The Missionary Movement from the West: A Biography from Birth to Old Age   

EMQ » April – July 2025 » Volume 61 Issue 2

Reviewed by Richard Cook, PhD, professor of church history and missions at Logos Evangelical Seminary in El Monte, California, and a former missionary in Taiwan. 

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Andrew Walls (1928–2021), an innovative missiologist and influential historian, envisioned this project, which tells the story of Protestant missions before his death, but realized it would not be possible (xv). Instead, he agreed to have his lecture notes from four separate lecture series delivered between 2005 and 2008, carefully edited and published in one compendium. His goal was to place the overarching history of the Western Protestant missionary movement into the context of church history and 2,000 years of missions history. Sadly, he did not live to see the completion of this volume, but with this work, Walls will speak to yet another generation of scholars. 

Walls’s distinct contribution comes from his pioneering insight and his gentle wisdom, distilling and advancing contemporary scholarship. The bibliography is limited, as the book arose from lectures, but it is still useful with about ten pages of numerous classic studies. Sources are primarily in English, which matches Walls’s focus on Protestant missions, principally from Great Britain and the United States. There is a helpful index, and the editors have added informative footnotes when possible. 

The flow is logical, starting with part 1 on the origins of Western missions. The first chapter deals with Christendom and the “Great European Migration,” breaking new ground beyond his previous publications, as Walls sketches his understanding of missions as expanding and later contracting along with European migration. chapters 2–4 discuss Jonathan Edwards, early Protestant foreign missions and initiatives, and includes consideration of the “humanitarian strand” in early Protestant outreach. 

Part 2, “Toward Middle Age,” focuses on the nineteenth century, including sections on prophecy, the non-Western churches, and “race, culture, and society” in Western mission thinking. Chapter 8, the final essay, provocatively discusses Protestant missionaries entering China and how “China got into the missionaries.” 

The development of the “midlife crises” of Western missions is addressed in part 3, covering the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Topics include the maturation of missions, dark clouds arising, the growth of specialization, and concluding in chapter 12, the years before the Second World War. 

Part 4, “Old Age,” starts with the Second World War and continues to the transition from Western missions to global Christianity. The chapters include “Birth of the Indian Nation,” the “China Experience,” and the “New African Nations.” The final segment, chapter 16, reflects on the theological challenge of world Christianity, considering new questions and possibilities. Walls develops his optimism for enriching Christian theology through the infusion of fresh cultural insights. 

The anthology collects the best contributions of Andrew Walls, providing us with an excellent new missions textbook worthy of assigning to young seminarians. For readers familiar with Walls, this is a worthwhile summation, along with several fresh insights. Most importantly, Walls would desire fresh conversations to arise among global theologians. 

For Further Reading

The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History by Andrew F. Walls (Orbis Books, 2002). 

Jingjiao: The Earliest Christian Church in China by Glen L. Thompson (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2024). 

Faithful Disobedience: Writings on Church and State from a Chinese House Church Movement edited by Hannah Nation and J. D. Tseng (InterVarsity Press, 2022). 

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EMQ, Volume 61, Issue 2. Copyright © 2025 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.