Contextual Theology

The Drama of Our Times

Paul Duane Matheny

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781608999675
  9781498258586
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630877828
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

It has been almost fifty years since theological educators first began talking about contextual theology. Today, in every country of the global South, their home schools require them to contextualize theological education and construct contextual theologies that would be helpful for their local churches. In spite of this expectation there are few helps available. The expectation is clear, but an understanding of the process by which this may occur is lacking. Educators often complain that they are led to adapt Western theology to their context rather than developing theology for their churches. Arguments for contextual theology are proposed often, but there has been little debate explaining and defending the methods involved. This book is intended to enter that debate and invite others who should help appreciate the gravity of our situation and join the conversation.  The epicenter of Christianity has shifted to the global South. Yet, contextual theology, which seeks to preserve the integrity of the faith, has not been met with generosity among scholars in the US and Europe. This book intends to forge helpful bridges that encourage mutual regard to develop among scholars across the globe. The bubble of the Western academy needs to be breached.

1

The Church Looks to the Future

The Encouragement of Contextual Methods in Theology?

The Turning Points of Christian Mission Trigger Contextual Theology

The history of Christianity has exhibited surprising and dramatic turning points during the last century. A century ago, commentators declared that the twentieth century would be the most hopeful and promising of any period in history. William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury, declared early in the century at his installation as Archbishop of Canterbury that Christianity was a worldwide reality.1 He and others speculated about this new turn of events and prophesied great and exciting changes. At the beginning of the century John Mott wrote a classic of the times. The title says it in a nutshell: The Evangelization of the World in this Generation.2 Remarkably, during the first half of the century and in spite of the changing fortunes of colonialism, conservative and liberal theologies, and scientific culture, the hope for a global Christianity continued to rise. Colonialism yielded to anti-imperialist nationalism; optimistic philosophy based upon logic and science was humbled by post-modern rejection of foundational thinking in any form; mission that espoused Western values and cultural traditions yielded to evangelism that is rooted in the struggles of indigenous peoples. Yet the hope for a global Christianity seems to be ever-present in spite of these changes and perhaps due to the fact of the success of the mission efforts. Barriers attempting to block the growth of mission efforts seemed to be thrown up at every point during the last century up until the first decades of the twenty-first century. The turn to contextual methods in theology is part of the effort to fulfill that hope.

The cultural and social trauma of the twentieth century has taken a toll on mission theology and practice. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the mood of Western Christianity was high. Consciously or unconsciously enthused by the excitement of scientific progress and Western colonial influence, Christian leaders believed as well in Christian advancement. This enthusiasm mirrored and colluded with the confidence in moral and scientific progress. It was to be a Christian century—thus the name of the popular journal The Christian Century published since the beginning of twentieth century in conjunction with the founding of COCU and the Divinity School of the University of Chicago.3 Piety and progress were wedded together by a politics of intervention and dominance. Fundamentalism and liberal theology competed for the scientific worldview and confessional theology arose to counteract the dark-side of secularism and science. Racism, which had been such a comfortable partner for colonialism, had bitten the hand that gave it birth, and began catalyzing ethnic warfare throughout the world.4 I am sure that neither William Temple nor John Mott could have imagined what became of world Christianity and the world, if they had been given the opportunity to look back at the century from the promontory of the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Rudyard Kipling called upon Americans at the beginning of the twentieth century to take up the “white man’s burden” and convert the world to “progress” and “civilization”.5 Echoing Protestant leaders around the country, President William McKinley spoke of the success of American missions as a “triumph of civilization.”6 The Christian West was experiencing a fever for evangelism, motivated by faith and simultaneously stimulated by the arrogance of cultural chauvinism. A marriage of aggression with religious and moral conviction worked itself out in the “fields” of mission work, in ways that diminished the lives of the very people they sought to serve. At the height of this enthusiasm mission studies was an integral part of the curriculum of seminaries and theological schools throughout the West. Today, as a response to this chauvinism, it has been marginalized.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the mood is very different. Mission studies is a peripheral subject in most seminaries and theological schools, sometimes led by professors who are opposed to the “sending of missionaries” to foreign countries. In addition the mainstream churches that fired the earlier movement have lost their grit and their ground. They lost ground among the peoples of the West and are losing members in what seems to be a free fall with no end in sight. They cling to their heritages with little awareness of the global changes that ebb around them, lapping at their social and cultural boundaries and eroding their futures.7

Today the “evangelizing nations” are weak evangelists at best, while the epicenter of Christianity is migrating to the South settling among the homes of the peoples who were once identified by church leaders from the West as “mission fields.” Secularism in the West has led many to become “neo-pagans” and uncommitted.8 While the millions who live in Europe and America and call themselves Christian live out their faith uninformed about the scriptures, and dissuaded of Christian ethical and doctrinal expectations and traditions of Christian convictions. Both Christianity’s critics and adherents are little concerned with the depth of Christian faith and the integrity of its beliefs. Such critics of religion as Richard Dawkins can make up his own dream Christianity without even well educated intellectuals knowing the difference. In the Third World, in contrast, Christians and non-Christians alike are often eager to learn more about Christian beliefs. Chinese scholars, Africans from indigenous tribes, and former Soviet atheists are but a few examples of persons hoping for the retrieval of commitment to the Christian faith and its promulgation. The non-Western world is now the home of the great majority of Christians, while committed Christians in Europe are few and far between.

This points to the queer significance of the legacy of Christendom and of the escalating importance of the migration of Christianity into new cultural and social domains. Christendom in its many forms is now a part of history and participation in Christendom no longer plays a role as a pre-requisite and privilege for Christian identity. The question facing Christian leaders and theologians today is whether we will be effective in uncovering and using resources that will ensure a healthy future for Christian faith. One ecumenical answer advocates the retrieval of insight from pre-Constantinian Christianity to help resource the formation of the new Christianity emerging in the global South. The early church not only practiced a vigorous unity with diversity, it was a marked by a strong social and cultural identity that was not integrated with the civic culture of empire. The substance of the witness of the early church has been a source for inspiration in both the Reformation traditions and Catholic practices. The Christianity of the New Testament was blended with that of Christendom. Søren Kierkegaard and John Howard Yoder are two influential thinkers who have warned us about our failure to take seriously the Christianity of the New Testament.9

Prevalent throughout the globe is the answer that arose with the awareness of the reality of global Christianity. The response to the reality has been a broad affirmation of the necessity for contextual methods in doing theology, for models of theological education, and in contemporary understandings of mission and evangelism. In each case the initiative to implement a contextual response to this new awareness was led by ecumenical and missional movements, Protestant, Catholic, and evangelical.

During the centuries of Christendom, Western Christianity was too often a religion without mission and when it did engage in mission it did not hesitate to use coercion.10 Christendom took a variety of forms, as a consequence of a synergetic relationship of mutual benefit between political, cultural, and social order; but it always took a form that left no question about the Christian identity of their civilization. The development of this identity was marked by greater complexity and institutional coalescence. In spite of the penetration of criticism, the contemporary church in the West and perhaps as well in the new Christianity of the global South is still living within the Christendom framework. Protestant and Catholic churches are extensions of the Christendom form. Debates in Europe and the USA continue to rage over the role of Christianity in public life. Should Christianity remain a state religion? Should we allow or even enforce prayer in school?

While providing a sturdy future for Christianity that even today is hard to shake off, Christendom relied upon a huge distortion of the relation of the nature of the church and mission. It is only recently that the vital place of mission in the origin of Christian theology has been recalled to the church’s attention. Martin Kähler working as an historian noted, “mission was the mother of earliest Christian theology.”11 For the early church mission provided the context for Christian theology. Mission was not a tool with imperialist goals that could be described as a form of conquest. It provided the womb that gave birth, form, and shape to theological thought.12 Mission made theology possible and theology participated in the vitality of mission.

The result of Christendom’s neglect of the relation of the nature of the church and mission was the separation of the church and God’s mission, the missio Dei. The medieval church struggled over the form it should take. The problem that dominated their struggle was not the nature of God’s mission, but the order of a Christian political and religious life. From the ninth century on, the debate centered on the three orders and the power of monks, kings, knights, merchants, and bishops.13 The problem faced was that of vocation for members of a Christian society. How could a knight or a merchant be a Christian, if their way of life contradicted biblical and traditional teachings? Who had greater power in spiritual and secular matters, the abbot or the bishop? Was a king a sacred ruler, under the counsel of the pope, bishops, or abbots? In the end the question that plagued until this day, was the character of vocation.

When mission happened it was something carried on, if at all, by agencies and directed toward non-believers in foreign lands. A pattern of “us” (the Christians) and “them” (non-Christians) developed within the social imaginary of Western culture. The agencies coordinated missionaries with vocations recognizable by the structures of the church and the political order as coincident with and dovetailed to the growth and stability of Christendom—whose growth was vital for both. Ecclesiology focused on the role the church played in preserving order and proper doctrine in the social imaginary of everyone living within its domains.14 Mission was no longer understood as the work of God among the peoples of the world, but as the expansion of ecclesial domain and rule.

Ecclesiology lost its verve and urgency. The church was no longer a missionary church, which witnessed and forms disciples. Today the hope to recover this verve has motivated new approaches to ecclesiology. Scholars are returning to the biblical resources. A few words aside here will help illustrate this point. Stanley Skreslet’s recent book, Picturing Christian Witness...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Church Looks to the Future
• Chapter 2: Contextual Methods within the Theological Processes of Christian Churches
• Chapter 3: The Helpfulness of Theology in the Life of the Church
• Chapter 4: Contextual Theology Becomes an Issue
• Chapter 5: Sources and Processes
• Chapter 6: Theology, Both Local and Ecumenical
• Bibliography