Church History as Global History

The following is an abstract for a conference paper that I will be presenting in January 2005.

Church history has often been regarded by the professional historians as a quaint hagiographic outpost for the pious. Globalization, along with developments within the historical profession, suggest that the time is propitious for church historians to assume the center. In his acclaimed The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 , C. A. Bayly claims that ?it is no longer really possible to write ?European?Eor ?American?Ehistory in a narrow sense,?Esince even ?local, national, or regional histories must, in important ways . . . be global histories.?E Global history, however, faces not only the postmodern challenge that global history is complicit with global structures of oppression but also the more practical question of what the object of a global study might be. Is global history the history of global institutions? Is it the composite history comprised of local histories? How can myriads of local histories become subplots of a global history without doing violence to the locals? Is there any historical entity of sufficient reach to provide a unified subject-matter for a global history?

If postmodern and postcolonial thought challenges global history in general, it also offers an opportunity to the church historian. To say that the story of history is the story of Christ?s church is to make a profession of faith, but postmodernism has taught us that everyone who claims to discern a narrative shape in history is making a profession of faith, an ungrounded wager on meaning.

From both perspectives, the current intellectual climate offers an opportunity for church historians to press claim that the church is the historical entity at the center of global history. Bayly?s work demonstrates that even the modern history of world religions might be seen as part of church history. He writes, ?It has always been clear that Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism reformulated themselves partly in response to vigorous missionary assault from Christians in the age of European empires,?Eand adds later that Asian religions in particular responded to Christian missionary efforts by adopting the ?missionaries?Emethods of preaching and evangelism.?E As a result, ?they became proselytizing religions for the first time.?E The church thus had an important role in shaping its competitors in the global religious marketplace.

Popular church historians in particular have an historic opportunity to bring church history out of the ghetto, and tell the story of the church as global history.