From the latter half of the twentieth century, scholars began to pay attention to the truly worldwide, polycentric, and culturally diverse world of Christianity. The rapid growth in the number of Christians living in the Global South caught the attention of Western scholars as a trend that would not be reversed in the near future.
On 20 August 2026 at 1400 UTC, Professor Chammah J. Kaunda, Extraordinary Professor of Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology at the University of South Africa, will develop a constructive account of creedal orthodoxy as a living, normatively bounded relational logic of divine communion. He will explore its implications for the renewal of theological education by drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s account of tradition as an “ongoing argument” and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen’s phenomenological reading of the creed as a “horizon or perspective”. Kaunda will further argue that neither a static propositional model nor a purely perspectival account sufficiently captures the ontological and ecclesial function of creedal faith in World Christianity. Instead, creedal orthodoxy should be understood as a normative relational boundary that both constrains distortion and enables participation in truth. This account is enriched through African relational ontologies in which tradition is not a backward-facing horizon but an active, life-giving field of relations that sustains identity across time.
Prof. Chammah J. Kaunda also serves as Academic Dean at Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS), UK. He is affiliated as a Research Fellow with both the Southern African Institute for Policy and Research (SAIPAR) and the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, UK. Previously, Kaunda was an Assistant Professor at Yonsei University in the Republic of Korea. He has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in internationally renowned journals and book publishers. Additionally, he has co-edited over 10 volumes and authored four monographs. His recent book is Decolonial Pentecostalism: A Post-Nicene Theology from Africa (T&T Clark, 2026).
