“Christian Church History in and from Other Parts of the World”

Often, I tell my friends who teach Christian Church history and Christian theology in seminary and divinity schools that God’s global movement in human history did not begin and end with Western civilization. In fact, God has always been at work in various cultures, nations, people groups, ethnicities, and civilizations in the world. He has left his DNA and footprints–that is, his revelation, both special and general–in the multiplicity of world’s cultures and civilzations.

If Christian Church historians and theologians want to be faithful to God’s historic interactions with the peoples and cultures he had created and beyond the European geographical borders, they must affirm in their teaching the diversity of the divine intervention and integrate in religious (Christian/ecclesiastical) education the “other churches’ histories of God” that have graced the soil of other nations and peoples.

Below, I provide a selected list of non-European centered Church histories that record a different but a complementary story of God among his creation and people. At least, these texts will help seminary students to develop a wider perspective of Christian history and better grasp the universality and inclusiveness of King Jesus’ Gospels and God’s historical records in other parts of the world.