The Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements

      A common aspect of all revitalization movements is their connection to the spiritual dimension of life. In fact, outside the West such movements often are responses to colonialism or to the paternalism sometimes associated with Christian missions. One of the themes of modernity in its present globalized form is the naming of the secular and its separation from the spiritual side of life. Resistance often takes the form of asserting the unity of life, including recovering local control of expressions of spirituality.  New Religious Movements theory arose in the 1970s from culture-change studies in anthropology and an initiative for…