DepartmentCook School of Intercultural Studies
Biola AffiliationsFaculty

Documents

Degrees

  • D.Phil., Oxford University
  • M.Th., Edinburgh University
  • M.Div., Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
  • B.A., Yale University

Biography

Allen Yeh is a missiologist who specializes in Latin America and China. He also has other academic interests in history, classical music, homiletics, social justice, the California missions, the Maya, and biographical interest in Jonathan Edwards (America's greatest theologian) and Adoniram Judson (America's first intercontinental missionary). He serves on the Board of Trustees for the Foundation for Theological Education in Southeast Asia. He earned his B.A. from Yale, M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell, M.Th. from Edinburgh, and D.Phil. from Oxford. Despite this alphabet soup, he believes that experience is the greatest teacher of all (besides the Bible). As such, Allen has been to over 60 countries on every continent, to study, do missions work, and experience the culture. As Mark Twain said in 1857, "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." He is joyfully married to Arianna Molloy, a professor in Biola's Communication Studies Department.

Affiliations

  • American Baptist Churches (ABC-USA)
  • American Academy of Religion (AAR)
  • Evangelical Theological Society (ETS)
  • American Society of Church History (ASCH)
  • Evangelical Homiletics Society (EHS)
  • Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Faith Alliance
  • Evangelical Missiological Society (EMS)
  • American Society of Missiology (ASM)
  • Association of Professors of Mission (APM)
  • International Society for Frontier Missiology (ISFM)
  • British & Irish Association for Mission Studies (BIAMS)
  • International Association for Mission Studies (IAMS)
  • California Missions Studies Association (CMSA)
  • Latin America Mission (LAM)
  • Latin American Theological Fellowship, Fraternidad Teológica Latinoamericana (LATF or FTL)
  • Orlando Costas Consultation on Global Mission
  • International Conference on Baptist Studies (ICOBS)
  • Yale-Edinburgh Group on the History of the Missionary Movement and Non-Western Christianity
  • Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (LCWE)
  • World Council of Churches (WCC)
  • Urbana Student Missions Convention
  • Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty
  • Jonathan Edwards Society

Awards

  • 2017 Polycentric Missiology selected as one of the top 10 missions books of 2016 by International
  • Bulletin of Mission Research (IBMR)
  • 2005 Cook Fellowship, Acton Institute
  • 2001 Parish Pulpit Scholarship, Church of the Pioneers Foundation
  • 2000 Sandy Ford Memorial Scholarship, Leighton Ford Ministries

Publications

Books

  • Majority World Theologies: Theologizing from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Ends of the Earth, co-edited with Tite Tiénou (Pasadena: William Carey Publishing, 2018) [Evangelical Missiological Society series, Vol. 26]
  • Polycentric Missiology: 21st Century Mission from Everyone to Everywhere (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016).
  • Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey & Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers (Studies in World Christianity), co-edited with Chris Chun (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2013).
  • Routes and Radishes: and Other Things to Talk About at the Evangelical Crossroads, co-authored with Dwight Friesen, Mark Russell, Michelle Sanchez, and Chelle Stearns (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010).

Book chapters

  • Mission and the age of World Christianity” in Risto Jukko and Marina Behera, eds., Together in the Mission of God. Jubilee Reflections on the International Missionary Council (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2022). [Jubilee volume for the 11thAssembly of the WCC in Karlsruhe, Germany]
  • “Bartolome de las Casas: Defender of the Indians, Defender of the Word” in Edward L. Smither and Robert L. Gallagher, eds., Sixteenth-Century Mission: Global Mission in the Age of Reformations (Bellingham: Lexham, 2021).
  • “Creation Care in Latin America: Lessons from Catholics and Evangélicos” in Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood, eds., Ecumenism and Independency in World Christianity: Historical Studies in Honour of Brian Stanley (Leiden: Brill, 2020).
  • “Jonathan Edwards, Revival, and Missions” in Chris Chun and Kyle Strobel, eds., Regeneration, Revival, and Creation: Religious Experience and the Purposes of God in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (Eugene: Pickwick, 2020).
  • "Theology and Orthopraxis in 21st-Century Global Evangelicalism" in Mark Labberton, ed., Still Evangelical?: Twelve Insiders Reconsider Political, Social, and Theological Meaning (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018).
  • Together Towards Life and The Cape Town Commitment” in Kenneth R. Ross, Jooseop Keum, Kyriaki Avtzi, Roderick R. Hewitt, eds., Ecumenical Missiology: Changing Landscapes and New Conceptions of Mission (Oxford: Regnum, 2016).
  • “The Chinese Diaspora Church and Cross-Cultural Mission”, co-authored with Paul Woods, in Sadiri Joy Tira and Tetsunao Yamamori, eds., Scattered and Gathered: A Global Compendium of Diaspora Missiology (Oxford: Regnum, 2016).
  • “Asian Perspectives on 21st Century Pluralism” in Scott Sunquist and Amos Yong, eds., The Gospel and Pluralism Today: Reassessing Lesslie Newbigin in the Twenty-First Century (IVP Academic, 2015). [Vol. 1 of IVP’s Missiological Engagements series]
  • “The Chinese Diaspora” in Amos Yong and Chandler Im, eds., Global Diasporas and Mission (Regnum Edinburgh Centenary Series, Vol. 23) (Oxford: Regnum, 2014).
  • “The Significance of the California Missions in Californian Theology and Culture” in Fred Sanders and Jason S. Sexton, eds., Theology and California: Theological Refractions on California’s Culture (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014).
  • “Asia and Latin America: Taking the Gospel to the Ends of the Earth” in Casely B. Essamuah and David K. Ngairuiya, eds., Communities of Faith in Africa and the African Diaspora: in Honor of Dr. Tite Tienou with additional essays on World Christianity (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014).

Articles

  • Tribute in Jeremy Weber, “Remembering ‘Prof’ Andrew Walls, Founder of the Study of World Christianity” in Christianity Today (August 17, 2021).
  • “Majority World Theologies” in Transformation (SAGE: Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, 2021).
  • “A Christian Response to Racism in the Year of Coronavirus” in Christianity Today’s The Exchange with Ed Stetzer (March 15, 2020)
  • “The Future of Mission is from Everyone to Everywhere” in Lausanne Global Analysis (Vol. 7, No. 1, January 2018).
  • “A.J. Gordon and Social Action” in American Baptist Quarterly (Vol. 34, No. 2, Summer 2015), issue in honor of the 175th anniversary of his birth.
  • “Hispanic and Asian North American (HANA) Theologians Together: A Groundbreaking Consultation”, co-authored with Octavio Esqueda, in Lausanne Global Analysis (Vol. 4, No. 4, July 2015). “Missions” in Brian C. Stiller, Todd M. Johnson, Karen Stiller, and Mark Hutchinson, eds., Evangelicals Around the World: A Global Handbook for the 21st Century (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2015).
  • “Migration and Global Mission” in Common Ground Journal: Perspectives on the Church in the 21st Century (Vol. 12, No. 1, Spring 2015).
  • “The Virgin of Guadalupe” in International Journal of Frontier Missiology (Vol. 28, No. 4, October-December 2011), co-authored with Gabriela Olaguibel.
  • “Lessons from 2010: Tokyo, Edinburgh, Cape Town, & Boston’s successes and failures as prelude to CLADE V” in Journal of Latin American Theology: Christian Reflections from the Latino South (Vol. 6, No. 1, 2011).
  • “2010 Boston: The Changing Contours of World Mission and Christianity” in Missiology: An International Review (Vol. 39, No. 2, April 2011).
  • “A Participant’s Account of Lausanne III” in Evangelical Missions Quarterly (Vol. 47, No. 1, January 2011).
  • “Tokyo 2010: Global Mission Consultation” in International Bulletin of Missionary Research (Vol. 35, No. 1, January 2011).

Areas of Expertise for Media Interviews

  • Arts and Humanities
  • Asia
  • Bible
  • China
  • Church History
  • Cross-cultural Issues
  • Cultural Diversity
  • Culture
  • Evangelism
  • Gender and Theology
  • Hispanics
  • Intercultural Studies
  • Latin America
  • Missions
  • Movies
  • Multicultural Issues
  • Music
  • Preaching
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