The early mornings between Christmas and New Year were spent absorbed in a book: Jehu Hanciles’ Migration and the Making of Global Christianity (Eerdmans, 2021).
With a Foreward written by Philip Jenkins and an opening quotation from Lamin Sanneh, Hanciles had me wandering among my pantheon before he himself had written a word — and now he has joined them. [NB: his earlier book, Beyond Christendom, arrived yesterday!].
As the title suggests he makes a case for migration as ‘the central lens or explanatory key’ (1) in telling the story of the spread of global Christianity before 1500.
At the very least, an explanatory framework that emphasizes ways in which mundane events, marginalized persons, and commonplace experiences shape historical development is deeply subversive of master narratives and constructs centered on use of power (5).
One of those ‘master narratives’ that he subverts is the ‘top-down’ (a Sanneh phrase) ’empire-argument’ which asserts that the spread is due to ‘state action or formal structures of political power and economic self-interest’ (269).
For me it is a second significant subversion, coming one generation after the last one. That one was about breaking out of the Eurocentric way of telling history. This one breaks free from the dependence on a story that hovers around those with power and focuses instead on ‘the largely unstructured, boundary-crossing movements of Christians in countless migrant flows’ (419) — because this is how Christianity spread. ‘Every Christian migrant is a potential missionary’ (418, emphasis his) and the ones appearing most often prior to the sixteenth century are people like ‘captives or slaves, government administrators or agents, the military, merchants and religious specialist or devotees’ (26).
The link between migration and global Christian expansion is as pivotal and profound as its neglect in the historical study of Christianity is perplexing (418).
I want to shower you with cool discoveries, but I am worried that it is might turn out to be a waterfall. Let’s see how we get on. In the meantime I entreat you to front-load your forgiveness…
The biblical story
This is a good place to commence, highlighted by the chapter entitled “Theologizing Mission: From Eden to Exile” (78-137). Scroll through the characters yourself. There are a lot of migrants. Abraham and Joseph, for starters. ‘The book of Genesis could sensibly be renamed the book of migrations’ (89). Hanciles’ analysis of Babel was so different (82-88): ‘the multiplicity of languages, peoples, and nationalities dispersed throughout the world reflects divine purpose, not divine punishment’ (87).
The divine response is corrective because human intent (non-migration and universal cultural sameness) collided with divine purpose. The builders’ self-preoccupation (v. 4, “for ourselves’) constrasts sharply with the divine purview (vv. 8, 9, “the whole earth”). This clash of perspectives is embedded in the storyline: preservation versus propagation, tribalism versus pluralism, singularity versus multiplicity. From this perspective, the divine plan for humanity is not one language but a plurality of languages, not one location but global dispersion, not a single name or cultural identity but a multiplicity of cultures (87).
So then are Pentecost and Babel similar, not just different? I digress. Hanciles’ point is that ‘the biblical tradition and message would be meaningless without migration or migrant activity’ (88) … and this ‘often serves a redemptive purpose’ (91). There is ‘theologizing’ to be done. The experience of being an outsider emerges as a metaphor for the life of faith.
The people of God are redeemed through migration … because the migrant (outsider, stranger, foreigner) status exemplified the experience of dispossession, vulnerability, and exclusion that gave potency to faith and sharpened consciousness of divine action and protection. The election of migrant-foreigners or outsiders was not only conducive to faith; it also made Yahweh’s unconditional love and redemptive grace manifest (123).
The exile becomes significant, as it ‘provided impetus for cross-cultural missionary engagement or witness’ (118). Everyone’s favourite passage, Jeremiah 29, came as a ‘theological bombshell’ (121) at the time:
… it instructed the displaced migrants to transfer their prayers and prospects from Jerusalem to the pagan city. They had become foreigners in a strange land, away from the land of their ancestors and the place of worship; but they were still enjoined to pray to Yahweh, call on his name, and “seek him with all their heart” (Jer 29:13). So, Yahweh was not a tribal or national god, confined to a particular territory (like other gods). He could be approached and could be found, indeed fully worshipped, anywhere—even (from a Jewish point of view) in a pagan land, the place of exile and captivity (121).
Just because every generation makes its own movie of the Exodus is no excuse for losing sight of the Exile as we do. It keeps popping up in Hanciles’ story and is such an evocative metaphor for the mission challenge we face today.
Nothing much changes with the New Testament. The pages on Jesus are beautiful (123-127). The incarnation is ‘a veritable act of migration or relocation’ (124). ‘Galilee, in a word, epitomized foreigness or otherness. That it became the primary place of ministry for the (Jewish) Messiah points to the border-crossing, migrant-outsider status intrinsic to the divine mission’ (125).
To put it plainly, the mission of God starts on the margins (emphasis his). In sociological terms, margins signify the vulnerability, powerlesness and otherness intrinsic to migration and migrant existence … down the centuries, the faith birthed in the ministry of Jesus would chiefly spread through migration. Largely due to the role of Christian migrants in the cross-cultural transmission of the Christian message, it recurrently and inescapably penetrates new socities fron the margins (126).
And then it is on to the book of Acts (127-137) and beyond…
Drawing on the biblical text and the story of the Rwanda genocide,
Hanciles brings a message on ‘radical forgiveness and remarkable faith’.
The translation principle
This one lies in the legacy of Lamin Sanneh (in whose honour, in the year of his surprising death, I posted three blogs: here, here and here — with the last one engaging his ideas on translation). But it kept popping up as a significant part of Hanciles’ story as well, largely because it places ‘premium emphasis not on the values of the missionary but on the recipient culture‘ (67, emphasis his). Where this principle was present (for example, in Persia and England) the spread was more sustainable, when compared with where it was absent (for example, parts of the Arab story).
It is also worth noting that vernacular translations of the Bible in Africa allowed direct interaction between indigenous understandings and the biblical message in a way that bypassed or undermined foreign missionary transmission of the Christian message sheathed in European culture and Enlightenment assumptions (59).
… migration remained indispensable for cross-cultural expansion; and the principle of translation embedded in the Christian message rendered the missionary (regardless of status) an outsider in every encounter with non-Christian peoples. Successive translation of the gospel into new cultural contexts warranted pluralistic forms inherently subversive of efforts to absolutize the faith within a single cultural system … (and so) migration played a key role not only in Christianity’s expansion … but also in its theological development (178-179).
… the indispensable need to convery the sense and meaning of the message using the language (ideas, categories, and idioms) of the recipient indigenous culture establishes the compatibility of the Christian faith with all cultures. Whether in Europe or among the multitudes in the vast reaches of Asia, vernacular translation made potential converts active collaborators in the conversion process and underlined the indispensability of local resources for religious change (415-416).
‘Bypassed … theological development … active collaborators’? This stuff is all just so cool. “What a God we have”, as the song expresses it. I wonder if the principle has significance in more spacious areas of translation — for example, the translation into digital formats?
I’ve often said to students over the years that my favourite sentence (or two) outside the Scriptures is the one penned by John Stott in The Lausanne Covenant: “… through (the Scripture) the Holy Spirit still speaks today. He illumines the minds of God’s people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes and thus discloses to the whole church ever more of the many coloured wisdom of God.” Still lovin’ it! Isn’t it just so beautiful? Well, the Spirit had a little helper — translation.
In other words, crossing cultural frontiers is not only a prerequisite for the spread of the Christian movement; it is also the means whereby the worldwide community of faith increasingly experiences the fullness of the gospel … Migration, therefore, does more than facilitate the cross-cultural expansion of the Christian movement; it often provides the impetus for historic transformations of the faith (70-71).
Lamin Sanneh died suddenly in January 2019.
Here is an event at Princeton that looks to honour his contribution.
Hanciles speaks from 34.20 until 50.10.
The role of women
In the early English story (6th-7th century), ‘christian wives and royal brides’ (273-281) played a strategic role. They ‘journeyed to a new home in distant lands to marry foreign husbands’ (275). There is a Bertha and an Ethel (which almost knocked me off of my chair because those are the names of my grandmother and her only sister!). Bertha comes to Saxon Kent and her ‘devout Christian presence … undoubtedly prepared the ground for King Aethelbert’s conversion and the Christianization of Kent’ (279). A generation later, something similar happens in Northumbria with Ethel and King Edwin. Extracts of letters from two different popes to these two queens are included and I never imagined such words coming from a pope’s pen: ‘delay not then to strengthen your glorious husband’s love of the gospel by continual exhortation … you never cease lending your aid in spreading the Christian faith’ (279, 280). Although ‘Queen Bertha’s role is muted in the records’ (293), (her) piety and practice almost certainly played a vital role in the establishment of Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons of England’ (278-279).
In “Mongol Wives and Queen Mothers as Migrant Missionaries” (386-395) this theme returns! Two women in the story — Sorkaktani-beki (d. 1252) and Doquz-khatun (d. 1264) — are ‘devout Christians’ (388). The former was mother to not one, but three Khans (Mongke of the Mongols; Kublai of China and Hulegu Ilkhan of Persia). Dorkuz married Hulegu and under her watch Christianity was ‘revitalized’ in Persia. Largely because of her influence, a minority Christian population found itself ‘on the ascendancy’ (390) after six centuries of ‘largely oppressive Muslim rule’ (390). She ‘shaped the tenor and trajectory of Christianity in Persia for at least a generation’ (390). However, none of the Khans became Christians and soon after the death of Dorkuz, the first one converted to Islam.
If you are searching for a middle name for a daughter, go no further than Dorkuz, Sorkaktani, Ethel, or Bertha — and have your family connected meaningfully with history :).
‘The paradox of otherness’
Authors often place a quotation, all on its own, on the page opposite the Table of Contents. Hanciles chooses to use this statement from the Epistle to Diognetus:
For [Christians], any foreign country is a motherland, and any motherland is a foreign country.
This statement hovers over the book’s central argument, as well as landing in it on multiple occasions. It provokes, doesn’t it? What does it mean? The second part asserts that Christians, especially as migrants, will always tend to be marginalized cultural outsiders — foreigners, even in their motherland. However, with the first part, there is also a ‘household of God/holy nation’ (using 1 Peter language) going on which creates a solidarity that ‘alleviates the migrant’s experience of alienation (167), enabling any ‘foreign country’ to be as a ‘motherland’. This is something of the ‘paradox of otherness’.
So central is this to Hanciles’ story that three paragraphs from the end, he writes these words:
For countless communities of Christian migrants down through the ages to the present day, a lived faith not only forms part of a strategy of survival (meeting the need for solidarity and belonging) but it also shapes interaction and engagement with the wider society. The migrant experience makes poignantly manifest what may otherwise be muted in the life of the church: otherness is foundational to outreach (419, emphasis his).
If ‘three paragraphs from the end’ doesn’t grab you, how about we try the final sentence?
When all is said and done, the rise of Christianity as a world movement has been predominantly through the agency and activity of migrants—individuals and communities living as strangers and outsiders in foreign lands (420).
The gospel is carried forward my cultural outsiders, ordinary people living close to their neighbours. It sounds a lot like the paradox inherent in being light and salt, remixed by Peter in 1 Peter 2.11-12 and Christian communities ever since. “Witness through With-ness” (147-153). ‘The tremendous growth of Christianity in the Roman Empire was mainly due to unregulated “missionary” effort of ordinary believers’ (147).
Ordinary believers. Cultural outsiders. As I lean in and listen to the secret of mission in ‘the West’, forgive me if I can be led to conclude that it is more dependent on elite believers aiming to be cultural insiders. And yet, here is the church in another time (prior to 1500) — and we could add the church in another place, as I hear churches in the Global South also bearing witness to this paradox — pleading with us to think differently and to live distinctively. It will take a lot of courage, grace, wisdom and imagination. It becomes a ‘de facto form of proclamation’ (419).
After reading this book, we went off on a week’s holiday, only to find ourselves hosted by a woman, in her 70s, in retirement, living beside a gorgeous lake, who has grasped this ‘paradox of otherness’. Maybe she wouldn’t express it in this way! But she has her way of ‘witness through withness’. And while she and I would have a few theological Is left undotted and Ts left uncrossed … we were in awe, prompting the aspiration, beyond inspiration, that is needed.
The bulk of the book (chapters 4-10) ‘explore specific historical periods and contexts’ (8). I have not flowed with that structure so much, but here it is (to whet your appetite!):
4. Christianization of the Roman Empire: The Immigrant Factor (141-183)
5. Frontier Flows: The Faith of Captives and Fruit of Captivity (184-214)
6. Minority Report: From the Church in Persia to the Persian Church (215-262)
7. Christ and Odin: Migration and Mission in an Age of Violence (263-312)
8. To the Ends of the East: The Faith of Merchants (313-355)
9. Gaining the World: The Interlocking Strands of Migration, Imperial Expansion, and Christian Mission (356-401)
10. Beyond Empire (402-420).
Exhilarating! One of the books of the decade for me (and there have been a few). My pantheon is taking on a distinctly West African hue, with Sanneh (from The Gambia), Hanciles (from Sierra Leone) — and, at the moment, I am also trying to get my head and heart around Bediako (from Ghana).
I did miss the Latin American story and it looks like more of the African story is in his earlier book, Beyond Christendom, which now sits just a few feet away… but let me conclude with these reflections on the East Syrian Church (which includes Persia) in the days after Dorkuz.
Yet, the tragic misfortune that befell East Syrian Christian missions in Asia ought not to distract from its striking historical significance. Unaided by political authority, cultural power, or social status, East Syrian Christian migrants depended on their individual skills or mercantile activity to participate in diverse societies … The success of these diverse and wide-ranging missionary endeavours also owed something to the spirit of East Syrian Christianity: a religious community defined by migrant existence, habituated to life as a minority faith, attuned to outsider witness, and shaped by ethnic plurality (an attribute that became even more pronounced as it spread among the people of central and eastern Asia). Everywhere, East Syrian clergy and laity acknowledged, even celebrated, the authority of non-Christian authorities and built communities that combined missionary-mindedness with religious coexistence and interdependence. The contrast with the Roman Church or Western Christendom, with its distinctive vision of religious uniformity and intimate alliance of cross and crown, could not be more striking (399).
Is it any wonder that Syria and Iran, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, sit atop my bucket list…?
The NFL (American football) is in the midst of its playoffs at the moment.
One of the phrases they use is “a coaching tree”, meaning a seminal, transformative Head Coach,
with various assistants alongside — and then these assistants go elsewhere to be Head Coaches
and the ‘tree’ takes shape. In reality it is just 2 Tim 2.2 embedded into sport!
Here the coaching tree develops around Professor Andrew Walls as Head Coach.
He died in October 2021. This clip has Hanciles, ‘an unrepentant Wallsian’, participating
in a service to honour Andrew Walls — and he speaks from 30.50 until 48.30.
A tear or two
This book impacted me at another level. Grandparents (and parents) in both Barby’s family and my family were missionaries in Asia. So I am a missionary-kid. That sense of being an alien, or foreigner, is an identity I’ve carried with me all my life. We MKs belong everywhere, but nowhere. Our world is creating more and more people like us. It is not that uncommon. But my story is intensified a little bit. Apart from a move from Auckland to Invercargill (which is a wider cultural chasm than it sounds!), it was not until I was 36 years of age that I lived in the same place for more than five consecutive years … and all the shifts until that time (with that one exception) were between continents, not just cities or countries. The sudden exit from India, due to Covid, has had me living in this space again, as an exile in New Zealand!
I love 1 Peter. It is such a letter for our time. Understandably, the way Peter speaks of his readers as ‘strangers … scattered’ (1.1) has always resonated with me. But, more recently, God drew near to me, in that healing way that he has, and showed me complementary truths in this same verse, and letter. I am not just a stranger, but ‘chosen’ — chosen by God (1.1). I am not just scattered, but gathered — gathered to God and to his people (such central truths in the letter).
This book touched a similar area in my life. I am a migrant. And, as a migrant, I take my place in this enduring and glorious story. But I also ‘theologize’ about it, discerning God’s call into the ‘paradox of otherness’ and trying to be more like that elderly woman by the lake, with God’s help.
nice chatting
Paul
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Posted in Bible, book review, christian mind, church, family, langham, leadership, mission, spirituality, travel
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This is fantastic, Paul, thanks for taking the time to give us such a full summary and so much to think about.
Thanks, TKR — so pleased you found it helpful … and to hear from you.
best wishes
Paul