Unless you have been living in a cave, you have probably heard that there has been an explosive growth of Christianity outside the Western world. A recent study concluded that there are 35,000 conversions a day in Latin America, 28,000 conversions a day in China, and 20,000 conversions a day in Africa. It is, in a word, remarkable. How is this possible? Countless forgotten saints over the past century who have toiled and sacrificed for the sake of the gospel. God has blessed their efforts with the great expansion of Christianity around the world.
Some Names You’ve Never Heard
In their book Cloud of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia, Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom want to introduce you to some of the key believers in Africa and Asia between 1880 and 1980. It is a companion volume to Noll’s The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. While the latter tries to relate the new global reality of Christian experience and faith to the social fabric, values, and events within American history, this book focuses on people and events. American Christians know names such as Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, Martin Lloyd-Jones, Jack Wyrtzen, and Billy Graham, but my guess is that few know of Byang Kato, Simeon Nsibambi, Pandita Ramabai, and Sun Chu Kil (to name a few). The book is broken down geographically, covering Africa, India, Korea, and China, and highlights individuals such as leaders of revivals, church planters, theological educators, and political activists who struggled with colonialism.
Noll and Nystrom have chosen a diverse group, but it shows just how flexible the Christian faith bends to fit different cultures. Politics certainly plays a significant role in the lives of many of the individuals in the book. In one chapter you read about Albert Luthuli, whose nonviolent struggle against multiple forms of discrimination led to him being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. John Chilembwe, however, was killed when he led an uprising against the colonial government of his home country. Vedanayagam Azariah was a moderate voice when India broke from English rule. At the end of the book we find Yao-Tsung Wu, who partnered with Mao Zedong to start the Three-Self Patriotic Church in China. The point the authors are making is clear: Christians have responded very differently to political issues in their desire to serve their Savior.
Cloud of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia
Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom
Cloud of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa and Asia
Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom
As Africa and Asia take their place as the new Christian heartlands, a new and robust company of saints is coming into view. In seventeen inspiring narratives Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom introduce pivotal Christian leaders in Africa and Asia who had tenacious faith in the midst of deprivation, suffering and conflict. Spanning a century, from the 1880s to the 1980s, their stories demonstrate the vitality of the Christian faith in a diversity of contexts.
The authors perform a great service by tying the lives of these individuals with places and events that are well known by Western readers. John Chilembwe raised money from African churches in the United States. Dora Yu is the woman who led Watchman Nee to Christ and was the main speaker at the International Missionary Meeting of the 1927 Keswick Convention. Sun Chu Kil came to Christ reading Pilgrims Progress. He was caught up in the Korean revivals that were covered by the London Times. Byang Kato was part of the first meeting of the Accrediting Council for Theological Education in Africa. Vedanayagam Azariah attended the well-known missions conference in Edinburgh in 1910, asking the Western world for partnership instead of paternalism. Azariah was influenced by Finney’s writings and was happy to work across denominational lines in his work with the YMCA.
By alerting the reader to connections with Western history, readers can better understand how God is working in the world. In an age when there was no Internet, it is remarkable how interconnected the church was and how the Holy Spirit worked in such similar ways.
Influence Over Fidelity
It needs to be noted that the authors have chosen people based on influence and courage, more than on theological unity and fidelity. The authors selected these individuals because they had been “intellectually stimulated, historically instructed and spiritually challenged” by them (13). The definition of what constitutes a “Christian” is quite broad. It is difficult to discern what some of the individuals actually believed. There is mention of “Christian teaching” and “orthodox messages,” but one can’t help but think that for some of them their teaching bordered more on moralism than on grace. It would have been helpful explain what all these people were teaching. The churches (though vast) planted by William Wade Harris became places where the prosperity gospel was welcomed. Cardinal Kung is commended for being faithful to the pope through great trial. Yao-Tsung Wu’s Christology seems to deny the deity of Christ. One wonders what Chinese house church leaders would think about Wu’s inclusion in this book.
While keeping in mind the limits of this project, I would have wished to see someone from Central or South America. The authors pass on Central and South America because they believed tensions between Protestants and Catholics are too much to work through (14). It seems strange that the fastest-growing segment in Christianity is left out of a book introducing us to key figures in Christianity’s expansion.
For readers of this book, you would be helped to also read A God Sized Vision: Revival Stories that Stretch and Stir to get a bigger picture for what is going on. There you will see that the accounts of revival often have similar characteristics, namely a treasuring of Scripture, an exalting of Christ, and personal confession of sin. The individual stories in Noll and Nystrom’s book play this out beautifully.
This book will expand your understanding of the global church. If you struggle with larger history textbooks, but are eager to read individual stories, this book is for you. It is also a helpful tool in engaging those from the countries and cultures you will read about. It is one thing to understand the general history of a country but quite another to learn about the leading individuals who were caught up in political, ethnic, and religious struggles, and to gain an understanding of how Christians expressed their faith.
