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November 26, 2012

Visiting Scholar Wesley Granberg-Michaelson Will Discuss “The Pilgrimage of World Christianity,” Dec. 13

Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, a distinguished visiting scholar in the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, will discuss the major demographic changes in the Christian world and the impact of the explosion of Christianity in the Global South.

Granberg-Michaelson, the former general secretary of the Reformed Church of America, will present "The Pilgrimage of World Christianity: A Post-Christian West and the Non-Western Church" at the Library at 4 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 13 in Room 119 on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The lecture is free and open to the public. Tickets are not needed.

While at the Kluge Center, Granberg-Michaelson has studied the major shift in Christianity’s presence within the world to Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the challenges now facing the global Christian community to unite and communicate. His research will be used for a forthcoming book on the topic.

"The typical Christian in the world today is a woman in a village in Kenya," said Granberg-Michaelson. "The shifts to Africa, Asia and Latin America constitute an astonishing change in how Christianity is present within the world. That creates a huge challenge in Christianity in learning how to stay in relationship to one another."

Raised with a strong evangelical background, Granberg-Michaelson attended Princeton Seminary. He served as an aide to U.S. Sen. Mark O. Hatfield before entering the ministry. In 1994, he was appointed as general secretary of the Reformed Church in America and served for 17 years.

Through a generous endowment from John W. Kluge, the Library of Congress established the Kluge Center in 2000 to bring together the world’s best thinkers to stimulate and energize one another, to distill wisdom from the Library’s rich resources and to interact with policymakers in Washington. For further information on the Kluge Center, visit www.loc.gov/kluge/.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 151.8 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

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PR 12-216
11/26/12
ISSN 0731-3527

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