INTRODUCTION
“The global image of the US has significantly deteriorated over the past 12 months, as the chaos in Iraq has deepened. And in 18 of the countries that were involved in previous polls, the slide in America’s standing has steepened.” This was the verdict of a BBC article reporting on a BBC World Service Poll which found widespread discontent among most of the world population toward the United States of America. While the US government may think it is offering the world Pax Americana through particular foreign policy efforts, those policies are viewed with contempt by the rest of the world and have resulted in a crisis of confidence in the American government, diluting its ongoing ability to influence the world. Already its mass exportation of American culture has pricked the ire of many Arab nations, resulting in such events as the USS Cole Bombing, 9/11, and the Iraq insurgency. With so much discontent with America in general, it is no wonder that the American Church’s influence is also waning, especially when it comes to missions. Rightly or wrongly, Christianity is linked with the West and specifically the United States of America. And as America continues its pseudo-colonialist endeavors in the interest of ‘national security’, the American Church’s influence will continue to dwindle unless it embraces a post-colonial posture toward the emerging South and East. As the Western Church grapples with Her role in global missions, She must be post-colonial in theology and missions if She is to make a continued difference in the world for Jesus Christ.
TOWARD A POST-COLONIAL POSTURE
“Colonialism is the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizing nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.” During the glory days of European colonialism, nation states ventured to distant places to wrest land, resources, and manpower from the ‘savage,’ all the while saving him from himself and his own damnation. These later religious efforts were based upon the ethnocentric belief that the Christian morals and European values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized, efforts which claimed the use of force was necessary to ‘help’ the colonized understand how superior those morals and values were. These Western Christians never seemed to question, however, whether they had received the God-given right to take the lands and resources of people in the non-Western world, nor did they seem to doubt whether their European culture was superior to the savages of the unknown world. An excessive confidence dominated the Western ethos, a confidence that has lived on to this day. The response to this attitude is post-colonialism, a condition which celebrates the Other, deconstructing the assumed authority and primacy of the West and insisting these voices of non-Westerners be given a seat at the table of worldwide discourse.
As I explained in my first essay of the course, previous and current missions tactics were and are often similar to 19th and 20th century colonial efforts; contemporary Western global missions efforts are often like crossing borders into enemy territory to settle and claim people for our kingdom, dominating all of the emotional, intellectual, and verbal capital in an effort to make the Other our own. Furthermore, we often insist that we hold the trump card to all things spiritual and theological, that our morals, spirituality, and theology are more superior to our fellow Southern and Eastern humans, ultimately thinking they have nothing to add to the conversation. In response, I suggested the Western Church needs to shift from colonial mission efforts to a model similar to economic sustainable development that is post-colonial. We are called to step into the cultures and languages and customs and lives of real people to show and tell them a better way of being human by showing them Jesus and telling them of God’s Kingdom Reign.
In the same way that those who are committed to sustainable economic development enter the lives of people groups indefinitely for the purpose of showing them a better, more sound way of growing food, filtering water, or organizing an economy, we are called to step into the lives of people indefinitely to show them a better way of being Human in Jesus and explain the significance of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Just as sustainable development is about the individual (rather than the group thats doing the developing), efforts at reaching non-followers through global missions are about them and their life, not us and our church or group. In the same way sustainable development equips people to better grow food or better manage a local economy, Western global outreach must be about indigenously equipping the Other to follow Jesus and obey His teachings in their own context, while respecting their own spiritual heritage. Rather than colonize and conquer through outmoded mission tactics, the Western Church must develop people through discipleship by incorporating post-colonial attitudes that embrace the “otherness” of the Other, because this was at the heart of the mission Jesus which He gave His own disciples. While the world has shifted, the church and its agencies continue to act as if nothing has changed.
Doing Western mission in global context through a post-colonial posture will not only rethink missions, but will rethink (and begin with) theology, too.
POST-COLONIAL THEOLOGY
As America’s influence around the world wanes, so too the time of Western dominance in theology is over. No longer is there an “assumed primacy…of the West” in general, let alone specifically in the area of theology. In a post-colonial era where the voices of previously suppressed non-Western nations are exerting their influence on the world stage like never before, so too is the South and East beginning to come into their own in the theological discourse. Because the Western versions of Christianity that have prevailed for the last fifteen hundred years are no longer viewed as connecting with this time and place, the time is ripe for such emerging voices to enter the theological conversation. Thus, as the Western Church approaches global missions, it must unbundle the ‘package’ of the Jesus Story from Western Civilization and allow the Church in emerging global contexts to frame that Story in their own language.
For example, just listen to the voice of the Masai people in Kenya and Tanzania:
We believe in one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on earth…We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day he rose from the grace.
“The hyenas did not touch him.” What a wonderful way to express the resurrection of our Lord and communicate the majesty and glory of the Story of God using their own language! Notice what sort of language was not included: Trinity; sovereignty of God; election; determinism; the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of God; and other Western theological constructs. In other words, these African people crafted a theological credo that was contextual to their expression of faith in Jesus. The expression of faith in theology is never universal, anyway, but is in fact very particular; our dogmas and doctrines of God, of humanity, or Jesus, of sin, of salvation are firmly embedded in the Greco-Roman context of another time and in some ways have become meaningless in even our own postmodern Western context. Imagine, then, how those Western, Greco-Roman theologies and doctrines appear in an Asian or African context. The Aristotelian Unmoved Mover concept of God, which is shared by many contemporary Western Christians, just will not translate to the Masai people.
The Western Church, then, needs to contextualize the theology of Christian spirituality within other tribes, but She also must allow those tribes to inform the contemporary theological discussion. “Theology in a postcolonial context is a highly political affair. Postcolonial theologies will not settle for a position at the margins of their Western counterparts. Rather, they serreptitiously seek to turn the margin into the centre, thereby disrupting the serenity grounded on the assumption that Western formulations are self-evident.” And there is the rub: why must ‘Western formulations’ be entirely self-evident? I certainly understand and would agree that the Zeitgeist of God’s Story has helped formulate our theology and preserved truthful understandings of His Reality, but must they be the sine qua non of theological discourse? Why cannot the West learn from African Christological expressions? How could Asian understandings inform our understanding of pneumatology? Or why cannot the Western Church learn from the Eastern (Orthodox) Church’s understanding of worship and prayer? We’ve already recognized the Western understanding of the gospel has been too often truncated, shallow, thin, bland, anemic, privatized, personalized, polarized, and compromised. Perhaps our more globally integrated era will help further expose weaknesses in our thoroughly Platonic, Enlightenment theology.
But maybe that’s the fear: “Evangelical faith, which has hitherto been articulated and formulated in the stable idiom of Western rationalism that guaranteed its sameness, suddenly finds itself confronted with other idioms that disturb both the stability of classical formulations and the appeal of sameness. Will the evangelical faith break or stretch? Therein lies the question.” Many Western theologians, especially of the evangelical variety, will balk at the idea of making space for the theological voices of the global South and East, suggesting that our understanding of God is settled. That arrogance, however, will not only hinder global missions efforts, but will also keep the Western Church from growing in its understanding of God and living out its Reformation creed: “the church always reforming.” While the West certainly provides a tether to historical theological categories (e.g. Trinity and the dual nature of Christ), we must be able to learn as students from the global Church if we are to both contextualize God’s Story and partner with our overseas brothers and sisters in missions.
POST-COLONIAL MISSIONS
How exactly does missions look from a post-colonial posture? If we are to do missions in a postmodern context from a post-colonial perspective, we must first recognize that the Other does not need to conform to our Western morals, values, and customs. In fact, it might be best to encourage Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish seekers to not become members of the Christian religion at all given how closely Christianity is linked to the West. In his book, Generous Orthodoxy, Brian McLaren explains, “Although I don’t hope all Buddhists will become (cultural) Christians, I do hope all who feel so called will become Buddhist followers of Jesus; I believe they should be given that opportunity and invitation. I don’t hope all Jews or Hindus will become members of the Christian religion. But I do hope all who feel so called will become Jewish or Hindu followers of Jesus.” While this suggestion may seem radical and have a slightly universalist tinge to it, we need to understand that the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Christianity’ carry with them much baggage and Western, especially American, connotations. In the previous paragraph Brian affirms the need to become “humble followers of Jesus, whom I believe…to be the Son of God, the Lord of all, and the Savior of the world.” Missions outreach, then, must be rooted in the notion of “following Jesus” over against other religions, while permitting the Other to remain embedded in their cultural and spiritual traditions.
Rooting our post-colonial mission efforts in “following Jesus” as opposed to “becoming a Christian” is not only important to the Western Church’s efforts at global missions, it is also biblical. It’s called discipleship and, of course, finds its meaning in Jesus’ Great Commission and model of sustainable development. It means embedding ourselves in tribes of the Other, learning their customs and spiritual heritage, and committing to the long process of helping them become students of Jesus, rather than simply Christians. But as Dallas Willard wrote, “non-discipleship is the elephant in the church!” While the Western church is woefully inadequate at discipleship in its own Western context, global missions needs to shift to this more “sustainable development” model. Through this model Western global missions would include these elements: we must embed ourselves among the Other and first embody and demonstrate the Way of Jesus by being disciples ourselves before proclaiming the gospel of Jesus; we must consciously seek to make disciples, to bring others to the point where they are daily learning from Jesus and follow Him with their lives and lifestyle, instead of winning converts through evangelistic colonialist endeavors; like economic sustainable development, we must take the time to change whatever it is in their actual belief system that prevents them from placing their confidence in Jesus as Master of the Universe, while connecting their existing belief system to God’s Redemptive Story as found in Jesus; and finally, while we do not want to syncretize Jesus with Buddhism or Hinduism, we must allow space for the following of Jesus as Lord without embracing a Christianity that is rooted in the West nor American culture.
Finally, the Western Church needs to begin partnering with the Church of the global South and East to reach all nations with the good news of Jesus Christ. Ironically, already African nations are sending missions to North America. For example, the Anglican Church of Rwanda planted a church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Church of the Resurrection. Another movement within American Anglicanism, called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, is a missionary effort from the Church of Nigeria to shepherd disaffected former Episcopal churches who have left the American Anglican communion over several biblical and ecclesiastical issues. These and other stories illustrate that the vital centers of missions are dispersed throughout the world today, and could be multiplied with deliberate Western Church partnerships. Such partnerships, however, must flow from a spirit of mutuality of authority and unity of purpose. Just as theology must shift from a Western centric posture to a global discourse, including the tribes at the margins of our world, so too must missions shift toward an arm-locking posture with our Asian, African, Indo-Philippino, and South American brothers and sisters as coequals for the sake and purpose of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
CONCLUSION
The authority and voice of the Western Church is dissipating, in no small reason due to the waning authority and power of the United States of America. In times past, America and Europe were the dominate sending organizations of missionaries to the global South and East, now the Two-Thirds world sends the majority of people on missions throughout the world, including to both Europe and America.
It is very encouraging to see our fellow African and Asian churches provide leadership to the global church and global mission efforts. But while I certainly applaud the missions efforts of my African, Asian, and South American brothers and sister who are owning the commission of Jesus to make disciples, there is still a place for the West to join in with these other churches in fulfilling the Great Commission. Gone are the days, though, when the West is the sole leader and authority on theology and missions. In our 21st century global context, we the West must make room for indigenous theological expressions of God’s Story and voices of leadership in missions. The West certainly can ground and tether the South and East to the historical development of theology and missions, but that once ultimate authority must give way to partnership. While the time for dominance of the Western Church maybe over, the time for quitting is not. The Southern and Eastern Church has much to learn from us as much as we do them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BBC News. ‘Listen More’ Is The World’s Message To US. Available from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6288933.stm. Retrieved 7 June 2008.
Donovan, Father Vincent J., Christianity Rediscovered. Orbis Books: Maryknoll, NY, 2005.
Engle, James F., and William A. Dyrness, Changing The Minds of Missions. InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, IL, 2000.
Mabiala, Kenzo. Evangelical Faith & (Postmodern) Others. Available from
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2001/iceman.shtml. Retrieved 7 June 2008.
McLaren, Brian, “Church Emerging: Or Why I Still Use The Word Postmodern But With Mixed Feelings,” Pages 142-151 in An Emergent Manifesto Of Hope. Edited by Doug Pagitt and Tony Jones. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007.
McLaren, Brian, A Generous Orthodoxy. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2004.
Pagitt, Doug. A Christianity Worth Believing. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 2008.
Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. Updated 22 July 2004, 10:55 UTC. Encyclopedia on-line. Available from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism. Internet. Retrieved 7 June 2008.
Willard, Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy. HarperSanFrancisco: San Francisco, 1998.
