| dc.description.abstract | Andrew Walls (1928-2021) "may be the most important person you don't know. "1 During
his life, he was broadly recognized as the doyen of the study of world Christianity-that is, the
study of world Christianity as a single, though multidisciplinary, field incorporating church
history, missions history, missiological theory, and missional praxis. Through his tireless work
with the Centre for the Study of Non-Western Christianity (which he founded at Aberdeen,
then moved to Edinburgh, later renamed as the Centre for the Study of World Christianity)
and with the Yale-Edinburgh Group on World Christianity and the History of Mission (which
he co-founded with Lamin Sanneh of The Gambia, then a professor at Yale), and through his
mentoring of so many leading scholars who take the approach of world Christianity rather than
a traditional Western approach, Andrew Walls is rightly recognized as a principle founder of
the study of world Christianity. This essay reviews the impact of his life and scholarship on
the fields of world Christianity and missions studies and aims to introduce him to Missio Dei
readers who may not be familiar with his work. | en_US |
