Yale-Edinburgh Group on World Christianity and the History of Mission

Andrew Walls (University of Edinburgh) and Lamin Sanneh (Yale University) founded the Yale Edinburgh group in 1992. The Group’s conferences and LISTSERV facilitate discussion and exchange of information about the development of world Christianity and historical aspects of mission, with special emphasis on the sources for documentation. The conferences are hosted by the Centre for the Study of World Christianity at the University of Edinburgh and the Yale Divi nity School.

The 2024 Yale-Edinburgh Group conference will be hosted by the Yale Divinity School. For more information about the Yale-Edinburgh Group, contact:

Kyama Mugambi
World Christianity
409 Prospect Street
New Haven CT 06511
world.christianity@yale.edu

Yale Edinburgh Conference Registration

The theme is Spirit and the Spiritual: Ancestors, Deities and the Holy Spirit in Church and Mission. Registration is now open for the Yale-Edinburgh 2024 conference. The conference will be hosted by the Yale Divinity School, New Haven CT, 8am 26 June to 2pm 28 June, 2024.

REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED - 18 June 2024

You may use this link to update your existing registration: https://cvent.me/NeALVy

Conference Hubs: Conference participants wishing to join either the Nairobi or Singapore hub may use this registration link as well. The hubs will then communicate directly with scholars wishing to attend via the hub.

There are a variety of accommodation options for New Haven which include several hotels in the area and Airbnbs. Limited rooms are available at conference rates in the hotels listed below.

Yale-Edinburgh 2024 Theme

The Yale-Edinburgh 2024 conference will be hosted by the Yale Divinity School, New Haven CT, 26th-28th June, 2024.

The theme is Spirit and the Spiritual: Ancestors, Deities and the Holy Spirit in Church and Mission.

Missions from the West brought Christianity into worlds with a wide array of cosmologies. Recipient cultures embraced Christian faith while negotiating differing perspectives of spiritual realities. The subsequent transition from missionary Christianity to indigenous faith produced a range of responses to the notion of ‘spiritual beings.’ Through mission, Christianity encountered traditional religions which venerated ancestors, revered spiritual beings, and navigated intricate relationships between deities in a world far more complex than the typical Western experience. From Korea to Brazil, Nigeria to Samoa, France to India - these multifaceted cosmologies continue to animate the Christian experience producing dynamic expressions of the faith. Movements of the Holy Spirit represent another dimension of Christianity. A wide range of pneumatic Christianities populate the long history of Christian expansion around the world.

World Christianity scholarship is deeply enriched through exploration of the historical, theological and missiological implications of these relationships between the Holy Spirit and the Spiritual worlds of Christians across the globe. The Yale Edinburgh conference 2024 especially welcomes contributions that: illuminate the interactions between spiritual realities of recipient cultures and missionary notions of the Holy Spirit; provide historical accounts of religious transformations with respect to ancestors, deities, and other spiritual beings in the process of Christian expansion; enlarge current understandings of local and diasporic perspectives of spiritual beings and their role in Christian expressions; provide comparative studies of missionary approaches to spirits and deities across denominations and across time; venture into ecumenical and interfaith dynamics with respect to spirits and the spiritual; or map trajectories of discourses on the Holy Spirit and other beings in a rapidly changing world.

Please supply an abstract of 250 words to world.christianity@yale.edu by 15th February 2024. Your abstract should clearly state, among other things, the enquiry, method, and historical context in which you situate your paper.

The gathering at New Haven will be in-person. There will a will be a conference hub in Nairobi and in Singapore on the same theme, and on the same dates.

Yale Edinburgh Conference Plenaries

Conference Keynote: We are excited to announce that our keynote speaker will be Carlos Cardoza Orlandi. Cardoza-Orlandi is the Frederick E. Roach Professor of World Christianity at Baylor University. He is an interdisciplinary scholar and historian in the fields of world Christianity and mission studies. The respondent for this presentation will be Esther Acolatse. Acolatse is professor of pastoral theology and World Christianity at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. They will open the conference on Wednesday morning. Their plenary will be beamed to the Yale Edinburgh hub participants meeting in Singapore and Nairobi.

Hub Plenaries: The plenary speaker from our Nairobi hub will be Rudolf Gaisie. Rudolf K. Gaisie is a Senior Research Fellow at the Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission and Culture at Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana. His plenary will be beamed from Nairobi to the gathering in New Haven. The Singapore hub will have a panel of presenters.

Conference Venue

The conference will be held at the Yale Divinity School within a building complex known as the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle on Prospect Street. See the Yale University Map here. The conference registration will take place next to the Yale Divinity School main entrance. The plenary gatherings will take place in the Niebuhr Hall N123 near the main entrance. See the YDS/SDQ map here. There is a major construction underway at YDS. Please follow the signs for directions within the compound.

Meals

In addition to providing for conference materials and logistical costs, your registration fee also provides for some meals. There will be simple breakfasts on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Lunch will be availed on Wednesday and Friday. There will be dinner on Wednesday and Thursday. In case you have dietary restrictions please send an email with the header “Dietary restrictions,” to world.christianity@yale.edu and we will do everything we can to address them.

Andrew Walls Celebration

This year’s conference will include a special 90-minute session devoted to remembering and honoring the late Andrew F. Walls, co-founder with the late Lamin Sanneh of the Yale-Edinburgh Group on World Christianity and the History of Mission. Jim Ault, an ethnographer and documentary film maker, has coordinated this session bringing together important voices to speak about Andrew Walls’ life.

Library Resources Session

Each conference features a resources session, where presenters can give short summaries to highlight resources relevant to the gathering. The contact for this session is our Special Collections Librarian Scott Libson, scott.libson@yale.edu.

Travel to and from New Haven

If this is your first time to Yale you may find general information about getting there from this link. You may also find more information about getting to New Haven from JFK International Airport in this link, and about getting from Bradley International Airport from this link.

Travel within New Haven

Yale University operates a shuttle service for movement within the area. The Red and Blue lines stop right next to Yale Divinity School where the conference will be held. More information about this shuttle service is available here.

Program, Sessions, Presenters

See the conference program, session and list of presenters here.

New Haven Hotel Information

Limited rooms are available at conference rates in the hotels listed below. Rates are available if booked before 1 June. Click the links to start your reseveration at the conference rates.