Professor Brian Stanley

Lecture title: "Edinburgh and World Christianity"

Date: 15 September 2010, 2pm

Venue: The Assembly Hall, New College

Lecture abstract

In his inaugural lecture, Professor Stanley discusses three individuals connected to Edinburgh who have major symbolic or actual significance for the development of world Christianity over the last 150 years.

Tiyo Soga (1829-71) studied in Edinburgh for the ministry of the United Presbyterian Church, and became the first black South African to be ordained into the Christian ministry. His Edinburgh theological training helped to form his keen sense of the dignity and divine destiny of the African race.

Yun Chi’ho (1865-1945) was the sole Korean delegate at the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh in 1910. His political career illustrates the ambiguities of the connection that developed between Christianity and Korean nationalism under Japanese colonial rule.

John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907) was a native of Edinburgh and a student of the University of Edinburgh who went on to found a utopian Christian community near Chicago - ‘Zion City’. This community and Dowie’s teachings on the healing power of Christ were formative in the origins of Pentecostal varieties of Christianity in both southern and West Africa.

Lecture video