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“In the twentieth century, for the first time, there was in the world a universal religion – the Christian religion. . . . In country after country . . . it took root, not as a foreign import, but as the Church of the countries in which it dwells,” this author powerfully proclaims. Though the term is not used, this was the period when “World Christianity” fully came into being as the major development in Christian history and, perhaps, of all human history.

In these chapters, we note the pattern of progression, “conquest,” and then retrogression, as formerly “Christian” nations and peoples were conquered from without or fatally compromised from within.

This one-volume history of Christian missions is, in one sense, comprehensive. Neill’s grandparents and parents had served as missionaries in India, bequeathing to him an insider’s knowledge of missionary life and work, which he augmented by serving in India with the Church Missionary Society for twenty years. His narrative reads like a story rather than a mere chronicle.

This is an outstanding book, of great usefulness to anyone wanting to understand the immense changes that took place in the twentieth century. It is also a marvel of conciseness: Sunquist packs an enormous amount of information and analysis into less than 200 pages.

We’re revisiting this book review more than 25 years after the beginning of the new century to see what we can learn in hindsight. Noted historian on the subject of World Christianity, Scott Sunquist has given us another outstanding volume. He possesses both a wide knowledge of the Christian movement’s history as a whole and a comprehensive grasp of Christian missions in all its dimensions.

In her epilogue, the author writes, “The main purpose for writing this book was to get to know a man—an ordinary man who nevertheless magnified the grace of God…. Another purpose … was to record the history of a crucial period in the development of the history of the Church in China.” In my opinion, she succeeded in both purposes.