Editor and contributor of two chapters to Christian Missions and the Enlightenment (Eerdmans and Curzon Press, 2001)
- Joint editor with Kevin Ward of The Church Mission Society and World Christianity 1799-1999 (Eerdmans and Curzon Press, 2000)
- The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1992 (T. & T. Clark, 1992).
- The Bible and the Flag: Protestant Missions and British Imperialism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Apollos, 1990)
