The last century has seen the revolutionary remaking of Christianity into a truly world religion. How did it happen? What triggered the emergence of this new global faith no longer dominated by the West, full of new and vital forms of devotion?

Mark Shaw's provocative thesis is that far-flung revivals are at the heart of the global resurgence of Christianity. These were not the quirky folk rituals associated with rural America and nineteenth-century camp meetings that belong more to an age of plows and prairies than of postmodernity and globalization.

Rather they were like forces of nature, protean, constantly adjusting their features and ferocity to new times and to new places, speaking Spanish, Portuguese, Yoruba, Korean, Mandarin and Gujarati. They crossed the equator. As they traveled abroad they grabbed hold of missionaries, Bible translations, national evangelists, globalization and glossolalia and turned them into a religious revolution.

In this engaging book we read the stories of Joseph Babalola and the Aladura Revival in Africa, of Kil Sun-Ju and the great Korean revival of 1907, of Paulo Borges Jr. and explosion of neo-Pentecostalism in Brazil, and of V. S. Azariah and the mass conversions of the Dalit people in India. As Shaw paints portraits of these and many more, his gallery fills, and we begin to see beyond isolated pictures to the sweeping landscape that we didn't realize was before our eyes all the time.

Mark Shaw is the director of the Centre for World Christianity at Africa International University in Nairobi, Kenya. He is the author of a number of books, including Work, Play, Love: A Visual Guide to Calling, Career and the Mission of God, Global Awakening: How Twentieth Century Revivals created a Religious Revolution and The Kingdom of God in Africa: A Short History of African Christianity. Mark and his wife Lois divide their time between the United States and Kenya, where they have worked for over twenty-five years. Mark studied world Christianity at the University of Edinburgh (MTh) and the history of Christianity at Westminster Theological Seminary (ThD). He enjoys speaking to churches and campus groups across North America on topics related to his books. He loves listening to Dylan, following the Red Sox and hanging with his grandsons.