Intercultural Theology, Volume Two

Theologies of Mission

Henning Wrogemann

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780830889068
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Ministère chrétien

Christianity is not only a global but also an intercultural phenomenon.In this second volume of his three-volume Intercultural Theology, Henning Wrogemann turns to theologies of mission. Mission theologies, he argues, are found in a wide range of implicit as well as explicit forms, from the practice of Christian presence by a Pakistani Christian among a marginalized people to the published deliberations of mission scholars in the West. The task of intercultural theology is to investigate and promote awareness of the variety of culture- and context-specific theologies of mission.From Warneck to Bosch, from Edinburgh to Lausanne to Busan, Wrogemann provides an overview of the theological underpinnings, rationalizations, and visions for mission and its practice. Tracing developments across a range of Christian traditions, movements, themes, and regions of the globe, from Europe and North America to sub-Saharan Africa, Wrogemann presents us with an array of mission theologies across the scope of the modern missionary movement. This rich conspectus is rounded out with the doxological dimension of mission and the varied facets of oikoumenism.Masterful in its scope and detail, this volume will richly inform the study of missiology and global Christianity. And it is essential reading for doing theology in a multicultural key. In a day when the church in the West struggles to understand and appreciate its missionary legacy and calling, Wrogemann's work sparkles with its deeply informed insights and inspiring vision.Missiological Engagements charts interdisciplinary and innovative trajectories in the history, theology, and practice of Christian mission, featuring contributions by leading thinkers from both the Euro-American West and the majority world whose missiological scholarship bridges church, academy, and society.

1

To Set the Tone

Mission—Surprisingly Different

In the last ten years, general interest in the topic of mission has grown in Germany, both in the media and in academic discussions. Within the broader society, people are asking what the requirements for religious and social missions should be, i.e., what claims to validity they should be permitted to make. It is becoming ever clearer within the field of political studies that even peacekeeping missions carried out with military support need to be assessed according to the legitimacy of their mandate. In religious studies, there are questions about the legitimacy of mission efforts by Christian mainstream denominations in light of an ongoing membership decline, while in social and cultural studies, the global growth of Pentecostal churches is receiving a lot of attention. These different settings show that we need to study missionary efforts very carefully, for missionary work is manifested in very different dimensions. The object of this present volume is to bring this very plurality into view. It will be shown that mission is constantly being experienced and perceived in surprisingly different ways. To set the tone, we will preface the following remarks with an illustrative case study.

Body Language: Just Be There?

We are traveling through the Sindh province of southeastern Pakistan. The road takes us through some flat country with vegetation that is still relatively lush. This will change in a few months as the sun continues to bake the expanse of the Thar Desert. We make a stop in a little village and enter a simple house. Here we meet Asif, a Pakistani Christian who spends most of his time in one of the many local villages that are all inhabited by members of the Khachi Koli caste. We start to talk. Asif tells us that he sees himself as a kind of missionary. When we ask him what exactly the nature of his work is, he answers in a way that sounds flabbergasting to Western ears. The most important thing, he says, is just to live together with the people. Of course he tries to organize help for them, especially in terms of medical care. Even the most basic services are lacking in these areas. He also tries to find help in terms of school teaching. He points out that most of the village residents are Hindus, a population group that receives very little attention in this country. On the contrary—the Khachi Koli experience discrimination.

Since they are a landless tribe and belong to the Hindu religion, many of the majority Muslim population consider them to be uneducated kuffar (Arabic for “unbelievers”) who can be used as cheap labor but who actually belong to India. For this reason, most members of the Muslim population do their best to avoid contact with these people. “It’s important that I cook for them and invite them over, or conversely, that I let them cook for me, that I enter their homes and eat with them there,” says Asif; “I am seen as someone with a higher status, and simply living together with the people this way makes them ask questions.” Asif has lived in his hut for a long time, he reads the Bible, he prays, but he does not preach on his own initiative. When people ask him for information, he gives it them; otherwise he remains silent. What counts here is his physical presence among the people. In contrast to the Hindu purity laws that define marriage across caste lines and eating together as forms of cultic pollution, Asif demonstrates that these things do not matter to him and his faith. Contrary to the tradition of keeping people of lower caste away from holy scriptures and holy places (temples), Asif lives out his faith among the people, and in this way he illustrates a basic dimension of the Christian faith: that the message of the gospel is intended for all people without distinction and that cultic purity laws no longer apply.

Joining Jesus at the Well: Considering the Scene from a Mission-Theological Perspective

Change of scene. Let us consider a painting by Indian artist Angela Trindade that illustrates a “theology of mission” that Asif also endorses (fig. 1). Angela Trindade was considered a prominent Dalit artist; she died in 1980.1 In the painting she expresses what Jesus means to her and what she sees as the essence of the gospel. There is Jesus—our European eyes can also recognize him as “our” Jesus, but in some aspects, he looks very different. Long hair, beard, and a halo—all of that is very familiar to us. But this Jesus is not wearing Jesus sandals. No, he is barefoot, and his garment is neither white nor gray, but blazing orange. His eyes are not directed to the woman standing in front of him; no, they look half-closed, and he holds his foot at a strange angle—is that a comfortable way to sit? Jesus is being presented here in an Indian way, as an ascetic. He is shown as a person who leads a life of homelessness for the sake of meditative contemplation, a life of peregrination like that of Gautama Buddha; after all, among Buddhists, orange or red is considered to be the color of the monks. The eyes are half-closed like those of someone meditating; Jesus is sitting in what is considered in India to be a meditative pose. Calm, withdrawn. Actually, he looks as if the whole situation does not concern him at all.

Figure 1. Jesus and the Samaritan Woman (1947) by Angela Trindade (1909–1980)

How then, we may ask, can Angela Trindade see him as the Savior, the Christ, the Son of God? Jesus is not “doing” anything! Really? Is he not doing anything? He is. He remains seated and is waiting to be approached, namely by the woman. Jesus is seated next to a well, far outside the village depicted in the background, seated in the shade of a tree, just like the Buddha once was. This is precisely the place where the woman has to go with her water jar—because she is a Dalit woman. That is how Trindade sees it; in this way she is relocating the story from the biblical Samaria to India. The biblical Samaria was also populated with both orthodox believers and people who were despised. The place is key, for Dalits are not permitted to draw water from the village well nearby. No, in many cases Dalit women must travel long distances on foot to draw water. For this reason, the village is depicted at the top right of the painting, off in the distance. The village well is off-limits to the Dalits, because if they were to draw water from it, the others (i.e., those of higher castes) would see it as ritual pollution. And since ritual purity is considered extremely important in the Hindu traditions, it is safeguarded on all fronts: no village water is available to the Dalits, no fellowship is to be had with the Dalits, and there are no rights for the Dalits.

So where can we find the gospel here? It is located in that the Dalit woman approaches Jesus, that he, the Son of the living God, remains seated, and that he talks with her! The Dalit woman in the picture can be recognized by her rather dark skin, although Trindade has defamiliarized the woman for the sake of her dignity; traditionally, Dalit women were forbidden from covering their upper bodies with their garments. Their toplessness made them recognizable as Dalits: yet another form of humiliation. Trindade restores the woman’s dignity, portraying her the way she perhaps appears in the eyes of Jesus. The story of Jesus at the well with this Samaritan woman, this Dalit woman, in whose presence he is, whom he addresses, and—and this is critical—from whom he accepts water, this story is for Dalit women one of the most important stories of the entire New Testament. God became flesh and made his dwelling among us—this assertion2 is especially relevant to those people forbidden from doing this very thing by the precepts of the Hindu traditions, forbidden to enter temples, who may not read any holy scriptures, who have no place. For as Untouchables they are as far removed from the divine as anyone can be. How different, in contrast, is the biblical understanding! Here the eternal God testifies that Jesus Christ came into this world to be close even to the most despised people and to give them new dignity.3

That concludes our image review. What is important is that obviously both Trindade, the Indian, and Asif, the Pakistani, see a fundamental aspect of Christian mission not so much in verbal proclamation as in body language, not so much in being on the move as in sharing life with other people. It is not so much about affirming the content of faith on a rational level as it is about experiencing a physical presence that has a therapeutic effect, that is uplifting, that restores dignity, and that raises questions. In the discourse of mission theology, such kinds of mission initiatives have been labeled as “missionary presence.” This is not about educated missionaries; it is about simple Christians who believe they are called to follow Jesus Christ. This is not about foreign personnel needing to be sent “overseas” but rather about people becoming active in their own countries, crossing ethnic, social, and societal boundaries as they do so, as is the case here in the villages of the Khachi Koli. This is not first and foremost about reading the Bible but about telling biblical stories that are important to the person doing the telling; it is not about a personal encounter between two human beings but rather about being human in communality, for in these contexts, human beings are perceived first and foremost as belonging to people groups. Missionary presence as the body language of faith? This is mission—surprisingly different.

Developments, Profiles, and Questions: The Layout of the Present Volume

This brings us to the question of how this book approaches the topic of mission theologies of the present. We need to state three delimitations in this regard. First, we must emphasize at the outset that a comprehensive topic such as this one can only be approached by way of example. The informed reader will certainly perceive that in a number of instances, much more could and should have been said. I concede this point unequivocally. My intention was to present as many facets as possible of a topic that is as gripping as it is challenging. Second, I wish to underscore that the material is presented perspectively: even though my many experiences were gained in African and Asian countries, the perspective from which the material is presented is also my own, namely that of a German and of a man. In addition, the first part emphasizes mission-theological conceptions formulated by Germans. I believe this to be a tenable approach as long as the reader remains aware of it. I attempted to avoid the danger posed by an encyclopedic approach: the danger of straying from the central theme. The wealth of material made it imperative to proceed selectively, as demonstrated for instance by the fact that in the section covering the world missionary conferences, only some main points were addressed. That being said, the footnotes provide sufficient material and references in each case to enable the reader to fill in the gaps.

The third delimitation concerns topics covered by the other two volumes of this textbook series. The first volume already addressed both the theme of inculturation and hermeneutical issues. For this reason, the present volume provides a number of cross-references to what was addressed in greater detail in the first volume. Since the third volume will be devoted to the discussion of a theology of religions, and since it will address issues arising from the theme of interreligious relationships and various aspects of dialogue, I have limited myself in the present volume to making just a few remarks on the interplay of mission and dialogue.

The book is divided into four sections. In the first section, we will study the history of the mission-theological developments of the past one hundred years (part one). Here we will need to outline the general politicohistorical climates and the various ways in which the World Council of Churches, the Lausanne Conference, and other international organizations and movements attempted to provide mission-theological answers to issues arising within the respective climates. This will provide us with an indispensable frame of reference into which the subject material of the following sections may be inserted. The second section will deal with the profiles of various Christian actors (part two). It is necessary to use the broad term actors because the respective entities are structured so very differently; the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, is a world church with a rather uniform character in terms of canon law; the various Orthodox churches are constituted in different ways but share certain liturgical and theological traditions; North American Protestant churches again can only be described in broad terms as a group, while they continue to provide the largest contingents of missionary personnel worldwide. When discussing the Anglican Church family, we focus on European contexts even though it would naturally also have been possible to emphasize other aspects. Again, we can discuss the Pentecostal movement in summary fashion only; even so, tremendous caution is needed as we do so, since this movement has become a global phenomenon, with approximately five hundred million adherents today. This section discusses the various general profiles within Christianity as a global religious configuration.

The third section will be devoted to topics of significant interest as far as both the history of mission and the theology of mission are concerned, since they touch on a wide variety of aspects of human coexistence (part three). Here we will discuss continental contexts and their specific characteristics by way of example. This concerns a whole palette of questions and challenges that could easily have included other topics also...