To Whom Does Christianity Belong?

Critical Issues in World Christianity

Dyron B. Daughrity

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781451472271
• eBook ISBN: 9781451496581
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

To Whom Does Christianity Belong? is a question that is asked, at least implicitly, throughout the world today. The issues that surround this question open up a host of others: Is Christianity a primitive religion that has little to say to twenty-first-century people? Is it a Western religion that has been exported through colonialism? Is it a religion poised to increase in size? Should it? Does Christianity lead to economic prosperity? Does it foster violence or peace? Does it liberate or restrict women? Who gets to claim Christianity as their own?

In this exciting new volume, an anchor to the Understanding World Christianity series, Dyron B. Daughrity helps readers map out the major changes that have taken place in recent years in the world's largest religion. By comparing trends, analyzing global Christian movements, and tracing the impact of Pentecostalism, interreligious dialogue, global missions, birth rates, and migratory trends, Daughrity sketches a picture of a changing religion and gives the tools needed to understand it. From discussions of sexuality and afterlife to contemporary Christian music and secularization, this book provides a global perspective on what is happening within Christianity today.

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Theological Loci

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The New Church

Ephesians 2:19–22

You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

What is church? Is it simply “where two or three gather” in the name of Christ?^[1] Is it an organized denomination, complete with officers, budgets, and creeds? Is it something that must be recognized by a government in order to be legitimate?

In the broad sweep of world Christianity, we can see that Christians come to very different conclusions about what church is. In this chapter we look at a few different ways that Christians globally interpret the meaning of church. In the American context, our understanding has always been profoundly impacted by our nation’s most prolific pastors. And in this chapter we look at two of the giants who have shaped, and continue to shape, our thinking: Billy Graham and Rick Warren. The chapter also presents a more global and inclusive understanding of church, as we highlight the work of the World Council of Churches—perhaps the most international and ecumenical forum for understanding global Christianity today. Finally, we take a case study of a relatively new church: the Kimbanguists of Africa. The Kimbanguist Church is an African movement that demonstrates how Christianity changes, indigenizes, and adapts itself into new contexts. It presents a pattern that continues globally today, paving the way for the new churches emerging worldwide. However, there are times when new churches challenge well-established norms of Christian orthodoxy. The case of the Kimbanguist Church aptly illustrates this tension.

Rick Warren—Successor to Billy Graham

Rick Warren’s influence on American Christianity is incalculable. His vision has become the new archetype for how Americans do church in the twenty-first century. While he did not create the model by himself, he certainly blazed a trail, and thousands of pastors worldwide look to him as a guide and an inspiration. Already Christians in North America and beyond look to him with deep respect. Here is a unique personality, perhaps the only American pastor capable of receiving the baton from Billy Graham as the next leader of the powerful, collective voice of America’s Christian millions.

Similarly, Billy Graham shaped twentieth-century Christianity in powerful and lasting ways.^[2] He embraced the civil rights movement and joined forces with Martin Luther King Jr. He preached to audiences of thousands, drawing in crowds on a scale that only the most famous rock stars were capable. He was embraced by several US presidents, serving as advisor to them regardless of their political affiliation. He tapped the power of media in fresh, innovative ways through print, radio, television, film, and a significant Internet presence. Billy Graham understood the globalization of Christianity like few others before him, and he preached to live audiences in nearly every country of the world. With grace, class, and a unique appeal to reach the unchurched, he became a cultural icon, gracing the covers of important news magazines during his storied career. He even received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a rare feat for a preacher. People raised eyebrows when Graham allowed his name to be embossed on a street not known for religious conviction, yet he humbly replied, “We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner. . . . I couldn’t condemn Hollywood Boulevard any more than any other place.”^[3]

Rick Warren’s rise was less conspicuous. While Graham first came to national prominence during his landmark 1949 tent revival crusade in Los Angeles, attended by 350,000, Warren caused a mild sensation in evangelical circles with his 1995 book The Purpose Driven Church. It was read by America’s pastors. However, it merely set the stage for his wildly successful follow-up book in 2002 that was directed not just to pastors, but to all: The Purpose Driven Life. No one seems to know how many copies have been sold, but estimates range from 30 to 60 million. Zondervan, the publisher, claims it has been translated into more than eighty-five different languages, making it “the bestselling hardback non-fiction book in history.”^[4]

Both Billy Graham and Rick Warren are Baptist preachers. And both of them have an uncanny ability to reach out to people of all persuasions: left and right, Catholic and Protestant, prosperous and poor. Like Graham, Warren has been iconoclastic. Just when evangelicalism was being stereotyped as antiscience, insular, right wing, unconcerned with the poor, and overly concerned with the United States of America, Warren broke several molds. He backed the Evangelical Climate Initiative in 2006, brokered an unprecedented and exemplary partnership with the government of (mainly Catholic) Rwanda, and spoke of Barack Obama in very positive ways.^[5] That’s not quite what America might expect from the pastor of Saddleback Church, one of America’s largest Southern Baptist Convention member churches, known for their conservative stances.

Warren is at the vanguard of a new church. It is global. It emphasizes social justice. It is ambitiously evangelistic, planting churches and offering humanitarian services all over the globe. And, importantly, the new church is very ecumenical. It shies away from endless doctrinal disputes, embracing all Christians on the ground that serving the poor—in the name of Jesus—is the priority at this moment in history. Warren seems to take seriously the words of Paul at the beginning of this chapter. He envisions the household of God as being very big. And he wants to build it bigger. In Pauline fashion, he wants to broaden the existing definition of what that word church seems to encompass. For Warren and the new church, the ecclesia is a concept that we have unjustifiably limited to our own experience. Those borders, however, must be lifted. The question everyone is asking, however, is where those borders end. Is Christianity, perhaps, a religion without borders?

Ecclesia

Earlier we looked at how the first-century church had to deal with the issue of identity. Does Christianity belong to Judaism? Did Paul’s unpredictable and sweeping success as a missionary to the gentiles change the essential nature of the church by switching it over to them? It is fascinating that many of those complex discussions of Christian identity are still happening today, yet for very different reasons.

Ephesians 2:19–22 is a description of the church that reads as fresh today as it did twenty centuries ago. It is a snapshot of Paul’s thinking just as Christianity was transforming from a Jewish-majority religion to a gentile-majority one. Notice the metaphors he employs:

• These gentiles are no longer foreigners, on the margins. They are now “fellow citizens.” Christianity now belongs to them, too.
• The church is God’s house. The concrete floor is the collective voice of the prophets and the apostles. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, the most important part of a foundation because all other stones will be set according to its positioning.
• The church—consisting of both Jews and gentiles—is a holy temple, a sacred space. gentiles are no longer profane. They are now holy, just like Jews. They can come in—not as pollutants, but as full-fledged “members.”
• The church is constantly “being built together.” It is not finished. It is a dwelling place for God’s Holy Spirit, even while under construction.

Paul’s letter to the Ephesians proved too difficult for some Jews to accept. Others, however, found its brazen claims refreshing. If we could listen in, we would likely hear Jews asking major, fundamental questions about Paul’s proposed changes: “Did God really open the door to gthentiles—the ones we have been taught to avoid? Have they been promoted or have we Jews been demoted? What’s going on here? Who is this man who claims to speak for God?” Paul was doing something new. He was totally redefining what it meant to be a child of God. His teachings caused great offense for some, and provided spiritual liberation for others.

The New Testament uses many images to describe the church: architecture, family, body images (one body, many parts), a flock of sheep, a military unit, a married couple (Jesus is groom, people the bride), a school of students with Jesus as teacher, a kingdom. We could go on.

However, at the root of all of these metaphors is a Greek word that has been studied intensely for centuries: ecclesia—the word translated “church.” Ecclesia has become a Christian word, but it was common in the Greek language before the New Testament era. In its most basic sense, it refers to a public assembly that has been called out by a herald, from the words ek (out) and kalein (to call). The word was used by the Greek translators of the Hebrew Bible to refer to Israel’s gathering before the Lord (see Acts 7:38). New Testament scholar Geoffrey Bromiley noted the following insight about the concept of ecclesia: “It is of interest that behind the New Testament term stand both Greek democracy and Hebrew theocracy, the two being brought together in a theocratic democracy or democratic theocracy.”^[6] He goes on to point out that Jesus had little to say, explicitly, about ecclesia. He only mentioned it in two places: 1) Matt. 16:18, when Jesus says to Peter: “On this rock I will build my church”; and 2) Matt. 18:17, when Jesus discusses how to confront sin in the community: “Tell it to the church.” This meager use of the term has caused some scholars to wonder whether Jesus even intended to establish a following.

However, if we interpret Jesus to mean “the church” when he speaks of “the kingdom,” then we have tremendous evidence to indicate he indeed meant to establish a movement. In the New Testament, “the kingdom” is a chief concern for Jesus. Is the kingdom the same thing as the church? Bromiley says we do not know for sure. Whatever Jesus meant, it is quite clear that the apostles used the word liberally when referencing the various communities that gathered in Christ’s memory. Acts and the epistles refer to the ecclesia often, and there seems to be a shared understanding amo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Introducing the Fortress Series “Understanding World Christianity”
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Theological Loci
• The Church and the World
• Contemporary Themes
• For Further Reading
• Index