Mark Noll's latest book is The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith (IVP, 2009). Noll is Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at Notre Dame and among the most respected historians of evangelicalism working today. Below is a brief interview with him about his new book.
Why is American Christianity important for the world?
The argument of the book that it is of course important for many contacts between the U.S. and the rest of the world that can be measured in terms of "influence." But it is even more important because the U.S. pioneered a pattern of "Christianity after Christendom" that has become the main pattern for Christian expression in the rest of the world. By this I mean, more lay-oriented, less tied to government, more entrepreneurial, more charismatic, and less structured.
One of the main points of the book seems to be that the American form of Christianity accounts for America’s most significant contribution to this new shape of world Christianity. Can you give us a thumbnail sketch of the way in which American Christianity developed from its European predecessors? Are there historical precursors to what happened here in the 19th century, or was it a new form altogether?
Europeans looking at the U.S. in the early 19th century knew that Christianity could not flourish because the faith had always had the support of governments in Europe (at least since the 4th century, so for 1400 years). Amazingly, however, Christianity flourished in the U.S. with no government assistance (to speak of), with bottoms-up lay initiative, and through the use of voluntary societies. The missiologist Andrew Walls has written profoundly about the huge impact of voluntary societies on world Christianity. My book is, in a sense, only an extended footnote on Walls' very important insights.
For those unfamiliar with Walls's work, where should they start?
I'd start with The Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith.
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