Power and Identity in the Global Church:

Description

Power and Identity in the Global Church: Six Contemporary Cases applies contemporary sociological, theological, and New Testament insights to better understand how God’s people can, do, and should interact in the field, thereby laying the groundwork for better multicultural approaches to mission partnership. The authors—six evangelical anthropologists and theologians—also show that faithfulness in mission requires increased attention to local identities, cultural themes, and concerns, including the desire to grow spiritually through direct engagement with God’s word. In this context, failure to attend to power imbalances can stunt spiritual and leadership growth. Attending to those imbalances should make Christian churches more truly brothers and sisters in Christ, equal members of the one global body of which Christ alone is the head.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Philosophie et théologie
• Growth
• Christian Church

Informations

• Publié par: William Carey Library Publishers
• Date de parution: 01 juin 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645085300
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Power and Identity in the Global Church: Six Contemporary Cases Copyright © 2009 by Brian M. Howell and Edwin ZehnerAll rights reserved.

No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording—without prior written permission of the publisher.

Unless otherwise indicated all biblical quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version © 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by permission of Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. All rights reserved.

Naomi Bradley, editorial manager Johanna Deming, assistant editor Hugh Pindur, graphic designer

Cover Photo: Churchgoers, Mbozi, Tanzania, s.d. – Courtesy Moravian Archives, Herrnhut, LBS 006675

Published by William Carey Library, an imprint of William Carey Publishing 10 W. Dry Creek Cir. | Littleton, CO 80120 www.missionbooks.org William Carey Publishing is a ministry of Frontier Vantures, Pasadena, California www.frontierventures.org

ISBN: 978-1-64508-530-0 / Digital eBook Release 2023

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Power and identity in the global church : six contemporary cases / Brian M. Howell and Edwin Zehner, editors. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-87808-513-2 ISBN-10: 0-87808-513-0 1. Christianity and culture--Case studies. 2. Identification (Religion)--Case studies. I. Howell, Brian M. II. Zehner, Edwin. BR115.C8P675 2008 261.089’009--dc22 2008040430

Contributors Preface Brian M. Howell

C ONTENTS

1Contextualizing Context—Exploring Christian Identity in the Global Church through Six Contemporary Cases Brian M. Howell

2Paul in Japan: A Fresh Reading of Romans and Galatians J. Nelson Jennings

3Contextualization from the Ground: Longuda Lutherans in Nigeria Todd Vanden Berg

4Local Language and Global Faith: Choosing Church Language in the Philippines Brian M. Howell

5Identity Matters: Christianity and Ethnic Identity in the Peninsular Basque Country Steven J. Ybarrola

6Contextualization and Ethnicity: Millenarian Discource Among the Bayano Kuna in Panama Eric J. Moeller

7Beyond Anti-syncretism: Gospel, Context and Authority in the New Testament and in ai Conversions to Christianity Edwin Zehner

Afterword: Concluding Missiological Reflection Robert J. Priest

Bibliography Endnotes Index

C ONTRIBUTORS

Brian M. Howell (B.A., Wesleyan University; M.A., Fuller eological Seminary; M.A./Ph.D., Washington University in St. Louis) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He is the author ofChristianity in the Local Context: Southern Baptists in the Philippines (Palgrave, 2008), in addition to several journal articles and book chapters on global Christianity, and Philippine Christianity in particular. His current research on Short-Term Missions and Christian ethnography has appeared in Anthropological eory, e Journal of Communication and Religion, Christian Scholar’s Review,andThe Bulletin of Missionary Research. J. Nelson JenningsVanderbilt University; M.Div., Covenant Seminary; Ph.D., (B.A., University of Edinburgh (Scotland) is Professor of World Mission at Covenant eological Seminary, St. Louis. Dr. Jennings served in Japan from 1986 until 1999 with the PCA’s Mission to the World, in church-planting and pastoral ministry. In 1996 he became assistant professor of international Christian studies at Tokyo Christian University. He is currently president of Presbyterian Mission International (PMI—www.pmiweb.org) and editor ofMissiology: An International Review(www.asmweb.org/missiology.htm). He is the author ofGod the Real Superpower: Rethinking Our Role in Missions, eology in Japan, and the co-author, with Hisakazu Inagaki, ofPhilosophical eology and East-West Dialogue. Eric J. Moeller(M.A., M.Div., M.A./Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Assistant Professor of Pastoral Ministry and Missions at Concordia eological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His work on the Kuna of Panama has been presented at various meetings, including the Evangelical Missiological Society. In addition to his work with the Kuna, he has also studied Hispanic theology and practice in the United States. Robert J. Priest(B.A., Columbia International University; M.A., University of Chicago; Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Professor of Mission and Intercultural Studies and Director of the Doctor of Philosophy in Intercultural Studies Program at Trinity Evangelical Divinity. Born to career missionaries, he was raised in Bolivia and eventually returned to South America, conducting nearly two years of anthropological field research among the Aguaruna of Peru, focusing both on traditional religion and on conversion to Christianity. He has been published in various journals and has contributed chapters in a number of books. Todd Vanden BergCalvin College; M.A./Ph.D., State University of New York, (B.A., Buffalo) is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Dr. Vanden Berg has done fieldwork with the Longuda of Adamawa State Nigeria. is research was supported by the Deur Endowment of the Department of Sociology and Social Work at Calvin College as well as a Calvin College Research Fellowship. Related to this fieldwork he has published on the topics of involuntary resettlement as well as on issues of witchcra beliefs of Longuda Lutheran Christians. He is the author of “Culture, Christianity, and Witchcra in a West African Context” (InThe Changing Face of Christianity: Africa, the West, and the World. Eds. Lamin Sanneh, and Joel Carpeter. Oxford University Press, 2005) along with a Reformed defense of Christians in anthropology published inChristian Scholar’s Review. Steven J. YbarrolaBethel College; M.A., Brown University; Ph.D., Brown (B.A., University) is Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the E. Stanley Jones School of World Mission and Evangelism at Asbury eological Seminary. Dr. Ybarrola has served as a missionary with Operation Mobilization and has ongoing research in the peninsular Basque country. He is currently completing work on the manuscriptEnemies & Allies, Strangers & Friends: Identity and Ideology in thePeninsular Basque Country to be published by the University of Nevada Press. Edwin ZehnerHoughton College; M.A./Ph.D., Cornell University) has taught (B.A., anthropology at Houghton College, Wheaton College, and Central College, and for several years headed the publishing program of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Northern Illinois University. In the 1980s he spent four years living and working among Christians in ailand. His Ph.D. dissertation drew in part on that experience as it analyzed stories of ai converts to Christianity. He is the author of “Short-Term Missions: Toward a More Field-Oriented Model” (Missiology, October 2006) and “Orthodox Hybridities: Anti-

Syncretism and Localization in the Evangelical Christianity of ailand” (Anthropological Quarterly, Summer 2005). In the spring of 2008 he was a visiting fellow of the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University.

P REFACE

Brian M. Howell

is book grew rather organically out of a conference of the Evangelical Missiological Society in 2003. All the authors (save Vanden Berg) were presenters on different panels who happened to come around a common theme. e papers seemed to make a nicely coherent point about the need to attend to matters of ethnic change, political context and power within the missionary enterprise, particularly in terms of contextualization. e essays contribute helpful insights to the missionary enterprise and an understanding of global Christianity in general. It was tempting to move the Aerword to this spot. is brief reflection, graciously provided by the organizer of the original EMS conference and one of the nation’s pre- eminent mission anthropologists, Robert Priest, helps to clarify contributions these essays might make to the larger project of missiology. His summation insightfully brings out a history and context to the discussion that is, we believe, enormously helpful. (If so inclined, readers might just want to flip to the back right now, read Priest’s Aerword, and then start the Introduction.) However, the discussion is meant to be a bit larger than the missiological context he knows so intimately, so we have le the Aerword where it makes the most sense—aer our words—to remain the final thought, but not necessarily shaping the larger framework of the book. at larger framework is laid out in the Introduction by Brian Howell. is Introduction began its life as a project for the Faith and Learning Seminar at Wheaton College. rough the opportunity provided by release time (as well as the requirement that prior to tenure all faculty members produce an essay integrating their disciplines with Christian theology), this essay became the opportunity to think about the larger issues of context, culture, contextualization and identity raised in the subsequent chapters. It was only later that it was adapted as the Introduction here, but the time and encouragement to work on these issues, along with the delightful engagement with colleagues Roger Lundin and Kathryn Long, made an important contribution to the final result. We are grateful for the support of our families in all that we do, but it is often keenly felt as we carve out precious time to work on publishing projects. For that patience and understanding we are grateful. We are very appreciative of the support of William Carey Library Publishers. In particular, we thank the editor there, Naomi Bradley, for her patience and work on our behalf. We thank the anonymous reviewer who provided encouragement on the manuscript and several helpful suggestions. anks to Michael Fox for his work on the bibliography. Joel Carpenter also provided helpful input on the project. We regret that we were not able to respond more substantively to some of this extremely helpful critique. We hope that in spite of the flaws that remain, this volume finds its way into the hands of students of mission, missionaries themselves and Christians around the world interested in sorting out the complicated issues of identity, ethnicity, power and context as they play out in our Christian lives everywhere. If we can enlarge the discussion and provide more resources for Kingdom work, we will have counted this effort a resounding success.

What does it mean to practice “local” Christianity? What is local culture?

Can we speak of “inauthentic” and “authentic” culture at all?

7

C C — E C ONTEXTUALIZING ONTEXT XPLORING HRISTIAN I G C S DENTITY IN THE LOBAL HURCH THROUGH IX C ONTEMPORARY C ASES

Brian M. Howell

While conducting field research in the northern Philippines in 7998, my family and I stayed in a small dorm apartment at the Philippine Baptist eological Seminary. At the same time, a number of graduate students from various Asian countries throughout the region were on campus pursuing their doctoral degrees in theology through the branch campus of the Asia-Baptist Graduate eological School. One of the students was a pastor from Korea who was working on a thesis about the “contextualization of Christianity” among the “Igorots” or upland ethnic minority groups (also known as “mountain people”) 7 from the many homeland areas of the northern mountain region. is missionary/student had taken on a research project in which he would determine how the mountain people (i.e., Ibaloi and Kankanae living in the city of Baguio and surrounding areas) could, or should, best practice Christianity. He told me how the Christians of these various ethnic groups had a very “inauthentic” form of Christianity that was, in his words, “totally Western.” ey needed to use “their own music” and develop liturgy that used traditional dances, instruments and languages. He even went so far as to suggest that they should not be wearing Western-style clothing, suits and the like, and “go back to traditional clothing” such as thebahag,or g-string. He explained, “My dissertation [topic] is to show them how they [can] have a real ‘mountain Christianity’ and work out Christianity for their context.” e irony of a Korean pastor telling ethnic minority people of the Philippines how to practice an Eastern religion as it has been translated through Western theologians and missionaries was striking for several reasons. In the first place, it would probably surprise some secular anthropologists and scholars of religion to know that a conservative Korean pastor was criticizing these evangelical Christian Filipinos for being culturally “inauthentic” (i.e., too Western) and encouraging them to discard so-called borrowed religious practices. Moreover, it exemplified some of the complexity to the contemporary spread and development of Protestant Christianity in places like the Philippines where competing visions of “Filipino culture” and denominationally and historically varied form of Christianity are being worked out. Finally, it made even more dramatic the reality that while conservative Christian academics and intellectuals from Korea, the United States, the Philippines and, indeed, around the world, were calling on “local” Christians to be more culturally particular and to practice locally distinct forms of the faith (even while they defended doctrinal orthodoxy as transcultural and universal), the Christians themselves oen continued to practice, and in many cases defend, what could only be described as a thoroughly “Western” form of the religion. For Christians seeking to understand contemporary global Christianity, this scenario brings up a number of questions, old and new. e old questions go back to some of the beginnings of the missionary movement: What is the responsibility of the missionary in directing cultural change? How should Christianity be communicated in new contexts? What is the relationship between Christianity and culture? e new questions come about in an increasingly globalized and interconnected world: What does it mean to practice “local” Christianity? What is local culture? Can we speak of “inauthentic” and “authentic” culture at all? ese questions deserve more than a slim volume of six case studies, but we hope this might provide some fresh ways of examining the issues. e essays here provide ethnographically and historically specific examples of Christians in various places working out their Christianity in living communities, reshaping and (re)defining their political, ethnic and religious identities. Each author is a social scientist with strong interests in the