Introduction

II" I. I .,dl .IN 111'I'iouslyOSthe jihadists do, becoming the "church

11111II ,"11" III I he ori ginnl sense of the phrase, without the military,

way.
I ""Pll'I.5 asks what a reinvented, postmodern,
global evan111,11\ III Christianity would turn out to be. It outlines four R's of
" Chl'islianity that is faithful to the Great Commission in today's
Illohopol11o cosmopolis. It calls for a Christianity that is radical,
r'd~1Iional, revelatory, and "rhizomic"-a word that Gilles Deleuze
deployed to characterize the new global, postmodern organizations
that the church must emulate. It contrasts the radical relationality
of Christianity with the transcendental moral collectivism offered
by current globo-socialist visionaries along with Islamism (the new
and aggressive form of political Islam) all of which are vying for
adherents.
Chapter 6 deals with a subject that is usually scanted by Contemporary theological writers--eschatology
or the anticipation of the
"end times"--even though pop eschatology for some time has been
all the rage. In its eschatology the global commitment of a faith
is sealed. The chapter contrasts the eschatologies of Christianity
and Islam, Eschatology not only frames the motivations of various
peoples of faith but also charts the field for the expansion of faith
in a global setting. A new eschatology is emerging that envisions the
radical relationality of the Christ who is returning, the GloboChrist,
one that will reactivate the summons of the Great Commission in
this day and age.
Chapter 7 takes a look at both current advocates and critics of
what is normally termed "postmodern Christianity." It finds both
versions wanting in key respects, mainly because of their Western
parochialism, which can be both overt and subtle. It concludes that
to understand the dynamics of future faith, we must truly think
globally even if we act locally.
Hid hi II pONrlllodcrn

Globopomo
The Planetary Postmodern Moment

The speed of light does not merely transform the

world. It becomes the world, Globalization is the
speed of light.
Paul Virilio

Christianity's Postmodern Moment

After centuries of strife between orthodoxies and heresies, religious wars over sectarian issues, and the multiplication of denominations founded on different interpretations of Holy Writ, sacrament, morality, and tradition, the West is no longer the Christian
West in any recognizable guise. Christianity has passed from the
West to the "rest" of the world. Christianity is no longer merely
a Western phenomenon but is instead a global one. As Christians
we are now all part of a new body of Christ, the GloboChrist.
GloboChristianity is the decisive trend of the late postmodern era
that is sweeping us beyond the postmodern. While the increasing
tension in the American churches between moderns and postmoderns has deteriorated into the latest and greatest variant on
the tireless and tiresome battle of social styles and political values
that have come to be known as the culture wars, global Christians

23

25

24
are laying down their lives-as
Jesus called them to do-for
fell""
believers in the most extreme situations.
The issue is not wherlu-i
one should go to church anymore, or whether church is "relevanr ",
it is about whether one can go to church without being imprisoned,
beaten, or tortured.
Christianity
as a motivating
cultural force in Western civilizn
tion, mainly in Europe but also to a surprising degree in the United
States, is largely spent. Yet all across the developing-the
so-called
postcolonial-world,
Christianity
is rapidly gaining both traction
and surprising momentum.
This slow Christianizing
of countries
previously non-Christian-or
decidedly anti-Christian,
in the case or
the former Communist
bloc-at
the same time that secular market
economies are also taking hold cannot be explained simply as the
result of Occidental precedents and influences. Indian Christianity,
for example, looks a lot more like archaic Hindu devotional movements than like Roman Catholicism or mainline Protestantism,
Latin
American Pentecostalism,
which is undermining
the centuries-old
alliance of regional politics with the Catholic clergy, resembles more
the messianic religious nativism that challenged Spanish colonial administrations
in the seventeenth century than it does the nineteenthcentury cartel of the church and the ruling European oligarchies.'
Chinese Christianity may soon reach ten percent of the populationapproximately
the same portion of Christians in the Roman Empire
when Constantine
converted in the early fourth century and made
the fairh of Jesus's followers into the official state religion-and
has
almost as many complex and diverse characteristics
as the culture
and politics of Asia's great dragon (China).' In Africa, Christianity
1. See, e.g., R. Andrew Chestnut, Born Again in Brazil: The Pentecostal Boom and
the Pathogens of Poverty (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997); David
Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Euangelical Growth (Berkeley:
University

of California

Press, 1990); Andre Corren

and Ruth Marshall-Fratani,

cds.,

Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism ill Africa and Latin America
(Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2001); Joel Robbins, "The Globalization
of
Pentecostal and Charismatic
Christianity," Annual Review of Anthropology 33 (2004):
117-43; Virginia Garrard-Burnett,
"The Third Church in Latin America: Religion and
Globalization
in Contemporary
Latin America," Latin American Research Review 39
(October 2004), 257-<59.
2. See David Aikman, Jesus in BeIjing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and
Changing the Global Balance of Power (New York: Regner y, 2006); Stephen Uhalley and
Xiaoxin Wu, eds., Chitta and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future (Armonk, NY:
M. E. Sharpe, 2001). For historical overviews, see George H. Dunne, SJ, A Generation

111111

IIII)"I(

.11"111
\1<I,ll
111111"111,"1

influential force-perhaps
surpassing even Western
in promoting modernization
and the development
and communications
systems that we assume are

,,1 II" "III growth of globalization.'

III lolli,,, Iii Y in general and Christian missions specifically have
'10 oIl"VOI
in world history that seems as unprecedented
as the
'I .bu !lUll ion of Caesar's
realm during the first three centuries of
,'111"""' era. That change came through the strange and disIh 1111 Roman cult from Palestine centering on the crucifixion
111111111 'l'CI ion of a mysterious
nobody now known to history as
I ~H' ,tI Nnznrcth. Let us call it the church's postmodern
moment.
,"11 II Y 10 carping old-guard evangelicals, becoming postmodern
!!tli
Hlle Bohemian
lifestyle choice, or heretical outrage, among
, Illy !tlld "hirty-something
young theologians, even though many
In 11 lililil 1 hat mantle unfortunately are living up to the caricature
Ifll~',,1 (Ill them. Becoming postmodern
means that we all, whether
111,,'il or not, are now going global, which is what that obscure
111., 11'111
ury sect leader from Palestine truly had in mind.
I h,' postmodern moment in Christianity
arrives at a time when
I, Ijtl~l,'Icommand to his followers to "make disciples of all nations"II" "" culled Great Commission-is
having a profound impact be1,",,11 he geographical zone in which Christianity
was spawned and
I'" w 10 maturity. Postmodernity
not only coincides with the advent
ul II genuine global Christianity, it also is the propulsive force. How
dl! we account for this incredible turn of events?
lhcrc are a number of obvious and not-so-obvious
factors that are
"',ponsi ble for the emergence of a postmodern
GloboChristianity,
II", furmation of an authentically catholic faith in Christ, for whom
I lu-re is "no east or west" as well as "no south or north,"
as runs the
1')"lOn.The new GloboChrist is neither the Jesus historically pictured
rhrough Western eyes nor the variety of formerly indigenous Christs

"I

II/

(,';llIIts (London: Burns & Oates, 1962); Suzanne W. Barnett and John King Fairbank,
I 'tsinnin Christianity: Early Protestant Missionary Writings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

, lmvcrsiry Press and The Council on East Asian Studies, 1985).

J. See Richard Gray, Black Christians and White Missionaries (New Haven: Yale
I Inivcrsity Press, 1990). For further insight about the new African Christianity, see Allan
Anderson, "New African Initiated Pentecostalism
and Charismatics
in South Africa,"
JUllrnal of Religion in Africa 35 (2005): 66--92; Birgit Meyer, "Christianity
in Africa:
From African Independent
to Pentecostal-Charismatic
Churches," Annual Review of

Allthropology 33 (2004): 447-74.

26

GloboChrln

from sundry native traditions who perhaps often had more pagall
than biblical traits. Nor is our GloboChrist
the ecumenical fusion 01
various evangelical, orthodox, liberal, liberation, or race-based theoideologies that have been elaborated from the fertile, constructive'
minds of seminary-trained
Christian professionals
and academics.
The coming of the GloboChrist
is far better appreciated by anthropologists and historians of religion, who happen to be specialists in
cultural sign-systems and the various subtleties of the symbol-making
processes, than it is by church theologians.
One must de-theologize
the complex legacy from different denominations
about missions and
evangelism, even to a certain extent the now-fashionable talk about

"rnissional" Christianity in a postrnodern context.

Much

of the missional

post-Christendom

and "emerging"

talk about

27

I 'I"\UIII

l'itHIIH.t..:rnism

as a historical and cultural phenomenon-as

philosophical,
theological,
or intellectual worldview
" I. 1IIIII,II1y construed
by American scholars-has
been defined
II" r unt cmporar y Russian political scientist D. A. Silichev as the

i 1,,,,,III):l

I L\ h,111

"modernist Eurocentrism" is rapidly being "replaced with

1",,,,,11 polycentrism."

'Wildlhl.'l'
,"'111

Today, "globalization"

is a much-used

slippery term, but it is clear that whatever it represents,

I he

midst of it. According

,tid \ unununity

to Silichev, globalization

"is a

minus a world state and world governance; it is

, N, I III which ideas about

1111 11'111';.'"

the guiding and the guided have no real

A more useful definition has been provided by Ellen

She characterizes it as a "long-term process of connection and

Iwdorrnation"that "sets in motion a living, expanding, and highly
Hili VI'II network of cross-border flows" from goods and services to
1'11'1'1<- and ideas." What do globalization and postmodernism
have
III lilt,

evangelical

is much more parochial, Eurocentric, and less

radical than even so-called progressive evangelicals tend to think.'

The idea of post-Christendom
often turns out to be simply a current
version of what H. Richard Niebuhr termed the "Christ of culture,"
in this instance post modern urban culture.' The truly radical shift
presently under way is the deconstruction
of all cultural Chrisrs
through the interpenetration
of a welter of highly modernized social
configurations
with differing religious practices by the power of a
gospel message that has little theological baggage on this new global
turf in comparison
with all the conceptual
and symbolic freight
the same discourse has acquired in the West. One can guess that
the same power was at work in the first-century
Levant. Although
Christianity
initially arose as a sectarian movement that appealed
primarily
to Jews in their Diaspora in the Roman Empire, it was

able to overleap-even apart from Paul's missionary genius-vast

cultural chasms in a brief time span.
4. For a good overview of what missional Christianity means, see Darrell L. Guder,
Missional Church: A vision for the Sending of the Church 'in North America (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998).
5. Take, for example, Stuart Murray's well-known book Post-Christendom (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2004). Murray talks extensively about the decline of the church
in the West and advocates a kind of return to the Radical Reformation legacy of the
sixteenth century, particularly the Anabaptist movement, from which his own heritage
springs. He "reirnagines" a post-Christendom
church that includes "poets and mystical
dreamers" as opposed to technically trained clergy. He also sees Christianity as a kind of
"re-marginalizarion'' of the faith, as it is already in the West. But Murray says virtually
nothing about the dynamism of a new global Christianity that is going in certain areas
in a reverse direction, from margins to mainstream.

II

III ,II) with each other?

Everything.

They are not cultural

or moral

, I" 11,,'s that peoples and individuals in different societies everywhere

1111 I he

planet casually

make.

til I he same time, the same peoples and individuals do not have
illI' c.rsy option of deciding not to be postmodern any more than

IIII'Y

can simply

elect to send a message between New York and

or to travel from San Francisco to Singapore
Ily -rcarnship the way it was done a century ago. As we know with
",,' case of the Amish, entire ethnic or religious groups can refuse
'" deploy certain up-to-date technologies out of concern that their
lu-licfs and values will also be severely compromised.
But no one can refuse to be posrmodern any more than one can
u-solve to live completely as people did in the seventeenth century,
unless we are talking about hermits or geographically
isolated tribes
III the jungles of Southeast
Asia or New Guinea. One of the critical
connotations
of posrrnoderniry,
according to Silichev's definition,
IS that globalization
coincides with localization.
And previously
localized, or parochial, habits now have a worldwide fascination
und currency. Increasingly uniform economic and communication
111)1
<walla by telegraph

6. Quoted by Igor Petrov in "Globalization

as a Postmodern Phenomenon,"
Internationai Affairs: A Russian Journal of World Politics, Diplomacy and International

tcelaticne 49 (2003): 127.

7. Ibid., 129.
8. Ellen Frost, "From Rockets to Religion: Understanding
paper, European Union Studies Center, October 6, 2000.

Globalization,"

working

28

29

Ctobo Chrln

systems are matched-ironically-by

1,11111111;
"lid the creation of new symbolic boundaries that are
,I "" 1,Wirily erased in the twinkling of an eye--or the launching

distinct and particular cultural

expressions, even if none of them can he considered "native" 01

"traditional" any longer. An obvious example is the vast array 01

_1,11111Cl:1ry
media campaign. Globalization is no longer about
where so much as it is about whatever and wherever,
III! Illilp is no longer even the territory, because neither map nor
111'\\

ethnic foods that have become available to global consumers from

Kansas City to Berlin because of the transnational flows of capital
investment and high-tech marketing.

Postmodernization

II Ilhl

'"111) ,,,II :lily longer be defined or delimited. For example, in rhe

"1 ,',111or the first decade of the new millennium, Europe looks
" III" I he Middle Ages than it did only a few years ago. The change

ludl'

and Globalization

tI'i

According to the twentieth-century French postmodernist philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who recognized this sort of trend long
before social theorists did at the opening of the new millennium,
globalization is a feature not only of cultures and economies but
also of the very tools of communication
we use to understand one
another. Verbal, visual, behavioral, and structural complexes of

signs-studied
by various specialists under the rubric of the science
of semiotics (from the Greek semeion for "sign")-become
"globolocal," insofar as they impart certain mixed messages

that secure

for different peoples a sense of personal identity and uniqueness,

when all identities throughout the world are up for grabs. The visible
processes of globalization make us aware of the erasure of all fixed
linguistic and social boundaries

"reterritorialization."

Globalization

is at once the abolition

of ter-

of a "united states"

1 III

my, before sovereign states existed, territories were generally

hy where the presence or military influence of a certain prince

Illdu IH' obvious, so a thousand years later the entire patchwork is
'I ",lly becoming deterritorialized by mobile labor and intricate pat-

11111

II

111'111(1I11'Uralexchange. We really know where Germany "is" only

I HI.ljl' ,I certain language
is spoken there and certain various tourist
IIII1II I HI1lS arc there. No longer is there a British Empire on which "the
HH m-vcr sets." But the new empire of English as the lingua franca
1111 ,dll'ommercial
transactions is vastly more extensive than when
I lIiI,'1\ Victoria raised her scepter and nations cowered,
1\111what is true of consumer products and services is also true
III 1J,I'irspiritual counterparts. The globalization of religion is in-

'I""

that is now occurring.

In the 1980s a global polling organization tried to discover what

was the most recognized face on the planet. The result was startling.
It was not the face of President Reagan, the pope, or even Chairman
Mao of China, who had just recently died. It was not an iconic picture of Jesus or the Buddha. It was that of Colonel Sanders, founder
of Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants that were now ubiquitous
throughout the developed and developing worlds. Kentucky Fried
Chicken, a product with a narrowly regional name when it was
introduced into the market with all the cachet that might imply, is
now simply KFC, which doesn't even communicate the fact that the
product it sells is poultry.
The face of the colonel and the familiar brand abbreviation have
no reality in themselves. They are "pure signs," what the post modern
French philosopher and media theorist Jean Baudrillard terms "simulacra." Deleuze calls this total transformation of linguistic meaning
the play of two complementary processes: "dererritorializarion" and

to do with the recent implementation

1111111""
known today as the European Union. Just as in the elev-

HIIII

.ihlc from the globalization of the marketplace. And as in the

kct place, certain consumer products tend to catch on more than

1I1111'rs.
During the height of the Cold War, in the West and in the
III" "I world of Russian military power and diplomacy, both godless
iI,III'I'ican capitalism and godless Communism--celebrated
during
I ht' death-of-God movement in the mainstream Protestant seminaries
I" lite 1960s-assumed that they had rendered religion obsolete. At
11111 1 irne

the newly perceived beginnings of globalization were intt'I'IHctcdas Westernization, equaling modernization, which equaled

ularization. A God-diminished modernizing world seemed ready

run roughshod over all forms of strong religious faith, which
WI'!'e supposedly confined to enclaves of cultural backwardness in
lite Indian subcontinent or the American Bible Belt.
Bura funny thing happened during the march of a now-economically
uucrdependent humanity toward a brave new world of triumphal
secularity. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 was not so much an
enduring victory for democratic capitalism over Marxism as it was
I he first loud report in the clamorous
collapse of the vision of a

Nt'l
III

31

30
secularized world and a religionless global politics to which WestCIII
pundits and policy makers had considered themselves to be the sol,
legitimate heirs.
This epochal event was followed by approximately a decade (II
heightened planetary prosperity fostering what turned out to h,
a false consensus that globalization meant seamless integration
of peoples and ideologies powered by digital computer networks,
surging market economies, the withdrawal of immigration bani
ers, easier and more convenient forms of travel, and bourgeoninu
systems of speed-of-light telecommunications. This new secularist mythology found numerous adherents, the most celebrated of
which was New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. In the
first edition of his runaway bestseller The World Is Flat, Friedman
proclaimed that the world five centuries after Columbus was besr
again perceived as it was in the fourteenth century. By the provocative metaphor of. a "flat earth," Friedman suggested that the
West's former political, economic, and military dominance had
been suddenly and seriously challenged by the low-cost workforce
and entrepreneurial dynamism of the developing world. Friedman
cited the obvious examples of China and India. But he saw the
"flattening" of the global economic horizon to be an unavoidable
development, with uncharted consequences for the future.
Looking back, we cannot by any means conclude that Friedman got
it all wrong. But what he left out, at least in the first edition published
in 2005, was the way in which the religious factor, particularly radical Islamism, was starting to undermine the expectation of a global
secularist utopia. In his most recent rendering of the world-is-flat
thesis, Friedman makes the point that religious terrorism, particularly radical Islamism, is as much an output of globalization as the
confluence of political and economic practices. Friedman writes:
"Though we didn't notice it at the time, there was a discordant note
in this exciting new era. It wasn't only Americans and Europeans
who joined the people of the Soviet Empire in celebrating the fall
of the wall. ... Someone else was raising a glass .... His name was
Osama bin Laden, and he had a different narrative.??
But Friedman still tends to see radical religiosity more as a fly
buzzing on the screen door than as a deeper disturbance. The struggle
9. Thomas Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History
tury (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005), 58.

of the Twenty-First

Cen-

i 1111 '1\1'11\ Sf rains of fierce religious neoconservatism, includ, 1111111',

I Will Serbian nationalist orthodoxy to al-Qaida's
11111 ~~\ldllstthe West to militant Hindu nationalism, is not
II 11\" ",,'I'C blip if we carefully consider what is happening
I" " ,,,!lilY.The idea that religion is not resisting globalization
III II 1111 11 ISlending a whole new verve to national and ethnic
"I" 1111'<
hilSbeen offered by Vinoth Ramachandra. According
IIII' 11"".11':1, the "globalizing processes both corrode inherited
II II Ii IIld p...:rsonalidentities and, at the same time, stimulate
II dllillion of particular identities as a way of gaining more
I III Illjlll(';l1ce
in this new global order."!" Ramachandra points
, ill II I ,h";s,ianity is itself a different sort of globalizing leaven
I Ii", IN I he whole loaf. He has in mind the way in which a new
II I
"identity politics" uses indigenous faith to counter the
"I" 11'''11 inroads from the West. Christianity, he argues, appeals
,I,,,,,, who feel disinherited by both secularization and the new
hl,IIIIIM IHII ionalism-or
in the case of Islam, transnationalism. It
"1'ld,,'~ IIpowerful dose of human dignity, intentional community,
lid 1!'\'lmtl~d cmpowerment where otherwise a lethal combination
Ii, 1IIIonlicexploitation and cultural caste discrimination would
1'1' \",1. "The church is the only truly global community," RamachanII, Willes, "and it is largely a church of the poor."!'
"," I he postmodern configuration of religion at a global levelI Iii II"i:II' faith or otherwise-is
not as straightforward as it may
qq'I'UI' :,1' first glance. Postmodernism, as the very term implies, is
!111!I,:OlllCS after modernism. Modernism has come to be associated
1\ II h I he European Enlightenment
of the eighteenth century and the
11,11'111 ific assault on traditional religious conviction that gathered
I'l't'din the late nineteenth century and reached its climax in the
"dd twentieth century. To its detractors-both
religious and secuI", postll1odernism is routinely vilified as a cult of unreason and as
1I"VIIIga tendency to take excessive liberties with language. It is also
[un tided-quite wrongly-as
a degenerate form of moral, cultural,
," philosophical relativism. The sundry stereotypes in Western so, u-t y of the postmodernist betray deep-reaching secular prejudices,
1',"11 among many self-professed Christian believers. Post modern-

II"""

10. Vinoth Ramachandra, "Global Religious Transformation, Political Vision, and

( hristian Witness," International Review of Missions 94 (October 200S): 482.
II. Ibid . 487.

32

33

Globo( IIiH

ism is frequently satirized or condemned in such circles as a type 4.1

juvenile outrageousness, a cultural theater of the absurd.
But the global shifts that bear the stamp of the postmodern h.l\,
a quite different look and feel to them. In many ways these shill
can be construed as taking issue with the assumption that to gJn
balize is ipso facto to secularize. This same caution applies to II"
Islamist phenomenon as well. Islamism is generally dismissed ,"
an effort to bring back the Middle Ages, but careful analysis of IIII
phenomenon itself indicates the opposite. Islarnism, or more tech
nically re-Islamization, in the view of French social theorist Olivh-r
Roy, is a distinctive third-world reaction to the European version
of secularism as it plays itself out on the international stage. Til,
Islamists "want to bridge the gap between religion and a secularized
society by exacerbating the religious dimensions, overstretching lr
to the extent that it cannot become a habitus by being embedded ill
a real culrure.t'F Islamism is both desecularization and a new type
of secularization at the same time, because it decouples the Musli III
religion from its historic and cultural base while creating a style
of globalism rivaling that promoted by the West, one that at least
champions the sense of non-Western identity in the same way thai,
paradoxically, Christianity often now does in the postcolonial era.
Contrary to the famous argument of Harvard political scientist
Samuel Huntington-right
after the Soviet Union unraveled, he
predicted a "clash of civilizations" where the legacies of the Wesl
and the Middle East would find themselves on an unstoppable collision course-the
conflict is turning out to be one between those
who assert the antireligious values of modernism and the Enlightenment on one hand and those who find ways of repackaging old
religious symbols for contemporary political purposes on the other.
The genuine clash of civilizations is "between the religious and the
non-religious," not between the different religious cultures."
12. Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 40. For related research see Johan Meuleman, ed., Islam
in the Era of Globalization (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2002); Ali Mohammadi, ed.,
Islam Encountering Globalization (London: RourledgeCurzon, 2002); Stephen Verrigans
and Philip W. Sutton, "Globalisation Theory and Islamic Praxis," Global Society 16
(2002),31-46.

13. Gregory Mcllcuish, "Clobalised Religions for a Clobalised World," Policy 21

(Winter 2005): 20. See also Robert Weller, "Afterword: On Global Nation-States and
Rooted Universalisms," European Journal of East Asian Studies 2 (2003): 322-27.

'.... III ",,,nco of Religion

, II" III)W deceased Jacques Derrida-the

grand old man of
" 1"1""1 who discerned back in the early 1990s, right after
11","11111111
thesis"
"
began to grab headlines, that something
1,1111',1
was "foot. Long before anyone in the West had even
I ,I I 1"""., bin Laden and seven years before hijacked planes
d Ni-w York's World Trade Center, Derrida took his post"1'" 1IIIl'lIectuai revolution one step further by proclaiming
II
1411 1101 about "deconstruction,"
whatever kind of freight
",I" '''')II~ht that word still carried, but about the "return of

11,,1,,"<, ..
of the religious, according to Derrida, is inextricably
h what is conventionally termed "globalization," and
tI I Ii II td,1 himself calls "globalatinization."
The latter expression
",I I 1111
odd to those of us who prefer to regard globalization
1111
dly :IS "Westernization" in the broader connotation of the
1,1 11111
l)crrida makes a tacit historical comparison that has
1111H.jflIlS
implications for any forecast about what is coming for
iii W nJoh:ll
Christianity. Westernization, as we know, is driven
1111Iicrrida, following French academic convention, describes
IIII' u-chnoscience," the synergy between practical science and
I, til wloprncnt of far-reaching and advanced communications
IHltllo,~y.Tcle-technoscience, as the twentieth-century historian
111,,1"loynbce stressed, is the present principle of world unificaI. 'II IIIIhe same way that the might of Roman legions two millenII III')hrought about the consolidation of the civic and economic
11'11,\1rues of the European and Mediterranean realms. We are now
III I 1.11'\ nnd wave of latinization,
which, as ancient history makes
I, II, ,1,,1not really succeed until Christianity began to grow its
11 ~jplt'itllalshadow-state within a state, The Constantinian
age
1" 111)1 SO much a dramatic break from the pagan past as it was
I 1",IIlll'drecognition on the part of the Caesars of where the new
1,,,111 y for a disintegrating Roman Empire was vested.
1111.:
post modern era, Derrida suggests, represents such a second
WitVI' because it all comes down to the economic and social forces
"" 11110
play at the end of the Cold War that on a global scale have
"I
III
Ihe
integration of the cultural and economic-though
not
1
",'. ,'<sarily the political-order
of things. Derrida regards the postIIHldcrn world order as a veiled Latin imperium, a Fourth Rome in
lit. It I Hill
.. 11111 WII

34
the language of classical empire-speak."
any "Roman"

35

GloboCIIIIII'

empire, according

to Derrida,

11,"10111

The primary purpose "I

is "pacification."

In

few centuries before and in the period immediately after the biul.
of Jesus, Rome's

influence

spread as a consequence

of the pervasiv,

civil and internecine conflicts marking the breakdown of the nl.]

koinonia established by Alexander the Great. The new postrnodciu
world empire has been forged, perhaps fortuitously, by the ubiquitous
clash of economic regimes everywhere on the planet, wrought hI
the collision of capitalism with Marxist socialism.
Nevertheless,

it was not capitalism

per se but tele-rechnosciem

II II
III

of nations

I, It II It Y t hat their pagan masters could not fathom, was an ex11,01IllIs fundamental religious convention of merging spiritual
, .11111' with a demand for political loyalty. The Roman insistence
llilillll< I olcrance, which early Christianity then and radical Isla-

HllhlWddrlYs

I I, II,

in the new empire that has triggered

14. In classical historical parlance, the empire of the first four centuries was the
First Rome, Byzantium the Second, and imperial Russia (which in the Slavic domains
appropriated most of the heritage of Byzantine orthodoxy, particularly after the fall
of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453) the Third. Of course, the French and German
emperors of medieval Europe, beginning with Charlemagne, fashioned themselves "Holy
Roman" emperors, and there is some evidence that the Abbasid caliphs of Islam, based
in Baghdad, modeled themselves after the Caesars, although the comparison was far
more un-Islamic than Constantine's assumption of power as a "Christian" emperor
was un-Christian by the standards of their day. Finally, there is also, at least in the late
1970s and early 1980s, some suggestion that the Soviet politburo began consciously to
adopt the older language of the czars as the Third Rome and to view Russian Communism in that light.
15. Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar {New York: Routledge,
2002),79.

have both rejected, was part of this equation.

IHISimodern religiosity is intricately enmeshed with the

1,11111111<"" according to Derrida, because global capitalism funcI' 11111 lively like Roman rule in a bygone age. "Religion today al''', II will, tele-technoscience, to which it reacts with all its forces.
111111", one hand, globalization; it produces, weds, exploits the
I'll 1I1111d knowledge of tele-mediatization; neither the trips and

the return of religion.

The field of this war or of this pacification is henceforth without limit:
all the religions, their centres of authority, the religious cultures, states,
nations or ethnic groups that they represent have unequal access, to be
sure, but often one that is immediate and potentially without limit, to
the same world market. They are at the same time producers, actors
and sought-after consumers, at times exploiters, at times victims. [At
stake in the struggle] is thus access to world (transnational or transstate)
networks of telecommunication and of tele-technoscience. Henceforth
religion "in the singular" accompanies and even precedes the critical
and rechnoscienrific reason, it watches over it as its shadow. IS

1111 Y ideal of global citizenship. During the first century the

1111111 of Caesar worship, which the early Christians resisted

under the guise of global communications and the consumer-driven

market economy that was the decisive factor in "winning" the Cold
War, as far as such an analysis might go. We might coin a different
tcrm to describe this process: "globe-electroWcsternization."
Tlu
end of Communism paved the way for genuine empire. Ironically, il
is this pacification

points out, the word religion comes from the Latin

IIIlng 10 "bind" or "obligate." The empire was founded on

Itllwh 01 religious practices and religious observances as a way
II.u 111"1 hnic communities into a much larger civic encomium
l'it ,.llItlUl'S refer to as Romanitas, which was similar to today's
lilt

1111

, ,

I, ,II 1111III',.j :lcularization

of the Pope, nor the interstate

dimensions

, d" 'Itushdie affair,' nor planetary terrorism would otherwise be

"""," Yet religion at the same time is hostile to this technologyIII ,II I"()I)..!.;1l1ization
of the world. It constitutes an "autoimmune"
" "I III, whereby instead of protecting the new world "body" from
01,,,,, I'lililOgens that would destroy it, it attacks this very world.
lr 'Ii III IS immediately,

simultaneously,

declaring

war against

that

,,"" Ilivcs it this new power only at the cost of dislodging it from
,1111',,, opcr places, in truth from place itself, from the taking place
I ", 11'111 h. It conducts a terrible war against that which protects it
1111 hy ,hrcatening it, according to this double and contradictory
immunitary
and auto-immunitary."16
The "return"
of
IIp,ll)11 is actually a resurgence, a violent reaction to the relativizing,

IHh
I

1111'1.;:

',,,,1>11 lCi'l.ing,and "liberating" effects of modernity.

I Ill' "me point is made, though less technically and philosophi-

diy, hy Friedman. Friedman acknowledges what Derrida discov-

'Ii" " decade

before him. According to Friedman, the "flat world"

to a level playing field for all economic parties. But "the
1",11"11[.\ field is not being leveled only in ways that draw in and su1" 1I""pOWera whole new group of innovators. It's being leveled in a
I1llIIlIl1ts

1(,. Ibid., 82.

36

37

Glob .. 1 III'

way that draws in and superempowers a whole new group of ""I"

IIiL

frustrated, and humiliated men and women," such as al-Qni.l.,

Friedman tends to view religious militancy in the way seculnu.i

IHOllill

and fund-raising techniques that come with

economic territory. Shah and Toft conclude:

III .lIt hI! :llld

Ii, I I luu oul breaks of politicized religion are temporary

,"Ih, >'Dildto secularization was plausible in 1976, 1986,
l'I'ht I !)(.l:iy, the argument is untenable. As a framework for

political economists do, as outrage against perceived worldly III

justice. Friedman mainly documents what Derrida predicted "',"
before Osama bin Laden launched his first strike against the Kh()j,,11
Towers in Saudi Arabia in the mid-1990s.
As an article for the prestigious Pew Forum by Timothy Sa II "" I
Shah and Monica Duffy Toft put the matter, it is not clear 11""
those who tout the familiar globalist, or "globalatinist," model (II ,
world made safe from upheaval by the economic pacification of II"
religious impulse have really "gotten it." The caption for the artu Ii
makes an observation that anyone who has closely followed glolu!
politics and trends in at least the past decade could easily mnk,
but which has often been resisted by the culture of the secular nell'
media. "Religion was supposed to fade away as [secular] dernocr.u
spread. Instead, it's booming around the world-and
often decid
ing who gets elected."" As part of a string of factoids, the arru l,

predicting the course of global politics, secularism

~,IIIJ\ly unsound.'?"
till hdllk with secularism "God is winning," as the title of
I, I. Idl'I'~CS it, what does that really mean concretely, and what
Hljl 111111

" III"", docs it have for global Christianity,

particularly evangel iI" I 110,"" y, which far more than Roman Catholicism has brought
, lJ",1I y of new believers into its fold? Shah and Toft lead off
1111, I" hy citing the victory of Hamas in the last Palestinian
I iii dlltl ~ivc considerable attention to the rise of Islarnism in the
hili WIII'ld.Obviously what is happening in the Muslim sphere,
I

ptl)jmrncl

antipathy toward modern secularism

has been a

I "II 11'111 I hroughout the modernization of the Middle East, is

I _11J"'lliciollysymmetrical with what has been happening with
i 11 Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Because secularism

goes on to report that "the period in which economic and political

modernization has been most intense-the
last 30 to 40 years-s-hu-,

11,1111111)'

witnessed a jump in religious vitality around the world." Chrisrianiry

and Islam, the planet's two largest faith communities, have expanded
at a rate exceeding population growth. According to the article, the
trend toward religious growth has been deepened by an explosion

"' Ii", Wcsl'-in the view of Islamists with a defilement of the sacred

of new constituencies "with traditional religious views."J9 Shah and

Toft dismiss the common view that these traditionalist movements
are some sort of "return to the Middle Ages," as the conventional
wisdom goes. Instead, "today's religious upsurge" can be explained
more as "an explosion of 'neo-orthodoxies.'"

The spread of religion has proceeded in tandem also with a more

aggressive effort on the part of local groups to bring their faith
and values into the public arena. Such neo-orthodoxies (not to be
confused with the well-known brand of Christian theology that
flourished in the United States and Europe from the 1920s through
the early 1960s) utilize sophisticated communications technology
17. Friedman, The World Is Flat, 8.
18. Timothy Samuel Shah and Monica Duffy Toft, "God Is Winning," Dallas Morning News, July 16,2006, Ill.
19. lbid., 4P.

rlw"y" been identified in the Muslim mind with encroachments

",I III""I'ic:t!unity of the Dar al-lslam (House of Submission), of
hi ,llIn polil"ical and spiritualunity-the "return of religion" in that
dill I,. less surprising, even though its militancy, single-mindedness,

",I

\-11

uknce continues to astound casual Western analysts.

I It II Era of Disenchantment
I Ill' demise of the secular ironically did not begin in the devel'1'11ifl world, but in secular America itself more than three decades
ql,I" Amcricans have short historical memory. But we should recall

iii II t hc death-of-God

movement in the mid-1960s, featured in a

of Time magazine in 1965 that marked the
1IIIIh water point of secularist sentiment in this country, was quickly
tulluwcd by the cultural fallout from the disastrous Vietnam War
111.1 Ihe acceleration of violence and social breakdown during the
" ()IId half of that decade. America's era of disenchantment reached
I

<II""" special edition

ln, Ihid., sr.

38

Clobot

39

lu!

its peak with the Watergate scandals, Arab oil embargoes, run"\\,,.,
inflation, and President
Carter's politically
controversial
SIW' , I.
about American "malaise" during the 1970s. This era correspond, II
to a deep-reaching
revival of spirituality in new and unprecedcuu .l
forms throughout America and to a lesser extent in Western EUI'OIII
Everything from the advent of the Jesus movement in Californi.i t
the new charismatics
in Anglo-Catholicism
to the proliferation
"I
strange cults to the emergence of what in the 1980s became know II
as the New Age phenomenon
can be cataloged as key component
of this trend. Commentators
at the time frequently referred to th""
changes, perhaps a bit ambiguously,
as a "third great awakening,'
comparing them to the waves of religious enthusiasm engulfing
America in the 1740s and 1820s. In retrospect much of this shill,
especially when it came to what in the 1970s had been termed, I"
"Asian invasion" of gurus and Eastern meditation practices, could
be attributed to a "reverse globalization" of sorts.
The contemporary
paradigm of globalization
presupposes
th.u
it is something
emanating
principally
from the West, or that it i"
at least a caravan for the transport of Western values, instirutions,
and technologies. To critics of globalization,
the process is often dis
missed as a kind of neocolonialism.
But the initial beachhead against
secularism was made by "missionaries" from the East, mainly spiritualleaders
or monks from India, Japan, Korea, or Tibet who found
a promising market for their teachings, writings, and prescriptions
for religious discipline among young, disgruntled
baby boomers.
These traders in what previously had been perceived to be exotic
religious commodities began penetrating the American market in the
mid-1960s as their standing in their own home cultures, undergoing
rapid modernization,
had taken a tumble. The Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi, who founded Transcendental
Meditation
and won an instant
following because of his role as spiritual adviser to the Beatles, made
the greatest splash during that period. He was followed by the Hare
Krishna devotees, the Guru Maharaj j i, the Rev. Sun Myung Moon,
Bhagwan Rajneesh, and many other renowned or notorious leaders
of what were first called "new religions" and later the New Age movement. It would not be an exaggeration
to say that the resurgence of
religion worldwide had its genesis in this setting, although the first
glimmerings of the Islamist revolt against secular Arab regimes can
also be traced to this period as well. The Islamic upsurge was due
largely to the growing influence of the Islamic Brotherhood-which

II ,IIIIIII,,'red the assassination

I III I

.uul

1'0

the long-term

of Egyptian President Anwar

fallout from the Iranian Islamic

,,,", wi"""

overthrew the shah in 1979.

vdllgdicalism broadly termed "postmodern" these days
II d dill 1111~this American religious revival, which ironically
~ 1lllllllNI I'C;11l1 Protestantism. The same acids of postmodernity
.j 11'1' tnlluence of Protestant denominationalism
all across
I ,IHPfh III spectrum and initially gave rise to the "postdenomiII tI ' IIIl'~:1church-a
term popularized
by Fuller Seminary
III II"I\'I' Wagner-and
the meteoric impact of the new televinn 1',\1111 nisrrics. The present emerging church movement was a
III ,'dll ion to these 1980ish styles of mega-evangelicalism,
but
11l~1'~were also quite similar. The postmodernizing
of world
I,ll "tli y hod its precursors in the de modernizing
of American
hl,ll HI, which can be seen as a sort of nativist spiritual revolt of the
I
II gl.'naation against a highly rationalized
and bureaucratic
I .11 4'dllllsm.
It is no accident that the 1960s hippies made a ro1111" I"llSh out of American
Indians and earth-based
spirituality.
,I" 11111 "1':11 upheaval in America throughout
the 1960s and 1970s
something of a template for what would happen in the
I, ,I''illn~ world, so far as global Christianity
is concerned.
III \\ I

" ..,1.1.,,,

Illuhnl Postmodern Christianity

I 1I1'1'(';
are three essential characteristics
of what we must rec"1'"l/l' :1S global postmodern
Christianity:
decentralization,
deIilqlltl11
ionalization, and indigenization. We know what is connoted
"1 Ih" lirst two terms, but what precisely is implied by the third? By
IIHh)!,cnization" we mean a process by which-if
we read closely
ill,' philosophical
arguments
of Deleuze-universal
concepts are
Itll,'''i~ible only if they are understood
in light of specific circum6111111(;CS. In fact, Deleuze insists that the basic notion of universally
vll1l(.1"scientific" concepts, as ensconced in Greek philosophy and
'" ,,,,rained in the thought habits of the modern West, distorts the
,IIIClcrlying laws of language and meaning by which people actually
I nrurnunicate
and agree with one another. According to Deleuze,
IIlC~lning or signification is located in the singularity of an event. The
r-vcnt, which as a singularity always has a particular location in time
lind space, generates other comparable or connected events down

40

41

GloboCllllll

rnrhc f-ifteenth generation down the line may be gauged

one's genetic makeup.
11'-1 nll\'1 h-ccntur y philosopher
Ludwig Wittgenstein, who
I, 0111111111is! ic analysis, or analytic philosophy, provided an

the line. And the chain of these events, when viewed retrospecrivch,
crystallizes

1111'1111

as a concept.

III.d)I"lI'

Even broad and abstract concepts, mainly philosophical ones, h:I\"

both a genealogy and an ordered arrangement across the spall III
history. They are comparable to what in contemporary marhem.u
ics are known as fractals-forms
or structures that are built by lli,
process of recursion. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defim-s

III 1II1IIIIIIS problem when, by resorting to the more traditional

I, '''Ilil'' IIInpproach coming from the Enlightenment, he tried to

I1I11I

But each snowflake is generated by a rule of recursion starting

with the shape of the original particle. This notion of the concept a,
a kind of historically determined fractal, as opposed to the standard
classical and Enlightenment definition of it as a logically self-similar

examples

it remains self-same,

or identical with

real is rational if its numerous iterations

are produced

by a rule of

development that the new mathematics terms "self-similarity."

The real as a universal truth or object instantiated in a concrete
situation, or sequence of situations, does not have to be the same
as itself. It only has to bear some similarity to itself as it takes on a .

life of its own. Furthermore, the similarity or likeness is measured

by the relationship between the thing in its distinctive circumstances
and moment and its immediate progeny, or replication. Thus a child
resembles his or her parents, but a similarity between an ancestor

was concerned?

II

aunts, uncles, and cousins. In peering at the family

11111111, \X/IIIJ:!,cnstein
noted, one can never find a common property
IHI ,l!tHlllj.!,uisheseveryone in the picture. But one can find a web
HldjhtlVllrS,

idea that persists without variation across the ages, is not merely
a strange, postmodernist
innovation in thought that abandons us

itself. In the postmodernist view of things articulated philosophically

by Deleuze and applied scientifically through fractal geometry, the

nnccpt." He realized at once that they were not the same,

,til, lie fell back on the illustration of what one sees when
1""1,, ,II" family picture that offers a comparison of the physII" III11l'S of not only parents and children but also of siblings.

as human observers have discerned for centuries.

in all its countless

dll' purpose of logic, as far as Wittgenstein

II
I

extensively by geographers and crystallographers, but also to chaos

theory and complexity theory, employed for sophisticated weather
forecasting and geology.
The principle that defines these contemporary scientific procedures
that rely on the mathematics of recursion, in contrast with the older
modernist preoccupation with the logic of identity and formal demonstration, is quite straightforward. In modernist thinking the "real
is rational," as the philosopher Hegel phrased it, if after being shown

which

,,"11,11', I)id the lack of identity, only the presence of similarity,

steps." Snowflakes are fractals, which makes them infinitely varied.

current advanced science, not just fractal geometry, which is used

between certain logical propositions,

"1'1" INI to embody what the eighteenth century had called

"recursion" as "the determination of a succession of elements (n"

numbers or functions) by operation on one or more preceding ell'
ments according to a rule or formula involving a finite number 01

in the shadowlands of irrationality. It also is the key to so much of

1111'
I. nnnccrion

III

I I IIl1ily resemblances that are recognizable yet not reducible to a

lor. One "knows" that these people all are descended from

111101,

"II

I",

gcnetic stock, but one cannot necessarily

!Ill have exactly in common.

"lillie

"II \

stipulate what

cnn one define exactly what that genetic stock actually is. But

NI II

I \. I lOW

that whatever it is, that stock is somehow

incarnate in, or

through, the singular person who shares it. Throughout

lil,l'ller work Deleuze invoked the botanical category of the rhizome
1111",1" explicate this pattern of change. The word itself is derived
11I.lIIII'lIiz"d

1111111 :1

Greek compound

that means a "mass of roots." Rhizomes

.ilways subterranean and promote growth without seeing the

ilfllll of day. Unlike a tuber, such as a potato, which decays as it
til'

I'tlds up shoots into the atmosphere

and sends down roots into the

,,," before it replicates itself below, a rhizome sustains itself and

ends horizontally, often thickening with nourishment for further
",Iowth. Rhizomes can engender both roots and shoots simulrane-

'I"

Hlo.:ly

without ever dissipating.

Deleuze contrasts rhizomic growth

wu h what he calls the "arboreal" (after the trajectory of tree growth).

Rhizornic growth is global rather than local; it is basically invisible
.uid can manifest in different ways in different places.
Deleuze's discovery that a concept can only be construed frac1:llly,genealogically, indigenously, or rhizomically has tremendous
iinplications for grasping what is going on with the new posrrnodern

43

42
GloboChristianity. Westerners cling to the outmoded rnodcruun ,
sumption that Christianity is basically the same, or should I" "
same, everywhere in the world; it is easy for us to miss whar l')\!ll II
is the latest third-millennium installment of worldwide effoll
fulfill the Great Commission. Because the Western Chrrstianh ;
know has for years been slowly dying, or at least sputtering, WI II
wont to suppose that the faith as a whole is in its terminal SI "1\'
But for the past several decades now, data from missions filII I
nizations and demographic surveys have showed a rapid expallNIHII
in the practices and influence of Christianity beyond the West, 1'\,,,
among those segments of the world population where other reliII'"
traditions have dominated in the past. Nor can the explosive gl'l'" II,
of GloboChristianity be attributed mainly to the legacy of Europc.u,
hegemony and colonialism, which has been fast on the wane wild,
indigenous forms of the church are taking over. On a global 5,,11,
Christianity looks less and less like what is taught in historical III
Western sociological textbooks.
In his provocative book Whose Religion Is Christianity? '1'1"
Gospel beyond the West, Lamin Sanneh, professor of missions ,,".1
world Christianity at Yale Divinity School, argues that globalizariuu
and indigenization has brought about a remarkable rebirth of '"I
ancient faith analogous more to what happened during the first thre,
centuries of the Roman Empire than to what took place even afltl
the three hundred years that followed the Protestant Reformarion.
As far as global Christianity is concerned, we are not witnessing 11
reformation so much as a transformation. Just as the Jewish Christianity of the initial disciples morphed radically and dramatically
after Saul of Tarsus had completed his mission to the gentiles and
the temple at Jerusalem had been razed by Roman legions, so world
Christianity is undergoing a total overhaul now that Europe has
become secular, America is engulfed in its own parochial culture
wars, and Westernization has been replaced by indigenization-the
religious version of the world-is-flat hypothesis.
According to Sanneh,
The contemporary confidence in the secular destiny of the West as
an elevated stage of human civilization is matched by the contrasting
evidence of the resurgence of Christianity as a world religion; they
are like two streams flowing in opposite directions. Perhaps the two
currents have more in common than meets the eye, as if the impetus

I, Hhto I" "'l'l 10 fill the void from which religion has been
IIII! tlllHllHIS resurgence elsewhere makes headway in sociII .llljlI11'~1

by secularism. No matter, What is at issue now is

I IllhH' fill II it tUHJ

depth of the worldwide Christian resurgence,

to proceed without Western organizational
III! hnl II I' ncadernic
recognition, and is occurring amid
1.11111111 irH 1 instability and the collapse of public institutions,
, ,III!I 11II11:nl15 to speak of a post-Western Christianity. Even
I, I.b hnvc been unable to comprehend fully, still less to
.,lllIn thll'ly to, the magnitude of the resurgence.t'
11o! I hili ,'It-'I.'IllS

t"

"1''''11'' uut rhnt in Africa in 1910, after the continent had been
"I' 1111,11'" I he spiked heel of colonialism, only nine percent
I.."" IH'I"dace of 108 million was Christian. Many of these
II II .. hOldbeen so for centuries, belonging to the Coptic and
1"111I), t hodox branches of the church. The percentage was
11111 h'.~111:111
half in the early 1960s, when colonialism came to

lid

It 1111 IIdd-1980s, however, Christianity had emerged as the mali 1'111\1011, and the conversion rate was staggering-almost
six
11111111'1'1' YC;HY Yet another trend "little noticed in the statistics,"
1111 II llly,'1, "is a theological one: Christian expansion was virtually
lilli' .II" rhosc societies whose people had preserved the indigenous
""' I,,, ( ;ocl. That was a surprising discovery, because of the general
111111
I h,,' Christianity
was incompatible with indigenous ideas
I "IIjll,,"."lJ In other words, indigenization in Africa has followed
,I>, 1"lIll'rn of Catholicism in the ancient Mediterranean and in the
10111111'1
II Europe of the Middle Ages. Local "pagan" forms of wor11111
,I lid religious discourse are also transformed into expressions
with the gospel itself.
Ih~ primary force driving Christian global expansion-not
just
III A 1,'Il:;\ but elsewhere-is neither Westernization nor the economic
,,,"I11"sof globalization. It is the rhizomic as well as relational power

""."",,,,t

) I. L:.. nin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West
II uoud Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 3. See also Lamin Sanneh and Joel A. Carpenter, The
I h,w,lI,illg Face of Christianity: Africa, the West, and the World (New York: Oxford
1llIlYl'rsity Press, 2004). A similar argument is offered by Peter Beyer, "De-Centering
Ih,llj\IOllS Singularity: The Globalization of Christianity as a Case in Point," Numen

1111.0031,357-86.
u. Sanneh, Whose Religion, 14-15.
II. lbid., 18.

45

44
of the gospel, which, though it cannot be theologically cociifi".III'
one language or culture, turns them inside out. "World Chrisri.n.u
is not merely an echo of [economic 1 globalization. On the connu I,
in some instances new Christian movements are a reaction I() till
ravages and threats of globalization, with concerted attention lit
the value of local cultures and economies, the challenges of SCl< III
dislocation and marginalization, the interests and dignity of familn
and the importance of community well-being. World Christinuu,
is evidence of a boundary-free global economy being witness ",
boundary-hinged communities of faith. "24
The rhizomic and relational power of the gospel is evidenced ill
the overseas work of David Wahlstedt, lead pastor at Crosspoiun
Community Church in Carrollton, Texas. A graphic designer beflH,
entering the ministry, as well as a protege of famed postmodc. II
ministry theoretician Leonard Sweet of Drew University, Wahlsl:e.ll
has turned a traditional Reformed congregation with denorninn
tional identity and modest financial backing from the Evangelical
Presbyterian Church (EPC) into a small but dynamic community
outreach-oriented ministry in the northwestern suburbs of Dallas.
But for Wahlstedt, outreach and becoming involved missionally gocfar beyond parrnering with the Christian social service organization
and other familiar ministries--even the trendy ones-that seek 10
reach an increasingly ethnically mixed and generation ally segregated
expanse in one of America's fastest growing metroplexes. It means
reaching across oceans to Africa's teeming and impoverished populations that are hungry for the gospel, however they can gain access
to it. Crosspointe does not merely send or support missionaries who
annually or semi-annually make a brief home visit and stand before
the congregation to report on how "God is working" far from the
experience of the average suburban professional and their families.
Wahlstedt goes once a year to Uganda and stands in for his own
congregation, building relationships as well as a constant cross-flow
of stories and information between the two vastly different worlds.
Because Crosspointe is not, and does not intend to become, a megachurch, the communities on either side of the ocean have their own
sense of investment in and relationship with each other.
The Uganda Children's Project (UCP), as it is called, was conceived
in 2001 after a Ugandan nurse visited the church where Wahlstedt

1111'
III ( ILlIlunooga , Tennessee. She shared with Wahlstedt
"" ..1111III lnw had passed away and that his children would
II 1111'0 wu h her and her husband. Her biggest concern was
111.111<'1'
husband would be able to provide an education
,hil,I'l'li. She went on to explain that although there is a
HI.lh ! dllf,::l1 ion system throughout Uganda, there are costs
II, ,J \VIIh ,IIl'endance that each family must absorb. Her fam'III I ill\.olllC would not be sufficient to pay the extra costs to
I,. " Ilulrlrcn attend school. An elder at the church in Tennessee
11"'I"IIIS<)I'the children. Within a few weeks the elder learned
lit! I 11 tlI01'C children with desperate need of sponsorship. He
I 1,
for those children, and the project was born. Today,
"" """ren arc sponsored by members of local churches across
1111111'1'''' and in Texas."
Ild'lll'tll'S own involvement grew as the number of children
I, III t 11~1L'1 continued to increase. Within a year of its inception
, II' [our Ugandan nationals administering
the project. The
1,1 1111 III roncd above invited Wahlstedt to join him on a trip. to
IIIII"d,1dllring the summer of 2002. Wahlstedt has been going
i ,',' ,i nee. He and the same elder travel while raising funds and
,",,,,,itip' for the nearly four hundred children still on a waiting
I 1111 1'1111':1 nce into the project. Funds are sought predominately
""'11" I he [PC and personal connections .
. dd,'edt brought both his passion for Uganda generally and
illi I'" uccr specifically when he assumed the lead pastor role at
1""l'ointc. "Our people caught the vision for partnering with
1111, Illi'ision immediately," he writes. Crosspointe is a "huge part')
0111", project insofar as they contribute financially "but in other
I 1I1111liie
ways as well." He adds: "without the support of the church
I. ,,11'l<itip,I would be unable to take time away from my pastoral
111111"
10 raise funds and travel yearly" to Uganda. "None of the
111111'
I spend working with the UCP is counted against my vacation
", "II cloys." The UCP "fits beautifully into our missions strategy.
11111
l~o,,1is to be involved in strategic mission partnerships locally,
1I111011:tlly
and internationally." At Cross pointe "mission" and "rnis'11"",,,,, converge. UCP is tied closely to the vision of Crosspointe,
wit" h rriangulates it both with a growing partnership with Christian

,,"")1"

J.~. The Web site for the project can be found at (www.ugandachiJdrensproject
24. lbid., 75.

IIII~).

46

Glohn! III

Community Action-a thirty-year-old ministry that serves till' I""

through a food pantry, resale shop, vocational training, and 111111
munity health services-and
its own church plant in Los Angl'l,
UCp, Wahlstedt says, "has been a part of my church's missillll.,1
DNA from the day I arrived." It is distinctive from other OVO,"I I
missions because of the "personal nature of the relationship" 1"
tween sponsored child and sponsor." The relationship between dlll,1
and sponsor is paternal and fraternal in many ways. "Many of I I" .,
children are orphans and look upon their sponsors as pa rcrus
Regular letter and video messages are shared and sponsors ree,'!\>
their child's report card each semester. Many of the sponsors 10,,\,
visited Uganda during one of the church's twice-yearly trips. 011"
a very small percentage of funds raised go toward administmlll'l
costs with the lion's share going to the children themselves. Everyo.n
picks up their own expenses. The motto of UCP is "changing Ugand,
one child at a time," which means that change itself is relationnl
and the relationship among the different churches is networked, '"
"rhizomic, "27
If global Christianity is a God-directed cry among the distress 01
those uprooted and displaced by the economies of globalization, Oil
the spiritual side it is meeting fierce resistance as well. The world moy
appear flat these days in terms of investment flows and the exchang
of goods and services, but dark clouds are beginning to roil and roll
across the fruited plain of technology-generated prosperity. If Chris,
tianity is resurgent as a global faith force, so is the new globalized
Islam. Islam's resurgence is due to the same rhizomic tendencies
that we find in Christianity, though the outcome is obviously quite
different. What is the meaning of this dual resurgence that offers
the possibility of a worldwide battle of the titans for the spiritual
future of the planet? We will address this prospect in chapter 4, but
first we must understand better what is signified when we say Christianity is becoming a GloboChristianity. We must understand that
GloboChristianity, a globopomo Christianity, is first and foremost
an incarnational Christianity in which missions and the missional
are seamlessly

interwoven.

De-Signs of the Time

I see Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is

calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which
is at the heart of our reality.
Sydney Carter

I Ii" Incarnational Christian

I I", secret of Christianity's
growth throughout the ages has
oIw"ysbeen its unstinting push to evangelize non-Christian peoples
,'IIlrures. Contrary to politically correct thinking prevalent
II11WII"aysthroughout the secular West, this impulse does not

,,,,I

from some lingering imperial drive of one civilization to

1IIIIIlinJtethe other or even of one religion to dominate over all the
III !!t.'I'S. It originates in Jesus's explicit instructions
to his followers,
whkh tradition has named "the Great Commission."

IIlH'I').!.C

The key passage is found at the conclusion of the Gospel of

M ,II thew. "The eleven disciples made their way to Galilee, to the
III'"llltain where Jesus had told them to meet. When they saw him,
ihcy fell prostrate before him, though some were doubtful. Jesus
I "en

26. Telephone

27. Ibid.

conversation

with David Wahlstedt,

December

31, 2007.

came up and spoke to them. He said: 'Full authority in heaven

"nd on earth has been committed to me. Go forth therefore and
make all nations my disciples; baptize ... [people] everywhere in
thc name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teach

47