CONTRIBUTORS: E. Byron Anderson, K. K. Yeo, Margaret Eletta Guider, OSF, Lester Edwin J. Ruiz, Brent Waters, Namsoon Kang, Luis R. Rivera, and David Esterline. Theological education in the United States finds itself in untested circumstances today. Rapid social change is creating an increasing multicultural, multiracial, and multireligious context for leadership formation. At the same time, international enrollment, cross-border educational initiatives, student and faculty exchanges, and more are connecting US theological schools with a global community of Christian teaching and learning. How do US theological institutions “locate” themselves within this global ecology of theological formation so as to be both responsible participants and creative shapers within it? That is, how do they discern their proper place and role? It is questions like these that the contributors to this volume explore. Building on the decades-long discussion about the globalization of US theological education, this book argues that, in engaging such questions, US theological institutions have much to gain from a sustained conversation with the burgeoning literature on the internationalization of American higher education. This research offers theological institutions a trove of insights and cautionary tales as they seek to discern their rightful place and role in educating leaders in and for a global Christian church. CONTRIBUTORS: E. Byron Anderson, K. K. Yeo, Margaret Eletta Guider, OSF, Lester Edwin J. Ruiz, Brent Waters, Namsoon Kang, Luis R. Rivera, and David Esterline

Can something as simple as friendship have a transformative impact in a divided world? Through a series of richly textured historical portraits and reflections on personal experience, this book shows that boundary-crossing friendships in Christian mission have shaped theologies, built organizations and partnerships, facilitated mission work, and changed attitudes and ways of thinking. This is true in settings as varied as eighteenth-century French women’s work, twentieth-century urban Boston, colonial India, the Jim Crow South, and twentieth-century rural Congo. In all these settings and more, friendship has mattered. Boundary-crossing friendships are, however, not easy. Despite their power, such friendships are complicated by race, gender, ability, class, nationality, and other elements of identity, as this book also demonstrates. Friendships are not immune from the divisions in the world, nor a simple cure-all for them. Still, friendship stands as a powerful testimony to the gospel. Therefore, the book calls for more attention to friendship in the study of mission history and more living out of friendship as a practice of mission. In this way, this book pays honor to Dr. Dana L. Robert as a pre-eminent mission scholar and exemplary friend and mentor to others in the fields of missiology and world Christianity.

Papers presented at a conference held from 10-13th June 1992 at the Union Biblical Seminary, Pune, India.

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The Vanderbilt Divinity School is one of only four university-based interdenominational institutions in the United States, and the only one in the South. As such, its history provides a distinct vantage point for viewing what has occurred in theological education since the latter part of the nineteenth century. In this book, the contributors explore the school's history in terms of four main themes: Engagement with southern culture, present from the beginnings of the university but taking on special significance in the mid-twentieth century around the issue of race; The transition from an institution of the church (Methodist) to an independent and interdenominational school with a liberal Protestant orientation; The development of the modern research university, evident in the establishment of a graduate program in religion in addition to its program for the profession of ministry; From the 1950s, a growing concern with diversity and inclusivity, in keeping with national and international issues and developments both religious and cultural, which has broadened the school's sense of ecumenism and deepened its commitments to social justice. Conflict has played an important part in shaping the history of the Vanderbilt Divinity School, from struggles over initial visions to questions of financial support and institutional control, from local debates over academic freedom to national issues of social justice. Especially noteworthy are the transformations the school has undergone since 1960: the "James Lawson affair," where the divinity school faculty resigned over the expulsion of an African American graduate student who was organizing local lunch counter sit-ins; the impact of social change on the school since the late 1960s; and the contributions of women and African Americans, including their appointment to the faculty.