MOST AMERICAN CHRISTIANS likely don’t know the degree to which the center of gravity of Christianity has shifted from the West to the global South. This reality has failed to penetrate the consciousness of most Christians in the U.S.—and our ecclesial imagination would be transformed if it did.
In the early years of Christianity, Paul wrote to what had already become a global church stretched across the vast reaches of the Roman Empire, from Rome to Corinth to Ephesus to Philippi and beyond. Paul’s epistles demonstrate his clear conviction that the health of the church in one place impacts the health of the church elsewhere or, as he puts it so poetically in 1 Corinthians 12, if one part of the body suffers, then all parts suffer with it.
Paul writes that Christians must learn from each other’s travails as well as their triumphs. The same applies to the church today. There is a great deal that those of us steeped in American Christianity must learn from the global church, particularly from Christian voices in the global South and in places where the church has broken free from the captivity of American nationalism and Western ethnocentrism. In this issue you can hear from a diverse cross section of voices from the global church who offer timely words of encouragement, challenge, and tough love.
I am deeply grateful for the many ways the global church has informed and shaped my own faith journey and understanding of discipleship. From South Africa, I learned to appreciate the power of kairos, which—as opposed to chronos, or “regular” time, as we know it—represents moments that injustice becomes so pernicious that God can be called to intervene in and through us.
In the Holy Land, I learned the true meaning of Jesus’ mandate to love our enemies through the courageous witness of Palestinian Christians who refuse to be enemies with the Israeli government and the Jewish settlers who are seeking to force them off their land. In Zambia, I witnessed firsthand the church’s capacity to move from a posture of condemnation and judgment to one of compassion and justice as it broke the silence around the crisis of HIV/AIDS.
Where would my understanding of discipleship be without Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s provocative call to costly discipleship rather than cheap grace? Where would my understanding of Christ’s call to reconciliation and forgiveness be without Archbishop Desmond Tutu? These and other global Christian voices have profoundly shaped my theology, witness, and discipleship.
While serving as vice president overseeing advocacy for World Vision U.S., I had the opportunity to experience the critical importance and challenges associated with working across the global church. Many Christian international nongovernmental organizations have gone through the often difficult and tumultuous process of internationalizing their governance and decision-making, which often requires decentering power from the United States and sharing it with the rest of the world.
In similar ways, the American church will need to learn how to further internationalize itself, particularly as the growth of Christianity continues to accelerate across the global South. While the road may be at times rocky and disorienting, our faith will be made stronger and our discipleship will be stretched and deepened as a result.
Rev. Adam Russell Taylor is president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community. Follow him on Bluesky @revadamtaylor.
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