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Verbum et Ecclesia

versión On-line ISSN 2074-7705
versión impresa ISSN 1609-9982

Verbum Eccles. (Online) vol.31 no.1 Pretoria  2010

http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v31i1.340 

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

 

The impact of evangelical revivals on global mission: The case of North American evangelicals in Brazil in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

 

 

Edward L. SmitherI, II

IChurch History and Intercultural Studies, Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginina, USA
II2Department of Missiology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa

Correspondence

 

 


ABSTRACT

The aim of the current article is to show that an important element behind the establishment of evangelical missions to Brazil - particularly during the pioneering stages - was evangelical revival, especially that which occurred in North America during the nineteenth century. Following a brief introduction to the general relationship between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivals and evangelical missions, I shall endeavour to support historically the commonly accepted, yet often unsubstantiated, correlation between such movements of revival and mission. Firstly, I will show the significant paradigm shift in missional thinking, which took place in the nineteenth century, as North American evangelicals began to regard Roman Catholic countries in Latin America as mission fields. Secondly, I shall argue that the influence of nineteenth-century revivalist evangelicalism (particularly that sourced in North America) on missions to Brazil and Latin America can best be observed in the Brazilian evangelical identity that emerged in the twentieth century, which has, in turn, propelled the Brazilian evangelical church into its own significant involvement in global missions (Noll 2009:10).

Keywords: Brazil; Great Awakening; majority world missions; nineteenth century; revivals


 

 

Full text available only in PDF format.

 

 

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Correspondence:
Edward Smither
1971 University Boulevard
Lynchburg
VA 24502
USA
Email: elsmither@liberty.edu

Received: 04 Nov. 2009
Accepted: 28 June 2010
Published: 28 Sept. 2010

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