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The MWRC is pleased to announce that Dr David Bundy, Research Professor of World Christian Studies at New York Theological Seminary, has accepted the role of associate director of the MWRC, commencing January 2017.

Bundy will work alongside Director Dr Geordan Hammond and two administrative assistants to carry out the day-to-day work of the centre, as well as plan events and work with the centre’s 13 partner institutions.

“I have been very impressed with the use of resources, the quality of work that is done in and around the MWRC, and the positive influence it has had in the UK, but also beyond, and the vast network of connections,” Bundy said. “I hope that I can entice some of my friends to also consider the MWRC as a locus for some of their interests and projects and a place where they can find help. I hope we can find more doctoral students to work with the resources that are here in Manchester – both people resources and other intellectual resources. My goal is not to remake anything but to help support the good things I see going on.”

For the last six years, Bundy has lived primarily in Europe so that he could pursue research on the development of holiness movements in France, Britain and Scandinavia. He and his wife, Nancy, call southern California their North American home.

Having grown up attending holiness churches in the United States, Bundy initially wrote a book on Keswick while serving on the faculty at Asbury Theological Seminary, where he taught Greek and Hebrew. His interest has developed into a life work around discovering and promoting a deeper understanding of the history of holiness and Pentecostal movements around the world, and their relationships to one another.

“I was initially curious if there is anything beyond [American holiness movements], and what it is and how would it relate to us,” he said. “It has been a series of wonderful discoveries of the lives, thought and histories of interesting people and movements.

After earning his M.Div. and Th.M. from Asbury, he relocated to Belgium, where he held a Licentiate in Oriental Philology and History at Université Catholique de Louvain, studying and teaching there for 11 years as well as conducting research on Syriac, Armenian, Arabic and Middle Eastern Christian studies.

During those years, his interest in European holiness and Pentecostal history led him to found two Pentecostal organizations and a journal (now the Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association), all of which continue. Additionally, he earned a Ph.D. in European Pentecostal history in 2009 from Uppsala University.

“I recognized that the holiness background in Europe was badly understood by all concerned,” he said. “I started to do some pushing on that in Scandinavia and Belgium and the Netherlands and just a tiny bit in England. I mapped out very carefully what those relationships were, how they evolved in ways that were very different from the North American experiences of the USA, Canada and Mexico.”

Grants allowed him to continue his work in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and in France. He has been an invited lecturer in 44 countries, and taught graduate-level courses in 28 countries. 

In 2015 Bundy was a Visiting Fellow with MWRC, spending six weeks exploring in the Nazarene Theological College (NTC) archives and other repositories across the United Kingdom, researching “The British Roots of the Korean and Japanese Holiness Churches.” Bundy is now working toward a book on holiness movements in the UK, 1870-1920.

The Bundys will reside in Manchester through July 2017, to continue his research and to learn more about NTC and the MWRC.

“When you’re deeply involved in [research] for personal reasons, as well as for institutional reasons, it gives one a more complete perspective on what one is representing to one’s colleagues and friends around the world. And I hope it makes me more useful to people who are here doing research.”

“We’re honoured that Dr Bundy has chosen to invest his time and talents into the MWRC,” said Dr Hammond. “His astonishingly wide networks of scholars and church leaders in the Wesleyan traditions and beyond have already begun to bless the Centre.”

Dr Bundy has authored Keswick (1975, 1983, 2012), Visions of Apostolic Mission (2009), and has contributed to reference works, including the Dictionnaire d’histoire et de gegraphie ecclesastiques, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, Anchor Bible Dictionary, Dictionary of Religion in America,  The Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography, Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, Mission Legacies, Dictionary of Missionary Biography, International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, and Norsk pinsekristendom og karismatisk fornyelse. He has served on the boards of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, North American Patristic Society, American Theological Library Association, Wesleyan Theological Society, and Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, among other corporations and educational institutions.