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According to orthodox Christianity, Christ’s disciples are to have transformed lives marked by spiritual and moral qualities associated with Jesus. According to the New Testament, this new life is to manifest itself in an identifiably different manner of living. Evangelicals are well known for their emphasis on the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20, but it is also important to see that in the text, disciple-making includes teaching people to follow the Great Commandment of Matthew 22:34-40: they are to love God with their entire beings and to love their neighbors as they love themselves. Jesus’s disciples are also told to treat others the way they would themselves want to be treated (the Golden Rule). This ethical principle has tremendous implications for how Christians are to live among followers of other religions.

This chapter explores how producers realized that a media-saturated market in the US limited their appeal and envisioned multiplying their investments and effectiveness in communicating to the world. Grounded in the Great Commission, these producers sought to adapt the medium to other cultures, with mixed results. As communicators, they showed little concern for cross-cultural communication problems. Their films, while targeted at foreign countries, clearly reflected a Western, Christian view of the world, with mostly Caucasian actors and Western music. The chapter also depicts how the impact of showing evangelistic films increased Indian persecution of the Christian minority. At the same time, The Jesus Film and Karunamayudu proved to be very powerful evangelistic tools and have converted many Hindus. Though the Indian constitution guarantees freedom of religion, India has demanded the departure of foreign missionaries.

This chapter presents excerpts from William Carey's An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792). Carey was born on August 17, 1761, at Paulerspury, Northamptonshire, in England. At age fifteen, he began an apprenticeship as a shoemaker and joined the Baptists in 1783. At Moulton, and after reading about the voyages of Captain James Cook, Carey began working on a pamphlet that he finished after accepting a pastorate at Leicester in 1789. In Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, he made a strong argument for overseas missionary work as a fulfillment of the Great Commission. Carey studied the Bible and found scripture passages that justified the evangelization of non-European nations.

Africa has provided an auspicious context for religious reformation, renewal, and revival. Its landscape has been radically shaped by the dynamic forces of Christianity. African Christianity evokes a protean image that has been moulded by the interrelated processes of mission, conversion narrative, prophecy, and waves of spiritual independence. In contemporary times, Africa continues to serve as a living laboratory for creative religious movements and models. This paper analyses the importance of translation and indigenization in African Christianity and how the processes have influenced the dissenting tradition in this religious experience. Translation provided the impetus for genuine and creative appropriation of the Christian faith in Africa. The engine of faith was enabled by the conscious effort to rediscover Christian doctrines and formulas in familiar syntax, symbols, and concepts.