Newbigin.net – Bibliography & Document

A lifetime of Lesslie Newbigin’s missionary engagement has left to us a rich and extensive testimony, enacted and spoken and written. In most of what he wrote he was putting on paper what he intended to say in some lecture or address he had been invited to give. And most of those occasions came about because of his personal engagement in issues critical to the moment, essential for the church’s missionary engagement. In all of it, his was always an ad hoc theology, spoken to a time and place in the church’s life as a community sent by the Spirit to bear witness to the reign of God in Christ.

This bibliography traces several kinds of materials produced from this missionary life. There are of course the published materials (section A). In regard to those, the bibliography is extremely comprehensive, though undoubtedly not entirely complete in that Newbigin’s writings have always tended to emerge and re-emerge in print in a wide range of venues. A limited form of annotation is supplied for each item to indicate, so far as it is known, the setting in which an address or essay was first given and/or to trace the various forms and places in which materials have been republished, including translations into various languages. In most cases, particular published materials are included in the listing only once, at the point of initial or primary publication. Revised editions of books have been listed a second time in those cases in which the revisions are substantive and are of significant importance.
A number of unpublished manuscripts are referenced in section B. The selection is limited to those works deemed to be especially significant for Newbigin research. Many more materials exist in archival collections that are as yet not fully catalogued. At the head of the list, detailed information is provided regarding the relevant archival collections. The locations where particular items can be found are included in the annotations.