From Mark Noll’s book The New Shape of World Christianity pg. 88. The book explores the relationship between the development of American Christianity in the 19th century and the current development of World Christianity.
Even more germane to the concerns of this book, it is important to remember how the American concern for enumerating Christian work can look to non-Americans. Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese Christian evangelist and Bible teacher who as a young man studied in the United States and thereafter made many visits to North America. Toward the end of his life in 1926 he wrote at some length about his impressions of Christianity in the United States:
“Americans are great people; there is no doubt about that. They are great in building cities and railroads. . . . Americans have a wonderful genius for improving breeds of horses, cattle, sheep and swine. . . . Americans too are great inventors.. . . Needless to say, they are great in money. . . . Americans are great in all these things and much else; but not in Religion. . . . Americans must count religion in order to see or show its value.. .. To them big churches are successful churches. . . . To win the greatest number of converts with the least expense is their constant endeavour. Statistics is their way of showing success or failure in their religion as in their commerce and politics. Numbers, numbers, oh, how they value numbers!”
To Uchimura, the American churches did their work under the guidance of American cultural imperatives. Uchimura elsewhere had many positive things to say about American religious life, but he was struck by how much the norms of an acquisitive, market-driven and aggressively statistical culture had shaped the perspective of the churches.
Kanzo Uchimura, “Can Americans Teach Japanese Religion?” Japan Christian Intelligencer 1 (1926): 357-61, as quoted here from The Complete Works of Kanzo Uchimura, 7 vols. (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1972), 4:63-65. I was introduced to Uchimura and his opinions on American religion by Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996), 221-22.
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From Mark Noll’s book The New Shape of World Christianity pg. 88. The book explores the relationship between the development of American Christianity in the 19th century and the current development of World Christianity.
Even more germane to the concerns of this book, it is important to remember how the American concern for enumerating Christian work can look to non-Americans. Kanzo Uchimura (1861-1930) was a Japanese Christian evangelist and Bible teacher who as a young man studied in the United States and thereafter made many visits to North America. Toward the end of his life in 1926 he wrote at some length about his impressions of Christianity in the United States:
“Americans are great people; there is no doubt about that. They are great in building cities and railroads. . . . Americans have a wonderful genius for improving breeds of horses, cattle, sheep and swine. . . . Americans too are great inventors.. . . Needless to say, they are great in money. . . . Americans are great in all these things and much else; but not in Religion. . . . Americans must count religion in order to see or show its value.. .. To them big churches are successful churches. . . . To win the greatest number of converts with the least expense is their constant endeavour. Statistics is their way of showing success or failure in their religion as in their commerce and politics. Numbers, numbers, oh, how they value numbers!”
To Uchimura, the American churches did their work under the guidance of American cultural imperatives. Uchimura elsewhere had many positive things to say about American religious life, but he was struck by how much the norms of an acquisitive, market-driven and aggressively statistical culture had shaped the perspective of the churches.
Kanzo Uchimura, “Can Americans Teach Japanese Religion?” Japan Christian Intelligencer 1 (1926): 357-61, as quoted here from The Complete Works of Kanzo Uchimura, 7 vols. (Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1972), 4:63-65. I was introduced to Uchimura and his opinions on American religion by Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996), 221-22.
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About PaulVK
Husband, Father of 5, Pastor