Daewon Moon Reports on Edinburgh
The 2012 Yale-Edinburgh Group Meeting was held at New College at the
University of Edinburgh on June 28–30, with the theme “Religious
Movements of Renewal, Revival, and Revitalization in the History of
Missions and World Christianity.” Dr. Andrew Walls delivered a keynote
speech about the effects of revival and revitalization in the history
of missionary movements, with extensive examples of “dedicated”
Christians (in contrast to “ordinary” Christians) empowered through
revival and involved in various missions all over the world since the
first century. He noted there is a potential danger in revitalization
because it tends to have a very narrow definition of conversion and
“real” Christians.
Several alumni and current students of BU STH presented papers at the
meeting. Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak (Th.D., ’02, second from left), Associate
Professor of Korean Christianity at UCLA, presented his research on
the Korean Revival and its influence on traditional religions and
colonialism from 1903 to 1935. Jaekeun Lee (STM, ’08, second from
right), Ph.D. candidate at the University of Edinburgh, gave his
presentation on a notable revival meeting in Mokpo in 1906 as a case
study of the influence of the Southern Presbyterian Revivalist
tradition on the Korean Revival. Daewon Moon (right), doctoral student
at BU STH, presented a paper on the contribution of African leaders to
the East African Revival in the 1930s and 40s, and another BU STH
doctoral student, Daryl Island, gave a presentation on John Sung’s
evangelistic bands as a location for a new female identity in
Singapore in the 1930s.
