The practice of religious conversion in the 21st century has revived academic interest in the subject. Most theories and frameworks for understanding religious conversion are still based on outdated models. Recent studies have focused primarily on converts’ testimonies, which is a valuable starting point for contextualizing religious conversion. However, much of this research has concentrated on individuals and their past religious worldviews. There is a significant gap in understanding the contextualization of religious conversion in relation to culture, theology, community, and other factors. In September, OCMS will address this gap through its MBL lecture series, focusing on the contextualization of religious conversion in the majority world. Full Programme Details here
Previous Lectures
Overview In this lecture, Dr Kamil will explore the conversion of, arguably, the greatest Muslim convert to Christianity in the 19th century South Asia: He will highlight the contextual factors involved in his conversion and those factors which may or may not be important for the present context of South Asia:
Speaker Dr. Maqsood Kamil
About the speaker Dr. Maqsood Kamil (D. Min, Ph.D), Theologian, Teacher, Preacher, Writer, Ordained Minister of the Word and the Sacraments, Professor of Theology & Vice Principal of Gujranwala Theological Seminary, Gujranwala, Pakistan. Dr. Maqsood is a PhD Alumnus of OCMS.
Overview Is it possible for academia to use generative AI responsibly? What are AI’s biases that help or hinder its use in mission studies for scholars from around the world? What practical ways can AI tools be used in research and scholarship? These and other relevant questions will be explored in this presentation:
Speaker Dr. Kirk Franklin
About the speaker Dr. Kirk Franklin has authored the Regnum-published books Towards Global Missional Leadership (2017) and co-authored A Missional Leadership History (2022) and The Mission Matrix (2024). Kirk was born in Papua New Guinea and served as a missionary there. He has had executive leadership and governance roles in Australian and global mission agencies. He is a lecturer in missional leadership and doctoral supervisor based in Melbourne, Australia and an associate faculty member in Global Missional Leadership at OCMS.
Overview The lecture will explore scholarship on the modern Christian missionary movement which links mission to the European colonial conquest since the fifteenth century and gives attention to emerging voices seeking to ‘redeem’ mission from this conquest paradigm, especially those in the wider Evangelical tradition arguing for mission as ’incarnation’, ‘integral’, 'translation’, ‘holistic’, and ‘transformation’: A case will be made that history and a careful reflection of societies where modern Christianity is dominant oblige us to re-read the Gospel narrative and its imperative for followers of Jesus: compelling us to ponder if ‘mission’ is redeemable: Could it be more plausible to talk about the need to ‘repent’ of the mission paradigm?
Speaker Dr. David Zac Niringiye
About the speaker Dr. David Zac Niringiye holds a PhD in Theology and Mission History from the University of Edinburgh (UK), an MA in Theology from Wheaton College (USA), as well as a Physics Honours degree and Teaching Diploma from Makerere University in Uganda. He is a leader with national and international acclaim and has experience as a church leader, theologian, peace and social justice activist and an organizational development consultant. Bishop Zac who previously served as Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Kampala, is now engaged in full-time civic-political activism in his native country of Uganda.
Overview One of the most notable contemporary developments in Chinese Christianity is its entry into the public sphere—a departure from its predominant tradition of private spirituality, otherworldly absorptions, and political apathy: Christian engagements with public issues have been spearheaded by Protestant public intellectuals, democracy and human rights activists, and academic theologians: As part of the exploration of this new phenomenon, this talk will focus on the Sino-Christian theology (汉语神学) of He Guanghu 何光沪, highlighting the scope and dominant themes of a theology that seeks to both affirm and transcend the particularities of a contextualized Chinese Christianity:
Speaker Dr. Xi Lian
About the speaker Dr. Xi Lian is the David C. Steinmetz Distinguished Professor of World Christianity at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of The Conversion of Missionaries: Liberalism in American Protestant Missions in China, 1907-1932 (1997), Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China (2010), and Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao’s China (2018).
Overview This lecture will look at the ideological implications of the rise of Xi Jinping upon New Left, New Confucian, Liberal, and Christian Ideological Perspectives from 2013 to the present:
Speaker Tom Harvey
About the speaker Dr Tom Harvey’s expertise is in China and Southeast Asian Church and State. In Singapore he served as Chair of the Theological Review and Response Committee of the Presbyterian Church and as an executive board member of the National Council of Churches. He authored Acquainted With Grief: Wang Mingdao’s Stand for the Persecuted Church in China as well as numerous articles on Christianity and Christian social engagement in Asia and Southeast Asia. Tom is a member of the Lausanne Congress Global Diaspora Network and European Coordinator of the Lausanne European Diaspora Educator’s Group and is a missionary co-worker with the Presbyterian Church USA.
