The Multi-Directional Impulse of the WCSAD Working Group:

The work of the BCDSS has opened new avenues of research that resonate with the study of the global Christian tradition, its theologies, and its relationship(s) to social structures and phenomena. Indeed, the history of Christianity, world Christianity discourses, ecumenics, intercultural theological research, slavery studies, and asymmetrical dependency research are inseparable on both the levels of human experience and academic exploration. Consequently, the following assertions generate the multi-directional impulse of the WCSAD working group:

• The history and contemporary experience of Christianity in all its diversity is linked with the construction of, resistance to, and operation within structures of asymmetrical dependency.
• Contextually aware and historically grounded studies of Christianity are lacking if they negate the persistence and pervasiveness of social relationships defined by the BCDSS as asymmetrical dependencies.
• In many contexts, asymmetrical dependency research is impoverished if it lacks an awareness of the role of Christianity(ies) in constructing, resisting, operating, and/or cooperating with structures of asymmetrical dependency.
• The legacies of past expressions of asymmetrical dependency relations (e.g., diverse forms of slavery, serfdom, bondage, and extractive colonialism) have shaped the global Christian tradition in ways that continue to influence its contemporary expressions. 
• Relations of asymmetrical dependency endure within and exert an influence over the global Christian communion and how its members experience life in the world (e.g., through unequal experiences of ecological dependencies, religious legitimizations of hegemonic gender constructs, racial categories, oppressive sexual norms, and limitations on or weaponizations of religious freedom discourses, etc.)
• Contemporary Asymmetrical Dependencies (CADs) like modern slaveries, human trafficking, extractive economic systems, and more persist as concerns across Christian communions.
• World Christianity studies (WCs) and the theorization of the discourses it shapes may both affirm and critique the comparative and case-based approaches to asymmetrical dependency research (ADr) currently employed at the BCDSS (e.g., because of its potential fixation on universalistic classification). 

Learn more about the theoretical foundations and general approach employed by the WCSAD Group via our 'Concept Note (2024).'