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India, of course, is hugely complex, but what was going on with the Catholics in the 16th century and with Protestants from the 18th century on was indigenization. Indian Christians tried to demonstrate to their fellow citizens that Christianity could be an Indian religion.

What elements of American-style Christianity are appearing elsewhere?

The American tendency has been to see authority as self-created rather than inherited; to read the Bible for oneself rather than just to accept biblical interpretation from others; to create organizations to meet a need rather than simply to inherit organizations; to empower laypeople, first laymen and then laywomen, as opposed to being super-clerical; and to use the forces of the market for the church rather than to worry about the forces of the market. The American tendency has been populist, and sometimes democratic, rather than aristocratic.

Another way churches in other countries have become like America is that they've become missionary-sending bodies.

You see that most notably in Nigeria, Brazil, and South Korea. But Northeast India sends many cross-cultural missionaries to the central part of India. Many African Christian communities now do missions work elsewhere in Africa. But then also, and this is a wonderful reversal, back to London, back to France, and back to the United States. It is mostly to diaspora communities, but increasing in a general sense as well.

The big geopolitical reality is that the Western imperial era did not last very long. It lasted roughly from the last third of the 19th century to 1960. All of us who came of age during that period felt that there was something natural about Western control of the world, but that was just a short time. In our post-imperial situation, it's easier for missions theory and missions practice to relate to local conditions and to realize that no one size is going to fit all people.

Years ago I attended a meeting of missiologists from 30 countries. It rapidly turned into 29 countries versus America. They criticized U.S. missions for being too technique oriented, too concerned about measurable results, and too concerned about getting the maximum return on missions investment. Are those aspects of American Christianity going to spread?

I put in the book a wonderful comment that I first read in an Andrew Walls book, a comment from Kanzo Uchimura in the 1920s. He said Americans are great people but they just don't understand religion. They have to count everything. But certainly some of the strong mission groups active in the world today—maybe Nigerians, maybe Koreans—would have something of that same desire for technique and counting.

It's good to ask whether and where that particular aspect of American-ness is showing up. I don't know the answer to that question. I think in China, it doesn't, because different Chinese Christian groups have built their success on not drawing attention to themselves and not putting a figure on Christian adherents. In China, the numeric focus of Americans may not translate as well as, say, the lay empowerment aspect does.

How has missions strategy changed over the decades, in America and abroad?

In the first half of the 19th century in the U.S., there was not a whole lot of strategic thinking. Rather, there was a lot of activity simply trying to respond to need. There was a lot of successful organizing on the run. But it was not until the 1840s, '50s, and '60s that more systematic strategizing began. Today, in many places around the world with new Christian communities, activity, meeting felt needs, and organizing on the run are all more prominent than systematic thinking about how to go from A to B.

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July 2009, Vol. 53, No. 7