A.B. Simpson’s Fourfold Gospel in the Evangelical Church of Vietnam: A Study of Selective Theological Assimilation

The officially distinctive mark of the Evangelical Church of Vietnam (ECVN) is the Fourfold Gospel emblem. It is inherited from A.B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), through the teaching of C&MA missionaries in Vietnam. However, ECVN adapted some of the teachings and reinterpreted the symbols in the Vietnamese context. The reason is that the assimilation of the Fourfold Gospel to the ECVN’s theology has been selected through a fundamentalistic perspective and a serious uneasiness about Pentecostalism, and hence, it has become disconnected from its original theological foundation.

Aspectos de la pluralización religiosa a partir del ingreso de la misión the Christian and missionary alliance en el Sur chileno, el caso del misionero metodista Albert Dawson (1897 – 1914)

El ingreso de diversos cultos protestantes a Chile desde mediados del siglo XIX tensionó el orden religioso establecido dando un impulso y transformando las esferas de discusión acerca del lugar que debía tener la religión en la construcción del Estado chileno. En este contexto de tensiones político religiosas que se vincularon al proceso de secularización de la sociedad chilena, ingresó a fines del siglo XIX la Misión The Christian and Missionary Alliance, una organización estadounidense que buscaba instalarse en el territorio del sur chileno en búsqueda de nuevos prosélitos. Este artículo da cuenta del proceso de establecimiento de la Misión The Christian and Missionary Alliance, en la persona de uno de sus fundadores, Albert E. Dawson, un ministro religioso metodista canadiense que arribó a Chile durante 1897 e hizo una cruzada apostólica hasta el año 1914; la instalación de esta Misión en Chile se vinculó en buena parte a las actividades de este misionero el cual ha sido silenciado tanto de la historiografía chilena como de la memoria del evangelicalismo chileno.

DIFFERENCE AND THE ESTABLISHMENT: AN ASIAN CANADIAN SENIOR PASTOR’S EVANGELICAL SPATIALITY AT TENTH AVENUE ALLIANCE CHURCH IN VANCOUVER, BC

This paper explores how the evangelical spatiality of an Asian Canadian senior pastor at a historically Anglo-Saxon congregation has transformed it from an ethnically homogeneous, aging church to a heterogeneously-constituted gathering in an evangelical Protestant tradition. This piece challenges the conventional wisdom of the church growth movement and the new religious economics in the sociology of religion, both of which advise religious groups to construct homogeneity and consensus in efforts for numerical growth over against secularizing forces. The paper argues instead that Pastor Ken Shigematsu’s evangelical spatiality from the mid-1990s to the present must be understood as a theological embrace of difference in a church gifted to him by God over which he prayerfully pastors along with his staff. This paper understands Shigematsu’s evangelical spatiality through his own New Testament exegesis, his denominational affiliation with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, his ancient spiritual practices of indiscriminate hospitality, and his mystical reception of Tenth as a welcoming space toward a multiplicity of ethnic, class, and religious backgrounds. This article contributes to Asian Canadian Christian studies by discouraging a future where pan-Asian churches in Canada are homogeneously constructed and by exploring the concrete possibility of non-strategies in which heterogeneous, complex spaces that include Asian Canadians are received by pastors and studied by academics as a divine gift.