(Ebook) An Unpredictable Gospel: American Evangelicals and World Christianity, 1812-1920 by Case, Jay Riley ISBN 9780199772322, 0199772320

(Ebook) An Unpredictable Gospel: American Evangelicals and World Christianity, 1812-1920 by Case, Jay Riley ISBN 9780199772322, 0199772320

Missionaries have often been cast as cultural imperialists, but the evangelical engagement with new movements of world Christianity in the nineteenth century reveals a different process at work. Evangelical missionaries had little ability to control these new movements, which unfolded according to the terms of indigenous cultures and democratization. As a result, missionaries often had to readjust their efforts in the face of these new developments. These dynamics unfolded in this manner because evangelicalism contained within it paradoxes of power, culture, and influence. Evangelical characteristics of conversion, biblical authority, evangelism, and conceptions of atonement placed evangelicals in tension with whatever culture they found themselves in, simultaneously affirming and critiquing that culture. Audience-driven features of evangelicalism made it difficult for missionary elites to control democratized movements. Desires to find effective means to spread the Gospel compelled evangelical missionaries to readjust conceptions of civilization once uncivilized Christians proved themselves to be effective leaders of new movements. An Unpredictable Gospel describes the complex workings of this missionary engagement with world Christianity by comparing four evangelical missionary encounters in the nineteenth century: the American Baptist engagement with Karen Christianity in Burma, the globe-trotting efforts of the popular Methodist missionary William Taylor, African-American missionary efforts in the American south and South Africa, and the decentralized worldwide network of the holiness and early Pentecostal movements.