Transloyalties, Connected Histories and World Christianity during the Period of Decolonization and the Cold War

1945-1970

Frieder Ludwig, Ellen Vea Rosnes, Joar Haga, Marina Xiaojing Wang, Jairzinho Lopes Pereira

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040382134
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christianity

Focusing on the history of World Christianity, this book relates the concept of "transloyalties" to developments during the "Period of Decolonization and the Cold War." This was a time when the terms "loyal" and "loyalty" became more frequently used, not only in the United States, where a "loyalty program" was introduced but also in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Churches and ecumenical organizations had to navigate in this context of new loyalty demands. They had to clarify whether changes in church/ state relations and corresponding changes in their organizational structures were necessary, or whether they affected core identities. Was the restriction or exclusion of Western missionaries a threat to the universal character of the church or a transition to self-governing churches? How did African and Asian churches relate to Western mission societies in the new context? Was the strive for justice a basis for cooperation with socialist governments, or were the concepts fundamentally different? How were denominations organized at a national level? Which forms of church government were chosen? Which denominations could become members of Christian Councils that represented joint interests toward the states? These are some of the questions that underlie the importance of this volume to the study of the history of World Christianity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Changing Conditions and Changing Contours: World Christianity During the Period of Decolonization and the Cold War
• 3 American Protestants and Covert Propaganda in China: Renegotiating Loyalties During World War II
• 4 Testing Lutheranism in a Time of Revolution: The Divergent Paths of Two Chinese Lutheran Church Leaders
• 5 Missionary Kids Among “Worlds” and Loyalties – the Case of Aadel Brun Tschudi (1909–1980)
• 6 Rajah Bushanam Manikam, the First Indian Lutheran Bishop Between Tranquebar and Peking in 1956
• 7 ‘For Want of a Portuguese Soul’: Loyalty/Disloyalty Narratives in the Context of the Missionary Work of American Methodists in Northern Angola in the Early 1960s
• 8 Negotiating a Complex Site of Agricultural Education Within the Malagasy Lutheran Church at Independence
• 9 Umphumulo as a Theological Centre in the 1960s and its International Impact
• 10 “The Wheel of History . . . Relentlessly Rolling Forward”: Perspectives of the German Democratic Republic on Lutheran World Federation Assemblies Between 1957 and 1970
• 11 The End of Missionary Transloyalties in the Ecumenical Movement? the “Humanisation of the Gospel,” the “Frankfurt Declaration of 1970” and the Long 1960s
• 12 Negotiating Loyalties and Taking Sides: Gudina Tumsa and Tsehay Tolassa in Ethiopia During a Period of Change
• Index