The Missiological Spirit

Christian Mission Theology in the Third Millennium Global Context

Amos Yong

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625646705
  9781498222396
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630876005
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The field of the theology of mission has developed variously across Christian traditions in the last century. Pentecostal scholars and missiologists also have made their share of contributions to this area. This book brings the insights of pentecostal theologian Amos Yong to the discussion. It delineates the major features of what will be argued as central to a viable vision and praxis for Christian mission in a postmodern, post-Christendom, post-Enlightenment, post-Western, and postcolonial world. What emerges will be a distinctively pentecostally- and evangelically-informed missiological theology, one rooted in the Christian salvation-history narrative of Incarnation and Pentecost that is yet open to the world in its many and various cultural, ethnic, religious, and disciplinary discourses and realities. The argument unfolds through dialogical engagements with the work of others, concrete case studies, and systematic theological reflection. Yong's pneumatological and missiological imagination proffers a model for Christian theology of mission suitable for the twenty-first-century global and pluralistic context even as it exemplifies how a missiological understanding of theology itself unfolds amidst engagements with contemporary ecclesial practices and academic/theological impulses.

Part I

Reluctant Missiology

Indirect Missiological Reflection

Chapter 1

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Going Where the Spirit Goes . . .

Engaging the Spirit(s) in J. C. Ma’s Pneumatological Missiology

Pentecostals have always been missions-minded people. This certainly flows from the centrality of Acts 1:8 to the pentecostal Weltanschauung. Pentecostal missiology, however, has developed in theoretical sophistication over the course of the twentieth century. It is fitting that the dawn of a new millennium in pentecostal missions should be marked by the publication of a Korean Assembly of God missiologist’s reflections that bring together historical and anthropological approaches to religion, biblical, and ethnic theology, and mission theory.29 As a pentecostal, I am happy to see the direction that this volume charts for pentecostal missiological reflection. As one whose academic training is in religious studies and theology, I welcome the fact that pentecostal missiologists are seeing the necessity of engaging these disciplines with greater depth and rigor than ever before. The following reflections will therefore highlight these religious and theological components of the volume under consideration, and focus on the missiological motifs only as they arise in the discussion.30 My goal is to pay tribute to the author of this book by engaging with her proposals within the context of the larger conversation underway among the current generation of scholars who work in both religious studies and theology. Before doing so, however, a brief overview of the volume under review is in order.

Overview of the Book

Julie Ma has served with her husband as missionary to the Philippines for more than fifteen years, with at least half of that time spent among the Kankana-ey tribe of the northern Luzon area. Her book is divided into four parts. Part I sets the sociopolitical and historical context of the Christian mission to the Cordilleran “mountain people” (Spanish, Igorot) of the northern Luzon. Against the background of the sociopolitical developments in this region during the twentieth century, Ma introduces the Catholic, Episcopal, United Church of Christ (in the Philippines), and Southern Baptist missionary ventures. This allows her to identify the similarities and differences between these non-pentecostal mission endeavors and that of the pentecostal Assemblies of God. The story of the Assemblies of God features the heroic efforts of the single female missionary Elva Vanderbout (d. 1990), as well as brief overviews of the founding and development of various churches in the area by others, including nationally trained ministers.

Part II consists of a single, lengthy chapter detailing indigenous Kankana-ey religious beliefs and practices. Using James Spradley’s anthropological categories, Ma introduces and provides data analyses of three aspects of Kankana-ey religion: its pantheon of spirit beings, the roles of priests, and its thanksgiving and ritual practices.31 “Domain analysis” enables identification of the types of entities under the category of spirit beings, the kinds of religious professionals under the category of priests, and the kinds of ritual activities that Kankana-ey people practice. Following these same categories, “taxonomic analysis” and “componential analysis” sort out the arenas of involvement of the various spirit beings, the religious functions of the various priests, and the end results correlative with the various ritual performances. Finally, “theme analysis” pulls together in a succinct statement the central components that spirit beings, priests, and rituals play in the Kankana-ey world view. The exposition is lucid, the ethnographic details rich and thick, and the overall picture is superbly depicted. Ma’s skills as a missionary observer are clearly evident here.

In Part III, Ma switches to strictly pentecostal discourse on themes central to the pentecostal missiological enterprise among the Kankana-ey. She focuses on the notions of “power encounters,” “truth encounters,” and “allegiance encounters” made prominent by individuals associated with the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary.32 Ma’s use of these categories, however, is dynamic, emphasizing the movement from power encounters (producing spiritual and religious conversion) to truth encounters (producing intellectual or world view conversion) to allegiance encounters (producing moral, affective and volitional conversions).33 She emphasizes the importance of seeing these encounters as integrating and interworking, and provides, in a separate chapter, an extensive overview of “power encounters” drawn from the Hebrew Bible, the Synoptic Gospels and the Pauline literature.

The concluding part of this volume consists of three chapters. The first is an ethnological analysis of Kankana-ey Christianity derived from responses to a detailed questionnaire regarding how Christian conversion has transformed beliefs about divine connections with blessings and curses, sickness and healing, the revelation of omens and dreams, and the cosmological and afterlife conceptions of the spirit world. The second is a comparative assessment of indigenous Kankana-ey, practical pentecostal, and Kankana-ey pentecostal theologies.34 Ma concludes her book with suggestive missiological recommendations that await a new generation of pentecostal missionaries for implementation.

Religious Studies Perspectives

My own critical reflections will bring primarily religious studies and theological perspectives to bear on Parts II–IV of this book. In this section, I anticipate questions from phenomenological and anthropological approaches to the study of religion, and then make some observations on the phenomenon of syncretism, also from the angle of religious studies. Let me begin by engaging Ma’s summary of Kankana-ey Christian theology as emergent from the questionnaire she administered.

Kankana-ey Christianity from the Perspective of Religious Studies

Ma asked a group of 660 Kankana-ey pentecostals ages twenty and up eight questions. These focused on eliciting their responses to specific situations fraught with religious significance, such as what they would do if their crops were destroyed by a typhoon, if a family member fell ill, or if they had an omen or dream forewarning disaster. The results of this survey seem to confirm the radical nature of pentecostal conversion from the Kankana-ey animist world view. While this does not appear to be part of Ma’s explicit agenda, it is certainly evident as an empirical conclusion. That the results of the survey are detailed without critical or alternative interpretations of the data seems to imply that Ma is in basic agreement with the contrasts as presented. One of the issues I want to probe as a scholar of religion is whether the contrasts are as stark as Kankana-ey Christians (and Ma?) envision them to be.

Take, for example, the question concerning the failure of crops and plants in farming. Kankana-ey Christians were asked two questions: what they would have done prior to their conversion to Christianity and what they would do now. Tabulating the results of the survey, the responses are as follows:

Pre-Christian responses	Perform ritual	Curse ancestors	Experience stress or depression	Get drunk	Borrow money to begin another business venture
Number of respondents	261	30	174	50	138
Percentage of respondents	39.5	4.5	26.4	7.6	20.9

Table 1: Responses to the question, What would you have done given crop or farm failure prior to becoming a Christian?35

Christian responses	Pray and put one’s faith in God	Remain thankful to God	Remain peaceful and joyous	See the experience as a trial or test from God	Borrow money to begin another business venture
Number of respondents	422	30	52	105	47
Percentage of respondents	64	4.5	7.9	15.9	7.1

Table 2: Responses to the question, What would you do given crop or farm failure now that you are a Christian?36

From the perspective of Christian spiritual formation, a number of items stand out. First, the Christian leadership among the Kankana-ey pentecostals should be applauded for the educational work they are doing among the native converts. None of the Kankana-ey Christians even so much as intimated that they would be tempted to return to the indigenous priests for ritual performances. This contrasts with the practices of those in sub-Saharan African independent or Spirit Churches and rural Latin American pentecostals who might continue to consult their local shaman, especially if they felt that their prayers were not being answered.

Second, whereas 38.5 percent thought that prior to their becoming Christians they would have experienced stress and depression as well as curse their ancestors or get drunk, 32.3 percent now believed that they would remain at peace, be thankful toward God, or see this as a trial and opportunity to learn and grow. This is a sign of the growing maturity of Kankana-ey pentecostals.37

Finally, it is startling that while 39.5 percent indicated they would previously have consulted a priest in order to perform the appropriate ritual, a whopping 64 percent now believed that the solution lies in trusting God who answers prayer. On the surface of things, then, it would certainly appear that Christian conversion has brought about a drastic change in the attitudes, world view, and behavior of the Kankana-ey people.

From the perspective of Religionswissenschaft, however, two counter-observations may be made. First, on the very practical level of what should be done about crop failure, 7.1 p...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Reluctant Missiology
• Part 2: Pentecostal Missiology
• Part 3: North American Missiology
• Part 4: Systematic Missiology
• Conclusion: Christian Mission Theology
• Bibliography