In theory, Thursday is my philosophy writing day (I have a schedule that life often doesn't allow). Here is what I have written so far on "Pilgrim's (Philosophical) Progress":
1.1 Unexamined Assumptions
1.2 "Unitary" Thinking
2.1 Binary Thinking in Ethics
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8. I suspect that some missionaries in the early 1900s were largely unreflective in their understanding of culture. Again, there is the person who is curious about differences. This person presumably makes for a good missionary because they are interested in other people as people and are willing to hear how other people think and operate in the world in a non-condescending and non-judgmental way. We're not talking about compromising on principles or the gospel. We're talking about the forms that Christian faith takes at a particular time and place.
As we have already said, a large number of people are wired to see difference automatically as something that needs to be corrected. "I'm right. You're wrong. And I need to fix you." I have little doubt but that a sizeable number of early missionaries entered other cultures unable to distinguish their Christian faith from their American Christian culture. (As we will see, this dynamic likely applies also to the way many American Christians approach politics.)
Let's say two people go on a missions trip to visit a field where there is already a strong Christian community. One person comes away thinking, "God is really using the church there to lead people to Christ and do good in their context." Another person has only seen how "crazy" they are there. Fun stories of difference seem more about how ignorant and inferior they are in the other place.
The first person is more reflective. The second person may not have taken anything of value away from the trip except that it has confirmed to them how ignorant people in other places are. The ironic fact is, however, that it is much more likely that the second person is ignorant of themselves, and the trip has only hardened them in their ignorance. It has confirmed to them their superiority.
These days, there is often mandatory preparation before mission trips of these sorts. There is absolutely training before you can go to a field for any extended period of time. We've learned over the years.
But there was a day when visitors were not always particularly helpful to those on the field. The visitor might come with a savior complex, expecting to be provided with American-level standards of comfort and provision, creating a lot of extra work for the missionary or hosts, distracting from their work. Rather than helping, the mission team had to interrupt their work to take care of individuals who were largely oblivious to their own assumptions and needs.
I heard a story in recent years of an important person who went to engage a work in another country. Rather than stay onsite in the facilities of those with whom he was working, he insisted on staying in a location more comfortable for him at some significant remove from the site. Although I think we have gotten much better, I fear this sort of mindset and unwillingness to live as those whom we are allegedly serving was all too common in an earlier day. I believe nationals in other countries would readily confirm this impression, especially in earlier days.
When I was in Africa for a few months in the 90s, I heard stories of missionaries who engaged little with the people they were serving. Everything about them said, "I am superior to you, and you are blessed to have me here to help you." Certainly not all missionaries were that way. As I have said, I think we have become a lot more reflective about these dynamics in the last fifty years.
Hopefully, we have moved well beyond being "unitary" and "binary" thinkers in our missions work. A unitary thinker doesn't even know they have hidden assumptions. I suspect many of the early missionaries fell in this category. Meanwhile, a binary thinker devalues or demonizes other ways of thinking and other practices.
Later in the book, we will try to move toward greater self-awareness and a sense that there is often a spectrum of potential perspectives rather than just two options. Hopefully, we can move toward what we might call "incarnational" thinking, which is contextualized thinking. The word incarnation of course alludes to the fact that Jesus came to earth and took on our flesh (John 1:14). He did not share the gospel as a superior angel standing on the outside. He became one of us. He lived among us. He was one of us.
9. The 1970s saw an increasing emphasis on "contextualization" in missions. Contextualization is when you distinguish between the core of the Christian gospel and the form the gospel takes in a particular context. As you would expect, there was significant opposition to the concept. For example, the 1974 Lausanne Conference affirmed contextualization as an important missionary principle amid strong debate.
When we cannot tell the difference between our culture and the gospel, contextualization can feel like moral compromise. We think someone is "taking away" from Scripture when what they are really trying to do is translate it for another context. If women in my Christian culture wear their hair up in buns, then I end up instructing the women in other places to wear their hair up in buns.
In the mid-1900s, my church had a work among Native Americans in South Dakota, an "Indian school." I have no doubt but that the school did much good. However, I also suspect that there was a good deal of confusion about what was the missionary's culture and what was the core gospel. The native American students inevitably ended up looking like the missionaries in how they dressed, buns and all.
In the 1990s, my church decided that these native American believers should decide for themselves what the forms of Christian faith looked like in their context. Unaware of ourselves, we as outsiders were likely to mix our customs with the gospel, unable to tell the difference. The church concluded that the native American leaders were in a much better position to apply or "contextualize" the gospel in their culture.
Imagine the alarm when the native Americans incorporated some native dances into their district conference. Dancing was prohibited in the American Christian culture of the missionaries. From an outsider perspective, some said, "Dancing was part of Indian religion. You are being 'syncretistic' when you dance -- especially in your Christian worship." [5]
The native American Christians responded. "You didn't understand. Everything was a part of our religion. You didn't understand because, in your culture, religion is compartmentalized. It is one area among many areas of your life. Dancing was not intrinsically part of our former religion any more than anything else. It is a part of our culture that you assumed was distinctively religious."
In the last two decades, Christianity has become more concentrated in the southern hemisphere. [6] The countries of the rest of the world have started to send missionaries to us. The United Methodist Church was not able to change its understanding of marriage largely because of the voice of its members from the global south. The American church largely has not woken up to realize that the shape of future Christianity is less and less in our hands. It is only the fact that we have more money that is maintaining more influence at present.
One day we may wake up and find that the "inferior" Christians of the rest of the world have become the Christian leaders of the world. The binary thinkers among us will inevitably see them as corrupting the gospel, of mixing their culture with absolute truth. And it is inevitable that they will mix their culture with the gospel. What we should realize is that we have also been doing this all along.
10. This chapter is about moving beyond unitary and binary thinking in ethics. In chapter 8, we will return to this subject and explore more deeply the spectrum of approaches to ethics. I will argue that what is distinctively Christian are the core values and the priorities of ethics. But most ethical approaches have a place somewhere in the constellation of our decisions.
This is what I sometimes call "spectrum" thinking. We move beyond thinking there are only two approaches -- and especially beyond not even knowing we have an approach. We become more fully aware of our assumptions.
The idea that context affects how we apply ethical principles seems beyond question to me. There are those who would say that the idea of "abstracted principles" is Western. So be it. It works as a way of analyzing ethics. We can use the paradigm as a heuristic method without insisting it is the only right one. The end result in how we live and think broadly is the goal.
In chapter 8, we will explore more deeply the fact that the Bible itself gives us incarnated ethics. It is unreflective to read the Bible as words that are in a bubble. Every word of the Bible made sense to its authors and audiences in their worlds. That means these words were incarnated in culture too. It's a game changer of a paradigm shift. We will investigate this concept further soon enough.
For the moment, we are taking the first step toward ethical self-awareness. Is it possible that some of my approach to right and wrong is influenced by the culture around me? I'm not just referring to secular culture but to the Christian culture around me.
11. One issue my own church has debated now for several decades is that of drinking in moderation. In the 1800s and 1900s, there was a denial that the Bible even allowed for drinking fermented alcohol. Jesus was thought to turn the water into grape juice or the wine was thought to be so diluted that it was for all intents and purposes non-alcoholic. Meanwhile, all people who drink were villified. Many still hold these positions.
However, there has been a move toward reflectivity. I would say that, in my church today, most would acknowledge that Jesus drank fermented alcohol (Luke 7:33-34). The very fact that Nazirites were singled out for not drinking alcohol suggests that the vast majority of Israelites did drink.
Accordingly, the debate has largely shifted away from a biblical argument to a contextualization one. In our context, is our best Christian witness one in which we abstain from alcohol or one in which we drink? Having lived in England and Germany for several years, at some point I came to the realization that this is largely a matter of a certain American Christian culture. European Christians drink all the time without getting drunk or hindering their witness.
But unreflectiveness abounds on every side in this debate. There are still those who seem largely unaware of the assumptions and practices of biblical times. Alarmed by the "moral decline" of the church, they can only see the forces arguing to allow moderate drinking as forces of moral compromise. A number of counter-arguments are given that are only convincing to the already convinced, as we might predict.
Then there is the ethical unreflectiveness of the "other side." They unreflectively assume that if something was allowed in biblical times, then it must be allowed in our times. Indeed, this was a core unreflective assumption of the Protestant Reformation. One of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England reads in part, "Whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man."
Many Protestants take this sentiment to mean that if the Bible doesn't specifically forbid it, we can't forbid it. But this approach is oblivous to the principle of contextualization. "Doing what they did isn't doing what they did if the meaning is different today," I have pointed out. [7] The Bible was written to cultures at particular times and places. It is enculturated thinking and practices as well, incarnated principles, if you would.
Accordingly, the following principle is also true. We may not be able to do some of the things they were able to do in biblical times because the meaning is different today. It is possible that not drinking is more appropriate for Christians in some cultures even though it is allowed in Scripture. As it turns out, there are individuals on "both sides" of this issue that have unexamined assumptions they have absorbed from their culture.
Those who see that drinking was allowed in Scripture often do not realize that the Bible was contextual and inevitably must be recontextualized in our times and places. There is no way around it. If we deny it, we will inevitably misapply Scripture.
[5] Syncretism is when you mix elements of other religions into your religion.
[6] Cf. Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. 3rd ed. (Oxford University, 2011).
[7] Kenneth Schenck, Jesus Is Lord: An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Slingshot, 2008).
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