Crossing social, cultural, and religious barriers and making disciples of all nations has probably never been without some level of controversy. This book is an attempt to hit the pause button on this rapid-paced world and to reflect on how we do mission, especially in light of the new layers of complexity that globalization brings. While the contributors engage in new aspects of mission and cultural encounter unique to the twenty-first century, the underlying issues of each chapter are age-old topics that have reared their heads at various times throughout history: priorities in mission, power struggles, perspectives on cultural others, and contextualization. With that in mind, our aims are twofold: (1) to carefully consider issues causing tension and contention within current mission thought, practice and strategy and then (2) to engage in serious but charitable dialogue for the sake of God’s mission and the salvation of all peoples.

Leading evangelical mission experts offer a comprehensive theology of mission text, providing biblical, historical, and contemporary perspectives.

Newly updated and expanded by Christopher J. H. Wright, John Stott's classic book presents an enduring and holistic view of Christian mission that must encompass both evangelism and social action. Through a thorough biblical exploration, Stott provides a biblically based approach to mission that addresses both spiritual and physical needs.

This book represents the first critical edition and scholarly annotated translation of a pioneering report on the predicament of cross-cultural understanding at the dawn of globalization, titled “A Brief Response on the Controversies over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun” (“Resposta breve sobre as Controversias do Xámtý, Tien Xîn, Lîm hoên”), which was written in China by the Sicilian Jesuit missionary Niccolò Longobardo (1565–1654) in the 1620s and profoundly influenced Enlightenment understandings of Asian philosophy. The book restores the focus on Longobardo’s own intellectual concerns, while also reproducing and analyzing all the Chinese-language annotations on the previously unpublished Portuguese and Latin manuscripts. Moreover, it meticulously modernizes all romanizations with standard Hanyu pinyin and identifies, on the basis of archival research, most of Longobardo’s Chinese interlocutors, thus providing new insights into how the Jesuits networked with Chinese scholars in the late Ming. In this way, it opens up this seminal text to Sinologists and global historians exploring Europe’s first intellectual exchanges with China. In addition, the book presents four introductory essays, written by the editors and two prominent scholars on the Jesuit China mission. These essays comprehensively reconstruct the historical and intellectual context of Longobardo’s report, stressing that it cannot be viewed purely as a product of Sino-European cultural exchange, but also as an outgrowth of both exegetic debates within Europe and of European experiences across Asia, especially in Japan. Hence this critical edition will greatly contribute to a more globalized view of the Jesuit China mission.

The Rites Controversies in the Early Modern World is a collection of fourteen articles focusing on debates concerning the nature of “rites” raging in intellectual circles of Europe, Asia and America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The controversy started in Jesuit Asian missions where the method of accommodation, based on translation of Christianity into Asian cultural idioms, created a distinction between civic and religious customs. Civic customs were defined as those that could be included into Christianity and permitted to the new converts. However, there was no universal consensus among the various actors in these controversies as to how to establish criteria for distinguishing civility from religion. The controversy had not been resolved, but opened the way to radical religious scepticism. Contributors are: Claudia Brosseder, Michela Catto, Gita Dharampal-Frick, Pierre Antoine Fabre, Ana Carolina Hosne, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, Giuseppe Marcocci, Ovidiu Olar, Sabina Pavone, István Perczel, Nicholas Standaert, Margherita Trento, Guillermo Wilde and Ines G. Županov.