Global Christianity as Method

Scholarship in global Christianity has brought greater attention to understudied and/or marginalized Christian communities beyond the Euro-Atlantic. However, work within the subfield has also unwittingly reproduced colonial tropes and hierarchies in its approach to the study of non-Western Protestant communities. For example, scholarship on megachurches has largely echoed the narrative that non-Western megachurches are reproductions and/or adaptations of originally American ecclesial forms. This article argues that the subfield’s decolonial aims are better served by taking global Christianity as a methodological approach offering particular attention to translocal circulations of ideas and practices, especially circulations that challenge the self-sufficiency of the West and its cultural forms. Employing this approach, this article indicates that American megachurches are not always the “crucible” of global trends, contrary to prevailing narratives. American megachurches followed the example of South Korean megachurches in adopting both the multisite church structure and cell groups. Tracing American megachurch practices through their transnational histories challenges the American exceptionalism within certain accounts of megachurches and demonstrates how scholars might present marginalized Christianities differently by adopting a broader understanding of global Christianity and where it may be observed

Christianity · Colonialism · Exceptionalism · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Protestantism · Scholarship · Sociology · Christian Theology and Mission · Gender Studies · History · Law · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Society, and Development

• Latin American Megachurches in a Changing Culture

  Open Access•Fernando Adolfo Mora, Fernando Adolfo Mora-Ciangherotti•Religions•2022

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