As director of "Feed the Minds", Alec Gilmore spent 20 years visiting over 50 countries, encouraging and facilitating the provision of Christian literature. Drawing on this experience, Gilmore here examines Christian literature around the world.
A Fresh Approach to Overseas Aid for Christian LiteratureIntroduction
The issue with overseas aid is not whether aid works but how it works and with what results, not whether it gets through but what it does to the people who receive it. There are two basic questions: 1 Does aid create dependency rather than growth, development and self-sufficiency? 2 Does aid come only with control?
The Development Debate
After distinguishing subsidy and development three specific areas of literature work are targetted: general Christian publishing publishing for new readers the development of theological libraries. Each section begins with anecdotal evidence and empirical observation, followed by recognised research methods to reach more objective conclusions, from which emerges 'a different agenda', showing the deficiencies of some of the questions which have been addressed and suggesting new ones. After trying to appreciste where things have gone wrong, and where false assumptions have been made, strengths and weaknesses are evaluated concluding with hints on how the future may be different.
Suggestions for Action
We end with a set of questions and proposals for action which are of relevance to all concerned with church, aid and mission agencies, Third World academics in theology and Christian publishers (especially commercial publishers) in First and Third Worlds. We suggest that the solutions to the problems of Third World Books will only be solved when these various groups are able to work together more closely in partnership, first in identifying the problems and areas of need, and then in addressing them in a practical manner and propose detailed ways in which the partnerships need to be developed.
Extracts from Reviews
Not just a piece of scholarly research drawing on the writing of others but demonstrates a complete understanding of the factors influencing the writing, publishing, distribution and exploitation of Christian literature throughout the Third World . . . It is good to see the place and need for libraries recognised in a prominent way.
Problems which stand in the way of improved publishlng for Chrlstlan wrlters from the Thlrd World are identified and we are brought back to the underlying questions posed in the introduction. There is no doubt that things can be improved and this book sets out some routes to change.
Trevor Lyttle, in the Librarians' Christian Fellowship Newsletter, No 65, Spring 1997.
Provides a basis for the questions and proposals that concern everyone involved in theoIogical education and communicating the gospel throughout the world. Rooted in his extensive experience, and grounded in rigorous analysis and research, Agenda for Development offers Alec Gilmore's insight into how the need for Christian literature in different parts of the world can best be met in the future.
Chichester Diocesan Magazine, August 1996
Few people (are) more qualified than Alec Gilmore to write a book about the future of Third World Christian publishing. The bibliography and the impressive wealth of personal anecdotal evidence indicate the care with which the book has been prepared. Books of this kind can so easily become a catalogue of schemes and projects, but Alec Gilmore has avoided this pitfall by being clear about his research method. Consequently, the study unflinchingly challenges facile assumptions about the response of donor agencies to Third World publishing needs. The author insists that the right questions have to be asked if the right answers are to be found, and, as the argument is carried forward, he shows how the questions with which the book began 'were not necessarily the right questions and indeed in some cases were not even the questions at all' (p. 399). An important contribution to this whole area of study.
David Dunn Wilson, Hartley Victoria college, Manchester, in Expository Times,
. . . contends that the provision of Christian literature across the world is too important to be left to unimaginative mission agencies, easily distracted Western churches, self-interested commercial publishers or overworked Third World academics.
Church Times
Examines the previously uncharted history of Christian publishing and sets the production and availability of the written word firmly within the agenda for development.
Sections on third world publishing, literacy and the new reader, and the provision of books for theological college libraries, demonstrate the contribution of mission agencies and the importance of literacy teaching and Christian publishing to the wider development debate. Some areas, such as the Adult Literacy Organization of Zimbabweare, are explored in depth and shed light on the complicated relationship between donors and publishing partners in the developing world.
A valuable study for anyone concerned about Christian publishing or communications media on a global scale.
Theological Book Review
