Wrogemann Intercultural Theology, Volume Two

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-0-8308-8906-8
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 475 Seiten

Reihe: Missiological Engagements

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

Henning Wrogemann (DTheol, DHabil, Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg) is a world-renowned missiologist and scholar of religion. He holds the chair for mission studies, comparative religion, and ecumenics at the Protestant University Wuppertal/Bethel in Germany, where he also heads the Institute for Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies. He is the chairman of the German Society of Missiology.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wrogemann, Henning

Leseproben

1

To Set the Tone

Mission—Surprisingly Different

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

Body Language: Just Be There?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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