When I was a kid in the seventies, we often sang a song at church events and camps with this lyric:

We are one in the Spirit;We are one in the Lord.And we pray that all unity will one day be restored;And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

I remember thinking it was a bit corny; then as a teenager, I blew it off as clichéd as well as stylistically dated. But looking back now, I can see this lyric is actually quite profound, reflecting in simple words the sophisticated theology of Christian unity.

It’s a strange logic: in Christ, we’re already one, but we’re not yet one, so we must strive to achieve, maintain, or restore our oneness, until we finally attain our perfect, eternal oneness.

Strange Logic of Heaven

What makes this unity logic strange is that it begins with the assertion that we’re already one — otherwise, it follows a natural logical progression. But that’s just the thing: this logic is not natural; it’s supernatural. It’s the logic of heaven.

And it isn’t applied only to unity. We see this logic throughout the New Testament. The kingdom of God has come (Luke 17:20–21), and at the same time the kingdom of God is in the process of coming (Matthew 16:28). Christians have “been saved” (Ephesians 2:8), and at the same time we are in the process of “being saved” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Christians “have been sanctified” (Hebrews 10:10), and at the same time we are in the process of “being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

“In this era, our status as redeemed saints is complete, but our experience of redemption is partial.”

So, when it comes to Christian unity, it shouldn’t surprise us that we’re told we “are all one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28), while at the same time becoming one (Ephesians 4:13). This logic reflects the nature of this awkward age between the inauguration and the consummation of Christ’s kingdom, which Christian theologians call the era of the already–not yet. In this era, our status as redeemed saints is complete, but our experience of redemption is partial. We are becoming what we are.

But as strange as this heavenly logic might sound, it makes very practical sense in our day-to-day lives as Christians. Here’s how.

‘Already’ Fuels ‘Not Yet’

God’s inexpressible gift of salvation in Christ is something we inherit from our Father as his adopted children (Ephesians 1:5, 11). But this inherited gift has a participatory dimension:

Our justification (Romans 3:23–25) and the faith to receive it are given to us by God as a free (inherited) gift of his grace, and
the evidence that this grace-gift is at work in us comes through our (participatory) “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5).

It’s the participatory dimension of our inherited gift of salvation (and countless facets of this gift, like Christian unity) that explains the New Testament’s teaching on grace and works. The New Testament teaches that we are saved by God’s grace alone (Ephesians 2:8–9), and that works are necessary to our salvation (James 2:24). This can sound like a contradiction, but it’s not. Our works are not necessary in the causal sense — we don’t merit salvation by our works. Our works are necessary in the evidential sense — the fruit of works organically grows on branches that by faith abide in the “true vine” (John 15:1, 5).

This is the new-covenant reality of “by grace through faith” (Ephesians 2:8). We are saved by grace alone through the gift of faith alone, and the observable evidence that we are heirs of God’s gracious gift of salvation is manifest through our “work[s] of faith and labor[s] of love” (1 Thessalonians 1:3) — our obedience of faith. That’s what Jesus was getting at when he said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). And it’s what his brother, James, was getting at when he said, “I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18).

Now, here’s how heaven’s already–not yet logic works as it pertains to our inherited oneness as Christians. Believing that we’re already one fuels our faith in God’s promise that, ultimately, we will be perfectly one. And it fuels our hope that all the obedient works of faith and labors of love to achieve, maintain, or restore our unity in this partial age — as discouraging and futile as they might appear to us at times — are not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Our Duty: Tenacious Grace

Paul employs this heavenly logic when he urges the Ephesians (and us) to pursue unity in the opening verses of Ephesians 4:

I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. (Ephesians 4:1–4)

Christian unity is part of the inherited gift we receive when God, by his free, sovereign choice in election (Ephesians 1:4–6), calls us into the body of Christ. But it is also our participatory duty to “maintain the unity of the Spirit” as part of this gift of God’s calling.

To get some idea of the demanding nature of this duty, this obedience of faith, we just need to consider the little word all in Ephesians 4:2. We must bear with one another “with all humility and gentleness.” When was the last time you truly felt eager to maintain unity in a situation that required you to exercise all humility or all gentleness — in other words, in the middle of a significant, frustrating disagreement? Yeah, me too.

“This is love with rebar in its resolve; this is love with a spine of steel.”

This is nothing less than a call to tenacious grace and Calvary love. What happened on Calvary? Death. Voluntary death. Voluntary death for the sake of love. Voluntary death for the sake of love on behalf of those who don’t deserve that kind of love. This is love with rebar in its resolve; this is love with a spine of steel.

When Jesus commanded us to love one another just as he has loved us (John 13:34), this was the kind of love he was talking about.

By Our Love

That old chorus we used to sing fifty years ago ended on a convicting refrain: “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.” It’s a close paraphrase of Jesus’s words in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This might be a good time to bring that old chorus back.

Repeat that refrain a few times together as a church and, if the Spirit moves among us, it will provoke some hard questions. Especially when we think of how Jesus longed and prayed for our unity:

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:20–21)

It requires the self-sacrificial love of tenacious grace to die to our own remaining sin and graciously bear with the remaining sin in other saints. But it’s this love that bears witness that we are followers of the One who laid his life down for his friends (John 15:13).

This unity is our inheritance in Christ. We are already one. Believing this fuels our faith in God’s promise that, ultimately, we will be perfectly one. And it will fuel all the obedient works of faith and labors of love that achieve, maintain, or restore our unity in this partial age. But we can’t do it alone. We need the Helper (John 14:26). For the love it requires to maintain the unity of the Spirit comes from the Spirit of unity himself.

ABSTRACT: In the early 1980s, missionary and researcher David Barrett published the World Christian Encyclopedia, a massive survey of global Christianity and missions. Since then, the work of Barrett and others has shaped the church’s approach to missions in profound ways, not least by focusing attention on the world’s remaining unreached peoples. Now, new generations of researchers are tracing the gospel’s spread through the Global South and beyond, showing that today’s church is more diverse than many have imagined — and helping today’s Christians participate more strategically in the gospel’s advance.

For our ongoing series of feature articles for pastors and Christian leaders, we asked F. Lionell Young III, Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide, to describe how new insights and initiatives are shaping the church’s mission.

Evangelicals are serious about missions. To crib a quote from the American historian Douglas Sweeney, “Evangelicals care about nothing more than evangelizing the world.”1 Sweeney may be speaking in hyperbole, but not by much. We are passionate about doing and well-known for our activism. This is an evangelical strength. What evangelicals, as a group, have not always taken seriously is the life of the mind. As Mark Noll wrote in his epistle of a wounded lover, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”2 We have not been as passionate about thinking and are not as well-known for our erudition. This has been an evangelical weakness.3

American evangelical missions during the twentieth century often failed to combine zeal with knowledge.4 In a recent lecture on the history of missiology, Brian Stanley observed that “there is always a tendency, particularly in Christian missions, for the field to divide between the doers and the thinkers.” He rightly referred to the problem as a “fatal separation,” and one that may be more pronounced in missions than in any other area of Christian ministry. Stanley, a highly respected intellectual, is also an evangelical who is very much for missionary activity. As he put it in the same address, “The challenge is to enable practitioners to be less afraid of deep research and reflection, but to conversely challenge the thinkers with the continuing imperative of what the church is actually called to do.”5

There have been times in our recent past when the thinkers and the doers actually did get together. This essay introduces readers to the work of David Barrett and a remarkable story of success that has brought about significant changes in the way evangelicals carry out the Great Commission. A discussion about Christianity in the Global South will follow, interacting with Philip Jenkins’s recent comments about what he calls “the end of the Global South.” What does he mean — and what are the possible implications for the church and its mission?

‘Miracle from Nairobi’

In 1982, Oxford University Press published the 1,010-page World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE).6 It was edited by David Barrett (1927–2011), who served as a missionary with the Church Missionary Society from 1957 to 1985. Barrett was a British evangelical who had prepared for the Anglican priesthood at Ridley Hall, Cambridge. He was mentored by Stephen C. Neill (1900–1984), a missionary to India who later became an academic at the University of Cambridge.7 After finishing his studies at Cambridge (BA, MA), Barrett served as a missionary in Kenya (then British Kenya) before continuing his studies at Union Theological Seminary (STM) and Columbia University (PhD). Barrett the missionary, like his mentor, became Barrett the academic.

After finishing his doctorate at Columbia, where he did his work on African Independent Churches, Barrett returned to East Africa for an ambitious research project. Using Nairobi as his base, between 1968 and 1981 Barrett traveled to nearly “every country in the world” (he listed 212 countries) to harvest statistics on Christianity and missionary activity throughout the world. He worked with a team of 21 editors and more than five hundred consultants, one of whom was Patrick Johnstone, the missionary-researcher and author of Operation World.8 The project was slated to take three years but was extended to twelve, because Barrett and the entire editorial team “had seriously underestimated the size and complexity of the Christian world.”9 Barrett’s massive survey showed that the vast majority of Christians lived in the “so-called Third World,” and that there were “Christian churches in every inhabited country on earth.”10 Time magazine hailed his work the “Miracle from Nairobi!”11

As a well-trained academic, Barrett used a widely accepted conceptual framework from the study of economic geography. His data was organized around what is still known as the Brandt Line, which divided the globe between the economically developed regions of the world in the Global North and those classified as economically underdeveloped in the Global South. The term Third World was then a shorthand reference to those nations with the least-developed economies, though in the 1980s this term was gradually replaced with the more congenial-sounding Global South. The latter was a reference to most (not all) of the countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America (including the Caribbean), and Oceania. The term Global North was used for the bloc of nations with developed economies that are concentrated in North America and Europe. This nomenclature is still widely used in the discipline of global studies and informs important decisions made by governments, NGOs, and intergovernmental agencies (such as the United Nations and the World Bank). The taxonomy still holds, though in recent years, with the rapid growth of some developing economies, the lines have begun to blur.12

Seeing the Unreached

One of the more fascinating applications of Barrett’s work was related to how evangelicals made decisions about where to assign missionaries. His data on missionary allocation showed that the Western church was continuing to send nearly all of its missionaries to parts of the world where Christianity had already taken root. A classic case is Kenya, where Barrett had lived since the 1950s, and had returned again and again for research. In 1900, Christians made up less than 1 percent of the population of what was then British East Africa, though by the year 2000 the percentage had increased to an estimated 77 percent.13 Even though Kenya had been largely Christianized, it remained (and remains) a popular destination for the allocation of evangelical missionary personnel. Many parts of Africa and most of Central and South America also fell into this category. Western mission agencies, Barrett’s research showed, were continuing to send people to places where foundations had already been laid, even to countries in the Global South that were overwhelmingly Christian. Many churches seemed to hold the assumption that effective missionary strategy simply meant acquiring a passport and sending people anywhere they “felt led” to go outside of the United States. This assumption needed to be completely reassessed.

Barrett’s work encouraged evangelicals to think about what they were doing. Soon after Oxford published Barrett’s miracle from Nairobi, the Foreign Mission Board (FMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) hired Barrett to work as a consultant. The FMB (now the International Mission Board) was one of the largest and most influential mission agencies in the world. Using Barrett’s research, the FMB determined that there needed to be a greater focus on what is commonly called “unreached people groups.” Donald McGavran (1897–1990), a WCE consultant, and Ralph Winter (1924–2009), an early advisor, had already begun popularizing the language of “unreached” or “unengaged” people groups in the 1970s, though Barrett’s research was instrumental in its usage.14 The FMB set up a think tank called the Global Strategy Group to reappraise its allocation of missionary personnel. The SBC was so persuaded by the need to act on this research that, in an unprecedented display of interagency cooperation, it invited 36 other missions organizations to give serious consideration to Barrett’s proposals.15 The changes brought about by Barrett’s research over the next few decades have been called “seismic and enduring.”16 When Barrett died in 2011, the global strategist for the SBC wrote, “When David Barrett came to the Foreign Mission Board as a consultant in 1985, less than 3 percent of our mission force was deployed to [unreached, unengaged souls]. Today, as a result of Barrett’s prophetic push, more than 80 percent of the people groups our missionaries serve among are unreached.”17

“The willingness of evangelicals to think about what they were doing has led to greater evangelical faithfulness.”

John Piper made an even wider audience aware of Barrett’s work in his book Let the Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions, first published thirty years ago. Piper cited David Barrett, Patrick Johnstone, and Ralph Winter throughout, taking evangelicals to task for what Winter had called “people blindness.” His plea combined rigorous exegetical work with impressive missiological reflection. He corrected misunderstandings of the English word nation and urged evangelicals to place greater emphasis on declaring the marvelous works of God among all ethnic groups.18 Piper’s lively and learned contribution to missiology, which has sold more than 300,000 copies since its first printing, has probably influenced evangelical thinking on missions more than any single work that has been published over the last thirty years.19 The willingness of evangelicals to think about what they were doing has led to greater evangelical faithfulness to the missio Dei.

End of the ‘Global South’?

I recently had a conversation with Philip Jenkins about his suggestion that we might now be entering a new era, one that he calls “the end of the Global South and, consequently, of global/world Christianity.”20 Jenkins’s 2002 book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity helped focus the attention of literate laypersons and learned academics on the rapid growth of Christianity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. As he put it then, “The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning.”21 Jenkins helped popularize what Barrett and others had been working on since the late 1960s. In light of Jenkins’s usage of the expression Global-South Christianity and his insightful work on the “coming of global Christianity,” it is reasonable to ask what he means by these comments. Is Global-South Christianity no longer a helpful category? Has global/world Christianity already come and gone?

Looking back now over the last two decades, Jenkins has observed that there has been “real progress in the popular awareness of global affairs among Christians.” He notes that “in recent years, the situation has changed utterly. Publishers have turned out countless volumes in world or global Christianity, a topic that is now very well covered in seminaries and religious departments.”22 The remarkable literary achievements of academics like Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, Dana Robert, Brian Stanley, Kirsteen Kim, Kwame Bediako, Jehu Hanciles, Mercy Oduyoye, Todd Johnson, Dyron Daughrity, Scott Sunquist, Paul Hiebert, Gina Zurlo, and Wilbert Shenk (to mention only a few names!) are now enlarging the story of Christianity.23 A younger generation of academics is also standing on the shoulders of giants and writing fresh histories of Christianity with sweeping coverage of nearly every country in the world. The field of global/world Christianity now comprises historians, theologians, sociologists, anthropologists, linguists, and missiologists, many of them clustered around the Yale-Edinburgh Conference, co-founded in 1992 by Andrew Walls (1928–2021) and Lamin Sanneh (1942–2019).24 These scholars are interested in the broader theme of global/world Christianity, but individuals also specialize in particular regions (e.g., continents, subcontinents) and countries, and also focus on subjects like transnational movements (e.g., evangelicalism, Anglicanism, Pentecostalism) as well as specific topics (e.g., men and women, politics, migration, mission).

Generous samples of their scholarship are found in print and online academic journals published by major research universities in places like Boston, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Princeton. Lengthy bibliographic entries can be accessed in works like the Edinburgh Companions to Global Christianity, the World Christian Encyclopedia (bibliographies are listed under every country) and the new nine-volume Cambridge History of Christianity. There is now voluminous coverage of Christianity in every historical period, covering nearly every single country of the world. Gina Zurlo’s recent work Global Christianity: A Guide to the World’s Largest Religion from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe is an effort to make some of this scholarly work more accessible for a general readership.25 Hundreds of highly motivated academics, a surprising number of whom are evangelicals, are shedding new light on the church’s story.

Global from the Beginning

This enormous output of research on the history of Christianity from the first century to the present is now showing that the church is more diverse than we have ever imagined. When the Spirit of God came blowing in at Pentecost, the gospel was translated into the languages of Africa, Arabia, Asia, and Europe, spilling out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. Sometime around AD 60, the apostle Paul could already say that the gospel is “bearing fruit and increasing” throughout “the whole world” (Colossians 1:6). Christianity has been a worldwide, polycentric movement from its inception, and contrary to popular misconceptions, Rome has never been the sole seat of ecclesiastical authority. In point of fact, Christianity was adopted as the official religion of Armenia and Georgia in Asia and Aksum (Ethiopia) in Africa before it became the state religion of Rome in the West. In the ancient church (ca. 100–450), networks of churches were clustered around places like Jerusalem, Antioch, and Constantinople in Asia; Alexandria in Africa; and Rome in the West, with multiple centers of influence all confessing a near-identical creed. For a brief period in the early Middle Ages, these five regions formed a pentarchy (five coequal spheres), but even prior to the usage of this term in the sixth century, new centers had already formed further afield in Asia as far as India and China, across Africa as far south as Sudan, and to the farthest reaches of Western and Northern Europe. The work of historians is helping us see more than ever before that Christianity has been a diverse, global religion for two thousand years.

“Christianity has been a worldwide, polycentric movement from its inception.”

In our own day, the growing ethnic and geographic diversity of Christianity is pushing thinkers like Jenkins to challenge how we use expressions like the Global South and global/world Christianity. Jenkins believes that the classifications Global South and Global North are helpful ways of having conversations about macrolevel trends, but that they fail to do justice as descriptors of Christianity’s boundless diversity. With so much scholarly light having now been cast on Christianity in every country of the world, he wants to be careful about using the term Global South as though it were a religious monolith. He wants to avoid language that simply divides the church into halves. To be fair to my colleagues working in religious demography, they are not using the terms in this way, and Jenkins himself still uses Global-South Christianity in his writing. More controversially, the boundless diversity of Christianity has even led a few academics to adopt the expression “world Christianities” (plural) rather than global/world Christianity (singular), though this language is now being convincingly contested.26

A few examples will suffice to illustrate what Jenkins is talking about. Christianity has grown rapidly in Kenya, as well as in neighboring South Sudan, yet the church in both countries has been shaped by different narratives and disparate political and social realties. Nigeria is roughly divided between Christianity and Islam, creating unique conditions and challenges for the church within different regions of the same country. Christianity is growing in Northeast India as well as in the neighboring hermit-kingdom of Bhutan, but in decidedly different ways, due in part to starkly different political and social contexts. Historians still write about Korean Christianity, though the churches of North Korea and South Korea are undeniably living out their faith in different political contexts. Christianity across Central America has common features, but you can see and feel the differences between the churches of Guatemala and neighboring Honduras — and both countries are distinct from Costa Rica, with its large expat community. Brazil provides one of the most interesting examples of Christian diversity, with evangelicals and Pentecostals now diffused in nearly every tradition, including Roman Catholicism, in a way that has now influenced national elections. These are but a few examples of contrast, and we haven’t even begun talking about the vast continental differences. As Jenkins has put it, “In demographic and cultural terms, the world is anything but flat.”27 Said another way, the Global South is not a country.

Drama of Unfolding Redemption

Scholars will continue their work (and their debates), but what is important to note here is that the academic study of Christianity’s past and present has been a source of tremendous wisdom for evangelical engagement in global missions. This should encourage Christians who have been suspicious of the life of the mind not to be afraid of careful reflection. The increased awareness in our own day of Christianity’s boundless diversity also has implications for missions — a topic that needs further exploration. One implication is clear: the opportunity has never been greater for the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world. What is needed is a shift in missional thinking, one that abandons an America-first mentality, and one that adopts a gospel-first mindset. To repackage a Pauline trope, the gospel did not originate with us, and we are not the only ones it has reached. The way of the future is in working together across cultures in cross-cultural missions for the glory of God.

“The opportunity has never been greater for the whole church to take the whole gospel to the whole world.”

What we are witnessing today through the work of globe-trotting researchers and travel-worn academics is the glorious drama of God’s unfolding worldwide redemption. The Spirit is blowing where he pleases, the kingdoms of the world are continuing to enter the kingdom of the Lord from the east and the west, the north and the south, and the nations are singing the praises of God. These stories are now being churned out by major academic presses as scholars have turned their attention to understanding the “surprising work of God” around the world. Christian academics have eyes to see the overarching work of redemptive history in their scholarship, even as they delight in the increasing diversity of the church “that no one [can] number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Revelation 7:9). New research is helping us reimagine the Christian world and widening our gaze to apprehend more fully the glory of God, world without end. Amen.28

Today marks the first of four Sundays traditionally celebrated by the church as the season of Advent. And with live nativity displays, Christmas plays, and Advent calendars you’d be forgiven if you thought that Advent was only about the birth of Jesus.

But there’s more to Advent than the Bethlehem stable. Historically, the church has focused as much on anticipating the return of our glorious King as celebrating his birth. By examining the history of Advent, we recover this season’s neglected meaning.

Easter First

The earliest church centered its liturgical calendar around Easter. In fact, little evidence exists for the celebration of Jesus’s nativity during the first two centuries of church history. The New Testament, after all, discloses little detail concerning the time of Jesus’s birth. Of the Gospels, only Luke’s narrative hints at a time of year: lambing season in early winter when shepherds would have needed to keep watch over their flocks (Luke 2:8).

Where the Scriptures were silent, early Christian authors were too. There is no mention of birth celebrations in Christian writings from the first and second centuries.1 The earliest church, instead, focused on what the New Testament described with great detail — the final days of Jesus the Messiah. 2 For this reason, the celebration of Easter at the time of the Jewish Passover was the primary focus of Christian practice from the earliest days of the church — a celebration Paul implies in 1 Corinthians 5:7–8.

Despite the absence of Christmas celebration, by the end of the second century there was significant interest in determining a date for Jesus’s birth. This interest probably reflects the church’s apologetic emphasis on Jesus’s physical birth in the face of those who were skeptical of his full humanity. While there was vigorous debate around possible dates, by the early fourth century consensus emerged around two likely candidates: December 25 and January 6.3 Over time, the former became the traditional celebration of Christmas and the latter the celebration of Epiphany.4

From Easter to Christmas

But why December 25? Based on their understanding of Daniel’s prophecy, some early Christian writers reasoned that Jesus was conceived on the same day that he was later crucified. Tertullian (ca. 155–220) calculated that Jesus was crucified on the 14th of Nisan, the equivalent of March 25 on the Roman (solar) calendar — exactly nine months before December 25.5 Christians, therefore, reckoned the date of Christmas from their observance of Easter. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) relayed this understanding in On the Trinity: “He is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also He suffered . . . but He was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”6

That Jesus was conceived on the same day he would eventually give up his life may at first seem unlikely. But consider, as the early church did, the equal unlikelihood that the Messiah’s propitiatory death would exactly coincide with the celebration of Passover.7 As Peter confessed, all events, whether seemingly inconsiderable or inestimably significant, are guided by God’s “definite plan and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). His works in creation and his ways in history are beautiful and symmetrical (Psalm 18:30; Isaiah 46:10).

From Christmas to Advent

The precise origins of Advent celebrations are more difficult to determine. By the middle of the fourth century, celebrations of Jesus’s birth on December 25 in the West were increasingly common. A longer period of celebration like that of Lent (the period of fasting and reflection preceding Easter) soon developed around it. In 380, the church council in Saragossa set apart three weeks in December, culminating in the celebration of Epiphany.

So also, the church in Rome began formalizing Advent observances. The Gelasian Sacramentary of the late fourth century includes liturgies for five Sundays leading up to Christmas. By the mid-sixth century, bishops in France had proclaimed a fast on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from November 11 until Christmas Day.8 Pope Gregory I (540–604; also known as Gregory the Great) further developed the Advent liturgies by composing prayers, songs, readings, and responses for congregational worship. Over the next century, these practices spread to England. Finally, around the turn of the millennium, Gregory VII (1015–1085) standardized the four Sundays leading up to December 25 as the period of Advent.

Advent’s Neglected Meaning

Despite the challenge of tracing Advent’s origin, two things are historically clear about the celebration itself. First, in contrast to Lent (a somber season of fasting, reflection, and meditation on the suffering of Christ), the weeks leading up to Christmas were full of jubilance and festivity. In Advent, the church looked back to celebrate the incarnation as the fulfillment of God’s promise to deliver his people from sin, Satan, and death (Genesis 3:15). The church rejoiced with the apostle John, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Advent celebrations often concluded with baptisms and highlighted new life and union with the incarnate Christ.

What is often neglected, however, is that Advent celebrations also looked to the future. The term “advent” (Latin, adventus) translates the Greek parousia, a word that in the New Testament always speaks of the Messiah’s second coming. Advent looks forward to the final realization of all that Jesus’s incarnation at Christmas put into motion. For this reason, instead of the Gospels’ birth narratives, Advent sermons often centered on eschatological passages (like Luke 21:25–36 and Matthew 24:37–44) or on the Triumphal Entry (Matthew 21:1–9) as a joyful anticipation of Jesus’s victorious second coming. Leo I (400–461) reminded his congregation that Christmas looked both backward and forward:

Hence because we are born for the present and reborn for the future, let us not give ourselves up to temporal goods, but to eternal: and in order that we may behold our hope nearer, let us think on what the Divine Grace has bestowed on our nature on the very occasion when we celebrate the mystery of the Lord’s birthday. Let us hear the Apostle, saying: “for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. But when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory” who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Ghost for ever and ever. Amen.9

Songs of the Second Coming

This future orientation was reflected not only in sermons, but also in song. In the sixth century, a series of seven Advent songs emerged, one for each day of the week leading up to Christmas. Called the Great Antiphons (or the “O” Antiphons), each expresses longing for the Messiah’s return:

O Key of David and scepter of the House of Israel;you open and no one can shut;you shut and no one can open:Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

This rich tradition of looking back and looking forward has been passed on to Reformed Protestant denominations. In the Book of Common Prayer (1549), Thomas Cranmer (1489–1555) used material from the Gelasian Sacramentary and the writings of Gregory the Great to develop Advent liturgies reflecting on both Christ’s nativity and his second coming. While many contemporary services focus on themes of hope, joy, peace, and love, Cranmer’s Advent liturgies are primarily focused on Christ’s future appearing.10

We may neglect Advent’s future-orientation in our contemporary celebration, but, intriguingly, the theme of Jesus’s second coming runs deep in our favorite Christmas carols. Isaac Watts’s (1674–1748) “Joy to the World” celebrates Jesus’s glorious return and his future kingdom where sin and sorrow are no more (Revelation 21:4):

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;Let men their songs employ;While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plainsRepeat the sounding joy,Repeat the sounding joy,Repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,Nor thorns infest the ground;He comes to make his blessings flowFar as the curse is found,Far as the curse is found,Far as, far as the curse is found.

Finally, consider John Mason Neale and Henry Coffin’s “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” a translation of the ancient Great Antiphons:

O come, Thou Key of David, comeAnd open wide our heavenly home;Make safe the way that leads on high,And close the path to misery.Rejoice! Rejoice! EmmanuelShall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Desire of nations, bindAll peoples in one heart and mind;Bid envy, strife, and quarrels cease;Fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.Rejoice! Rejoice! EmmanuelShall come to thee, O Israel.

History illuminates the richness of Advent’s celebration and anticipation. And one practical way of recovering the deep joy of this future-oriented season might just be to believe what we sing.