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No one doubts that American Christianity has had a profound effect on the shape of world Christianity. It's figuring out the exact nature of that influence that still requires investigation and fresh thinking. University of Notre Dame historian Mark Noll has brought his usual careful research and wisdom to bear on this theme in his most recent work, The New Shape of World Christianity (IVP). Christianity Today Media Group editor in chief David Neff talked with Noll about the myths and realities of American influence overseas.

What have been the most common misunderstandings of the influence of American Christianity in overseas missions?

One version is to see a malevolent manipulation at work as moneyed Westerners determine what's happening in other parts of the Christian world. (For example, some scholars have accused Wycliffe Bible Translators of being puppets of the CIA.) There is certainly some influence from Western Christian money in other parts of the world, but it's nowhere near as important for what happens as what people elsewhere choose to do with their lives.

The other version is to equate missions activity with the growth of indigenous Christianity. Missions activity is almost always a factor in the growth of indigenous Christianity, but it's only a relatively small part of what actually develops as Christian communities in other parts of the world.

When I was quite young, I heard the statement an awful lot that we had "lost China." The loss of China meant, at that time, the expulsion of the Western missionaries. That was an understandable reaction. There had been a hundred-plus years of sacrificial labor that had led to about three million Chinese Christians by 1950. When missionaries were expelled, the only thing people could think was that we had lost China.

But from the perspective of 2009, it's clear that forcing the missionaries to leave was the birth of Christian China. Even though there was tremendous suffering and momentous persecution, what was left was Chinese Christianity, and Chinese Christians knew how to do the gospel in China without the missionaries. In a strange way, losing China was how the gospel took root in China.

You argue that we need to study American-style Christianity if we're trying to understand indigenous Christianity in other cultures. Why?

Much of the world is coming to have social structures like those in which Christian faith grew in the United States. That social structure is after Christendom. The development of Christian communities in the U.S. was the first large-scale effort to found, establish, guide, and nurture Christian communities after Christendom.

Meaning, after state sponsorship?

Yes. You're not relying on too much cooperation with government. You're asking Christian groups to do it themselves. It happens to the Lutherans and the Catholics as well as to the Methodists and the Baptists, groups who were more predisposed to doing that. The crucial thing for world Christianity is that in most places outside of Europe and North America, this post-Christendom situation now defines the arena in which Christian communities grow.

Under Christendom, colonizing powers sometimes tried to keep their missionaries away from the indigenous people. Take, for example, the British in India.

Yes, missionaries were seen as disruptive. It was not just that they messed with local religions, but also, if missionaries were successful, new Christians would want self-determination, and that would be hard to control.

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July 2009, Vol. 53, No. 7