“All
Things to All People”?:
Mission, Conversion and Providence in a Global Era
Max
L. Stackhouse, Ph.D.
Stephen Colwell Professor of Christian Ethics, Princeton Theological Seminary
Published
in Global Missiology, Contemporary Practice, October 2005, www.globalmissiology.org
Key
Effects of the Secondary Conversion
Christian
Missions and a Theology of Providence
Vocation,
Covenant, and Wisdom for the In-between Times
The way that missions work, as these
essays seem to illustrate, is always multifaceted with polydimensional
dynamics and unpredictable consequences. But its objective is always the
same: conversion – a deeply controversial idea in many contexts. Both the
motivations and the results are related to the very complex processes of the
conversion of persons, the planting of new kinds institutions, the encounter,
clash or dialogue about worldviews and the human condition, the ethical
reformation of the psycho-social “powers” that grasp the loyalties of the soul,
the struggles for truth and justice, and the formation of a conviction-based
ethos that is ever the core of civilization. True conversion may only be
accomplished by divine intervention, as accepted by the new believer; but those
who see themselves as proximate agents of that divine reality usually sense
that they are commissioned to draw attention to the need for, possibility of,
and benefits from a change.
Although missions are often thought
of in the religious sense, the missionary is, in many respects, very like the
healer, the reformer, the organizer of a movement, even the revolutionary, in
that basic changes are sought, and the changes advocated come partly by human
intention, partly by unintended transformations brought about by basic
alterations of the mind, will, and heart, and partly by the consequent
reorganization of the “powers” that, over time, re-order the habits of life,
the host society and its culture. Such changes are spoken of, in Biblical terms, as gūr
(“to draw near”) in Hebrew and as epistrephō
( “to return or turn back”) or a metanoia (“a
change of ‘mentality’”), on the part of a prosēlytos
(“one who has come to a new place”) in Greek, all of which were usually
translated into the Latin as conversio (“a
turning back or turning over”). The English word “convert,” thus, may
imply an approach to something anticipated, a recovery of something left
behind, a change of mind, or a turn to something new, and various missions may
seek any or all of these. The various possible meanings are illustrated
by one or another of the papers in this collection.
The whole idea of conversion is
usually thought of as a highly individual phenomenon, although multiple agents
are usually involved. Yet, indeed, there is no substitute for the
conversion of the person. Without it, no religion or transformational
project will get rooted, survive or thrive without convicted persons.
Even those religions or social movements that resist the notion of
“proselytism” also observe rituals of transition or initiation, often speaking
of the “twice born,” thereby seeking to induce an awareness of matters that are
believed to alter the consciousness and thus the life-orientation of the
individual. Conversion to a new basic life-orientation and social fabric
is thus always a controversial matter, but is probably unavoidable in human
history, for no life-orientation or social fabric has yet been discovered or
invented or so widely shared that it satisfies all persons in all ways.
Moreover, we cannot number the variety of felt needs and socio-psychological
promptings that bring a person to accept a new faith, or even to renew a
commitment to the one in which the person is nurtured, for the combination of
promptings is experienced as particular and unique by each person. Still,
it is not infrequent that a new or renewed believer confesses that a gift, an
insight, a new perspective has been received – one that is more intellectually
coherent, more ethically compelling, more emotionally satisfying and more
socially just and advantageous than what was known before. To grasp the
prospects for mission in pluralistic, globalizing societies, it is important to
attempt to understand how change takes place in human historical
existence. Such an inquiry will lead us toward a constructive view of
missions today.
It could very well be the case that
the capacity for conversion and the inclination to undertake a mission is one
of the most distinctive marks of what it means to be human. We may be, as
creatures, largely driven by the interaction of our genetic makeup, our medical
history, and the social groups into which we are born, as these interact with
the environmental options, ecological and cultural, to which we are
exposed. And we may have instincts to act in particular ways and can be
trained to respond to certain stimuli. In this, we are little different
than the beasts of the earth. But in conversion, persons are
inspired to step beyond the confines of these factors of existence.
People discover a new objective spiritual reality to which they become
related. They find that genetics is not destiny, that healing can take
place, that previous “others” become brothers and sisters, and that there is
within themselves a new reason for living. They
find a new ability to become agents in their own lives beyond instinct and
habituated responses, and a deepened, widened capacity for love. Together
these bring a dramatic sense of freedom along with an awareness of the splendor
that is in, behind, and beyond the mere factuality of the world – even in the
midst of senseless tragedy, alienation, oppression, and ugliness. All the
ordinary “powers” of the world (what the New Testament names as
“principalities”, “thrones”, and “dominions,” or as “spirits” and “daemons”)
are subordinated to a greater reality.
However, it is also true that
persons are almost never converted in isolation. Not only is it the usual
case that some person (the missionary, the reformer, etc.) discusses, preaches,
teaches or writes something that attracts the mind, will, or affections of
another, but the one attracted is often linked by a thousand bonds to
others. Some persons who are drawn to convert by these means are
“representative persons” – the head of a village, clan, caste, or kingdom, or
even a gifted youth, spouse, friend, or a “bad actor” who becomes a
“transformed person.” They become the agents who leads
other members of the family or group into the new ways of thinking and
living. When such a leader is converted, often the entire community whose
identity these persons represent also is converted. The reasons for their
conversion may well be that they are exposed to a better “metaphysical-moral
vision” of reality than the one they knew, but it may also be a quite practical
matter: they discover a higher standard of justice than the one in operation,
they find themselves healed of some physical, moral, or social disability, or
they sense an option for a better life for the people for whom they are
responsible.[1]
After a conversion, other individual persons in the group are gradually
converted in the more personal sense. Through nurture, habit, practice,
catechesis, and socialization, individuals are initiated into the faith,
usually bringing much of their cultural background, previous communal beliefs
and social practices with them. More often than not, they tend to
interpret the new faith in the old terms – and to reinterpret the old
traditions in new terms. In short, they tend to “baptize” many of the
existing patterns of life and their presuppositions, thereby generating a fresh
synthesis of new faith and old ways. This synthesis must be tested and
revised over the years, with the old selectively approved and the new given a
fresh inculturated expression, even if the new
religion is, in principle, “exclusionary.”
When persons are converted, it often
involves a decline in exclusive loyalty to their “home” tradition and a turn to
a “trans-local” metaphysical-moral and social frame of reference. A generation
ago, Robin Horton identified a difference between a “microcosmic” frame of
reference – one focused on the spirits of the ancestors, of a geographical
territory, or of visible natural phenomena – and a “macrocosmic” one – one
which has an account of the universe and the supreme divine power(s) that order
the whole of existence, as do the great world religions. He argues that
the primal religions are largely microcosmic but often have a thin macrocosmic
dimension that is invigorated and redefined by contact with one or another of
the world religions. The new framework provides a new range of
possibilities for understanding and new reference points for one’s personal and
social self-identity.[2]
The motivations for this kind of conversion may be triggered by a dramatic
healing of some wound in their lives or because of a growing suspicion of or
alienation from their previous society or its leaders – parental, religious, cultural,
economic, or political – when they encounter a more complex civilization.
Something in the way life is lived and legitimated simply does not make sense
anymore, or does not provide for physical, economic, social or spiritual
opportunity or well-being in the way that the alternative does. Integrity
requires a shift, and an act of freedom – in fact, quite possibly the most
important freedom possible to humans.
The consciousness that a decision
can be made, that we humans can “become what we are not” (as Paul said), or
cope with a major disruption in our accepted meaning system, or respond to an
act of grace toward us that alters our relationship to earthly commonality and
divine reality, entails an experience of freedom that is more formative of identity
than any other life experience.[3]
No longer are we victims of the pre-given “powers,” the “principalities,
thrones, authorities and dominions” of life. Personal conversion is a
decisive opportunity by which humans may discover the possibility of
transcendence over the material, social, cultural, and psycho-spiritual forces
that define most of life for most people most of the time. To deny this
opportunity to others – or to force them to pretend to accept this change by a
conquest that imposes a new religious order – is to deny the very humanity of
the other. In conversion we and they can come to know a reality other
than the given conditions of life in a way that allows us with them to
transform the given conditions of existence.[4]
In the midst of and, even more,
after a conversion, however, the individual ordinarily does not remain a free,
isolated, and autonomous person. The free convert feels a duty to convert
other individuals, and together they inevitably seek to found a new community
or to reform the old one by generating a sect, a cell, a fellowship, a school,
or, as in the Christian case, the church – a community of commitment that
shares the new macrocosmic vision and, indeed, a missiological
movement. If this development does not happen, the experience quickly
falls into the category of an odd psychic occurrence subject to psychiatric or
socio-pathic analysis, and may become the source of
cultic, tribal, class, or national idolatry. The high significance of the
formation of a new, distinct institution in the society is that a new social
fabric is woven that reconstitutes civil society itself. An increased
structural pluralism is established in society, incarnating the prospects of a
chosen community of conviction – a voluntary association that opens the door to
a more complex social and personality structure. The prospect becomes
that each person may be related to multiple kinds of institutions, now by
choice, not by pre-given destiny. If the act of conversion is the first
liberation, the exodus from the old station in life, the formation of a new
kind of community, one related to others outside the traditional community, is
the seed-bed of a reformation of the whole of society, the social incarnation
of true pluralism and freedom. This is a second conversion, often an
unintended one.
This does not mean that the past is
utterly abandoned or repressed. People bring their pasts with them.
In all known cases, aspects of the previous understandings of life and its
meaning, and patterns of relationship and loyalty inevitably survive; but they
are under standards and critical judgments that did not operate
previously. In the new community, all aspects of the society and culture,
and their presuppositions, become subject to redefinition and
reconstruction. The founding and formation of a new community not only
reflects the conversion of persons, but usually moves in one of three
directions. One is to withdraw from the dominant society and to form an
enclave of alternative piety and morality. We might call this the Qumran
strategy, adopted in various ways in Christian history by monastic movements,
communitarian sects, and sometimes by converted clans, tribes or castes who must defend themselves from persecution by a dominant
religion. A second, which we may call the Philemon strategy, is to form
an open and affirming attitude to other people on religious grounds within the
given institutions of society, and thus to accept the ethnic, linguistic,
class, gender-based, or caste sub-cultures as they are, leaving unchallenged
the dominant political and economic fabric as a part of one’s national cultural
identity, but promoting a parallel set of relationships on other terms.
These strategies do understand freedom by liberating exodus, but they do not
grasp the mandate to reform society by new covenantal or discipled
formation.
The third, which we can call the
Kingdom approach, sees in the principles and purposes of the newly adopted
religion the resources to move toward the reconstruction of the whole society:
political, economic, familial, and cultural. This approach to the
immanence of the Kingdom (as expressed in the New Testament phrase, “The
Kingdom of God is within you,” or “among you”) entails
the presumption that the power of God is in fact already at work within and
among the persons and processes of social history, transforming them toward God’s
ends. Thus, one of the tasks of converted people is to discern where, in the
midst of life, that power is at work, and to become agents of it so far as
possible. In this context, traditional identity and many cultural
patterns remain, for it is seen that God has also worked through them; but they
become much less determinative for life and more of a background factor, with
the recognition that they, like all existing institutions, are subject to
reformation or transformation.
Of course, there is a peril in each
option. The new community can become spiritually arrogant, a “saints'
church” that recognizes no integrity outside. Or it can become a social
club, full of fellowship within, but structurally indistinguishable from the
surrounding culture. Or it can become a militantly aggressive society of
reformers seeking to subject the world to its own view of life by coercion and
legal control – a temptation found in Christian “crusaders,” and in Islamic jihadis, Confucian “legalists,” Hindu nationalists,
Buddhist ninjas, and militant secular revolutionaries.[5]
Key
Effects of the Secondary Conversion
Whether driven by a communitarian
conversion that initiates the transformation of individual identities, even if
it preserves much of the traditional community’s culture and social order, or
individual conversion that seeks to convert other persons and to form new
communities with different strategies toward the surrounding social and cultural
heritage, the decisive changes are usually carried by minorities who alter the
religious landscape. That is a decisive clue to social change. This
clue implies that the governing metaphysical-moral vision of a civilization is
the most powerful force operating in society over time, and that a minority
able to generate a fresh, compelling metaphysical-moral vision, and incarnate
it effectively in enduring institutions, is the most likely group to shape
subsequent history. The powers of the common life are shaped by that
vision. It becomes embodied in political orders that render the relative
peace possible in human existence, legal authority that provides true glimpses
of justice, family customs that bond the sexes and the generations into mutually
caring and supportive relationships, economic institutions that are effectively
productive and open to opportunity, and professional expertise (as in
education, medicine, engineering, management, etc.). All of these
depend at least in part on the legitimating power of that vision, and most
people most of the time adapt to the social and cultural conditions in which
they find themselves as defined by these powers. Only seldom do these
powers and principalities become agents of change entirely on their own, and if
they do, it is on a short-term basis, when some dramatic failure of the system
is at hand.
For the most part, most people live
by a basic assent to the reigning system of social life, which anthropologists
usually call a “Culture” and sociologists call “Society” – in either case, a
system of interacting beliefs, structures, and habituated practices governed by
an “ethos” – a dynamic cluster of interlocking principles, purposes and values
that become incarnated in the institutions of the common life into which we are
socialized and that basically guide existence. This fact is often
reinforced by a sense of relative powerlessness among the majority in the face
of “the way things are,” and by a relative unawareness of the indirect and
quite powerful effects the influences of religious conversion and its
institution-forming dynamics can have.[6]
Even if mass movements based in material interests protest against the
effects of the reigning system and seek to mobilize communal or political
dissent against it, their protest and dissent will be temporary and either
managed or crushed by the “legitimate” powers of society that represent the
leading institutions of society the dominant religio-cultural
values – unless the dissenters challenge the dominant vision and suggest
better ways of life. As Robert Hefner has written,
although “empires and economic orders have come and gone, the world religions
have survived. They are...the longest lasting of civilization’s
primary institutions.... [Yet] only a few religions have shown great
success in propagating themselves over time and space.”[7]
Moreover, if these few religions do not simultaneously construct viable and
enduring social institutions to sustain their spiritual-intellectual efforts,
they will fail, and the advocates of the traditional ways (or some other, newer
movement) will pick off the converts one by one, and little group by little
group. Reflection on these matters makes one have greater admiration for
missionaries than the post-colonialist views have allowed for a couple of
generations. Those noble visionaries took on the task of spreading the
good news of a great vision and building the socio-institutional bases whereby
a new movement could become, as was said in the nineteenth century,
“self-sustaining, self-propagating, and self-governing.” They generated a
new regard for freedom of religion, the rights of conversion and the rights to
assemble, organize, and publish freely.[8]
When a basic conversion occurs and
incarnates, however, surrounding peoples, and especially their religious
leaders, will recognize that a new order is being formed – to which they must
adjust, or against which they will react. They may resist the new
movements by direct, violent action, or by petitioning
political authority to use its power to stop the growth of these new “foreign
bodies” in their sphere of influence; but focusing such attention on these new
movements also brings about alteration of the dominant religion opposing the
conversion. It is arguable, for example, that it was Christian missions
in India that prompted new interpretations of the Vedas as “revealed,”
and not simply the wisdom of the sages, and the Gita
as a kind of “new testament,” and not simply a part of a classic epic.
Moreover, Christian missions surely shaped the formation not only of the Arya Samaj, the Brahmo Samaj, and the Ramakrishna
Mission (and a host of “evangelical” guru-led international advocates of
transcendental meditation and yoga – forms of Hindu counter-missionary efforts)
– but of Hindu-based hospitals, colleges, presses, technical assistance, and
welfare centers.
To note these developments, of
course, challenges the secular, materialist theories of power and social change
that have dominated many liberal and most radical
interpretation of missions for some years. The resurgent power of
religious movements modified by their encounter with Christian missions is now
changing the patterns of life all over the world, and this fact forces us to
think some matters through again.
In view of these factors, I want to
argue that the interaction of personal conviction and institutional
transformation is the most revolutionary action of human history. It
forms, defines, and transforms civilizations, without violence and war, and
indirectly shapes the social history of humanity more than any other set of
forces. Further, it defines much of the individual identity of persons
and the structure of communities in civil society. If this contention is
valid, it will require a modification of the dominant interpretations of history
and social life in contemporary thought, most of which claim that the most
powerful forces in society are political, or economic, or cultural, and that
these determine the nature, motivations, and history of religion and, thus, of
missions. I think that the evidence is clear: we cannot grasp the sense
of identity, the social or cultural dynamics or the present state of affairs in
the tribal regions of the world without attention to the communal conversions
that are taking place under the impact of the great world religions. Nor
can we understand historic China without reference to the Confucian-Taoist
tradition as modified by Buddhism and now by the quasi-religion of Maoism and
the growth of the “underground church,” or South Asia without reference to
Hinduism as modified by both Islam and Christianity. These are the areas
of the world where great “metaphysical-moral systems of thought” (which we
often call “religions”) have already modified (and are still attempting to
modify, by absorption) primal religious traditions, by seeking to integrate
them into communitarian civilizations (Sinic or Indic
or Semitic) and to resist renewed efforts at conversion by the “converting”
religions (Buddhism, Islam and Christianity). Furthermore, we cannot
grasp many cultures from Burma to Japan without reference to the converting
power of Buddhism, or the Muslim world from Morocco to Indonesia without
reference to Islam, both modified by resurgent tribal traditions and a striking
resistance to Christianity.[9]
Indeed, these may be greater challenges to Christianity than are the primal,
Confucian or Hindu traditions, for Buddhism and Islam are also, like
Christianity, “converting” religions which claim to have a framework for
interpreting the whole of reality and believe that they must be extended over
all the earth for the salvation of humanity.[10]
Second, beyond the general effects
that conversion has had historically in producing the great civilizations of
the world, it is plausible to argue that the relationship of Christianity to
Western civilization reveals certain promising features as well as certain
fearful perils that can be overcome by new developments in our globalizing
world. There may be ways to both preserve key elements of the classical
tradition and to modulate them by new encounters with the great religio-cultural traditions of the world.
Christianity has encountered great traditions in the past. One thinks
particularly of the imperial traditions from Alexander to the Caesars that used
ancient polytheist religions to consolidate their empire in the West, at about
the same time as Ashok used Buddhism to legitimate, and expand, his rule; or
the Chinese imperial traditions have used Confucianism in the East, and of the
medieval period of priest-dominated hierarchical religion to stabilize feudal
society in the West and guide the many princely states of the period, which had
many parallels with the Hindu society of Manu’s day. During more recent missions history, Christianity has had its greatest
expansions in tribal areas – as continues today.[11]
The western story is best known, and
thus can be briefly retold. In the early church, the tiny minority of
Christians transformed the Mediterranean world and the Roman Empire, growing
out of, selectively preserving, and substantively offering critique of the
enormous and indispensable legacy of social justice from the tribal religion of
Judaism, many aspects of the ancient mystery cults, and selective metaphysical
and socio-political assumptions from the Greco-Roman philosophies. This
combination gave the Church the powerful sense of its orthodoxy and catholicity
that appears in the classic theologies of the early and medieval periods.
These theologies in turn formed the “traditional” culture of the West and had
certain parallels to the centralized imperial civilizations of East Asia and
the regional, hierarchical civilizations of South Asia – except that the
formation of the church in the West generated also a horizontal, and not only a
vertical pluralism in society. In spite of various alliances and
overlapping structures between church, state, and society, a new kind of
differentiation was established. No aspect of Western European
civilization – family life, arts, law, medicine, politics, education, and
the ideals of morality – has been unaffected by this complex set of missiological developments.
These traditions eventually
exercised influence, but were also reshaped, in Eastern Europe by their
adoption and adaptation into the Slavic cultures. A similar process of
influence and reshaping also occurred in Northern Europe and North America,
carried by the Protestant minorities that protested many features of both the
orthodoxy and catholicity that was claimed. These minorities protested
primarily in the name of Biblical insights which they thought the prevailing
orthodoxy and catholicity obscured, and also on behalf of an appreciation for
the truth of many humanistic insights advanced by the Renaissance, which they
thought Catholics repressed. Protestantism, which embraced these insights
in various combinations, produced the Evangelical, Reformed, Anglican,
Methodist and various Baptist traditions as they framed the basic patterns of
modern Euro-American civilization, further diversifying the pluralism and
challenging the imperialism of the Holy Roman Empire, the hierarchical
authority of the church, and the elitism of the permanently stratified imperial
societies it encountered. In substantive ways, key religious impulses and
themes present in the New Testament church were developed by Catholicism,
revised by Protestantism, and developed most rapidly in those periods when the
focus fell on the conversion of persons and the formation of new
institutions. The biblical themes, refined in controversy and by
practical testing, transformed the inherited communal civilizations into a
dynamic, modernizing culture committed to technology, democracy, human rights,
urbanization, corporate capitalism, and the development of the
professions.
This complex set of traditions not
only modified earlier primal, imperial, hierarchical and royal patterns of
life, but it also generated a dynamic civilization that could not but
expand. This means that it also joined in expanding the influence of the
West by colonialism, a highly ambiguous development. Ironically, it not
only exploited weaker civilizations but transferred to them a desire for the
fruits of this civilization: technology, democracy, human rights, urbanization,
corporate capitalism, professional excellence and, eventually, aspects of a redefined
family life and cuisines, clothing styles, musical styles, etc. What is
ironic about these developments is that precisely these “powers,
principalities, and authorities” also became key resources for overthrowing
colonialism, often in alliance with nationalism and socialism.
One thing to which this brief survey
of Catholic and Protestant Christian influences points is the fact that
Christian expansion prompted the leaders of many colonialized
peoples to critically re-examine their own traditions – as the early Christians
did Hebraic and Greco-Roman patterns of thought and life, and as the
Reformation did to both previous Roman theologies and practices and the tribal
traditions of the North European peoples. A chief dynamic in this aspect
of the process is that people begin to critically investigate aspects of their
own heritage and to find elements in it that have been neglected, submerged, or
overlaid by other emphases. They would discover similarities between
their indigenous tradition and the new religious orientation, and they would
combine these in fresh ways that refined and expanded both the culture and the
faith. When they raised a previously subordinate element of their own tradition
into dominance, they could see it as evidence of the pre-conversion working of
God’s providence in their own history. In this way, indigenous traditions
would add to the historic development of doctrine. Thus, a “conversion of
traditions” proceeds from the conversions of persons and peoples.
If such a dynamic is accurately
identified, it helps us account for the fact that we can already see the
emerging prospects of, for example, a Chinese Christianity deeply marked by
Confucianism and an Indian Christianity deeply marked by Hinduism, not unlike
“Italian Catholicism” or “German Lutheranism” or “Dutch Calvinism” or “Russian
Orthodoxy” of earlier ages. Each of these bears
strong traces of the social practices and religious orientations that were
present before conversion and that influenced what parts of the Gospel were
most attractive. Whether this will happen as Christianity encounters
Buddhism and Islam more deeply than it has yet done is more difficult, for
there may be sharper and inevitable conflicts. The one is
constitutionally atheistic and ascetic, although it
has became attached to pious royal polities at least since king Ashok and
became hierocratic in Tibet. The other is constitutionally monotheistic
and political, although it has had a mystical and personalist
dimensions at least since the Sufi movements, and it has become hierocratic in
Iran. These are decisive issues for Christian missions and its theology
of the world religions. Buddhism and Islam, and not only Christianity,
have had their greatest missionary successes with primal traditions, which have
been drawn into the more complex civilization-forming religions time and
again. Indeed, the conflicts between Christianity and the other religions
have often been played out among tribal peoples and oppressed peasant
populations who follow primal traditions. The complex metaphysical
pluralism and high ethical content of Confucian and Hindu traditions, however,
are likely to be encountered as early Christianity did the Greek philosophical
and Roman religious traditions: by selective borrowing and mutual critique that
forced theological clarity about doctrine and polity. Obstacles to this
process might arise if a resurgent China reasserts the superiority of loyalty
to its historic imperial ontocracy and suspicion of
“foreign” religion,[12]
or a nationalistic Hinduism with its metaphysical caste system closes off the
possibility of conversion.[13]
In the Greek and Roman cases,
Christianity learned from these traditions and nevertheless transformed
them. Is that likely to be the case in regard to Confucianism and
Hinduism, and with Buddhism and Islam? Can this be an intention of
Christian missions? And, if so, can we, should we, expect minority
Christians to take this task upon themselves?
Christian
Missions and a Theology of Providence
If the above account of the dynamics
of conversion and the secondary effects of missions is accurate, we shall have
to take the probable consequences of continuing the Christian efforts to engage
in missions and to keep open the possibilities of conversion for as long as we
can see into the future. Further, we shall have to clarify the direction
in which we think God wants us to bend the religious and social fabric of the
human future by our missions. We shall have to raise these questions for
several unavoidable reasons. First, Christians cannot avoid being in
mission. We believe that the truth of the gospel must be shared because,
above all, it is fundamentally true. Not only true for us, but true for
the world. It may not be the only truth; some philosophies, much of
science, and many religions also have valid insights that Christians must
acknowledge as true, if we are to be intellectually honest. And I have
just argued that converted people find elements in their own pre-conversion
tradition that have a deep affinity with aspects of the Christian gospel and
doctrinal developments – as, indeed, many of the Wisdom traditions of the Bible
are drawn from the literature and folklore of surrounding cultures.
Moreover, we must admit that what particular Christians or sub-traditions hold
to be true may be freighted with false assumptions or socio-cultural biases
that need correction by internal self-examination and external criticism.
Nevertheless, Christians believe that what believers point toward, even with
all the inevitable foibles that beset humanity, is fundamentally true, must be
told to all, and must find its way in open interaction with other faiths and
philosophies which also may be advocating something basically true. The
freedom to do so has not always been affirmed by the world religions and social
philosophies, or by all branches of Christianity equally; but the struggle for
an open society where this could be done is the root of the “modern” rights to
freedom of speech, expression, and press, as I have elsewhere shown.[14]
Closely related is a second reason,
often repeated in the New Testament: Christ has commanded believers to “go unto
all the world....” Christianity is, like
Buddhism and Islam, as the Japanese say, a “going” religion. It is
export-prone, transcultural and jumps borders, by
contrast with some other faiths that generate “staying” religions. Those
are like Shinto or other “civil religions,” which are rooted in a particular
territory, ethnic group, or culture and thus understand their own distinctive
rites, rituals, and assumptions about the sacred as intrinsic to the solidarity
of their local boundaries and identity.[15]
Christianity’s “going” seeks to offer a universal message to all
the world. To deny the right and duty of Christians to manifest
the faith by engaging in missions that eventuate in conversion is the height of
intolerance, the denial that this major world religion and others can be what
they are, the refusal to accept genuine pluralism.
In the Christian case, those who see themselves as Christ’s disciples, who take
Jesus as Lord and Savior, have no choice but to be obedient to this command;
and those who call themselves Christians but make no effort in this regard have
a difficult time maintaining their religious integrity. Of course, that
does not mean that everyone must go abroad, or go door-to-door, or go about
telling everyone that they are going to hell unless they adopt the faith
immediately in the specific form the bearer of the good news prescribes.
And it certainly does not mean that people should have Christianity imposed
upon them, or that material inducements should be used to “capture souls”; but
Christians cannot but share that which they (we) have come to hold. It is, rather,
a duty to offer what we think is invaluable as a loving gesture to any willing
to hear.
Third, Christians think that the
scriptures and traditions to which they turn for ethical guidance bring greater
justice into society. The faith is not only true, but it also leads to
justice and bonds people into communities of mutual support and
commitment. Of course, there are many definitions of justice that are
held in various cultures and at various periods of history; but some common
features can be found not only in the law given to Moses and in the teachings
of Jesus but also in the cross-cultural and cross-temporal debates about the
“law of nations,” as well as in the contemporary discussions of human rights
and global ethics.[16]
Christians believe that this is so because the God who created the world is an
ethical, righteous, free, and loving God who installed the basic capacity for
justice and loving relationships in the created order. Since
God created humanity in a way that all are made in the image of God, humans
have a conferred dignity that is everywhere to be honored.
Moreover, humans have, in various degrees, the capacity to think, will, and
feel – of intellectus,
voluntas, and caritas, what some have
identified with mind, spirit, and body. Because these are present, humans
have possibilities of conscience – coming to agreement about the first
principles of right and wrong; freedom – being able to make choices and resolving
to do good; and covenant – having the capability of bonding in communities of
commitment under righteous law and for good ends, held together by love.
That is why, Christians believe, all persons have, in some measure, the laws of
God written on their hearts. They can recognize at least in part what is
right; they can resolve to adhere to the good and to avoid evil; and they can
experience binding commitments of entrustment and love.
Christians, like the ancients, are
aware, however, of the fact that these capacities are fragile and
incomplete. No human, save one, is fully divine. The dignity that
all have in principle, and needs ever to be protected and cultivated, is not
always evident in self-image, behavioral choices, or social relationships.
That is because, in the Christian understanding of human nature, human beings
and the world around them are incomplete, fragile, and prone to distortion and
disruption. We call that propensity to unrighteousness or evil, to
passivity or arrogance, to alienation or domination, “sin.” It is a
manifestation of residual ignorance, willfully embraced or violently imposed by
a will to power, or ego-centricity or chauvinism. The forms of sin are
legion. Indeed, Christians hold that, when they are converted, they do
not automatically become righteous, capable of firm resolve, or loving, simply
because they are converted. Christians know that they have not lived up
to what they have pointed to regarding the ethical life of justice, and abuses
of the faith have dogged its history and perpetuated injustice. Sin is
defeated only in principle. All must admit that they have been complicit
in patriarchy, slavery, crusades, witch-trials, inquisitions, colonialism,
imperialism, nuclear bombing, ecological destruction, and the violation of
children, and have sometimes offered religious defenses of these actions.
And it makes no difference to the argument that Christianity brings justice to
the world that every other world religion and great social philosophy has engaged
in similar travesties. The point is that while Christians have an
ultimate confidence in the justice of the one, triune, righteous and merciful
God who finally rules nature and history, and know the right and the good and
the ability to love in their hearts, they also know that believers are people
who have too often betrayed the justice that all humans know at least in
part. For this reason, Christianity can never be simply identified with
idealism and optimism or with realism and pessimism. It understands the
fact that life is so constituted, as portrayed in creation myths pregnant with
layers of meaning, that it must always be lived in historical existence with
what can be called an ultimate optimism and a penultimate pessimism, with a
confidence in God and the necessity of building structures of justice that
constrain evil and guide the powers of the common life.
In this connection, when Christians
have some prospect of shaping the social ethos, modern believers know that some
societies, allegedly based on Christian principles, have exemplified structural
injustices that prevent others from correcting the ills that obviously exist or
from gaining access to the benefits justice entails. Still, it is because
the Christian faith embraces the idea that God’s law and purposes are “written
on the hearts of all” that we know these things are fundamentally wrong, and
that there are possibilities of transformation. In fact, converts are
called into communities of commitment that repeatedly call upon believers to
confess their sins and failures, to repeatedly invoke God’s forgiveness,
guidance, wisdom, and courage, and to constantly engage in self-examination to
correct ourselves, others, and whole societies, so that all may discover a
deeper sense of God’s righteousness, choice for humanity, and compassion.
The creation of this new kind of community of commitment in fact alters the
dynamics of every society where it is formed; it creates a new social space for
the exercise of intellect, will, and affectional
bonding that surpasses the spheres where the powers ordinarily operate.
Christians believe, thus, in the necessity of repentance, the possibility of
forgiveness, the corrigibility of injustice, wrong, and evil, and the formation
of new kinds of social order. The justice of these forms of order is only
partial in history; its fulfillment is in the ultimate future, for an
eschatological atonement has been made on humanity’s behalf. This
belief in justice binds us to many believers in other faiths or philosophies
and locks us into debates about the precise shape of justice in this or that
complex situation.
This sense of the necessary
participation in the struggles for justice, in spite of our own foibles and
failures, comes thus from certain basic doctrines that are held to be
universally true of all humanity, although they are only partially shared by
other world religions and great social philosophies. It is partly based
on the belief that a righteous God graciously created the world and propounded
just laws to rule it and human life, as mentioned above. This belief is
shared with all serious theists. Further, it entails the conviction that
humans are created in God’s image, and thus graced to have the capacity to
know, in some serious measure, what is right, to chose it, and to develop a
passion for just relationships and communities, also as suggested above.
This view is not shared by all, although most religious and philosophical
traditions have an account of the development of human capacities for the good,
hold people accountable for their choices, and honor those who exhibit
compassion and sympathy. They also usually have an account of the evil
that blocks these possibilities, from which we need to be saved.
Christians hold that this reconstruction
has already begun, not by human initiative, but by God’s, and claims that
Christ in his lifetime inaugurated a new age in the development of humanity,
one in which the power of God’s reign, which will not be completely fulfilled
in history, is nevertheless already at work within and among the persons and
processes of social history, pointing to a renewal and fulfillment of all that
promises the good and a judgment over that which prevents that good. The
power of God’s reign can be seen in those who are called to various offices and
roles in society to contribute to the process. The “powers” that
influence souls and civilizations can also be marshaled into service so that
they, like converted persons, can contribute to God’s salvific
purposes. Thus progress points toward the symbol of the social future;
the Kingdom fulfilled would be a New Jerusalem, a complex civilization to which
all the nations can bring their gifts.
Christians differ in this vision of
the ultimate future from many other traditions. Joining with the elders
or the ancestors is the desired end of many primal religions. The moksha of the Hindus is not the nirvana of
the Buddhist, or the Paradise of the Muslim. None of these are like the
total harmony of heaven, earth, and society of the Confucian, or the perfect
classless society of the Communist, and these in turn are not like the New
Jerusalem of the Christian. Many of these hold a more regressive rather
than a progressive view. Many want to return to the primal state of
affairs – back to the simple ways of the forebears, returning to the garden,
away from complex civilization, overcoming modern individualism in favor of a
primal acosmic consciousness or a
romanticized communitarian solidarity. Christianity doubts that
these are possible or desirable. It may foresee rewards to the personally
virtuous, as do all the religious traditions of the world, but the various
regressive views are unlikely to be able to constructively shape a complex,
globalizing civilization.
This is particularly important to
note in a world where international, cross-cultural, and multi-religious
encounters and clashes have become increasingly common and are creating the
basis for what may become an incredibly differentiated and interdependent civil
society, worldwide in scope. This new comprehending context is
increasingly the one in which we all live; it relativizes
every other contextual mode of social reflection and action. It
challenges both the contextual Eurocentric theologies of the Christendom of the
era of established churches that spread under the umbrella of colonialization, and the ethnocentric contextual theologies
that derive from the new nationalism of the more recent de-colonializing
period. We are forced to ask again about trans-contextual standards of
truth and justice and normative models of pluralist organization to challenge
local or imperial pretenses.
A key question is: what do
Christians have to offer in this new context? We stand, and we think
humanity stands, between structures of life and meaning created good by God,
but fallen into distortion, and a promise of salvation in a recreated world
that is anticipated in the present in the hearts of persons, in the life of the
church, and in the dynamics of God’s reign in the world,
due to the coming of Jesus Christ, but not yet fully actual in social
history. And the answer is, I believe, to renew and extend the
evangelization of the world, which presumes that the God whom we worship is
universal, the Gospel that we believe is trans-contextual, and the principles
of justice that they entail are valid for humanity. This is not only a
matter of supporting this evangelization
wherever it is taking place, reminding the overheated optimists of the reality
of sin and the cynical pessimists of both the capacities that are given and the
promise of what is to come. It also means thinking through a missiology that attends to the problem of how to build a
viable socio-economic fabric that is just in regard to this new comprehending
context that we face. It would be a mistake to reduce the accent on
creation, for without the basic structures of existence nothing would be, or
all would be facing nothing but entropy. Nor can we reduce the accent on
sin, for that indispensable doctrine points to the realistic limits of what we
can do and how easily all that we seek to do as we employ our capabilities can
be plunged into distortion. It would also be foolish to deny the
importance of eschatology, for our vision of the ultimate end has already, and
will more fully, condition whether we embrace and try to rechannel
what we now have or whether we will seek to resist and destroy the
transformations at hand. Yet, since we live between the times, and
between the universal aspects of the faith and our local conditions of life, we
must face another question: what can provide the kind of guidance for the
proximate, emergent context in which we now must live? The central
mission of the Christian churches today, I think, is to convert not only
persons and traditions and the powers intentionally, but also to draw them into
those providential patterns of life that will enhance open societies; further
encounters, discussion and debate among the religions about the nature of
truth, justice and the constituting forms and ultimate ends of life; and try to
form those contexts in a way that will be conducive to the formation of a
civilization that allows us to live together. This could be, I propose, a
public theology of providence.
This proposal, of course, presumes
that new powers, principalities, thrones, and dominions are present in the
society and are creating new artificial cultural and civilizational
options that cannot be stopped and should not be avoided. These could
very well bring about a global civil society, the nature and character of which
is quite undecided because at present it has neither a governing religious
inner moral and spiritual architecture that gives it an inner heart of
righteous and freely chosen love, nor an exterior socio-economic order that
gives it an exterior form of justice. It is, I believe, not a question as
to whether we will have globalization, but a question of its nature and
character – a question that is, in view of the encounter with other religions,
the greatest missiological issue of our time; it is
the locus where theology, ethics, and realistic social analysis meets.
This proposal grows out of what is
already implied in the analysis of our new, common context, and in our review
of what it is that Christianity has to offer the globalizing world. What
is implied is that the social and material forces which we identify with
globalization – the spread of constitutional democracy, the legal advocacy for
human rights, the growth of science-based technology, the expansive
productivity of corporate capitalism, the increased cross-fertilization of
cultural creativity, and deepening of religious encounter and borrowing, etc. –
are the largely unintended and often quite indirect results of Christian-shaped
sets of civilizational development. The
theological assumptions and implications of this tradition provided these
spheres of human activity with the inner moral rudder at key points in their
cultivation; they reshaped, revised, redirected, or otherwise reformed these
spheres of life over time and thus formed the inner ethical and spiritual
architecture on which they rest.
It is also true that much of
twentieth-century theology has not sustained its relationship to these
movements, except in the negative, and that the “scientific study of religion”
has engaged them in the positive, and thereby disallowed the role of religion
or theology as themselves basic interpretive or normative forces in human
life. Thus, the movements that we associate with globalization are today
present not only in the West in hyper-secular or neo-pagan garb, and are being
exported to the world without a compelling metaphysical-moral vision to guide
them. At home and abroad these movements become subject to chaos by
failing to provide new models for family life in the new complexities of global
civil society, new visions for establishing constitutional democracies with
human rights, new prospects of viable economic systems, or new directions for
redefined cultural creativity. They fail because they do not, above all,
give the whole a compelling frame of reference. We should not doubt why secularistic, economistic
theories of globalization are being advocated by some so forcefully and
resisted so intently by others; but is a debate of the morally and spiritually
empty. Neither should we be surprised as to why people are making the
preferential option for evangelical and Pentecostal theologies, or turning to
fundamentalism. These at least provide comprehensive frameworks for
personal and interpersonal meaning, even if they seldom have a serious theology
of social history, what I am calling a theology of providence.
The key to a theology of providence
is linked to the double meaning of the word. The word “providence”
comes from the Latin for “foresight,” a translation of the Greek pronoia. It involves, of course, a
looking forward, a living with a vision of and for the future, and the making
of adequate preparation (“provision”) for its anticipated eventualities.
It is possible to direct attention to the future, even if one never knows for
sure what will happen, if there is a confidence that life has a wise, free, and
loving will behind it. The whole idea involves the presumption that while
the world is a complex, developing system with all sorts of regularities, there
are also occurrences that seem fortuitous or serendipitous, even miraculous,
and that the divine reality that stands behind the whole from the beginning
bends the contingencies of existence, including the tragic, distorted, broken,
and vicious parts of life, in the direction of a new order and the promise of
fulfilled meaning, rather than in the direction of chaos, entropy or
nihilism. Providence, thus, is based in the belief that this has happened
in the past not only in creation, the exact nature of which is lost in time and
subject to continued speculation and investigation, but in history – in and
even through the disruptive dynamics of historical development – toward a
meaning that is not fully disclosed, but is present in the lives of people and
communities in ways that point toward a fulfillment or salvation in and beyond
all ordinary history. And yet it loses some of its integrity if it is
reduced to a theory of the necessities of nature, as in Leibnitz's “theodicy,”
or to the evolutionary dynamics of panentheistic
becoming, as in modern process theology. These have, like the Greek moira (fate), the Islamic kismet, or
the Buddhist dharma an element of an impersonally determined fixed
destiny about them. Providence, however, presumes the ongoing caring
creativity of the creator and redeemer God in the midst of a sinful and
distorted world, and the awareness of some relative actualization in personal
and social history of the promise of a fundamental renewal of meaning and life,
as seen in Christ’s inauguration of the Kingdom and Resurrection, that points
to an ultimate New Jerusalem.[17]
Between the world as originally
intended by God and as distorted by sin, and the world as it can be perfected
by God’s re-creation, what the Christian idea of providence offers to the
globalizing world is the confidence that God is concerned with the affairs,
institutions, and events of life in time, and is empowering humans, even in the
midst of sin and evil, to find greater truth, establish greater justice,
discover greater love, and form ever wider networks of association for the
facing of daily practical needs and the understanding of the more ultimate
questions than most of ordinary life experience, philosophy, and even the world
religions reveal. The classical theologies of providence presumed that it
had to do with counter-indicated events in people’s lives and the unexpected
re-ordering of the way society was organized. These theologies, as they
were developed over the centuries, recognized that this view has implications
for how meaning is to be found in the face of adversity, how apparently chance
occasions brought people and ideas and resources together at the right time and
place so that something promising could take place, and how, thus, the troubled
lives of persons, the community of faith, and the society at large might be
ordered to make the possibilities of fulfillment more likely.[18]
This is the quality that pertains to
our questions of mission in the context of our increasingly pluralistic,
technologically transformative, urban-cosmopolitan, potentially global
civilization that often seem fractured, disruptive, contentious, and
unpromising. Key concepts that point to the presence of providence in the
midst of this kind of life can be found in vocation, covenant, and
wisdom. Each of these is rooted in creation and points toward a new
creation inaugurated in Jesus Christ, although, as indicated, a theology of
providence cannot be reduced to the logic of a creation at some point in past
time nor to the ultimate fulfillment yet to
come. It is a key basis for a viable interim ethic, for times when we
live between the “already” and the “not yet,” as Paul put it.
Vocation,
Covenant, and Wisdom for the In-between Times
To persons and groups living in the
in-between times, Christianity offers a distinctive view of vocation,
the idea that we humans not only have a dignity and certain capacities given by
the fact that all are created in the image of God, but that we are called into
being to make a distinct contribution to human well-being and to the
actualization of the purposes of God by the functions we are to perform in this
life. Our vocations in the Christian view are not given by our birth
status, by our rank in some stratified division of labor, or by the ethnic
community of which we are a part. They are decidedly more personal than
that. The vocation to be a disciple of Christ and a member of his church
not only makes each individual more than a member of his or her community of
origin, it involves also attending to a cluster of vocations in society to
which we are called in a new way – as spouse, parent, citizen, volunteer in
some worthy cause, and specialist in some useful work necessary for the life of
the community as a whole. This cluster of social vocations is to be
discovered according to each person’s unique combination of talent,
inclination, and cultivated craft or professional training,
that constitutes a unique personal fabric that one feels “called” by God
to become and that one is judged by the community to be worthy. And, if
the community is so structured that it does not allow the actualization of a
person’s authentic vocation, if it does not allow vocational opportunities to
particular classes, races, castes, or sexes, if the society is so structured
that the person cannot find an opportunity to exercise one or another of these
vocations within its confines, the society can and must be reformed as a part
of the mission of the church, or the person must be allowed to leave and join
another society. That which does not accord with, or actually
subverts, the possibilities given creation and does not invite to a new vision
of the future, is against providence and is subject to reformation or
reconstruction as a part of the mission of the church.
Moreover, various institutions in a
society also have vocations under God’s providential care for humans in the
midst of life on earth. It is, for example, the vocation of the
educational system to convey a love of truth and of learning; of a legal system
to render justice and induce a respect for the law; of the medical system to
reduce pain and suffering, heal, and evoke a due respect for the human body and
mind; and of the economic system to efficiently produce goods, services, and
additional wealth for the commonwealth and to properly reward those who labor
to do so. Likewise, it is the responsibility of governments and of social
service agencies to care for the neglected with compassion, to ease their
distress, and help them find viable options for their own lives; of the cultural
system to encourage the construction of excellent artifacts of beauty and grace
and to express what depths of feeling reside in the human heart; etc. If
institutions able to make such vocations their own are not available, they have
to be created as part of the mission to the world; if institutions such as
these do not attract persons with a deep sense of vocation into them, deliver
their intended purposes in accord with the first principles of justice, or
develop monopolies over their capabilities in such a way as to exploit the
people, they too are subject to reformation or reconstruction as a part of the
mission of the church.[19]
Paralleling the idea of vocation is
the idea of covenant. As Israel was called into covenant, and as
those called to the anointed offices of the Prophets, Priests, and Kings of old
were dedicated to fulfilling of God’s covenants with humanity, and as Jesus is
seen as the Christ who fulfilled these offices and combined them in a
fundamental covenant renewal, calling and covenant are intrinsically
linked. Covenant may have to do with either the relationship of God to
humanity, in which a superior party sets the terms which the inferior must
adhere to (Heb: ba’alei brit),
or with the providential ordering of various human relationships or
associations by a voluntary agreement or alliance between parties formally
equal under Godly principles of justice and righteousness that they do not
construct but discern and make their own (Heb: bnai
brit). Covenantal relationships thus differ
from hierarchical or imperial domination and instead reflect a theonomous-democratic conception of the right order in
institutional life. Covenantal relations also differ from contractual
agreements wherein people define their mutual obligations for a term with no
reference to any onto-theo-logical order. At
the same time it must be said that some stratified orders of the hierarchical
or imperial types, when governed by a principle of subsidiarity
that limits their propensity to domination (as in Roman Catholic
ecclesiological theory, some “conciliarist” theories)
clearly approximate covenantal relationships; and some social contracts that
define mutual obligations within a just legal framework and for the common good
do also (as in “voluntary associational” ecclesiologies
and some “federalist” theories).
Covenants not only set the ethical
framework of a polity that allow the dynamic
interaction of persons and groups in a social context, they form institutional
structures that can sustain community among people who are not the same, who do
not agree on all matters, yet who can at least cooperate in debating what is
right and good and fitting to do, and in carrying out tasks together that none
could accomplish alone. At its best, covenant forms the exterior social
architecture for sustained friendships and loving relationships that are
reliable and purposeful, and they thereby anticipate the fellowship and harmony
that many pray for in the life to come. Covenants, like vocations, are
seen as a gift of grace; they constrain conflict and domination, and foster
community and trust.
In the midst of a globalizing
environment, it appears that covenantal arrangements may be necessary to order
the institutions of the common life. Is it not possible that covenantal
relations between husband and wife would reduce the stratified patterns of
patriarch and prevent the tendency to view intimate relationships as merely
contractual? In contemporary political life, they would support the
attempts to spread constitutional democracy and to cooperate with international
partners, and reduce the tendencies to neo-imperialism, or the resurgence of
priestly rule of the political order. In economics, they would reorganize
the relationship of management and labor in the corporation, and the
relationship of corporation to related stakeholders beyond the operation of the
business itself. And so on we could go – into areas of medicine, and
education, technology and law enforcement. In fact, the most likely
non-imperial way of facing the global future and its new multiplicity of
institutions (the transnational corporations, international media,
non-governmental organizations and advocacy groups, along with the World Bank,
the IMF, the WTO, the United Nations, OPEC, the G-7, the EU, NAFTA, ASEAN,
etc., etc.) would be to draw them into federated covenantal patterns, just as
various alliances, leagues, peace pacts and professional associations are drawn
into various networks of cooperation and regard under law.[20]
And third, we turn to the idea of wisdom.
In the scriptures, some of the most neglected portions have to do with the
wisdom literature – the treatments of observation and reflection on the
character of life and the ways of society. It covers the benefits of a
certain largeness of mind, respect for the mastery of some distinctive skill or
of valid insights that come from the simple and not from the learned scholars,
the error of wanton and dissolute living, and the rewards of prudence in the
practical conduct of life in the midst of complexity. To be sure, we have
accounts of the fact that the wisdom we find, for example, in Proverbs, Job,
Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Daniel, the Pastoral epistles, and embedded in
many narratives, is sometimes mixed with sorcery, magic, and astrology; but
time and again the practitioners of these “arts” are defeated when they are
tested in an encounter with anyone with divinely given wisdom. What is
remarkable about this wisdom is that no small amount of it is drawn from extrabiblical sources and does not claim to be
revelatory. And yet, it is included in canonical texts!
It is more than fascinating in this
regard that missionaries over the centuries have been
the ones who have recorded the oral lore and translated the wisdom of peoples
around the world and published it for all to see. This signifies one of
the key, often neglected features of missiology in a
global environment – having a due regard for the insightful wisdom of the
other, and being willing to learn from it, and include its insights into one’s
own tradition and commitments. If the impact of missions on other
traditions is sometimes the conversion of them, the reverse is also possible –
the expansion of one’s own insights by the inclusion of valid wisdom in other
traditions. One’s own view of scripture, tradition, reason and experience
can be expanded in a globalized world. It is possible to suggest that we
should never trust any missionary who has nothing to learn from the people he
or she is trying to convert or from their religious and cultural
tradition. Much the same can be said about those who feel much the same
about modern science, the social sciences, or secular philosophies.
If what I have suggested about the
way missions tend to work is accurate and true, there is no prospect for the
ending of the missionary task in the future. It will, and should,
continue to convert persons, the work with representative people, planting a
new social organization, the church, in the midst of their lives, which will
introduce new possibilities for organizing all areas of the common life, and
will indirectly contribute to the conversion of traditions. In the
process, the fundamental notions of the faith – Creation, Fall,
and Redemption in Christ – will ordinarily dominate the focus of attention, and
will be interpreted in highly contextual ways.
Today, as we live with the awareness
of a new context, a globalizing one that disrupts and comprehends all local
contexts and offers the fragile possibility of a global civil society that
could become a very complex world civilization, our missiology
must not cease, but take upon itself the quest for ways to structure this new
fabric with an inclusive justice, one that brings the various offices and
powers of life to their proper purpose and into interdependence with the wider
fabric of life. I have thus proposed that we consider those powerful
motifs of providence that are often neglected in missiological
thought – vocation, covenant, and wisdom – as models from scripture, and
contributions of Christianity to the world, that have allowed and can foment
anew the formation of a more just fabric this new common life than any known
alternative. They can encourage a civilizational
environment wherein missions and the respectful encounter of the many
traditions may continue with the least violent clash, and with the highest
prospects for the flourishing of human life and the greater understanding of
God’s truth and justice.
[1] For historical examples of these dynamics in the West, see
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996). For an analysis of cross-religious dynamics, see my
"Missions/ Missionary Activity," Encyclopedia of Religion. Ed.
Eliade, et al. (New York: MacMillan, 1986),
pp. 563-570. [Revised edition forthcoming, 2006].
[2] R. Horton, “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part One” Africa
45/1 (1975), pp. 219-235; and “On the Rationality of Conversion, Part Two,” Africa
45/2 (1975), pp. 373-379.
[3] See Sebastian C.H. Kim, In Search of Identity: Debates
on Religious Conversion in India (New Delhi: Oxford U. Press, 2003).
This is one of the most important new studies of the psychological and social
implications of conversion and the context in which it occurs in recent years.
[4] See my “Deciding for God: The Right to Convert in
Protestant Perspectives,” with D. Hainsworth, Sharing
the Book: Religious Perspectives on the Rights and Wrongs of Proselytism.
Ed. John Witte, Jr., and R. C. Martin (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1999), pp. 201-230.
[5] I am, in this matter, indebted to, and a revisionist of the
tradition of sociology that derives from the post-Marxist theorists, Max Weber
and Ernst Troeltsch. Troeltsch
wrote of the “withdrawing” and the “aggressive” sects in Christianity in
contrast to the “church-type” directions of Catholicism and the Reformation,
while Weber saw parallels in other religions. Their work implies that
faith shapes ecclesiology and that it shapes the social polity.
[6] See the summaries of new studies in this area in Lawrence
Harrison and S. H. Huntington, Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human
Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
[7] R. W. Hefner, ed., “Introduction” Conversion to
Christianity, op. cit., p. 34.
[8] John Witte, Jr. and Abdullahi
Ahmed An-Na’im were the general editors of the
research project “Soul Wars: The Problem and Promise of Proselytism in the New
World Order,” from which came several volumes, including: An-Na’im, ed., Proselytism and Self-Determination in Africa
(Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 1997); Paul Sigmund, Religious Freedom and Evangelization in Latin
America (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis
Books, 1998); and John Witte, JR., and M. Bourdeaux,
eds., Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia: The New War for Souls (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998;
and Witte, et al, Sharing the Book, loc. cit.
[9] It is, in my view, one of the great current failures of
Western understandings of the Middle East that modern political leaders could
see what they held to be authoritarianism, patriarchy, militance
and resistance to “modern” cultural and economic practices in Arabic cultures,
but did not see how deeply Islamic convictions were the bases for these
patterns. Thus, it was believed that if the people were liberated from
tyranny by a “regime change”, they would “naturally” want “democracy” in the
Western mode, for it was held to be a “natural” inclination of human nature,
not an alternative theologically-driven vision that only partially overlaps
with possibilities within Islam. Similarly, Western academics, no few
Christians, and many Indians trained in the western secular disciplines (or
caught up in socialist and communist ideologies of mass political movements)
fundamentally misunderstood the religious texture of South Asian societies and
were utterly unprepared for the power of resurgent Buddhism (in Sri Lanka or
Burma) and Hindutva (in India), as if these were
essentially motivated by economic and political interests.
[10] I have suggested this more fully in both Christ and the
Dominions of Civilization; God and Globalization, vol. 3 (Harrisburg, PA:
Trinity Press International, 2002), written with Diane Obenchain.
[11] See Philip Jenkins, The
Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford U.
Press, 2002).
[12] See David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is
Transforming China and Changing the Balance of Power in the World (New
York: Regnery Press, 2003). This book, I understand,
has had an ambiguous reception in China.
[13] This has been seriously attempted, as S. Kim documents,
“The Debate on Conversion...,: loc. cit., Ch.
8.
[14] See my Creeds, Society and Human Rights (Grand
Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans, 1984); and “Deciding for God:
The Right to Convert in Protestant Perspective,” in J. Witte, op. cit.
(1999), written with Deirdre Hainsworth.
[15] John Mbiti has argued as much for
primal traditions with their loyalty to ethnic identity and the elders; Sze-kar Wan for traditional Chinese culture with its
emphasis on “familism” and imperial “Middle Kingdom”;
and Thomas Thangaraj for Indian traditions, which he
sees as “bio-centric” and “geo-centric” and, in a certain way, particular “dei-centric” in their essays in my Christ and the Dominions
of Civilization, loc. cit.
[16] The debates on these matters continue to expand, especially
against the post-modern claims that there are no universal absolutes or master
narratives, as can be seen in these suggestive if not fully representative
volumes: Michael Perry, The Idea of Human Rights (New York: Oxford U.
Press, 1998); Hans Küng, A Global Ethic for Global
Politics and Economics (New York: Oxford U. Press, 1999); Ian Shapiro &
L. Brilmayer, eds, Global
Justice (New York: N.Y. U. Press, 1999); and Shimreingam
Shimray, A Theology of Human Rights: A Critique of
Politics (Jorhat, India: Barkataki
& Co., 2002)
[17] Religions differ on the character of that fulfillment, on
what they think must be overcome for that to happen, and what best overcomes
that which inhibits it. See Mark Heim, Salvations (Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis Press, 1995). As I have argued elsewhere,
this ratchets the argument up to the question of which has the more accurate
view of the human condition. Here and now I am interested in the
providential conditions to engage in that dispute.
[18] A compact overview of the history of the doctrine and some
of its key implications can be found in C. A. Beckwith, “Providence,” The
New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,
Rev. ed. (N.Y.: Funk and Wagnals,
1911) v. IX, pp. 306ff. It is notable that very few of the more recent
theological dictionaries and encyclopedias have an entry of any length on
providence, and none make connection to social ethics or missiology.
It is a defect in modern theology, perhaps due to the “naturalistic”
reductionisms of Leibniz, Process, etc.
[19] These observations on “vocation” are informed particularly
by Lee Hardy, The Fabric of this World: Inquiries into Calling, Career
Choice, and the Design of Human Work (Grand Rapids: Wm. Eerdmans
Publisher, 1990); Gordon Preece, The Viability of
the Vocation Tradition in Trinitarian, Creedal and Reformed Perspective: The
Threefold Call (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press,
1998); Douglas Schuurman, Vocation: Dicerning our Callings in Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishers, 2004); and my “Vocation,” Oxford
Companion to Theological Ethics (Cambridge: Oxford U. Press, forthcoming
2005).
[20] In these comments regarding covenant, I have drawn on
Daniel Elazar, The Covenant Tradition in Politics,
4 vol. (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1995-1999); William Everett, Religion,
Federalism and the Struggle for Public Life (New York: Oxford U. Press,
1997); Kihyoung Shin, The Covenantal
Interpretation of the Business Corporation (New York: University Press of
America, 2001); and my Covenant and Commitments (Louisville, KY:
Westminster Press, 1997).