This study of the cross-cultural transmission of the Christian faith looks at how Christianity became a world faith, the role of Africa in Christian history and the missionary movements of the West. It reaches back to Eusebius of Edessa in the 4th century and down to the contemporary world, from "Old Athens" and "New Jerusalem" to the vast continents of South America, Asia and Africa. On the way it offers fresh understandings of Pentecostalism, African traditional religion, and the ironic ways in which the western missionary movement often accomplished things - both for good and for ill - that its agents never dreamed of.