The Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements

      This fall important steps are being taken to launch planning for the first annual consultation of the Center, scheduled for October 2009, and funded by the Henry Luce Foundation.     On October 29 the action committee met with our project consultant, Professor Bryan Froehle of Dominican University, to develop a design for the first consultation. The consultation will bring together from around the globe practitioners of revitalization and scholars representing many disciplines. We will receive the most current data on revitalization events and movements occurring in the world church, in multiple cultural settings. Bringing together the best minds of the…

      The Henry Luce Foundation of New York City has approved a four-year, $300,000 grant to the Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements. The award funds the Center’s research from 2008 through 2011.      The Center will study Christian revival and the revitalization of faith communities in terms of their larger cultural contexts and in dialogue with the world church. The project will comparatively study revitalization movements across time and place. It will involve both scholars and practitioners who are intent upon understanding and extending revitalization within a spectrum of communities of faith and cultural contexts. The…

          This fall the Center's Coordinating Committee welcomes three new members who have recently joined the Asbury Seminary faculty: Kima Pachuau, Associate Professor of the History and Theology of Mission; Steve Ybarrola, Associate Professor Cultural Anthropology; and Thomas Buchan, Associate Professor of Church History (Florida).     The Center has begun forming a broad-based advisory council that will help us achieve our goal of interfacing revitalization research with local efforts in Christian renewal. Members include Philip Goff, Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis; Bill Burrows, editor of Orbis Books;…

      In collaboration with Scarecrow Press, the CSWCRM is publishing a new book series entitled Revitalization: Explorations in World Christian Movements. This series will continue and expand the Pietist and Wesleyan Studies Series edited for several years by J. Steven O’Malley and David Bundy. Categories are being added in Early Church Studies, Pentecostal Studies, and Intercultural Studies.     The first five books in this series, scheduled for publication in 2006, are:Irv Brendlinger, ed., “To Be Silent…Would Be Criminal”: The Antislavery Influence and Writings of Anthony Benezet––critical edition of the published tracts of the early Quaker abolitionist.John Tyson, ed., In the Midst…