Dr. Daryl Ireland Joins STH Center for Global Christianity and Mission
As a recent graduate of the Boston University School of Theology (PhD in Mission Studies ’15), Dr. Daryl Ireland joins Boston University as the Associate Director of the Center for Global Christianity & Mission and Research Assistant Professor of Mission. Dr. Ireland’s specialty is in Global Christianity and Missiology, with a special emphasis on Christianity in Asia.
“Dr. Ireland is already well-known to the STH community through his work with the Center for Global Christianity and Mission and his groundbreaking dissertation research on the Chinese evangelist, John Sung,” said Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore. “Students appreciate his ability to make history and mission come alive through his deep research, engaging storytelling, and care for students.”
Dr. Ireland earned his B.A. from Wheaton College and completed his Master of Divinity degree and M.A. in Church History at Nazarene Theological Seminary. He became interested in studying Chinese Christianity after living and working for the church in Taiwan and China.
One key year in missions history piqued his interest: 1949—the year China expelled all Christian missionaries, claiming that they were spreading exploitative economic practices, acting as cultural imperialists, and teaching religious superstitions. The missionary expulsion caused a deep crisis in missions, especially since China had received more foreign missionaries than any other nation in the history of the world. “What did it mean that China wanted missionaries gone,” Dr. Ireland asks, “and wanted them all gone?”
The troubles in China ended up magnifying difficult mission questions elsewhere. What did it mean, for instance, that in India the person who acted and sounded most like Jesus was not a Christian but a devout Hindu? Or what could be made of the charges that missionaries were but the shock troops of European colonialism?
Over the next twenty years, these pressing questions forced almost all university-based mission programs in the United States to close, while those in Europe were quietly renamed. In 1972 the little that was left of missions seemed to fall apart when John Gatu, the General Secretary of the Presbyterian Churches in East Africa, asked for a moratorium on foreign missions.
“When thinking about missions, I find most people picture of something like the explosion of the Death Star in the movie Star Wars. Missions seemed to explode in the middle of the twentieth century,” observed Dr. Ireland, “so when people hear about missions now, they tend to think of it as debris—remnants of some movement that died fifty years ago.”
But Dr. Ireland proposes a different analogy for what happened in missions. Instead of the Death Star, Ireland argues we should think of a dandelion’s blow ball. What happened to missions in the twentieth century was not an explosion, a sign of death. It was more like God blowing on a dandelion, spreading seeds of life.
“Mission is more vital than it has been in centuries,” he says. Mission Studies is not about something that is dead and gone. It is about tracing the seeds of life that have scattered in all kinds of unexpected directions since the collapse of colonialism. Whether it is the missional movement in North America, the flourishing of NGOs, or the explosion of Christianity in Africa and Asia, mission has found new soil in which to blossom. “It’s a particularly fun time to be in this field of study,” he says.
Dr. Ireland will be teaching core curriculum classes and mission courses alongside his role as associate director of Center for Global Christianity & Mission. He is looking forward to solidifying the CGCM as the leading center of mission studies. Based in a research university, the CGCM has unique opportunities to work with scholars in women’s studies, religious studies, social sciences, and globalization to better understand how missions and missionaries have become central characters in the formation of our contemporary world.
Mission Studies are a vital component for a religious leader’s education in our newly interconnected and globalized society: “To live in ignorance of what is happening in other religious communities around the world is to condemn ourselves to a very small existence,” said Dr. Ireland. “Mission Studies can raise our vision, so we can see and imagine more than we could have ever dreamt if left to our own context.” It’s critical to understand how Christianity is transmitted across cultural, linguistic or economic boundaries, he insists, and also important to grasp that Christianity often takes on new life or moves in unexpected directions whenever new frontiers are crossed. Mission Studies, he concludes, help us to recognize the complexity, diversity, breadth and vitality of Christianity; mission enriches our theological imagination.