South Hamilton, MA – Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary has established the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at its South Hamilton, Massachusetts campus.

Directing this new center will be Dr. Todd M. Johnson, co-author of World Christian Encyclopedia, Second Edition, published in 2001 by Oxford University Press, one of the world’s leading publishers of reference books. Dr. David B. Barrett, who edited the encyclopedia’s first edition, and with Johnson and George T. Kurian co-authored the second edition, will join the Center as Senior Researcher.

One of the Center’s foremost priorities is the continual development of the databases of the World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE). The encyclopedia immediately took its place as the authoritative, standard work in its field. Its oversized 1,000 pages represent the most extensive survey of Christianity, and of religion in general, ever attempted. The heart of the WCE is a series of 223 chapters on the status of religion and of Christianity in every country in the world at that time. Statistical tables show, in great detail, the religious break-down of the population of every country, and the Christian denominations of every country.

The second edition, published in 2001, updated and extended this analysis to include the status of Christianity in every language, people, city and province of the world. A 952-page companion volume World Christian Trends (William Carey Library, 2001) includes a first-ever empirical survey of Christian martyrdom, historical trends, future projections and finance.

The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) writes that the second edition of the WCE "leaves no stone unturned when it comes to the current state of Christianity in the world…Why add this to your reference collection? Simply put, it is the best statistical work on the current state of Christianity to come along in the 20 years since the WCE was first published. Between the two volumes, students and faculty alike will be able to answer many factual questions related to Christianity and missions. But the sheer amount of information compiled will also lend itself to individual analysis of what is happening in the world today. The second edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia is a ‘must have’ for every library."

The Center’s experienced staff will also collate, analyze and publish original research related to the exhaustive data on church membership and evangelistic activities collected by 33,800 Christian denominations in 238 countries. This research, in the context of the status of other world religions and secular demographic data, provides an authoritative view of global Christianity. When fully operational, the Center will be one of the world’s most definitive sources of empirical information on Christianity.

Interdisciplinary in nature, the Center integrates religion, history, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, missiology, demography, and other disciplines in the study of global Christianity. The Center will continue to develop an international network of scholars and informants dedicated to studying global Christianity, and plans a series of publications on global Christianity via books, journals and encyclopedias. A further aim is to apply the research of the Center in assisting churches in their strategic planning. It will feature a user-friendly web site with statistics, maps, graphs and other media related to religious affiliation.

"We are honored to have Todd M. Johnson and David B. Barrett with us at Gordon-Conwell," says Dr. Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., President. "The new Center for the Study of Global Christianity, which joins an existing consortium of seminaries, universities and centers in New England, will be extremely helpful to our faculty in their research initiatives. It will also be of great benefit to visiting religion scholars, graduate students, church leaders, missiologists and journalists seeking information and analysis on the global Christian movement."

Dr. David B. Barrett has been an ordained foreign missionary of the Church of England since 1951, serving mainly in Africa. Since 1969, he has been Anglican Communion research secretary. His research has appeared in 70 books and 200 articles. At present he works as Research Professor of Missiometrics at Regent University. He founded the World Evangelization Research Centre in East Africa in 1965, relocating to Richmond, Virginia in 1985.

Since 1989, Todd M. Johnson has been a full-time missionary researcher, most recently as Director of the World Evangelization Research Center (WERC) in Richmond, Virginia. He has also been a missionary with Youth With A Mission (YWAM) since 1978. Johnson has traveled in 30 countries performing various ministry tasks including relief work among Cambodian refugees in Thailand, inner city work in San Francisco, evangelism in villages in Guatemala, and language study in the Soviet Union. Since 1983, Johnson has been involved in the long-term church-planting arm of YWAM exclusively focused on the unreached peoples.