Vol. 34, No. 3 July 2010

What About Partnership?

artnership. This deceptively simple term masks a complex Preality. It commonly refers to some kind of formal or informal contractual arrangement between two or more persons On Page or organizations carrying on a joint venture with a view to benefit 131 Catholics, Carey’s “Means,” and Twenty-first of some kind, each incurring liability for failure and the right to Century Mission share in the fruits of success. Partners may be persons, groups, William R. Burrows 139 A Monumental Breakthrough in the Missiology of Vatican II and Its Reception by Ongoing Leadership in the Church William Frazier 144 From the Editors of the World Religion Database Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grim 145 The Theology of Partnership Cathy Ross 150 Not Yet There: Seminaries and the Challenge of Partnership Leon P. Spencer 156 The State of Mission Studies in : An Overview and Assessment of Publications and Publishing Siga Arles 165 My Pilgrimage in Mission Anthony J. Gittins 166 Noteworthy

Acrylic on canvas, 2007; from Reflections on God’s Redeeming Love 171 Who Cares About Mission History? or, The (OMSC Publications, 2009), p. 91 Elder Who Refused to Let the Word “Heathen” Hanna Cheriyan Varghese, Join Hands for Peace Pass His Lips Paul Jenkins organizations, or nations. Partnerships might be codified by civil 174 Christians in the Age of Islamic Enlightenment: or common law, or they may simply be informal, time-delimited A Review Essay arrangements for accomplishing a common cause. Lamin Sanneh Two of the essays in this issue focus directly on partnership. 178 Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies Takes In her article Cathy Ross looks at a theology of partnership, ex- a New Approach to Doctor of Missiology ploring the implications for mission of something integral to all R. Daniel Shaw identities and agendas, divine and human. Leon Spencer, writ- 179 Book Reviews ing from his years of close association with Anglican theological education around the world, observes how haphazardly—and 190 Dissertation Notices Continued next page 192 Book Notes exasperatingly—“partnership” has been understood and prac- tellingly thought of the church in organic terms, repeatedly and ticed since its first appearance in missiological parlance in a docu- emphatically insisting that it is the body of Christ (Rom. 12:1–8; ment entitled “Partners in Obedience” presented at the Whitby 1 Cor. 12:1–31; Eph. 4:1–16). Indeed, his cheerful acceptance of () International Council of 1947. the personal inconvenience and suffering that characterized his Since Max Warren’s famous Partnership: The Study of an Idea entire ministry derived from his absolute confidence that he was (SCM, 1956), which begins with the surprising comment that “completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of “partnership is an idea whose time has not yet fully come” (p. 11), his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24). the subject has been a mainstay of missiological discourse. Of The deficiencies of the discourse of ecclesiastical partnership course we know what is meant. Economic inequity in close social become apparent when applied to the organs of our own bodies. proximity has always engendered severe, even intractable, chal- It would be bizarre to suggest that each of the thousands of parts lenges for both churches and missions. At the deepest level of the that compose a healthy human being is in some kind of volun- Western psyche is the surety that he who pays the fiddler calls tary partnership with all of the others. Much more is at stake in the tune. And so Westerners, who have traditionally provided the interconnections, interpenetrations, and interdependencies the lion’s share of mammon in many partnerships, have exercised within us than the word “partnership” can be made to imply. A the lion’s prerogative in dictating the terms of their partnerships. detached body part is dead. In the most profound and ultimate Compounding the material and cultural asymmetries that sense, as with the myriad parts of any living body, so all Chris- make partnership so difficult is the increasing awareness that, as tians are interconnected, utterly interdependent members of one William Burrows notes, formerly missionary-exporting lands are body. As such, we dare not confine our practical thinking about today in greater need of evangelization than formerly missionary- how to fulfill the church’s mission to the restricted range of pos- receiving lands. This reality raises questions not only about many sibilities suggested or permitted by a contractual term, even one of the deepest assumptions underlying the organizing, financing, so potentially rich and intimate as “partnership.” recruiting, and training of in the West, but also about While mutual benefit is the ideal outcome of all partnerships, the nature and purposes of missions-related, task-orientated and though more is required of us—and promised to us—than partnerships, which until recently have been largely defined and can be encompassed by that ideal alone, just seeking to live in dominated by Western ecclesiastical entities, Catholic, Protestant, terms of this dimension of our faith is in itself of great value. and Independent alike. Hanna Cheriyan Varghese (1938–2009), who was an artist in But quite beyond the inevitable and pervasive shortcomings residence at OMSC, portrays her gentle vision of partnership in suffusing our selves, our organizations, and our cultures, might her painting Join Hands for Peace, above. The image is instructively it be possible that the term “partner” permits or even fosters symbolic. The fragile human chain—representing what St. Paul an ecclesiastical distortion that is so fundamentally false that refers to as “the gospel of peace” (Eph. 6:15)—is only as strong it perverts our grasp of the deepest verities? Although St. Paul as its weakest link, yet it is the divinely decreed framework for was warmly appreciative of the church in Philippi for its “part- partnering in God’s work in God’s world. nership in the Gospel” (Phil. 1:5 ESV), he most frequently and —Jonathan J. Bonk

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130 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 Catholics, Carey’s “Means,” and Twenty-first-Century Mission William R. Burrows

t is common to observe that geography is no longer an transformation, in effect, is the prerequisite “strategic knowledge” Iimportant aspect of world mission, yet a remark made by necessary to be a missionary of Christ—and such knowledge is Marshall McLuhan (1911–80)—“We look at the present through much more than instrumental or conceptual. a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future”1— It is not as simple as “modernizing” by ordaining married describes nothing so well as the mental furniture many of us use men or women, as many progressives have argued. First, because to image mission as something done by members of Catholic the has been engaged—quite properly, at least religious orders and Protestant mission societies working “over- in my opinion, in many if not all its efforts—in resistance to the seas.” Indeed, “mission” and activities directed from North to proposition that secular national and transnational organizations South seem embedded in the DNA of missiology, no matter how ought to be the supreme arbiters of morality. Second, because we try to shed them. These images are outmoded, yet they domi- the papacy has resisted the demolition of tradition by much of nate our imagination because of the way they so nobly captured academia since the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. In an aspect of the church’s missionary identity. The issue? Formerly large parts of the Catholic world, there is at present no opposi- missionary-exporting lands are today in greater need of evange- tion to current ordination policies. Absent a broad-based clamor lization than formerly missionary-receiving lands. The Roman for change, imposing married or women universally at Catholic Church, the focus of this article, thus faces a problem the behest of Western theologians runs the risk of ignoring the of where and, possibly more urgently, how pastoral care of the principle of subsidiarity, which involves allowing decisions to faithful and evangelization of the fallen away and nonbelievers be made at the level closest to those being affected. More posi- should be directed. If I read the tea leaves correctly, the principal tively, the insistence of Rome on the maintenance of its rules for alternatives appear to be equally unattractive to the church’s selecting leaders and making other decisions is integral to the episcopal and papal leadership, since (1) maintaining present reform project begun at the Council of Trent (1545–63), which policies seems to ensure that the current personnel shortage aimed at producing a cadre of well-educated, ordained priests will hamstring efforts to mount a “new evangelization” in the grounded in Catholic tradition as refined in the agenda of Trent. West,2 and (2) reopening post–Vatican II debates on issues like At least since the age of Kant and the Enlightenment, a piece of the nonordination of women and whether to maintain celibacy this agenda has quite properly insisted that modern canons of for its priests threatens to dissolve basic Catholic theological and what is provable (for instance, in historical-critical scriptural identity markers. studies) not be allowed to trump the and Tradition as ways of knowing who of is. In the Vatican’s view, in A Conundrum for Catholic Leadership other words, it is essential to maintain a leadership cadre loyal to maintaining fundamental church structures in the face of chang- In the discussion that follows I seek to sketch the ways in which ing cultural vogues, and even forces as basic as the democratic many Catholics look back at means of evangelization that served spirit and new views of gender identity and social roles cannot the church well for two centuries but that may need recalibra- be allowed to trump tradition. tion in an era that began in 1989 with the dismantling of the The question in the background throughout this article is Wall and the realignment of the world’s power blocs. In whether the Catholic Church is wise or foolish to insist upon its particular, I draw attention to the fact that Popes John Paul II traditions in the face of globalization and in the face of a mind- and Benedict XVI have each called for a “new evangelization” set that has been influenced by democratization to believe that but did not and have not made provisions for overcoming the everything cultural is subject to change if a majority so desires. dearth of personnel needed to carry it out. In resisting this worldview, is the church standing for deeper and As Sharon Welch has noted, without the right sort of “sub- more valuable tradition? When does the maintenance of traditions jects” or people needed to carry on a mission, nothing will hap- begin to occlude “Tradition” in the sense of passing on the core pen. Even more pointedly, she notes that the kind of “humanity of Christian doctrine and experience? Is the church losing the envisioned [for mission] . . . does not come about naturally; it ability to adapt its means of evangelization and pastoral care in has to be achieved.”3 Welch is speaking about what she calls the an era of globalization that, ironically, necessitates ceding more “strategic knowledges” necessary to carry on liberation. It is authority to men and women at the local level as opposed to my contention that historically missionary religious communi- maintaining universal hierarchical structures? ties were zones of evangelical intensity where men and women Like the opening of the petals of a flower, or the peeling of were formed, to paraphrase Ephesians 4:23–24, “in the furniture layer upon layer of an onion, a number of interrelated and con- of their minds to put on a new self, created to be like God in the sequential developments unfold in the discussion that follows. kind of rightness and holiness needed in the apostolate.” That Catholic Recession and Protestant Advance William R. Burrows, a contributing editor, is managing editor emeritus of Orbis Books and research professor For background and context, we begin with the Catholic church’s of missiology at New York Theological Seminary. The adaptation to the challenge of Protestant missions in the late working title of his forthcoming book from Orbis is eighteenth century, an adaptation that set the stage for the cur- “Mission, Church, Cultures.” rent situation. To a large extent, these Protestant missions were —[email protected] sparked by William Carey’s provocative book An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792). For Carey, the signs of the times indicated that

July 2010 131 missionary societies were necessary as “means” to bring about intentionally or not, these organizations owed a great deal to the conversion of non-Christians, which was the animating goal the famous Jesuit “way of proceeding,” that is to say, they were of mission. While churches in countries such as were highly centralized organizations rooted in evangelical piety.9 They favorable toward the mission ideal, Carey believed that neither were flexible and were able to gather both personnel and money ecclesiastical structures nor congregational or parish organiza- for missions. The mission societies used advances in technology tions were flexible enough to lead. For that function, mission and became the principal “means” that the Protestants used as societies were required. they entered the mission fields of India, China, Southeast , The importance of Carey’s book and of the challenge posed Sub-Saharan , and Oceania. for Catholics by the modern Protestant missionary movement More ambiguously, for all the creative dynamics it embodied, can scarcely be overstated. Protestants argued for dispersing the Protestant missionary movement would splice the genes of the organizational aspects of missionary work among scores of nationalism and colonialism into what was emerging, tragically self-initiating voluntary societies, which were patterned, in turn, repeating patterns that had so wounded early modern Spanish, on earlier Catholic missionary orders and secular commercial Portuguese, and French Catholic missions. Even more ambigu- practices. ously, it would bequeath what may be termed an entrepreneurial Early modern Catholic missions began with the founding spirit to the churches that were born. By this I mean that— of the in 1540. Building on the traditions of their unlike earlier periods of evangelization, which nurtured a spirit Franciscan and Dominican forebears, Jesuits pioneered new means of organic “communion”—the new churches were entities that of evangelization in and then carried those methods to could merge, split, and follow innovating trends with little to their new missions.4 Under the inspiration and guidance of men inhibit them. Rivalries sprang up, not only with Catholics but like Francis Xavier (1506–52), Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), also among Protestant missions, so much so that the Edinburgh José de Acosta (1539–1600), and Roque González (1576–1628), Missionary Conference of 1910 was convened to overcome them. Jesuits wedded a peculiarly modern evangelical fervor to the Edinburgh achieved many great things, but nurturing a spirit of communion among all the world’s Christians was not one of them. The missions so much embodied the modern spirit as As Protestant missionary the water in which they swam that they could not perceive the successes multiplied, problems it caused. Catholics realized that they The Catholic Response I: had to develop similar New Orders as the Catholic “Means” organizations. The Catholic world awoke to the Protestant challenge during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As Protestant missionary successes multiplied, Catholics realized that they spirit of the Renaissance and exploited the shrinking of the globe needed to develop similar organizations to implement their own accomplished by Spanish and Portuguese mariners. For reasons missionary ideals. A host of “orders,” both male and female,10 too complex to go into here, the Jesuits’ missions were were founded that to a greater or lesser degree embodied three effectively ended by 1644.5 Their mission in China was stymied principles: in 1724 by internal Catholic contentions as well as nationalistic rivalries among Catholic powers.6 As those conflicts grew, the • The Jesuit way of organizing, financing, recruiting, and Society of Jesus was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV in 1773, training missionaries, which brought men and women a suppression that also ended its influence in America into the orders from every strata of society, nurtured and reduced Catholicism there to subservience to Spanish and bonds that would hold them together no matter how Portuguese colonial predation.7 widely they were dispersed, and offered a structure Samuel Moffett terms the fifty-year period after 1773 as in which ordinary people could achieve extraordinary one in which Catholic world missions slid into a period of steep results. decline.8 Although the Jesuits were refounded in August 1814 • A spirituality of self-sacrifice and total commitment with the permission of Pope Pius VII, Catholics were largely to the church, which flowed from what can loosely be in a reactive mode in the face of two geopolitical and religious called the “French spirituality,” epitomized in Aban- vectors. The first of these was Protestant Britain’s position as the donment to Divine Providence, the classic work by Jean- superpower of the day, which brought British customs and rules Pierre Caussade, S.J. (1675–1751). Caussade counseled into ascendancy, so much so that, even where other colonizing self-abandonment to God, obedience to the church, and nations were locally more powerful, the terms on which com- finding God in the demands of daily life. This ethos of merce and colonization were carried on were largely set by a self-abandonment worked its way into the understand- Britain that had very low regard for Catholicism. ing of the missionary vocation in most nineteenth- and The second was the development of the mission agency as early twentieth-century Catholic orders. a religious voluntary society. With Catholic missions in disar- • Officialrecognition by papal authority and conformity ray, the stage was set for Protestants to enter into world mission to rules set up by the Holy See. with British Protestant hegemony behind it. Carey’s Enquiry, in effect, marked the emergence of currents that brought into being The missiological premise of these communities was twofold or informed groups such as the Particular Baptist Society for the and completely in keeping with the philosophy of Carey and his Propagation of the Gospel (1792), the London Missionary Society appeal to “means”: first, to seek the conversion of the “heathens” (1795), the Church Missionary Society (1799), the Basel (1815) and and the establishment of the church, and second, to uphold the Neuendettelsau (1841) societies, and a host of others. Whether idea that mission demanded personal holiness. Long periods of

132 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 training, beginning with a rigorous one- or two-year novitiate, create global uniformity engenders a counterreaction at the local level as were required in the belief that one needed to turn one’s back on peoples seek to maintain their cultures against what they perceive worldly values to convert oneself to Christ in one’s inmost to be an imposed hegemony. Viewed from the perspective of being. The training process also socialized members into an globalization, the Catholic Church was both the first truly global ethic of self-abnegation and cooperation for the goal of the order. organization and among the first to feel the discontents such an In each of the constitutions of the various orders, the Holy See organization causes. While organized vertically from local mis- insisted that two things be clear: on the one hand, the special sions up to the level of the general council and superiors general “charism” of the order and devotion to the larger church; on the residing in Rome, members of the orders were also inserted into other, the primacy of becoming holy as the goal of becoming a local cultural realities. Moreover, members were used to having member. (The language of “charism” in the parlance of religious a voice in decisions within their order. Members of these orders orders reflects belief that the order’s founder was led by the embraced the winds of Vatican II theology, it is my contention, Spirit to gather a group of followers to serve God in a special as a way of opening up to adaptation at the local level, where manner. The Passionist order’s charism, for example, was one the rigidities of canon and mission law often seemed ridiculous. of making manifest the love of God shown in Jesus’ undergoing Both men’s and women’s orders were among the groups that his passion and death.) Holiness was a reflection of that charism engaged most seriously in theological updating, and it is fair to and was the result of the Spirit’s leading a member to surrender say that many members came to feel a deeper loyalty toward to God by living out the charism. newly discovered Gospel values than they did to Roman direc- Two other characteristics are also important. The first is that tives. This tension led to a great deal of what causes an impasse these orders were to be close partners of the pope, dedicated to today in Catholic evangelization efforts. planting the Roman Catholic Church. Their constitutions were all approved by Rome and contained clauses that inculcated The Catholic Response II: loyalty to the Holy See and obliged the orders to undertake Women’s Orders as Integral to Modern Mission missions at the direction of the Holy See’s central missionary coordination agency, the Congregation for the Propagation of It is important to observe that the orders that were instrumental the Faith (founded in 1622, now known as the Congregation for in modern mission were not only male. Equally important were Evangelization of Peoples). In a practice that continued until orders of women, some of them founded as branches of male 1969, specific territories were entrusted to specific orders which communities, more of them as independent congregations. then became responsible for staffing them. Indeed, their emergence may have been more important for the Although less frequently recognized, a second character- credibility and success of Catholic missions than the work of istic is, I believe, extremely important for understanding what ordained men. There has been, I will admit, little serious study happened to the orders in the West after Vatican II. These orders that can assess whether this hunch of mine can be proved. Never- had a utilitarian side that reflected the rise of capitalism in theless, several studies do point in this direction. A leading exam- several important ways. They were organized bureaucratically ple would be the work of Dana Robert of Boston University.12 around concrete tasks. They attracted men and women who were A seminal article by her, for instance, raises the question of the task-oriented. And they relied upon what might be called, in significance of the fact that world is predominantly sociology-of-knowledge terminology, a constellation of beliefs a woman’s movement.13 A book recently published by Ana María and values that made the choice to join them “plausible” to Bidegain makes the case for the importance of the role played by youth who contemplated taking that step. The result was that Catholic women in the evangelization of Latin America.14 Susan the Catholic people as a whole viewed the vocation to religious life as a calling to a “higher way of life,” and they supported their children in embracing the option for celibacy that joining Religious orders were an order entailed. simultaneously a means by Catholicism Faces Modernity which Catholicism grew

A recent book makes the case that issuance of the 1917 Code of and by which the Holy See Canon Law as a result of initiatives undertaken by Pope Pius X exerted control. made the Catholic Church the world’s first truly global organi- zation.11 Under that code, religious orders were granted special privileges to manage their own affairs without the interference Smith has published an important book on the role of women in of local . The price for this “exemption,” as it was called, mission throughout the history of Christianity.15 Smith’s book has was supervision by the Holy See. Thus religious orders were the disadvantage of surveying twenty centuries, but when one simultaneously a major means by which Catholicism grew and is finished reading it, one realizes that historical and theologi- by which the Holy See exerted control of the results globally. But cal studies of the expansion of Christianity have almost totally each organization also had its own particular spirituality and ignored women. ways of approaching tasks. Despite the emphasis on obedience, Why raise this issue? Not just because women’s issues are the best communities were not ruled from the top down; instead, in vogue; indeed, many aspects of twentieth-century feminism they were zones where individuals were respected and where are today regarded as ambiguous. Rather, it is because the role ways were sought to utilize their particular gifts. of women needs to be factored in as we consider why the new- By 1959, when Pope John XXIII conceived of summoning evangelization agenda has not gotten off the ground. I propose the Second Vatican Council, the process of globalizing Roman we move forward with a look rearward, noting, as Rodney Stark authority had led to the church’s encounter with one of the para- has shown, that the attractive ethos of Christian communities doxical effects of globalization. That is to say, the force exerted to gave the nascent Christian movement credibility in the first

July 2010 133 centuries.16 While I do not claim to have the sort of evidence He seeks, moreover, to bring to the fore fundamental teachings used by Stark, I am convinced that when such research is done, from Ad gentes (1965), the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the we will realize that the point at which Christianity became a Missionary Activity of the Church. For both Roman documents, plausible option for vast numbers of people in Africa, Oceania, it is axiomatic that mission must move from being the activity of Latin America, and Asia was when women’s work in hospitals, specialist volunteers in religious and apostolic life communities clinics, schools, and convinced their fellow women to an activity of the whole church under the guidance of bishops that there was something in Christianity worth investigating. (RM 61–76, AG 28–41). The integrating element of mission is Becoming Christian, in other words, became plausible because the attempt to make known the person, work, and ministry of of women’s work. Christ in God’s plan (RM 4–11), a work animated by the Spirit We ignore that lesson at our peril if we think any kind of new of God (RM 21–30). evangelization among and carried on by Catholics can occur in Most missiologists heap praise on Redemptoris missio. Yet as the Americas or Europe without the enthusiastic endorsement alienation has increased among men and women who—espe- and participation of women. In saying this, I am not denigrating cially in the West—subscribe to a progressive interpretation of the work of male missionaries, but if the alienation of so many Vatican II, the notion of plantatio ecclesiae (planting the church) has dropped out of discussions of mission practice. Is it not ironic that so little seems to have been done to nurture the sort of com- Vatican II sought renewal munities that alone will produce the functional equivalent of the religious order “missionaries” for this “new evangelization”? based on this kind of The reality is that dioceses and parishes are struggling to insight, yet we must admit, maintain themselves. True, lay ministries take up the slack in many areas.18 David Gibson has written a much-acclaimed book if this is the criterion, on how the laity is transforming American Catholicism.19 Yet as the council failed. much as Gibson makes the case for a transformation, I read him as proposing a path not unlike that taken by the Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal, United Methodist, and other churches— women in the West is not overcome, we can predict that it will denominations that are losing members steadily. Transforma- be difficult to attract the kind of “subjects” necessary for a new tion for Gibson seems to be marked by how progressive and evangelization. If women do not believe they are respected or “American” the church becomes—but not by the standards of given equal rights, they will not work to bring people into the Ephesians 4, which highlights the transformation of the mind church or to improve the life of the church. and heart of the faithful as the Gospel of promise and forgive- Likewise, if Catholicism is to be given a second chance as ness of sin is embraced. a vehicle for presenting the Christian message today in areas Catholicism, it should be noted, claims to be a sacramental where such faiths and outlooks as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, church in which the formation of all members takes place in the and secularism are predominant, it will be because women think context of the celebration of a that is both a communal Christianity both identifies for them something they want to be meal and the place where one, first, joins the Lord in his paschal saved from and offers a community that enhances their ability passage and, second, finds one’s place in the paschal mystery. to engender better futures for their families, cultures, and na- Vatican II sought renewal based on this kind of insight, yet we tions. This is not the same thing, I hasten to add, as endorsing must admit that, if this is the criterion, the council failed. Find- the or of married men everywhere in the ing ways to create a communal celebration of liturgy is at the world. The situation in different cultures necessitates different heart to the conciliar vision of the center, from which the mis- solutions, including solutions to the problem of cultures that sion of the community and of each individual proceeds.20 Yet retard the development of women and girls. celibacy, on the one hand, seems to be ever less plausible to the average Catholic in the West as a requirement for becoming a Catholicism at a Crossroad -elder in the community, even as arguments, on the other hand, over the discipline of celibacy and over whether women In the rest of this article I address fundamental issues surround- can be priest-elders create a bitter impasse in many places, one ing the need to find adequate “means” for evangelization of each that keeps the church from articulating and embodying a more new areopagus in the world, a term I borrow from §37 of Redemp- vibrant missional message and way of life. toris missio, John Paul II’s encyclical on the permanent validity of the church’s missionary mandate.17 In speaking of a “new evan- Western Catholicism at an Impasse gelization” and of “many other forms of the ‘Areopagus’ in the modern world toward which the Church’s missionary activity Why is this impasse not resolved? There are numerous pos- ought to be directed,” John Paul is speaking of the need to move sible explanations, but here I highlight the one that seems most beyond geographic criteria for mission and instead to enter into persuasive to me. At Vatican II the scriptural ideal of service in an understanding of “new worlds and new social phenomena” the world with everyone responsible for testifying to God’s work that are created by social differentiation and stratifications, mi- in Jesus of Nazareth in every areopagus triumphed.21 But along gration, demographic slices, and the reality of “cultural sectors” with the triumph of the view that confers a missionary in which the Gospel is absent or poorly represented (e.g., the vocation on every Christian came another set of insights that worlds of scientific research and international organizations). unfortunately were kept from maturing so consequences could Redemptoris missio was issued to counter a notion that the be drawn from them. The insights I refer to were perhaps first pope believed had become prevalent, namely, the reduction of and best captured in the modern era in Luther’s teaching on Christianity to the status of “merely human wisdom,” in which the vocation of all Christians to be active in whatever way of mission takes place in a “merely horizontal dimension” (§11). life they found themselves, coupled with a stringent critique of

134 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 monasticism as obscuring true Christian vocation.22 Luther, as tension with the hierarchy. They have a highly refined sensitivity he channels St. Paul on vocation, still has the power to command to conditions in which men exert power despite lacking the quali- attention, and his insight marks his key contribution to the theol- ties of character and insight that engender the genuine authority ogy of mission, convincingly applying Paul’s message to societal people gladly give to true leaders. The result is the alienation of conditions emerging in the early modern period. many of the church’s most devoted members from a hierarchy In the post–Vatican II period, the adoption of the scriptural they believe has refused to be open to the call of the . ideal first retrieved by the Reformers has become a veritablesensus At another level, many religious orders, male and female, communis fidelium (the common “sense” of the faithful) among adopted the language of mission to express their raison d’être Catholics, essentially replacing the medieval and its modernized but understood that mission less as revolving around attract- French spirituality of celibate and religious life as “a more per- ing converts to Christ and the church or church-related action. fect way.” In Lumen gentium, chapter 2, “On the People of God,” Instead, the ideal became action to promote human liberation Vatican II applied that renewed and wider vision of Christian and to alleviate suffering. To their critics, this new understanding identity to the mission of the entire church. But it did so looking seemed to downplay the importance of introducing people to backward through its tradition that religious and the are saying yes to the promise of new life in Christ, of founding and set apart from the laity and called by God to be celibate. guiding Christian communities, and of liturgically celebrating Although it appears to be undiminished in broad swaths of the Christian mystery. And the critics may have a point. Check Oceania, Africa, and Asia, the plausibility of religious life and the Web site of any dozen orders of men and women chosen at priestly celibacy as a requirement for ordained leadership has random. Bringing people to Christ is usually not listed as inte- waned in Europe and America. Though religious life as lived in gral to their mission. But neither can anyone deny that in putting monastic communities (such as the Cistercians and Carmelites) themselves at the service of the poor and oppressed, whether and in new kinds of communities “in the world” (such as the the poor be Christians or not, those making the option for such Little Brothers and Sisters of Charles de Foucauld) survives as ministries have a genuine, Gospel-derived vision. “special calls,” the days of numerically large missionary and reli- But these shifts were not the only changes to occur in the gious communities founded in the nineteenth and early twentieth wake of Vatican II. While I simplify greatly, I think three things centuries for specific tasks appear to be numbered unless there is can be said to characterize what has been going on at the very a strong, shared commitment on the part of members to a hardy top of the Catholic Church since Vatican II as it affects the orders contemplative and semimonastic dimension. It is scarcely a secret and evangelization. First, several superiors general and others that a large percentage of religious took the teaching of Vatican in a position to confirm their statements have told me flatly (on II to mean that this monastic or semi-monastic dimension was superseded by the need to take down the barriers and live in the world. Young people have not found the results attractive, at least not in numbers large enough to give most orders a vibrant The plausibility of future. According to a recent study, for communities to thrive religious life and priestly they must have a way of life in clear contrast to the dominant celibacy has waned in society—one marked by a strong spirit of joy, the wearing of some form of religious habit, regular communal prayer, and Europe and America. insertion in the life of the people, especially of the poor.23 Even such communities, I suspect, will never enroll the numbers that American religious communities enlisted at their high-water background and not for attribution) that Pope John Paul II had mark around 1970 (35,000 religious order priests in the United lost confidence in the orders and viewed many of them as satu- States then, about 13,500 today, according to the 2009 National rated with a spirit of independence and dissent. When I asked Catholic Directory; 173,000 women religious then, about 61,000 for evidence, they related concrete situations in which religious today, despite the fact that U.S. Catholics have grown from 48 orders were treated with calculated disrespect by the Congrega- million in 1970 to 68 million today). And those who remain in tion for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Apostolic Life, with religious life are growing older, while few young members are the knowledge of the pope. One man pointed to words that were joining what appear to be moribund communities. written by the pope, in a different context certainly but indica- tive of his mind-set. Speaking of true “renewal” in the church Gender Issues, Orders, and the Impasse in Crossing the Threshold of Hope, John Paul notes that renewal “at one time . . . took place mainly through the religious orders” and I shift gears now to ask about the issue of gender in the church names the Jesuits, Redemptorists, Divine Word Missionaries, in the contemporary West. As is well known, in the aftermath of , and Salesians.24 In this book, the pope seems to see Vatican II, Catholic women discovered the possibility of serving more hope today in groups like Opus Dei and Communione e God in venues other than religious life, just as women’s roles in Liberazione, thus coming down on the side of the idea that the society at large were undergoing major changes. In this context, active orders are exhausted, at least in the West. many women religious found it difficult to operate in subordina- A second shift since Vatican II is that all popes since Paul VI tion to male authority structures, whose warrants in Scripture have given evidence that they believe that the progressive wing and Tradition seemed unconvincing to them. Whereas in an of the church, in the vanguard of which are many members of earlier era the “mission” of women religious was delineated as the orders, is overaccenting critical studies of the Scriptures, is working alongside of, in support of, and under the direction of downplaying the divinity of Christ and the transcendent nature ordained males, many now began to work where and how their of the Gospel, and has become skeptical about the role of the new consciousness led them. church in the divine plan. Defending “Tradition” in these areas The result? Not only did many women leave religious life is the popes’ way of keeping threatening influences at bay. altogether, but even many of those who remain are in serious Third, the recent popes have sought and seek to keep in one

July 2010 135 ecclesial body elements that in have splintered do well to remember that the genius of the orders founded in into a host of competing churches. But in doing so, they seem the modern era was to practice a form of Christian life in which to be insisting on uniform discipline worldwide. At one level the contemplative gifts of were married to the practical they have succeeded, but only at the cost of what the Dominican effectiveness of groups that were simultaneously a part of the Timothy Radcliffe, in a 2008 address to Canadian religious, has broader church and yet apart from it, acting as catalysts that called “sameness . . . the imposition of uniformity.” Religious brought specific charisms to bear in a host of ministries. orders, Radcliffe notes, used to break that pattern. They could do so once again.25 Conclusion At a second level, as Peter Hünermann has written, the church in Europe as a whole is in a process of dissolution and The conundrum faced by Catholic leadership today is one in operates in ways that contemporary Europeans consider substan- which the old models seem unable to attract large enough num- dard in critical areas such as the observance of human rights.26 bers to carry on the missionary task, and more recent proposals for change seem designed to bend the church to conform to what modernity finds acceptable. Although I do not wish to calum- niate the current cadre of seminarians, today’s models of priest- Contemporary models hood and of training for priesthood do not seem up to the task. of seminary are less Certainly the numbers are not there.27 Yet to turn to the stock than promising as places solutions of progressives—including my own proposals in the past—if one simply opts for a married male and female clergy, to prepare the sort of this change alone would not address the need to form the clergy missional leaders today’s as radically as the Ephesians ideal suggests. Seminaries and other forms of academic education seem to be the default funnels church needs. through which leaders would come, yet there is little to suggest that current models of preparation are able to transcend the problems caused by the professionalization of ministry, which Hünermann wrote before the eruption of the clerical sex abuse amounts to a substitution of academic criteria for Ephesians 4 scandal in the United States, Ireland, and . Since then, criteria. the credibility of Catholicism among its active, alienated, and Scott Sunquist’s recent article “Wrong Time, Wrong Place, nonpracticing members, as well as among nonbelievers, has Wrong Courses: The Dangers of the Unconverted Seminary” certainly not increased. says much about the problem of the “unreformed seminary.”28 I am personally convinced that the impasse surrounding His title evokes the memory of a famous 1740 sermon entitled celibacy and the nonordination of women will continue to impede “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry,” delivered by Gilbert recovery of the church from its persistent low-grade fever. But in Tennent during the First . The sermon presents saying this, I am only drawing attention to a more basic question: the prospects for evangelization in mid-eighteenth-century Should the church return to being such a large-tent organization? America as dire if ministers themselves are not deeply converted; That question brings the following two issues into relief. the life of many ministers reminded Tennent of unconverted “Pharisee shepherds” who were as “crafty as foxes” but lacked • Catholicism since the beginning of the the spiritual qualities needed to be evangelizing ministers.29 was a church of the masses. But belonging was at least Sunquist, a seminary professor and a scholar with great accom- as much a sociological fact as it was a matter of per- plishments, is not opposed to high academic standards. But he sonal conviction. Is the challenge today, rather, one of convinces me that contemporary models of seminary—or any discerning what sort of church we must become to be other type of academic institution I can imagine—are less than the community willed by Jesus in this age and in specific promising as places to prepare the sort of missional leaders contexts? today’s church needs. Instead, as Sunquist says, seminaries in • Is a more faithful church of the future likely to be a following the academic institutional model are preparing min- “contrast society,” a minority within a larger secular and isters for a “vanishing .” religiously plural world, a community whose mission is Aware that I may be indulging in nostalgia for my formation to witness prophetically to Jesus and kingdom values? years in the Society of the Divine Word (from 1958 through 1972), I cannot overcome my sense that the orders have a great deal It is virtually impossible, I believe, to imagine a reversal of wisdom to contribute. The eminent Presbyterian missiologist in the United States of the social changes that have made the Ralph Winter, aware of the pitfalls of purely functional mission traditional requirements for admission to ordained leadership societies and of bureaucratization of mission, wrote extensively implausible to the broad middle sweep of Catholic laity. And if on the fate of American Protestant societies. He shows appre- we select only men who wish to be celibate and continue to bar ciation for the way in which Catholic orders serve. Winter even women from ordained leadership, we will be restricting our goes so far as to say that he is “convinced that the Roman Catholic potential leadership cadre to a very few. De facto, we will cease tradition, in its much longer experience with the phenomenon of to be a broad-based sacramental church. the ‘order,’ embodies a superior structural approach to both renewal For people at the center-left and on the left, it is axiomatic and mission.”30 that if the church is to solve its leadership problem, it needs to If present impasses can be transcended, it may be that bish- resolve the questions of the nonordination of women and mar- ops and popes may appreciate the orders just as much as Ralph ried men in favor of the new outlook. The key question here is Winter did, and may encourage them to share their wisdom in a whether the church can make a change of this sort without losing church that can figure out which parts of its history, as revealed a distinctive Catholic identity. With that question in mind, we in a rear-view mirror, must be attended to and which parts are

136 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 WILLIAMNEW FROM CAREY LIBRARY

Telling God’s Stories with Power Is Hearing Enough? Is Hearing Enough? Storytelling in Oral Cultures Literacy and the Great Commandments Literacy and the Great Commandments Paul F. Koehler ISBN: 978-0-87808-4654 Don Edwards ISBN: 978-0-87808-4623 2009 WCL | 250 pages | paperback Our price ...... $14.39 2010 WCL | 145 pages | paperback 3 or more ...... $9.89 Our price ...... $11.19 Don Edwards 3 or more ...... $7.69 Th is is a complete and practical introduction to storying, especially for people who want to learn about using biblical Th is new book makes the case for including literacy in storytelling in cross-cultural contexts and who want to train and discipleship eff orts in developing nations others to become storytellers. It includes many fascinating like India. Drawing on over 20 years of cross-cultural accounts of the responses of tribal people to the fi rst ministry experience, Don Edwards off ers an insightful proclamation of the gospel through storytelling. look at literacy’s key role in building a strong, healthy body of believers. Edwards looks at the crippling eff ects Full of innovative and groundbreaking insights, this study is of illiteracy, examines Scripture’s view of literacy, and packed with ideas, explanations, and constructive suggestions explains literacy’s value as a door-opener in communities stated in clear and simple language. Tracing the movement that are resistant to traditional evangelism. of the biblical stories across multiple generations of tellers and listeners, storytelling is found to be superior for Readers will be challenged to share the gift of literacy knowledge transfer and for bypassing resistance to the gospel as a tangible act of obedience to Jesus’ two “Great” in oral contexts. commandments.

alitity, mororalityity, discrimscriminanate, transcend, preserervatioon, refleflecti , nnatureure, sellf-conconsciouciousneess, community, affirmaaffirmation,tion traditiraditi nlighlighteennmenent, bebeing,ng, ididentitntity, freedom, coherenceherence, ratrationanali Power and Identity in the “Peoples of the World” Poster enentity, freedomdom,, coherence, rationalism, value,valuue, mumulticticulturul urali Get Real valuvalue,e, contntrolol, autautonomy, rrelationship, independependeencnce, religi hihicss, sociacial ddiscocourse,rse, consiliei nce, sas cred, philosopophyhy, belongongi U.S. CENTER FOR WORLD MISSION Global Church t, cuultlturere, seself-aw-awarenessess, secusecularism, hypostaypostasizatiosiz n, assissimil On Evangelism in the Late Modern World PEOPLES OF THE WORLD ty,, iindivdividuidualitylity, moraliorality, discriminate, transtr cencend, preseeservavati Reached Peoples Unreached Peoples dodonnmmenent, reeflectiotion,n GET REAL: kinshipkinsh , esseessence, nnatatu 8,000 People Groups/2.7 billion people A new, full-color 16,000 People Groups/4 billion people Reached / Unreached Those who live in people groups without an indigenous Great Commission Christians The Globe at a Glance church-planting movement. Only 10% of missionary (800 million people) work is focused on them. ity,y, tradt adittioion, coommmunitynity, affirmation, tradition,o abandononme Those followers of Jesus who are, or can be, mobilized 300 Unreached People and equipped to make disciples of all nations. Other Groups Nominal Christians (31 mil. people) Christian (1.37 billion) Religions Unreached Peoples ennmenment,, bbeing,ng, identientity, freedom, coherence, ratirat onalisnalism, vval 10,000 Peoples Those who consider themselves Christians because 900 Peoples (2.33 billion people) they are part of a Christian culture, or Christian country, (42 million people) but who are not being discipled to follow Christ. Most mission and evangelism eff orts are presently focused on Brian Howell and nominal Christians. Non- 1.35 billion wall poster refl ecting alismm, reductictioniism, value, control,ol c onsilience, autonoonomy,y, s Nominal Christians Non-Christians Within Reach (1.83 billion) Those who do not know Christ as Lord and Savior, but Religious who live within people groups where missionaries have 300 Peoples Edward Rommen planted strong churches, pastored by their own people. , rereliggion,n, belbe ief,f, ethics, community, relationship, belilieef, eth (655 million people) Through these churches they can readily hear about Christ in their language and from their people. 100 Unreached Peoples (121 million people) ncece, on evangelism in the lat la e modeo rn world. securur Reached Peoples Edwin Zehner, editors Buddhist 700 Unreached Peoples The “dark blue” areas of the pie above and to the elelf--awarena ness, secularism, hypostasizatasization, assimilate, dodomimin (275 million people) updated statistics 1,300 Peoples left refl ect the number of individuals making up the ISBN: 978-0-87808-4630 (523 million unreached peoples of the world—those groups that people) still lack an indigenous church-planting movement. In these groups are 2.7 billion people, representing 3,300 Unreached ty, inindivididuality, moram lity,lit discrimicrim nate,e transcenscendd, preseseervatiati 40% of the world’s population. The individuals in these Peoples large blocs speak over 5,000 languages, and are further (1.26 billion people) 2,400 Unreached Peoples broken down into 8,000 nations/peoples, each of which requires specialized cross-cultural outreach and its own (860 million people) indigenous church. This task—the planting of churches ectiontion, kinship,hip, essence, natun re,e, self-conscf-cons iousneousness, comommmun for the fi rst time among the unreached peoples—must ISBN: 978-87808-006-9 be the highest priority for all churches around the world. Only when all parts of the worldwide church 1,200 Unreached Muslim accept the responsibility to penetrate determinedly Peoples these last frontiers by planting a viable, witnessing on the reached and aditiition, ababandndonmentonment, enlighnlightenmentenment, being, identity,ity, freedeedo 4,100 Peoples Hindu (161 million people) (1.47 billion church in the midst of them all will we be able to confi dently say that “every tribe, tongue, and nation” The pieces of pie (above and to the right) show the 3,400 Peoples people) has heard—the condition our Lord has placed upon his degree to which each of the major cultural groupings (960 million people) return (Matthew 24:14). of the world has been penetrated with the gospel. tioonalisism,m value, multm iculturculturalism,alism reductionism, valuelue, conont A people is defi ned as reached once an indigenous church has become well-established within it, capable of reproducing indigenous leaders, church planters, evangelists and missionaries. True and nominal Ethnic Religions Christians, plus the non-Christians within their cultural 4,000 Peoples my, essennce, naature, self-conlf-consciousness, communimmunity, affiaffirmmati True Christians, available as a work force, A Biblical Nation Is Not a Country reach, constitute about 60% of the world’s population, or (725 million people) through discipleship and equipping 4 billion people. Most missionary eff ort is concentrated here (over 90%). 2010 WCL | 260 pages | paperback Purely Nominal “Christians,” needing E0 renewal The chart is divided by the predominant religion within each unimax people.* (“Peoples” = unreached people ndondonmenment, enlightenment, being, identity, frefreedomm, coherherenn evangelism “People Groups”) All individuals in the world can be found somewhere on this diagram. Religion is seen as part of the cultural identity of the group as a whole. For instance, when a Buddhist people has a church movement established within it, which seeks to evangelize the rest of the Non-Christians making no Christian profession but The Great Imbalance members of that people, the group is considered “reached,” but still within living within reached groups, needing E1 outreach the Buddhist cultural bloc. evangelism valueue, muulticulc lturalism, reductionism, value, ccontrol, auutotonono Reached Unreached Non-Christians living within unreached people * Unimax People: The MAXimum sized group sufficiently UNIfied to be reached by a single groups, requiring E2 to E3 cross-cultural evangelism indigenous church-planting movement. Countries Ethne 2009 WCL | 245 pages | retail $16.99 People Groups 16,000 8,000 ffirmf rmation, traradition, abandonment, hypostasizatios tion, assiass mimil The Great Commission, found in Matthew 28:19-20, is Non-Christians a mandate given to the global Church to “disciple all 40% 60% nations” until the “end of the age.” The Greek word used Practicing Christians Distribution of Missionaries in Proportion to World Population for nations does not refer to countries but to ethnic groups of the world. 99% groups (Greek: “ethne” or peoples). Geo-political entities itity, individuaviduality, morality, discriminate, iindivviduidualitity, moramoral have constantly shifted throughout history, and within All Foreign Missionaries Reached Peoples Unreached Peoples many of them today are contained numerous ethnicities. 90% ((4 Billion Individuals)) ((2.7 Billion Individuals) As a global average, there are about 100 people groups per country. Some countries, such as , India, and Our price ...... $15.99 rannscecend,n preservatiion, reflection, kinship, essence,e, nan tuure,, s 1% 0.2% Other Indonesia, have well over a thousand peoples in each Practicing one. In other countries, such as South Korea and Japan, Christians the population is fairly homogenous, representing NonNoNon-Religious 11.9% Reached Unreached 3.4 % 0.6% primarily one ethnic group; but they are the exception Non-Christians to the rule. eess,s, comcommununity, traditiondition, abandonment,nt, enlienlighhtentenmenentt, bbeiei Nominal within Peoples Peoples Christians unreached Reached Unreached 3% 3% Muslim groups Peoples Peoples 20.5% Percentage of Global 40.3% 1.3%1.3% 0.6%0.6% Hindu Th is poster shows in Our price ...... $13.59 Evangelical MissionariesPercentage of Global nce,nce rationra ionalism,m, value,alue , rereduuctionctionisnism, ccontont Evangelical Missionaries 27.13% within Each Religiouswithin Each Bloc Religious Bloc For More Information 7.7.1%1% 3.8%3.8% EEthniEthnicthn Religions Non-Christians within reached groups 1.5% 1.5% Buddhist tionnshihip,p independencndence, religion, belief,elie ethics,hics, sococialal ddisciscouou www.uscwm.org www.perspectives.org 73.1% Christian Source: Bruce Koch, based on All Humanity in Mission Perspective AD 2008 (Active Christians = GCC) 3 or more ...... $10.99 90.4% 9.7% Totals www.missionbooks.org www.missionfrontiers.org chart form the extent saacred,red, phiphilosop osophy,ph belongingnging, secursecu ity,ty Edward Romommen. cononfl All Humanity in Mission Perspective in A.D. 2008 Majority Religions among the World’s Peoples elf-e f-awarenareneness,ss seccularism, hypostasizatioion,, assimilamilatatee, domidommin

Predominant Religion within Culturally Defined Peoples 3 or more ...... $9.34 Ethnic Non- Other Totals Christianity Buddhism Hinduism Islam Religion Religious Religions JPD Peoples 4,253 - 227 704 1,843 1,344 15 120 ality,y, moram ralitylity,ty, disiscriminate,nate t ranscenscend, prespre erervatiovation, rerefleeflecti Estimated Unreached Unimax Peoples 8,000 - 700 1,200 2,400 3,300 100 300 Frontier Missions Practicing Christians 5.3 - 0.4 1.2 0.4 1 2 0.3 Non-Christians (P2): E2 to E3 1,551 - 122 68 783 432 119 27 Non-Christians (P2.5): E2.5 to E3 1077 - 135 70 60 808 0 4 Non-Christians (P3): E3 71 - 18 22 17 14 0 0 Individuals (in millions)

Unreached Peoples Unreached Total 2,704 - 275 161 860 1255 121 31 Least Evangelized and Evangelized Least Global Evangelical Missionaries 24,300 - 3,700 9,600 1,600 7,500 1,400 500 , natturure,e, ses lf-cons-consciousnec ousness, community, affirmaffirmaatiotion,n, trraditaditi JPD Peoples 5,725 3,543 35 1,652 146 317 18 14 Missions "Domestic" Evangelism and Estimated Reached Unimax Peoples 16,000 10,000 600 2,800 1,000 800 200 600 Practicing Christians 796 570 20 120 12 5 65 4 Nominal-Christians (P0, P.5): E0 to E3 1,372 1,350 3 6 3 1 9 0 of the gospel and the Non-Christians (P1): E1 to E3 1,830 410 225 438 85 205 460 7 Christian Individuals (in millions) Total 3,998 2,330 248 564 100 211 534 11 Reached Peoples

Most Evangelized and Most Evangelized Global Evangelical Missionaries 228,700 185,000 3,700 18,000 3,400 7,500 8,600 2,500 Buddhist JPD Peoples 9,978 3,543 262 2,356 1,989 1,661 33 134 Estimated Unimax Peoples 24,000 10,000 1,300 4,000 3,400 4,100 300 900 Ethnic Religions 6,702 2,330 523 725 960 1,466 655 42

Totals Total (in millions) World All Missionaries 253,000 185,000 7,400 27,600 5,000 15,000 10,000 3,000 Hindu

The table above was generated by the Research Department of the U.S. Center for World Mission using data from the Global Mission Database (www.uscwm.info/gmd), the Joshua Project Database (www.joshuaproject.org), and the World Christian Database (www.worldchristiandatabase.org). JPD Peoples: All ethno-linguistic and ethno-cultural peoples Muslim documented in the Joshua Project Database, and summarized without geo-political divisions. Unreached Peoples: Estimate of Unimax peoples (1982 definition) without a viable church planting movement or a viable, indigenous, evangelizing church. The number of unimax peoples (1982 definition) are estimates. Clues are taken from linguistic and social Non-Religious factors (e.g., language clusters, caste). Reached Peoples: Estimate of Unimax peoples (1982 definition) with a viable church. This includes all peoples predominantly Christian. Practicing Christians: Christians of evangelical conviction who are being or can be discipled to obey the Great Commission. Global Evangelical Missionaries include foreign missionaries, missionaries working within their own country (both cross-culturally and in near cultures), bi-vocational missionaries, and home staff who are classified as missionaries who support field missionaries.

For an understanding of the following: E0, E1, E2, E3 and P0, P1, P2, P3, see the article “Finishing the Task” on the USCWM Website: uscwm.org Produced by the USCWM Mobilization Offi ce: 1605 E. Elizabeth St., Pasadena, CA 91104 • (626) 398-2200 • © U.S. CENTER FOR WORLD MISSION • 120109

Poster Final.Final.FinalB2.indd 1 12/22/09 3:13:56 PM needs of the world. It graphically illustrates Th e Gospel is more than information about the death and resurrection of our the numbers of reached and unreached peoples Lord. It is an invitation to enter, by way of personal faith, into a relationship in the Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, with the person referenced by our propositions. Our task as believers is to ethnic religious, and non-religious cultural mediate saving communion with a personal being upon whose will our very groups of our world. Th is wall poster shows the existence is contingent. It is precisely this personal aspect of our message, the great imbalance and the need of focusing on Gospel-as-Person, that is in confl ict with the late-modern notions of the Self the unreached peoples of the world. Great for and social discourse. offi ces, bulletin boards, dorm rooms, apartments, Dr. Rommen describes how the late-modern phenomena of existential anxiety, and the homes of believers everywhere! social alienation, and epistemic uncertainty have resulted in what some have Size 19 x 27 inches called “the loss of Self.” He also identifi es ways in which that loss obstructs Our price ...... $6.95 both the presentation and reception of the Gospel-as-Person. Finally, it shows how the Gospel-as-Person facilitates the recovery of the Self and social dis- 3 or more ..... $5.82 course, and how that message can be eff ectively presented. www.missionbooks.org • 1-800-MISSION mutable, thereby helping stewards well-versed in the ways of to renew their charismatic identity through the act of passing the kingdom to bring out both old things and new from the it on to men and women—celibate and married—who could, storehouse of missional tools (see Matt. 13:52). In itself, renewed in their turn, pioneer new ways of invigorating the church and regard for the orders will not solve all the Roman Catholic could mark out new forms of community so as to be present in Church’s problems. But it would encourage these communities and reach out to each new areopagus. Notes 1. For these and other McLuhan quotations, see the McLuhan estate 14. See Ana María Bidegain, Participación y protagonismo de las mujeres Web site, www.marshallmcluhan.com. en la historia del catolicismo latinoamericano (Buenos Aires: San Benito, 2. See especially the apostolic letter of John Paul II Novo millennio 2009). ineunte (“Entering the New Millennium,” January 6, 2001), www 15. Susan Smith, Women in Mission: From the to Today .vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/ (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2007). hf_jp-ii_apl_20010106_novo-millennio-ineunte_en.html, as well as 16. Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, Joseph Ratzinger, “The New Evangelization: Building the Civilization 1997). of Love” (address to catechists and religion teachers, December 12, 17. John Paul II, Redemptoris missio (encyclical on the permanent validity 2000), www.ewtn.com/new_evangelization/Ratzinger.htm. of the church’s missionary mandate, 1990), text available at www 3. Sharon Welch, Communities of Resistance and Solidarity: A Feminist .vatican.va/edocs/ENG0219/_INDEX.HTM. See also the book Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 66. edited by me for both the text of the encyclical and an authoritative 4. See John O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, .: Harvard commentary on it by its behind-the-scenes drafter, Marcello Zago, Univ. Press, 1993), esp. pp. 91–126. O’Malley maintains that both Redemption and Dialogue (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2009). Jesuits and Protestant Reformers drew their inspiration from the 18. Mary L. Gautier and Brian T. Froehle have documented how lay Mendicant Orders (i.e., the Dominicans and Franciscans), founded in leadership is emerging in the United States as ordained leadership the thirteenth century, and that accounts that see Jesuits responding declines, in Catholicism USA: A Portrait of the Catholic Church in the to Protestants as the pope’s counterreformation assault troops are United States (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2000). wrong. See also Liam Matthew Brockey, Journey to the East: Jesuit 19. David Gibson, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful Are Shaping Mission to China, 1579–1724 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, a New American Catholicism (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003). 2007), pp. 290–314. 20. See Vatican II constitutions Sacrosanctum concilium §2 and Lumen 5. Andrew C. Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, gentium §7, and the decree Ad gentes §9. 1542–1742 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1994), pp. 99–110. 21. See Ad gentes §§11–12. 6. See Brockey, Journey to the East, pp. 185–203. 22. See Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” in Martin Luther: 7. See bull of Clement XIV Dominus ac Redemptor, July 21, 1773; see Selections from His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (Garden City, N.Y.: William Bangert, A History of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis, Mo.: Doubleday Anchor, 1961), pp. 42–85. Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1972); see William F. Jaenicke, Black Robes 23. See the recent study by Mary L. Gautier and Mary E. Bendyna, in Paraguay: The Success of the Guaraní Missions Hastened the Abolition Recent Vocations to Religious Life: A Report for the National Religious of the Jesuits (Minneapolis: Kirk House, 2008), for a synthetic account Vocation Conference (Washington, D.C.: Center for Applied Research of the intrigues that led to the suppression of the Jesuits. in the Apostolate, 2009). This lengthy study (406 pp.) examines the 8. Samuel Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, vol. 2, attitudes of men and women who have joined religious communi- 1500–1900 (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2005), pp. 176–81. ties in recent years. 9. On this “way of proceeding,” see O’Malley, The First Jesuits; Peter C. 24. John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (New York: Knopf, 1994), Phan, Mission and Catechesis: Alexandre De Rhodes and Inculturation in p. 168 (italics in original). Seventeenth-Century Vietnam (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998); 25. Timothy Radcliffe, “The Future of Religious Life,” address to and Brockey, Journey to the East. Canadian Religious Conference, June 6, 2008, www.crc-canada.org/ 10. Orders of men include Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate bd/fichierNouveaute/478_2.pdf. (founded 1816), Congregation of Holy Cross (1840), the Congrega- 26. Peter Hünermann, “Evangelization of Europe? Observations of a tion of the Holy Spirit (1842), Salesians of Don Bosco (1845), Congre- Church in Peril,” in Mission in the Third Millennium, ed. Robert J. gation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (1862), St. Joseph’s Society Schreiter (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2001), pp. 57–58. for Foreign Missions (“Mill Hill,” 1866), Comboni Missionaries 27. According to the National Catholic Directory, there were 8,000 (1867), Missionaries of Africa (1868), and Society of the Divine Word major seminarians in 1965, but only 4,900 in 2006. In 1965 the church (1875). Orders of women include Marist Missionary Sisters (1857), ordained 1,575 new priests; in 2005, the number was only 454, a Congregation of Our Lady of the Missions (1861), Salesian Sisters decrease of more than two-thirds. See John McCloskey, “State of of Don Bosco (1872), Franciscan Missionaries of Mary (1877), Holy the US Catholic Church at the Beginning of 2006,” www.catholicity Spirit Missionary Sisters (1889), and Missionaries of the Sacred .com/mccloskey/state_of_the_church_2006.html. Heart (1900). 28. Scott W. Sunquist, “Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Wrong Courses: 11. Carlo Fantappiè, Chiesa romana e modernità giuridica, 2 vols. (Milan: The Dangers of the Unconverted Seminary,” Presbyterian Outlook, Giuffré, 2008). September 14 and 21, 2008, available at www.pts.edu/UserFiles/ 12. A book edited by Dana Robert, Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers: File/faculty/Unconverted%20Seminary.pdf. Missionary Women in the Twentieth Century (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis 29. For the text of the sermon, go to www.sounddoctrine.net/Classic_ Books, 2002), offers studies of important women missioners. Sermons/Gilbert%20Tennent/danger_of_unconverted.htm. 13. See Dana Robert, “World Christianity as a Women’s Movement,” 30. Ralph D. Winter, “Protestant Mission Societies: The American International Bulletin of Missionary Research 30, no. 4 (2006): 180–88. Experience,” Missiology 7, no. 2 (1979): 139–78 (italics in original).

138 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 A Monumental Breakthrough in the Missiology of Vatican II and Its Reception by Ongoing Leadership in the Church William Frazier

his study examines a missiological tension in the current Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975. The Holy Father’s apostolic Tteaching of the Catholic Church, a tension occasioned exhortation Evangelii Nuntiandi (EN) is an effort to gather the main by the following passage of Ad Gentes, the Decree on the Mission- insights and conclusions of the Third Assembly of the Synod of ary Activity of the Church, promulgated by the Second Vatican Bishops, which convened in 1974, to consider the topic of evan- Council in 1965: gelization. Before reporting on my search for AG 2 in Evangelii Nuntiandi, I keep its details before us by citing it once again. The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission in accordance with the decree of God the Father. of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, (Ad Gentes sec. 2, henceforth AG 2)1 in accordance with the decree of God the Father. (AG 2) I deal first with the breakthrough aspect of this statement and My examination of both the text and the footnotes of Evan- its magnitude. Then I turn to consider how it has been received gelii Nuntiandi yielded not a single direct or indirect reference in a selection of postconciliar papal and episcopal reflections on to AG 2, this despite the exhortation’s turning frequently to the relation between mission and church. other teachings of Ad Gentes. AG 2 is never included in these consultations. On at least one occasion, however, this pattern The Breakthrough and Its Magnitude may seem difficult to explain. I have in mind EN 14–15, where Paul VI affirms that the church “is born of the evangelizing AG 2 is a breakthrough because it represents a step that had not activity of Jesus and the Twelve,” born, he repeats, “out of being been taken before in the church’s official understanding of mis- sent,” which explains why “she exists in order to evangelize” sion. Vatican II gave it expression for the first time. Before the and why this activity points to her “deepest identity” and “most council, the magisterium had never embraced the anchoring of intimate being.” church in the soil of mission. One sign of this is that no earlier But is not this also the message of AG 2? Why, then, would the version of AG 2 is footnoted in the conciliar text. Another is Holy Father not make use of it to anchor his teaching in Vatican that the missiology that enabled the statement was little more II? The main reason is that AG 2 and EN 14–15 are not saying than thirty years old in 1965 and, for the most part, was due to exactly the same thing, and Paul VI must have been aware of Protestant scholars and their missio Dei initiative. the difference. Placing the two portraits side by side will help us As for its magnitude, AG 2 can be seen as a breakthrough of recognize where they coincide and where they diverge. monumental proportions. To take AG 2 seriously is to affirm the AG 2 EN 14–15 passim priority of to mission, as well as the priority of mission to Jesus, to church, and to all the church embraces, including its The pilgrim Church is mission- Paul VI affirms that the church nature and identity, its leadership and organization as a commu- ary by her very nature. For it “is born of the evangelizing ac- nity. The church of AG 2 is truly a missionary church anchored is from the mission of the Son tivity of Jesus and the Twelve,” in the missions of the triune God. and the mission of the Holy born, he repeats, “out of being Spirit that she takes her origin, sent,” which explains why “she Reception of Ad Gentes 2 by Catholic Leadership in accordance with the decree exists in order to evangelize” of God the Father. and why this activity points If there is any truth in what I have suggested about the role of to her “deepest identity” and “most intimate being.” AG 2 in the missiology of Vatican II, one might expect it to oc- cupy a place of prominence in postconciliar missiological state- Both portraits look to mission for the origin of the church. ments, especially those of the magisterium. To obtain the hard Both portraits find in mission the key to the nature and identity data needed to address this matter, I consider direct or indirect of the church. The portraits differ, however, when it comes to references to AG 2 in the following four documents: Paul VI, where mission itself finally originates. For EN 14–15, it is in Jesus Evangelii Nuntiandi, 1975;2 Catholic Bishops of America, “To the and his apostles. For AG 2, it is in the missions of the Trinity. This Ends of the Earth,” 1986;3 John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 1990;4 may be the source of Paul VI’s evident uneasiness with AG 2. and John Paul II, “The Church Is Missionary by Her Nature,” Through my survey I learned that Evangelii Nuntiandi is devoid General Audience Address, April 19, 1995.5 not only of the defining trinitarian moment of AG 2 but of any trinitarian reflection at all. There are, of course, references here William Frazier is a Catholic priest and member of and there to the persons of the Trinity, including a final chapter the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America devoted to the role of the Holy Spirit in evangelization, but at (Maryknoll). He earned his S.T.D. at the University no place in the exhortation are trinitarian relationships and life of St. Thomas Aquinas (The Angelicum), Rome, Italy, taken into the Holy Father’s missiological reflection. Why? It is in 1959. —[email protected] not clear. One thing is sure: for Paul VI, anchoring mission and church in “the evangelizing activity of Jesus and the Twelve” is preferable to anchoring them in the missions of the Trinity. Short of a broader investigation, we have no way of discovering the

July 2010 139 theological or doctrinal disadvantage he seems to have found emphasis, so necessary for the formation of future priests and in the latter alternative. leaders. Further, authors of catechetical texts should highlight the missionary responsibility of every Christian so that young Catholic Bishops of America, “To the Ends of the Earth,” 1986. As people may be educated from an early age in this essential before, we begin with the words we use to measure the most aspect of the Church’s life” (TEE 70). recent statement of the American bishops about mission: Having referred to mission once again as “task,” the bish- ops ask educators to “include a strong missionary emphasis” The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. in theological studies and to highlight mission in catechetical For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission texts. This can be seen as a “one-among-others” arrangement. of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father. (AG 2) It portrays mission as one among other tasks of the church, one among other emphases in theology, one among other aspects of At first glance, “To the Ends of the Earth” (TEE) would seem the church’s life. Mission in AG 2, however, is not one among to be more receptive to AG 2 than Evangelii Nuntiandi. And in one other realities of the church. It is the reality in which the church sense it is. Whereas specific reference to AG 2 is totally lacking in itself and all realities belonging to the church originate. Evangelii Nuntiandi, “To the Ends of the Earth” refers to it twice Uneasiness with AG 2 is easier to explain in “To the Ends of (TEE 2, 22). When we examine these two passages, however, we the Earth” than in Evangelii Nuntiandi, although the reason in each find that neither of them is a direct citation of AG 2. In the case case may be virtually the same. While neither document takes of TEE 2 we have a general summary, and in TEE 22 we have issue with AG 2 explicitly, the tension between the church of “To what amounts to a paraphrase. One may wonder how close these the Ends of the Earth” and the church of the conciliar formula can descriptions come to doing justice to AG 2. Placing the three hardly be missed. Fueling the tension is a relentless affirmation statements next to each other may help us decide. of the pastoral identity of bishops in “To the Ends of the Earth.” The bishops’ desire to produce a pastoral AG 2 TEE 2 TEE 22 reflection on mission is clearly stated in the subtitle of their document: “A Pastoral Statement The pilgrim Church is mis- The Church, therefore, is The missionary task of on World Mission” (see TEE 8). Their prevailing sionary by her very nature. missionary by her very the Church is rooted pastoral identity left them little choice. Even For it is from the mission nature. She continues the theologically in the when they emphasize the missionary nature of of the Son and the mission mission of the Son and the Blessed Trinity. The very the church along the lines of AG 2, as they do in of the Holy Spirit that she mission of the Holy Spirit origin of the Church is TEE 2, they seem to maintain that the identity takes her origin, in accor- by proclaiming to the ends from the missions of of leadership in that church is fundamentally dance with the decree of of the earth the salvation the Son and the Holy God the Father. Christ offers those who be- Spirit as decreed by the pedagogical and pastoral rather than missionary. lieve in him. We are faithful Father. “The Church, therefore, is missionary by her very to the nature of the Church nature. She continues the mission of the Son and to the degree that we love the mission of the Holy Spirit by proclaiming to and sincerely promote her the ends of the earth the salvation Christ offers to missionary activity. those who believe in him. We are faithful to the nature of the Church to the degree that we love Begging the ’s for the subtleties that follow, I and sincerely promote her missionary activity. As teachers and will try to make my case for them as brief and clear as possible. we are responsible for keeping alive a vibrant Catholic The main difference between AG 2 and these two renditions of missionary spirit in the United States” (TEE 2). it in “To the Ends of the Earth” involves the difference between If in the final sentence of this passage the bishops had being and action. AG 2 has to do strictly with the missionary being described themselves as missionaries by their very nature, we that the church derives from the trinitarian missions. Action is would know how they reached that conclusion. As it is, how- implied, of course, but this is not the point of the statement. In ever, we have no way of knowing how they can call themselves TEE 2 and 22, in contrast, the nature derived from the Trinity teachers and pastors instead of missionaries, without turning by the church seems to be more in terms of action than of being. to some place in the tradition where the church is said to be by With no encouragement from AG 2, these expressions move her very nature pedagogical and pastoral, and this by way of directly to the missionary action the church inherits from the continuing the inner pedagogical and pastoral life of the Trinity, trinitarian missions. For TEE 2, it is the missionary action of that is, by anchoring the pedagogical and pastoral dimension of the Son and the Holy Spirit that are continued when the church the church as deeply in the heart of God as AG 2 anchors mission. proclaims salvation to the ends of the earth. TEE 22 confirms this This note of pastoral primacy in “To the Ends of the Earth,” argu- pattern by summing up what the Trinity bestows on the church ably at the expense of the ruling primacy of mission in AG 2, has as a “missionary task.” Of course, being may be implied here placed its stamp on the entire document. as action was above in the case of AG 2, but not as the point of One of the patterns that makes clear the pastoral identity of the statements. bishops in “To the Ends of the Earth” is the repeated reminder One of the by-products of associating mission more with that bishops are not missionaries. They never apply the term to the activity than with the very essence or being of the church themselves. They make use of it only in the second and third is the tendency to deal with mission as one among other activi- persons: as in their desire to “affirm missionaries in their efforts,” ties of the church, a good example of which lingers beneath as in their assurance that “our gratitude to you, the missionaries, the surface of at least one other section of “To the Ends of the is especially profound,” as in their reminder that “as missionaries Earth”: “We appeal to all educators to help give Catholics you are sent to place yourselves at the service of the local church” a better understanding of the task and demands of mission (TEE 3, 72, 73). At best, the bishops of “To the Ends of the Earth” today. Theological studies should include a strong missionary are pastoral animators of mission, supporters, promoters, and

140 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 guides of those to whom the term “missionaries” properly applies church by the Trinity “in a dynamic way” (RM 1), as a “thrust” (TEE 3). Their responsibility for mission is radically a pastoral (RM 34), a “drive” or “activity” (RM 2, 33), a “service,” “work,” responsibility. It originates not in the missions of the Trinity as or “task” (RM 2, 21, 31, 34, 36, 86), indeed, as the “first task of such but in the missionary endowment of the pastoral church. the Church” (RM 34). We are dealing here with the difference The difference this makes is that the identity of leadership in the church reflects the identity of the church itself. Although the church of “To the Ends of the Earth” is said to When Ad Gentes 2 does not originate in the missions of the Trinity (TEE 1, 22), to be essentially or by her very nature missionary (TEE 2, 4), to be founded as a govern the bond between missionary community (TEE 4), and to be so thoroughly infused mission and church, the with mission that “to say ‘Church’ is to say ‘mission’” (TEE 16), these pointers to the primacy of mission in the church seem not tendency is to subordinate to be taken seriously in “To the Ends of the Earth” in deference to mission to church. a church whose primacy is pastoral. Accordingly, the document consistently reduces mission to a function of the church, using language like “the mission of the Church” (TEE 5, 51) or “the between ontological and functional language. The ontologically Church’s mission” (TEE 3, 7, 49, 52, 55, 60, 62), expressions that missionary church of AG 2 appears neither in RM 1 nor anywhere imply the church’s ownership of mission instead of mission’s else in the document. Despite a hint of ontological priority in the ownership of church. following words—“We are missionaries above all because of what If the classic New Testament commentary on the relation we are as a Church whose innermost life is unity in love, even between mission and church (“As the Father has sent me, so I before we become missionaries in word or deed” (RM 23)—neither send you,” John 20:21), cited in TEE 1, had guided the unfold- here nor in references to the church as missionary by her very ing of “To the Ends of the Earth,” AG 2 might have been more nature (RM 1, 62) does the Holy Father add (with AG 2) that conspicuous by its presence than by its absence. these characteristics apply because she originates in mission. When Ad Gentes 2 does not govern the bond between mission John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio, 1990. Bringing AG 2 before our and church, the tendency is to subordinate mission to church. eyes once again will help us discover how the Holy Father makes The following expressions of Redemptoris Missio could be taken use of it in his encyclical Redemptoris Missio (RM). in this direction.

The pilgrim Church is missionary by her very nature. Without the mission ad gentes, the Church’s very missionary For it is from the mission of the Son and the mission dimension would be deprived of its essential meaning. (RM 34) of the Holy Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father. (AG 2) What about the term “dimension”? Is it strong enough to allow mission to escape subordination to church? Or should we under- In much the same way as Evangelii Nuntiandi, RM makes stand it in its ordinary usage, giving mission partial and therefore little direct mention of this passage. It is never quoted in full. Part dependent status in relation to church? Can we restrict mission of it is included in RM 62. Twice it is paraphrased (RM 1, 49). It to a dimension of the church and still call that church missionary never appears among the document’s 178 footnotes. While the by her very nature? following words would seem to call for a direct reference to AG 2, none is provided: “This definitive self-revelation of God [in Missionary activity proper . . . is distinct from other ecclesial ac- Jesus] is the fundamental reason why the Church is missionary tivities inasmuch as it is addressed to groups and settings which by her very nature” (RM 5). are non-Christian. (RM 34) Does this pattern point to a measure of dissonance between the Vatican statement and Redemptoris Missio when it comes This mission . . . is one of the Church’s fundamental activities: it to the relation between mission and church? We can begin to is essential and never-ending. (RM 31) answer this question by placing AG 2 side by side with words the Holy Father uses to relate his letter to Vatican II in general For each believer, as for the entire Church, the missionary task and AG 2 in particular. must remain foremost. (RM 86)

AG 2 RM 1 In its origins . . . mission is seen as a community commitment, a responsibility of the local Church, which needs “missionaries” in The pilgrim Church is mission- The Council emphasized the order to push forward towards new frontiers. (RM 27) ary by her very nature. For it Church’s “missionary nature,” is from the mission of the Son basing it in a dynamic way on These statements apply one-among-other language to mission, and the mission of the Holy the Trinitarian mission itself. which is said to be one among “other ecclesial activities,” “one of Spirit that she takes her origin, The missionary thrust therefore the Church’s fundamental activities.” Among other tasks of the in accordance with the decree belongs to the very nature of the Church, “the missionary task must remain foremost.” The local of God the Father. Christian life. . . . church has commitments and responsibilities, and mission is one of them. In a word, mission resides, even originates, within While these statements have some details in common, they the church along with her other tasks and ministries. are not saying exactly the same thing about the bond between mission and church. Along lines already discovered in “To the The so-called return or “repatriation” of the missions into the Ends of the Earth,” the difference between being and action is Church’s mission, the insertion of missiology into ecclesiology, and clearly in evidence here. Mission has to do with the very being the integration of both areas into the Trinitarian plan of salvation, of the church in AG 2, as distinct from something supplied to the have given a fresh impetus to missionary activity itself. (RM 32)

July 2010 141 This statement throws light on the tendency to subordinate mis- tendency to subordinate mission to church in Redemptoris Missio. sion to church in the other five quotations here. The incorpora- The following words bring this tendency to mind: “the Church tion of “missions into the Church’s mission” seems to affirm the possesses the note of ‘catholicity’ from which her ‘missionary’ priority of church over mission, an assumption confirmed on the nature derives.” It would seem that if mission derives from theological level by “the insertion of missiology into ecclesiology.” catholicity, and if catholicity is a note or mark of the church, then When these two insertions are gathered into “the Trinitarian plan mission derives from and is thereby subordinate to church. But is of salvation,” the bond between Trinity, church, and mission in this really the meaning of AG 2? Comparing the two expressions Ad Gentes 2 comes to mind, not because the passages converge, may help us decide.

AG 2 CMBN

Ad Gentes 2 says nothing The pilgrim Church is mission- The Church possesses the note about catholicity and ary by her very nature. For it of ‘catholicity’ from which her is from the mission of the Son ‘missionary’ nature derives. nothing about mission and the mission of the Holy subordinated to church. Spirit that she takes her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father. but because they differ. While RM 32 and AG 2 both anchor AG 2 says nothing about catholicity and therefore nothing church and mission in the bosom of the Trinity, the agreement about mission subordinated to church. What it does say is that the ends there. In RM 32 mission presumes and derives from church; church is by her very nature missionary because she originates in AG 2 church presumes and originates in mission. This touches in mission. This is the only subordination clearly articulated in a deeper level than the Trinity supplying the church with a “mis- AG 2. The only way this can be reversed is by replacing “mis- sionary thrust” (RM 1). sion” with “missionary activity” in these texts, a pattern already When subordinating mission to church, Redemptoris Missio does not always use the term “church.” Sometimes it subordinates mission to pastorate, as in the following passage: “Particular churches should . . . make the promotion of the missions a key The church herself, element in the normal pastoral activity of parishes, associations including her catholicity, and groups, especially youth groups” (RM 83). Here mission is missionary by her very seems to be reduced to a species of pastoral activity, much like the “missionary pastoral activity” of RM 75, an arrangement nature because she derives consistent with the notion that “the charge of announcing the from and is subordinate to Gospel throughout the world belongs to the body of shepherds” (RM 63), except for the beginning of that passage, where the the missions of the Trinity. responsibility for mission resides in bishops as bishops and not only or mainly as pastors of particular churches. How have Ad Gentes 2 and its implications been received by pointed to in Redemptoris Missio (2) and repeated in the present Redemptoris Missio? The evidence points toward something like document through terms like “missionary movement” (par. 3), “with apparent reluctance.” Bringing this question with us, we “missionary drive” (par. 4), and “missionary dynamism” (pars. turn to our final document. 3, 6, 11). What derives from and is subordinate to the church’s catholicity, therefore, is not her missionary nature but her mission- John Paul II, “The Church Is Missionary by Her Nature,” General ary activity. According to AG 2, the church herself, including her Audience Address, April 19, 1995 (CMBN). This document adds to catholicity, is missionary by her very nature because she derives Redemptoris Missio the Holy Father’s attempt to deal specifically from and is subordinate to the missions of the Trinity. and at some length with Ad Gentes 2. He makes this clear not only in the title but also in the opening paragraph of his address. Conclusion

Heir to and continuation of the apostles who were sent to witness When it comes to the relation between mission and church, the to Christ and to preach the Gospel “to the ends of the earth” (Acts council’s Ad Gentes 2 has not been well received by the postcon- 1:8), the Church possesses the note of “catholicity” from which her ciliar documents considered in this article. Evangelii Nuntiandi and “missionary” nature derives. This second characteristic, part of her Redemptoris Missio neglect it, “To the Ends of the Earth” misses its mystery, comes “from on high.” The Second Vatican Council notes implications, and John Paul II’s audience address “The Church this in the Decree Ad Gentes, according to which, “The pilgrim Is Missionary by Her Nature” reads meaning into, rather than Church is missionary by her very nature, since it is from the mis- sion of the Son and the mission of the Holy Spirit that she draws out of, the text. We can only speculate as to the reasons behind her origin, in accordance with the decree of God the Father” (AG this development. For me, the most compelling of these is that 2). It is a mystery established by the divine trinitarian plan which the samples of magisterial missiology we have considered have is fulfilled in the Church and made manifest as permanently her not yet reached deeply enough into the bond between mission own, since the day of Pentecost.6 and church to realize that the church itself and not merely its missionary dynamism or catholicity originates in the trinitarian In addition to quoting Ad Gentes 2 in this passage and affirming missions. Ad Gentes 2 views mission as the very being of the its importance, the Holy Father explains his understanding of church, rather than as something with which it is equipped or the council’s teaching. In doing so, he sheds new light on his endowed. I raise the question of depth because this language

142 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 Evangelically Rooted. Critically Engaged.

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IBMR Leading Across C #6434 1 4/28/10 3:51:32 PM is used in Redemptoris Missio and the Holy Father’s audience We must insist on deepening the trinitarian origin of this mis- address (CMBN) to encourage theological reflection on a matter sionary dynamism, to which the Decree Ad Gentes refers (cf. nn. still in need of refinement: 2, 3, 5). (CMBN par. 3)

I earnestly ask theologians and professional Christian journalists In the depths of Ad Gentes 2 a genuinely missionary church to intensify the service they render to the Church’s mission in struggles to be reborn. One can hope that this indeed will happen order to discover the deep meaning of their work, along the sure as magisterial missiology continues to unfold. path of “thinking with the Church” (sentire cum Ecclesia). (RM 36)

Notes 1. Walter M. Abbott, ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Herder 4. Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris missio of the Supreme & Herder; New York: Association Press, 1966), p. 585. Pontiff John Paul II on the Permanent Validity of the Church’s Missionary 2. Pope Paul VI, On Evangelization in the Modern World: Apostolic Mandate (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1990). Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi (Washington, D.C.: United States 5. Pope John Paul II, “The Church Is Missionary by Her Nature,” Catholic Conference, 1976). General Audience, April 19, 1995 (www.vatican.va/holy_father/ 3. National Conference of Catholic Bishops, To the Ends of the Earth: A john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19950419en.html). Pastoral Statement on World Mission (Washington, D.C.: United States 6. Ibid. Catholic Conference, 1986).

From the Editors of the World Religion Database

Each of the three reviews of the World Religion Database (WRD) a religion) decreased by 26.5 percentage points in just two in the January 2010 issue of the International Bulletin years. The large discrepancy is likely due to how the question of Missionary Research pointed to a number of strengths was presented to respondents in each case. The 2001 census and weaknesses in the online database. The advantage of an questionnaire offered six choices. The only way a person would electronic publication is that it is dynamic and can be updated be counted as a religious “none” was either to say “none” in as new information and suggestions for improvement are the “other” category or to offer no response at all. The census’s received. For instance, we have already implemented one approach presumed that most people would choose one of the suggestion by Peter Brierley: in our desire to be aligned more five specific religions mentioned. The World Values Survey, closely with terminology, we will henceforth in contrast, did not begin with this presupposition. Instead, it use “United Kingdom” instead of “Britain” as the short name posed a two-part question. The first inquired whether respon- for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. dents belonged to a “.” Only those who When interpreting these reviews, it is helpful to keep in answered “yes” were asked “which one?” Our best estimates in mind the existence of another database published online, the the WRD attempt to reconcile a broad variety of such sources, World Christian Database (WCD). The WCD has a closer relation- paying special attention to groups that might be left out of ship with the World Christian Encyclopedia because it provides governmental or social science accounting. In this category, much greater detail on Christianity, the sort that Brierley finds we feel that the jury is still out on the number of Christians of interest. For example, a large number of Christian denomi- in China, which we will continue to monitor and document. nations are listed there, grouped by traditions, communions, We hope increasingly to annotate the choices we are and other networks. making by providing both source material and reasons for In addition, arriving at the numbers shown in the data- our estimates. Unfortunately, this is a painfully slow process. bases is not quite as simple as pitting figures generated by the We also hope to make the WRD a repository for various esti- religious communities themselves against census and survey mates and sources so that users can construct their own sets data, which are considered more scientific. In fact, figures from of estimates based on their preferred sources. Given that the censuses and surveys can vary wildly, even when the same WRD is constantly updated, we especially welcome input and question is asked in the same year. It also is well-established notification of new data sources to be included. that censuses and surveys, in some important cases, overcount We particularly sympathize with the problem faced by Siga majorities (e.g., Muslims in Saudi Arabia: 97 percent by World Arles and others with limited access not only to the Internet Values Survey reckoning, but likely closer to 92 percent when but also to subscriptions to the WRD. For this reason, we also all non-Muslim expatriates are taken into account) and under- make selected portions of the data available in other print count minorities (e.g., Jains in the United Kingdom, many of publications as well as other databases, such as Pennsylvania whom checked the “Hindu” box in the 2001 census). State University’s Association of Religion Data Archives. And, Furthermore, the limitations of population survey data as with any project of this magnitude and complexity, we are are significant, not only because of varying sample sizes, but heartened by Robert Woodberry’s conclusion: “I will eagerly also because of different approaches to asking about a person’s use these data in my research. I do not know of any better data religious affiliation. In Bulgaria, for instance, the estimate for available on such a broad scale.” “no religious affiliation” from the 1999 World Values Survey —Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grim (30.4 percent) is much higher than from the 2001 census (3.9 percent). It is unlikely that religious “nones” (as used here, Editors, World Religion Database (www.worldreligiondatabase.org) those who either say they have no religion or decline to specify —[email protected] and [email protected]

144 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 The Theology of Partnership Cathy Ross

artnership is an idea whose time has not yet fully this seems straightforward enough, we can see the potential for “Pcome.”1 So wrote Max Warren in his little book on a relationship that can lead us to the heights or into the depths. partnership in 1954. Max Warren was general secretary of the “Heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:17) shows us from 1942 to 1963. He went on to say that the sublime heights to which partnership can aspire. However, an understanding of partnership may “afford a key to unlock “This is the heir; come, let us kill him” (Mark 12:7) reveals the many of the doors which at present divide, and by dividing dark side and the depths to which it can descend. disrupt our life in society, both national and international.”2 Now over fifty years later, those indeed seem to be prescient words. In The Concept of Partnership the 1990s, Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama stated that the most pressing and urgent question facing the world was, Can Partnership, then, is constituted of three factors. First, there must we live together? In 2002 Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of Britain be the acceptance by each one concerned of genuine involvement, and the Commonwealth, posed the same pertinent question in a committal of oneself to the other partner in trust. This element his superb book The Dignity of Difference, where he writes, “Can of trust is foundational and inescapable. We trust the other with we live together? Can we make space for one another? Can we the “keys,” if you like; we respect their cultural way of being and overcome long histories of estrangement and bitterness? . . . Can doing. We learn to give up control and share the responsibility. we find, in the human ‘thou’, a fragment of the Divine ‘Thou’?”3 Second, partnership involves a ready acceptance of responsibil- And finally, at the beginning of 2009, the forty-fourth president of ity, a readiness to serve the purpose of the common enterprise. the United States, Barack Obama, addressed this same question in And finally, involvement must carry with it a readiness to pay his inaugural speech, where he referred to “greater cooperation the price of partnership, to accept all the liabilities and limita- tions that arise. Involvement, responsibility, liability—without these there can be no true partnership. In proportion as they are Partnership is a accepted, the partnership becomes more satisfying and creative. Now, these three factors presuppose the continuity within the relationship entered upon partnership of the identity of each partner. Neither partner can in freedom by persons who become so absorbed or assimilated that his or her own identity is lost. The conscious identity of each partner must survive; the remain free. possibility must remain present that either partner can contract out of the partnership, thereby ceasing to be responsible or liable. This is precisely because the essence of partnership is that it is and understanding between nations.” He rejected “protecting a relationship entered upon in freedom by persons who remain narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions” and called free. It is a dynamic relationship that is continually growing and for the renewal of “sturdy alliances and enduring convictions” developing, not one that is static and stale. always exhibited with “the tempering qualities of humility and This may all sound rather dry and heavy—involvement, restraint.”4 So perhaps the time has indeed come not only to ex- responsibility, liability—a little like a school motto. Stiff-upper- plore this idea of partnership but also to work it out in our world. lip attitudes and dogged perseverance will see us through! But And if we can find a fragment of the divine Thou in the other, of course partnership, at its most basic level, is a relationship then we are a long way down the road to genuine partnership. between persons, and we as people are dynamic, wonderful, The word “partner” derives from the Anglo-French parcener, unpredictable. So in addition to talking about the three factors an old legal term that denotes co-heirship. Warren points out that that make partner relationships, we need to think about the words are strange things—they come to us with all sorts of allu- way good relationships work in general, what we look for in sions and resonances, “trailing clouds of glory or of shame, and them. So what do we seek in relationships? We are looking for sometimes both.”5 And “partner” is just such a word. Co-heirship love, for mutuality, for understanding, for compassion, and evokes overtones of ancestry, with suggestions of property rights, sometimes (often even?) for forgiveness. Paul Tillich has some ownership, status, and dignity, as well as its underside of power, helpful insights here: “In order to know what is just in a person- wealth, jealousy, suspicion, and litigation. These associations— to-person encounter, love listens. It is its first task to listen. No both happy and unhappy, noble and ignoble—can wittingly or human relation, especially no intimate one, is possible without even unwittingly influence our approach toward a word and an mutual listening. . . . All things and all men, so to speak, call on idea. The simple dictionary definition of a partner is “one who us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen, they want shares, takes part, is associated with another in action.” Although us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being. They want justice from us. But we can give it to them only through Cathy Ross, from Aotearoa/NZ, lives in the United love which listens. . . . Listening love is the first step to justice in 6 Kingdom. She manages the Crowther Centre for Mis- person-to-person encounters.” sion Education at the Church Mission Society, is the Perhaps in order to allow partnerships to grow, we need more J. V. Taylor Fellow in Missiology at the University of being, more living, more listening, and less talking. Ivan Illich Oxford, and is the General Secretary of the Interna- says something similar: “Only the very brave . . . dare . . . to go tional Association for Mission Studies. She previously back to the helpless silence of being learners and listeners—‘the worked in , Congo, and with NZCMS. holding of hands of the lovers’—from which deep communica- —[email protected] tion may grow. Perhaps it is the one way of being together with

July 2010 145 others and with the Word in which we have no more foreign giving and forgiving. How do we do this in a world that behaves accent.”7 So here perhaps is a more compassionate, more so differently—in a world rife with unequal power dynamics, in human, and certainly more challenging way of defining involve- a world where the powerful are heard and the powerless are not, ment—by listening. In life, to listen is to become involved. Good where the wealthy can choose to give and the poor are forced listening requires humility, vulnerability, availability, receptivity, to receive, where grudges are nursed and revenge considered a and patience. To be a good listener means to be willing to share sweet dish, where forgiveness is often an alien concept? in the lives of others—in other words, the first step toward being an authentic partner. The Theology of Partnership To listening I would add seeing the other. The gift of sight is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Our eyes have to be opened to recognize Let us now consider a theology of partnership, which means that Jesus, just as it was for those first disciples—over the dinner we will consider it as an idea that is ultimately about God and table, in the garden, on the lake, on the Damascus road. Once an idea that is consistent with God’s creative and redemptive our eyes are opened and we can see Jesus, then the Holy Spirit purposes. I wish to explore three ideas here. First, that partner- enables us to see the other person. Sherron Kay George, in her ship is an idea essential to the very nature of God. Second, that book entitled Called as Partners in Christ’s Service, states that the partnership speaks of God’s relationship with humanity. Third, “first concern in a partnership is to get to know one another that partnership indicates the true relationship between human and cultivate relationships by observing [seeing], listening, and beings. asking questions.”8 Listening and seeing are vital to all human First, partnership is an idea essential to the very nature of relationships and vital to partnership if we really want to know God. I do not think that it is pushing the idea too far to say that the other as a human being. we see partnership in the Godhead. God is a community. God Tillich goes on to say that “giving” is inextricably involved is not a monad but a community of three divine persons. God is in relationships. He writes, “It belongs to the right of everyone also one God. These realities allow not only for relationship but whom we encounter to demand something from us.”9 This is the also for unity and diversity. This Trinitarian understanding of essence of the “I-Thou” relationship. Gift exchange in a way that God, expressed so beautifully in the icon by Rublev, means that we experience God in relationship with the other, in partnership, within community. The concept of the Trinity allows space for Mutual forgiveness is the created individual, but only in relationship to the other. So each person of the Trinity has its own divine nature, expressed in the only way forward; relation to the other persons of the Trinity. There is the space to without it, any partnership be each divine person, as each person relates to the other. They cannot each exist without this relationship. I did say before that is bound to dissolve an aspect of partnership appropriate to humanity is the freedom or at least fragment. to withdraw, which of course is inappropriate when considering the Trinity. But each person of the Trinity is a distinct person in a love relationship with the other persons of the Trinity, just as we both partners practice giving and receiving in a spirit of mutual in a partnership are distinct individuals but existing in relation respect can enrich the relationship. This giving may be as simple to and with the other. Feminist theologian Catherine la Cugna as acknowledging that the other whom we encounter is a person. comments: “In Rublev’s icon, the temple in the background is No more than this, but no less. the transformation of Abraham’s and Sarah’s house. The oak tree Sacks maintains that our moral responsibility grows out of stands for the Tree of Life. And the position of the three figures face-to-face relationships when we see how what we do affects is suggestive. Although they are arranged in a circle, the circle others. Obama knew this when he announced: “To those who is not closed. One has the distinct sensation when meditating on cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing the icon that one is not only invited into this communion but, of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but indeed, one already is part of it. A self-contained God, a closed that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your divine society, would hardly be a fitting archetype for hospitality fist.” He used that wonderfully evocative image of the open [or for partnership]. We should not miss the significance of the hand being extended in friendship, which can be grasped and Eucharistic cup in the centre, which is, of course, the sacramental reciprocated only if the other will unclench the fist and give the sign of our communion with God and one another.”10 open hand. This minimum of giving can lead toward a maximum Paul Fiddes, in his book Participating in God: A Pastoral Doc- of self-sacrifice if required. Ìn terms of partnership, this means trine of the Trinity, urges us to do more than just imitate the triune responsibility. To be in a partnership means to be committed to God by actually participating in the Trinity. He claims that this giving within the partnership and through it. participation enables us to truly appreciate the other because of Finally, Tillich speaks of forgiving—a powerful and essen- our engagement with the other. Engagement in the life of God tial dimension of any human relationship, of any partnership. means an experience of otherness—the otherness of God from This means the acceptance of all the liabilities and limitations humanity, the otherness of the Creator from the created. He writes, that may arise from relating with others whose weakness and “Nothing in the world can prepare us for this gulf of otherness sin may injure us, just as for them it involves the acceptance of in a God who abides in the unity of love. . . . Because it is an the liabilities and limitations that follow from our weakness otherness which arises in participation within God, it can only and sin. Mutual forgiveness is the only way forward; without it, be known through participation. To engage in the relationships any partnership is bound to dissolve or at least fragment. in God means that we are brought up against the challenge of So the concept of partnership means acceptance of genuine the alien, the radically different, the unlike; but at the same time involvement, acceptance of responsibility, and acceptance of we have the security of experiencing a fellowship more intimate liability, all of it seasoned with intentional listening and seeing, than anything we can otherwise know.”11 Our ego is broken

146 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 open by encountering the Thou in the other, and through the ship, communion, participation, or sharing. Our fellowship is in Thou of other people we can meet the transcendent Thou, God. Christ. “God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellow- This leads us to the second idea of partnership, which ship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9). The Eucharist speaks of God’s relationship with humanity. In the incarnation, is also important, where we participate in the body and blood of death, and resurrection of Jesus we see most fully and clearly Christ (1 Cor. 10:16), as is our daily fellowship in the power of the self-revealing activities of God. In the incarnation God com- the Holy Spirit. In other passages the word koinonia refers to the municates himself to us and establishes a relationship with us. life of the Christian community. In Romans 15:26 and 2 Corin- Referring back to the concept of partnership, we see that God is thians 8:4 and 9:13, the partnership with other Christians is first involved with us in a supreme act of trust, manifest in the made explicit in the taking of collections on behalf of the needy. incarnation. Moreover, God is responsible for our redemption. Finally, God’s self-emptying, supremely upon the cross, was the liability accepted by God for our creation and was God’s freely Are we disciples and chosen means for our redemption, should we choose to accept it. It is important to remember that we are free to respond to partners with crucified God or not. Without this freedom there is no true partnership. minds, giving up our rights, It is not a forced relationship—we should not be compelled to enter into a partnership. Jesus never compelled people into a manifesting the courage relationship with him. Think of his approach to the Samaritan to be weak? woman at the well (John 4:9) or his dialogue with Nicodemus (John 3); in Jesus we find a model of love and respect. Love cul- tivates mutual sharing, mutual serving, mutual forgiveness, and In Galatians 2:9 and Philippians 1:5 the emphasis is on partner- mutual suffering. Love is not feeling sorry for, giving charity to, ship in proclaiming the Gospel. What is common here is the or taking advantage of. It means coming alongside, somehow transcending loyalty to God—“all are equally involved, all have trying to feel what others feel, experiencing what others experi- committed themselves to God in trust, all have a share in a com- ence, taking a walk in someone else’s shoes. How do we do this mon responsibility, all recognise that they belong together, that if in a world of asymmetrical power relationships? one member suffers they all suffer, all have a liability for each.”14 God’s involvement with us is met by our freely chosen Partners share the sufferings of one another. Walter Bruegge- involvement with him. To become involved with God, however, mann explains suffering thus :“Suffering made audible and visible means to accept responsibility. We are laborers together with produces hope, articulated grief is the gate of newness, and the God, as we are told in 1 Corinthians 3:9. As we are caught up in history of Jesus is the history of entering into the pain and giving this relationship with God, we are called to share his will and it voice.”15 writes about “victim-missionaries,” who, purposes. Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 5:19–20, “In Christ “in contrast to exemplar-missionaries, lead people to freedom God was reconciling the world to himself . . . and entrusting and community.”16 Could we say the same of “victim-partners”? the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Again in 2 Corinthians Paul teaches about “the validity of para- Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat dox, about a God who, in spite of being all-powerful became you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” This responsibil- weak and vulnerable in his Son.”17 We live in relationship with ity by which Christians express their obedience to God, their a crucified God. Do we in our involvement with him and as his willing involvement with God, is not an easy thing. In fact this ambassadors live likewise? Koyama complained that too often partnership with God, between God and humanity, becomes Christianity exhibits a “crusading mind” rather than a “crucified discipleship. Jesus reminds us that persecution is the least of the mind” and that it suffers from a “teacher complex.” What attitudes difficulties we can expect. Our partnership with God and with do we exhibit when we enter into partnership? Do we adopt a others can lead to our suffering and to sharing the sufferings crusading mind and teacher mentality, or are we disciples and of others. We do this by being present, by feeling their pain, by partners with crucified minds, giving up our rights, manifest- reacting with compassion, and by joining them in solidarity. ing the courage to be weak—living the paradox of a crucified, Third, partnership indicates the true relationship between almighty God? Victim-missionaries are not powerful and suc- human beings. Warren quotes Bertrand Russell, who recognized cessful, nor are victim-partners. In this asymmetrical and uneven the inherent difficulty of true partnership. “Equal co-operation is world, victim-partners will not create what has been described much more difficult than despotism, and much less in line with as “a relationship of controlling benefactors to irritated recipients instinct. When [people] attempt equal co-operation, it is natural of charity,”18 in which recipients end up experiencing a complex for each to strive for complete mastery, since the submissive mix of gratitude and resentment at the same time. instincts are not brought into play. It is almost necessary that the parties concerned should acknowledge a common loyalty The Practices of Partnership to something outside all of them.”12 As Christians, we know the solution to this as disciples of Perhaps we see the practices essential to partnership most clearly the risen Lord. Perhaps the nearest word in the New Testament in Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where he thanks them for to partnership is koinonia. Its most basic meaning is “partaking their partnership in the Gospel. Paul and the Philippians were together in” or having a share. The word stands for participation. partners in many ways—in giving, receiving, working, praying, As Warren writes, “We are then, to seek first for the inward bond rejoicing, struggling, and suffering. They shared in a common which holds the fellowship of the Christians together, which project with Paul and were partners with him in the defense and inward fellowship is then externally manifested by the life of the confirmation of the Gospel. Partnership in the body of Christ fellowship, with its almsgiving, sharing of property and breaking is emphasized in the passages that speak of the gifts of the Holy of bread, which we find in the early chapters of the Acts of the Spirit (1 Cor. 12 and Rom. 12). Each person is dependent on the Apostles.”13 So koinonia can be translated as partnership, fellow- gifts given to everyone. Here Andrew Kirk describes partnership

July 2010 147 as “participating in the life of one another in such a way that the two parties possess unequal power. But that is the reality of our needs of all are met (Rom 12:6–13).”19 world today. We know that money, resources, education, land, An example of sharing material resources is given in 2 Corin- access to technology, ownership, and much more are unfairly thians. Paul expounds the principles of partnership as he exhorts and unequally distributed. the church in Achaia to match the generosity of the churches further The model of the incarnation can help us. We can let go of north (2 Cor. 9:1–4). The churches of Macedonia and Achaia are our pride and power, our privilege and sense of entitlement, sharing together in a particular ministry on behalf of the church insofar as we empty ourselves following Christ’s way depicted in Judaea. The churches in Judaea who will receive this token in Philippians 2. We seek to empty ourselves of our pride and of love have shared the Gospel with them, just as “Macedonia ethnocentrism, our feelings of cultural, religious, and technologi- and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the cal superiority, which blind and grip us all. We seek to empty poor among the saints at . They were pleased to do this, ourselves of the need to initiate, control, dominate, impose, and indeed they owe it to them; for if the Gentiles have come to manipulate, and run ahead in partner relationships. We seek to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service empty ourselves of autonomy and independence. Bosch’s insights to them in material things” (Rom. 15:26–27). Note that they are about vulnerability and “victim-missionaries/partners” are also in partnership not only with one another but also with God. helpful reminders for us to adopt an attitude of humility and of God will provide them with more than they could ever hope to considering others better than ourselves. A related issue here is give, as long as they go on sharing (2 Cor. 9:8–11), and God will what the partners are seeking to share. Money, resources, educa- receive the praise and thanksgiving. tion, land, technology, ownership, and power may be unfairly Sharing in suffering is another practice of partnership that distributed and may lead to distorted exchanges. But what else Paul writes about in 2 Corinthians. He writes that the Christians are we seeking to share? Stories, traditions, ancient knowledge in Corinth are sharing in his and Timothy’s sufferings (2 Cor. and customs, inheritances, joy, kindness, goodness, beauty, sus- 1:7). In fact, they are all sharing in the sufferings of Christ, which tainability, difference—these too are to be shared and can restore continue in the sufferings of his body, the church. This is a deep a balance where there may be uneven power dynamics. participation in the broken body, and every member feels the suffering of every other member. The suffering may have many Conclusion causes: persecution, hardships while traveling, hunger, thirst, sleepless nights, insults, exposure to cold, misrepresentation, So we have seen that partnership is a high ideal and a wonderful hard work—these are some of the ways listed in 2 Corinthians idea when practiced well. It can indeed lead us to the heights or 6 and 11. Perhaps suffering is not only the most difficult but also take us into the depths. It is not an easy ideal. Joint heirs with the most profound manifestation of partnership. The San Antonio Christ or such intense jealousy that it annihilates the partner. Report, a WCC statement on “mission in Christ’s way,” acutely Some of the requirements for authentic partnership are counter- observes, “Participation in suffering and struggle is at the heart intuitive to the human condition—vulnerability and suffering, of God’s mission and God’s will for the world. It is central for self-emptying and humbling ourselves, submission, listening our understanding of the incarnation, the most glorious example and learning. Bertrand Russell reminded us that cooperation is of participation in suffering and struggle. The church is sent in more difficult than despotism. And yet the attitudes of listening, the way of Christ bearing the marks of the cross in the power of giving, and forgiving go a long way toward enabling partner- the Holy Spirit (cf. John 20:19–23).”20 Partners share in the suffer- ship to work in fragile human conditions and a broken world. ings of one another, and the incarnation is indeed the supreme Tillich reminded us that listening love is the first step toward model for this. justice in human encounters. Giving is an essential part of part- So some of the practices of partnership are giving, receiving, nership. Partnership is a high ideal whose time has come. God working, praying, rejoicing, struggling, and suffering. But there can transform all our partnerships so that something new can be is one issue that distorts all the fine ideals and makes the prac- created, something that neither partner could foresee. Listening, tice of partnership difficult and demanding. This is the issue of giving, and forgiving—these three attitudes can lead us not only power. It is difficult to have a truly mutual relationship when the into genuine partnership but also into the adventure of living. Notes 1. Max Warren, Partnership: The Study of an Idea (London: SCM, 1956), 11. Paul S. Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity p. 11. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2000), p. 55. 2. Ibid. 12. Bertrand Russell, Power—a New Social Analysis (London: Allen & 3. Jonathan Sacks, The Dignity of Difference (London: Continuum, Unwin, 1948), p. 24; quoted in Warren, Partnership, p. 47. 2002), p. 17. 13. Warren, Partnership, p. 48. 4. www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/ 14. Ibid., p. 52. us_elections/article5554819.ece?token=null&offset=24&page=3. 15. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress 5. Warren, Partnership, p. 11. Press, 1978), p. 88; quoted in George, Called, p. 69. 6. Paul Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 16. David Jacobus Bosch, The Vulnerability of Mission (Birmingham, Eng.: 1954), pp. 84–85; quoted in Warren, Partnership, p. 14. , 1991), p. 10. 7. John V. Taylor, The Go-Between God: The Holy Spirit and the Christian 17. Ibid., p. 11. Mission (London: SCM, 1972), p. 37. 18. Ibid., p. 10. 8. Sherron Kay George, Called as Partners in Christ’s Service: The Practice 19. J. Andrew Kirk, What Is Mission? Theological Explorations (London: of God’s Mission (Louisville, Ky.: Press, 2004), p. 35. Darton, Longman & Todd, 1999), p. 189. 9. Tillich, Love, Power, and Justice, p. 85; quoted in Warren, Partnership, 20. Frederick R. Wilson, ed., The San Antonio Report: Your Will Be Done: p. 14. Mission in Christ’s Way (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1990), p. 37. 10. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, ed., Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective (: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), p. 84.

148 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 The Return of Revival 221 pages, paperback, 978-0-8308-3877-6, $20.00

Global Awakening Mark Shaw “Mark Shaw’s bold thesis . . . opens edifying vistas for Christian believers of all sorts who have become aware of momentous shifts in the nature of Christianity around the world, but who have needed a solid theological guide for understanding what is taking place. Along with Michael McClymond’s Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, this book is the most impressive study of worldwide to have appeared in a very long time.” —Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame

800.843.9487 . ivpacademic.com

IBMR Global Awakening #6433 1 4/30/10 10:35:50 AM Not Yet There: Seminaries and the Challenge of Partnership Leon P. Spencer

artnership has been an oft-used term in missiological ing in the Japanese context, Martin Repp suggested that Western Pcircles for many years, rooted especially in the transi- churches, to say nothing of individuals, have proven “unable to tion from mission to church.1 As Hong-Jung Lee has described name what they receive from their ‘partnership’ with the churches this evolution, we have moved historically from “pioneer” to in Japan.”11 David Bosch added that the Western mission appoin- “parent” to “partner.”2 The use of the term partnership in this tee or seminary faculty member or church leader knows what he context may be dated from the 1947 meeting of the International or she has to give. But “he does not know as clearly what he [or Missionary Council (IMC), where there was talk of all churches she] has gone to receive. And that is where the trouble starts.”12 being “worthy partners in the task of evangelism.” The IMC Trouble starts in part because our partners are, as a conse- chose the phrase “partners in obedience”—obedience being to quence of this inequity, unsure of our commitment to authentic the Great Commission. When the council met again in 1952, that partnership. “It is necessary for the church in the West,” Philip phrase yielded to “partners in mission.”3 Thomas wrote, “to demonstrate that it is ready to receive what Anglicans—who represent my tradition—captured the is offered; it is also important for our partners to know of that partnership theme when, at a congress in Toronto in 1963,4 they receptiveness.”13 Put more bluntly, Amon Eddie Kasambala, a used the phrase “mutual responsibility and interdependence,” Zambian, critiqued partnership by asking, “What can one receive explaining it this way: when one has been on the giving side for a very long time?”14 However the praxis is worked out (or fails to work out), it Each church must radically study the form of its own obedience to is the will toward partnership that is critical. As Kasambala con- mission and the needs it has to share in the single life and witness cluded, “Partnership is a sign of being ready to welcome and to of our church everywhere. Mission is not only a giving to others, be welcomed by others.”15 If we are truly ready, that alone, in it is equally a sharing and receiving. . . . Every church has both God’s name, will take us a long way. But note that the sources resources and needs. If planning and responsible partnership are cited above span many decades, up to the present. This article to be truly mutual, we must everywhere ask ourselves, systemati- cally and with the best help we can gain from any source, what is not a retrospective on the 1950s–1970s. The contention in this we have, what we need, and where we are called of God to share article is that we—and although there is mutuality in this failure, in major partnership with our fellow Christians. . . . Mission is the “we” applies largely to the Western churches—are “not yet not the kindness of the lucky to the unlucky; it is mutual, united there,” not yet ready to grow fully into what we so easily declare. obedience to the one God Whose mission it is.5 Partnerships Among Theological Institutions A Filipino declaration took a similar view, suggesting that “part- nership implies a reordering of relationships” characterized by In 2007–08 the Seminary Consultation on Mission (SCOM), a “mutual trust and the recognition of and respect for each other’s group of faculty under the Council of Deans of Episcopal semi- identity,” a partnership in which we “minister to one another, naries in the United States, provided me with the opportunity listen to one another, critique one another, and trust one another.”6 to apply my concerns about partnership to the seminary setting. The catch is that we have often failed to live into these They sought recommendations as to what would constitute ef- visions of partnership. The World Council of Churches’ Com- fective and authentic partnerships between North American sem- mission on World Mission and Evangelism declared in 1973 that inaries16 and those in the Global South. To carry out this task “partnership in mission remains an empty slogan.” Even when I engaged in extended interviews with seminary faculty— it happens “in a formal sense, the actual dynamics are such as ecumenical and Anglican—around the globe and visited theo- to perpetuate relations of dominance and dependence.”7 South logical institutions in Costa Rica, , India, Botswana, African missiologist David Bosch quoted an Indonesian church and Malawi.17 While I view partnership to be an issue faced leader’s response to the Western churches during moratorium throughout the church universal, much of what I write here days: “The partnership [is] for you; the obedience [is] for us.”8 emerges from my Anglican context and my broader expatriate The situation is complicated by the reality of great dispari- experience in Africa. ties in material resources between partners. This factor has been Seminaries have entered into partnerships for many years. widely recognized, but it is interesting to note the observation Overwhelmingly these have been informal partnerships—ones of Preman Niles, the general secretary of the Council for World that consist essentially of personal relationships, however and Mission, that “partnership is almost always among unequals. with whomever they emerged. They developed historically not The problem is not inequality in partnerships.”9 The situation through some systematic process of institutional analysis but is further complicated by the question: What do churches in the from personal relationships: a colleague that a faculty member Global South have to give to those in the Global North?10 Writ- met at a conference, or international students at a seminary who returned to their church to find themselves named as theological 18 Leon P. Spencer, recently retired as Dean of the School college principal, if they were not already. This does not mean of Ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, that seminaries did not step back and reflect upon the wisdom was formerly dean of studies of Trinity Bible College of a partnership with a particular institution as a product of a in the Anglican Diocese of Nairobi (1992–96). While personal relationship; but my impression is that most did not in Kenya he served as the first administrator of the begin with a commitment to partnership that led to an exami- African Network of Institutions of Theological Educa- nation of options, their appropriateness to the seminary, and so tion Preparing Anglicans for Ministry (ANITEPAM). on, after which personal relationships emerged. It was the other —[email protected] way around.

150 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 Formal partnerships—ones for which there is a formal writ- agreed-upon vision, not the vision itself. This failure in praxis ten agreement or some action by the institutions involved that is not a product of hypocrisy—saying the nice words and then indicates an established institutional commitment—have been going about our business in patronizing or manipulative ways. less frequent, but they have existed.19 They came into being to From the problems of expense and communication to the chal- underscore, for all members of an institution to see, that the lenges of theological diversity and levels of academic program, partnership was a serious and committed one; and they repre- living partnership is, simply, tough. sented an effort to integrate the link into the mainstream of the If, then, the difficulty is praxis, here are five aspects of seminary’s program.20 partnership in theological education that I believe will help to Partnership among theological institutions is a missiologi- move us from the “not yet there” toward authentic partnership.24 cal endeavor. Anne Reissner asks, “Can we imagine seminaries Seminary partnerships need to: and schools of theology around the world that are centers of missionary training because they understand that mission is • Be theologically grounded the basic reason for the existence of the church?”21 We can set • Reflect authentic mutuality and shared discernment aside a potential debate about what we might variously mean by • Respect local initiative “missionary training” these days. Suffice it to say that her ques- • Be transparent tion reminds us of the missiological nature of partnership, and • Be sustainable existing literature bears this out. While there are some writings about practical aspects of global partnerships, especially within First, theological grounding. Partnership has been called “close traditionally evangelical journals, most writers treat partnership to the biblical notion of koinonia.”25 It is grounded in God’s conceptually as an expression of mission.22 indwelling, a message of hospitality, of mutuality of guest and However they were structured, or not structured, partner- host.26 Both seminary communities, separately and when pos- ships have helped seminaries to discover the church in others’ sible together, need to reflect upon theirtheologies of partnership, cultures, but more than that, something new about our under- especially scriptural foundations. standing of God that was transformational—this was the consis- In my recommendations to SCOM, I suggested that, within tent observation made in the interviews I conducted. That said, it its structures, a seminary community needs to examine critically is not surprising that partnerships are also seen as addressing a how a partnership would or would not serve its institutional mission and priorities. That may not sound like theological reflection, but it is. Is a theological institution called into this Seminary communities partnership? How does it understand its own neediness before God and neighbor? What kind of commitment does a seminary need to reflect upon their really want to make? This discipline is critical. Otherwise, what theologies of partnership, we have are projects, nothing more.

especially scriptural Second, authentic mutuality and shared discernment. These first two foundations. points are cousins. The former implies, but the latter empha- sizes, process. A partnering process involves shared exploration of priorities, and when those are discerned together, all sorts of perceived problem or need. This has been especially true of infor- other things fall into place. In a template for a formal agreement mal relationships, which have often made Westerners intensely I drafted, I included this commitment: “We declare our inten- aware of the striking needs facing the theological institutions tion to engage in shared discernment of ways in which our part- their friends represented. These links have revealed institutions nership may serve the ministry of theological education, our with substantial concrete needs, and first steps toward partner- institutions, and the formation of those entrusted to us by the ship have often been found in a project to address a particular church.”27 need that a friend from the Global South has put before us. The How do we do that? First and foremost, we take the time to neediness of seminaries in has tended to be less do it. The temptation is to jump into a project, for the newness of material and, in a sense, more intangible. In the United States, the relationship and the energy are there. But in a recent reflection for example, the interest of SCOM in partnership emerged as an about the last of the Millennium Development Goals, to “create a answer to the perceived parochialism of American seminarians. global partnership,” I wrote that we (Americans) needed “to allow More on the theme of neediness below. ourselves to be needy too, to see in these goals a message to us. At its best, seminary partnerships have offered what Norma It may mean that, contrary to dominant American impulses, we Cook Everist wrote about poignantly, “possibilities for partner- are just quiet for awhile, we listen, we don’t organize anything ship in believing the other is someone from whom I can learn.”23 or do anything for ‘them.’”28 We just are. Full stop. Taking time permits both institutions to discover the other, especially related to academics and theological perspectives. Things to Strive for in Seminary Partnerships When one offers postgraduate degrees and the other, external diplomas, the issue is not that one institution is weaker; rather, Even if the literature on partnership is somewhat limited, what it is that curriculum, resources, and teaching methodology are is there—and what has been quoted here—is often strikingly likely to differ. When one focuses upon evangelism and another on the mark. My expectation is that those reading this article on prophetic witness, or one upon a particular denominational will tend to affirm warmly the theology and vision for faithful tradition and another on , or when the two differ in global partnership. No doubt some church traditions remain approaches to biblical interpretation, it is clear that there will be attracted to the more historic patterns of mission relationships, challenges, however much both may affirm a spirit of theological but broadly speaking, the difficulty is our fully living up to an inquiry. Building relationships that lead to an honest discern-

July 2010 151 ment of shared needs is time consuming, but it is of critical those needs be books or buildings or libraries. But it is worth a importance. And given historical tensions—religious, political, reminder that we should not immediately presume that they are economic—partnerships may simply but profoundly mark a all concrete project-oriented needs. Martin Conway, the former “process of reconciliation.”29 president of the Selly Oak Colleges and a distinguished British Whether partners enter into a ministry of reconciliation ecumenist with strong Asian ties, recalls that on a recent trip to or not depends upon the degree of homogeneity, especially Beijing his host took him to a new theological college established theological, that they possess. This is a critical matter for shared by the China Christian Council: discernment. One solution to partnership challenges is to choose partners who share theological and ecclesiological perspectives. We were able to meet the Vice-Principal and were startled to The Third Anglican Global South to South Encounter in 2005 said hear him say that one of the most important things they needed as much when they declared that “shared theological foundations to work on is a much fuller degree of international partnerships are crucial to authentic fellowship and partnership in mission than they have inherited from the earlier, much smaller and less well suited, college in the centre of the city. So I guess that he was aware how vital it is for his students to have mental and spiritual horizons that are much wider than those of China itself, whose Discernment addresses very success and sense of self-importance, now so much, much higher than it has been for many years . . . can so easily drown the neediness of both out the message of Jesus.34 institutions. The purpose of What do Western seminaries need that a partnership could a partnership is to serve the provide? Again and again my interviewees spoke of intangibles. needs of each institution. It Phrases like “global awareness,” “a broadening experience of the world,” “a sense of what it is to be a global Anglican,” “a is not an exchange. window on the world,” and “an incarnational presence” were commonplace.35 And institutions in the Global South can offer those things. Sandra McCann, an Episcopalian serving at and ministry.”30 Alternatively, Michael Wilkie, a USPG (United Msalato Theological College in , observed that “what Society for the Propagation of the Gospel) mission appointee Tanzanians have to offer is an example of Christ-like hospitality serving in theological education in South America, observed and a rich worship experience and a living example of joy and that it is “more important than ever that differing traditions of deep faith in the midst of poverty.” Grant LeMarquand points theological interpretation talk to each other if mutual under- out significantly that students at Trinity Episcopal School for standing and respect are ever to be found. I think probably the Ministry (Ambridge, Pa.) return home from global experiences key issue is tolerance and openness to viewpoints that are radi- “realizing that they are in a missional situation here.” They have cally different. . . . I think if links are limited to only those that found a “new way of seeing home.”36 Martin Conway again: are theologically compatible, then no way forward will ever be found since prejudices will continue to be strengthened since I would judge that the most important thing in any theological they will never seriously be challenged.”31 education these days in the USA is to transmit a profound aware- What better way to promote theological discourse—which ness that Christians are serving the purposes of a God . . . who seems to me to be an obvious intent in seminary partnerships is God of all creation and of all peoples, by no means mainly or and fundamental to theological education—than to enable faculty most effectively of U.S. citizens! This is something absolutely and students to engage with those whose commitment to the crucial to the sense of what the truth of Christian faith is, as to any faith is deep but whose interpretation of the faith as Scripture programme of international relationships, and if it isn’t learned pretty early in a person’s theological pilgrimage other “basic” and tradition speak to us today may differ significantly? Dis- truths can all too easily take over as the unseen but invariably course that is firmly grounded theologically yet indicative of dominant point of view. . . . So any exchange or partnership or an openness to theological inquiry is essential for the life of the visit to or from a comparable class or person from another part church universal. As Andrew Wingate writes, “I will be forever of the world is a vital tool for precisely this most important grasp thankful for my British academic training in biblical languages of the universal basis of our faith and the truth to which we are and biblical criticism, but it was in Tamilnadu Theological to devote our lives.37 Seminary [in India] that I became excited about applying the Bible to life.”32 An important point. But Mortimer Arias, formerly the president Discernment also addresses neediness, of both institutions. of Seminario Biblico Latinoamericano in Costa Rica, adds the David Bosch offered a rather intriguing commentary on needs, caveat that “mutuality requires seminaries in the North to be which he tested against standards for “true mutuality.” He specifically careful not to use the rest of the world . . . for the argued that the “fatal mistake” in relations between Western sake of their global education.”38 No doubt use is the key word and Global South churches—and by extension, seminaries— in that warning. was that our partnerships have historically involved “the same Yes, Western seminaries do note some tangible benefits: kind of ‘commodities.’” Reciprocity was expressed in an ex- students and faculty gaining fluency in Spanish, for example, or change of the same commodities that those in the West already the possibility of lectures on global (or any other had in abundance. “Genuine reciprocity,” he argued, “can only tradition) from another perspective in the world. But the emphasis develop where the two respective partners do not receive the tends to be upon expanding horizons.39 same as they have given.”33 The purpose of a partnership is to Finances are often the dominant challenge to authentic serve the needs of each institution. It is not an exchange. mutuality, leading to a difficult partnership “when economic As noted earlier, the neediness of theological institutions and academic resources are disparate”40—that reality is historic, in the Global South has dominated partner activities, whether and obvious. It is not going to change anytime soon, even if

152 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 North American seminaries are struggling financially, so the task Fifth, sustainability. Two questions arise. One is whether partners is to work through financial inequities in a manner that creates want to sustain a partnership, or a particular initiative of it. Just and sustains a mutual and authentic partnership. Key to that because something exists does not mean that it must continue to is an analysis of power, for it is from a position of power that exist. The second question is how to sustain a partnership when wealthier institutions, religious and secular, have historically it is desired by both partners. abused relationships. In one form or another, what I frequently heard in interviews That said, if mutuality is to involve a sharing of vision for the had to do with the will to sustain the relationship. Among faculty, partnership and an honest conversation about the needs of each staff, and seminarians, there will always be those who value a institution, it is not an exercise of power for a Western seminary partnership more than others. Everyone at a seminary need not be to say that a particular initiative sought by a partner is not one committed in substantive ways to the partnership. But whether it wishes to embrace or fund. By now we should have moved a partnership is formal or informal, an institutional discipline, past the flawed view that whatever a partner wants is what we where structures reflect upon the contribution seminary partner- should do—in either direction. That is not partnership. ships can make to the mission of the seminary, should be tested against the energy and enthusiasm—the will—of key individuals Third, local initiative. Also in a seminary partnership agreement to see that the institution fully lives up to the responsibilities of I drafted: “In this process of discernment we will recognize that partnership. the ultimate decision about programs at one of our institutions Sustain for how long? The , like other resides with that institution, yet we commit ourselves to listen to traditions, has valued time limits in companion links, and this and learn from one another as we consider our diverse needs.”41 may wisely apply to seminaries as well. There is an understand- This parallels a key principle named in a valuable document, ing that dates are flexible and that links may be renewed, but the “Ten Principles of Partnership in the Anglican Communion.”42 limits free either partner from the unsatisfactory phenomenon Western seminaries no longer are to declare what a partner of just letting the partnership quietly die. Instead, timetables “needs,” nor is either partner to initiate programs at their own encourage evaluation, and as critical an exercise as this may institution to address perceived needs of their partner without be for any specific activity, it needs to be undertaken for the shared discernment. relationship as well—an emphasis that deserves more attention than it sometimes receives. With that process, the partners may Fourth, transparency. This too is one of the “Ten Principles,” reach shared decisions about the future. Whether a partnership which the Anglican document simply explains as “we are open is renewed or ended, or even dissolved earlier than anticipated, and honest with one another.” That seems fair enough, but in partners should provide opportunities to celebrate the relation- cross-cultural settings it is a minefield. I well recall the genuine ship. The quest for relationships of integrity across the church hospitality Kenyan colleagues offered a visiting expatriate as he universal deserves celebration. advanced his plans for a theological education by extension (TEE) curriculum a few years back. His plan had merit, and they valued Here I have tried to underscore aspects of partnerships in many aspects of TEE, but it was clear that two dynamics were at mission, whether in theological education or otherwise, that the play. One was that hospitality demanded a courteous openness church seems to know. The catch is that partnership takes time that seemed favorable; the other was that the proposal really did and work, and it is far easier to agree to “Let’s do something not accord with their immediate priorities. He left convinced that together” than it is to engage in theological reflection together a commitment had been made; they watched him go, noncom- about our call to ministry together, to invest in relational quali- mittal but satisfied with the genuine hospitality with which he ties that are authentically mutual, and to demonstrate “mutual had been welcomed. Transparency? “Open and honest” is itself responsibility and interdependence.” Institutions and programs a vision of relationship but expressed in sometimes circuitous that engage in ministerial formation can be, ought to be, a model ways, and not quite what more-direct Westerners have in mind. for this vision of praxis throughout the church universal. It is And the Western model is not the standard. time for us to do it. Past time. Notes 1. The Seminary Consultation on Mission, a program of the Episcopal Christ in the Philippines Document ‘Partnership in Mission,’” Inter- seminaries in the United States, asked me to be a consultant on national Review of Mission 86 (July 1997): 339. partnerships, and I presented my recommendations to that body 7. Marsh, “Partnership in Mission,” p. 372. in September 2008. This article draws from my experience with 8. David J. Bosch, “Towards True Mutuality: Exchanging the Same partnerships generally and this recent consultancy in particular. Commodities or Supplementing Each Others’ Needs?” Missiology 2. Hong-Jung Lee, “Beyond Partnership, Toward Networking: A 6 (1978): 286. Korean Reflection on Partnership in the Web of God’s Mission,” 9. Preman Niles, quoted in Kai Michael Funkschmidt, “New Models International Review of Mission 91 (October 2002): 577–78. Actually, of Mission Relationship and Partnership,” International Review of Lee added a fourth stage: Participant. He argued that there is some- Mission 91 (October 2002): 570. thing “incomplete and tentative” about partnership, an “acquisition.” 10. I am writing as an American, but I seek in this article to avoid phra- Maybe he is right. But partnership, properly understood, strikes me seology that will speak of “us” and “them.” While Europeans / as more relational than participatory. Authentic partnership is an Westerners / North Americans / people of the Global North bear entry into something that is potentially profound and transforming, considerable responsibility for partnership failures, they do not do and there I am content to leave it. so exclusively. My hope is that this article might speak to all of us. 3. Colin Marsh, “Partnership in Mission: To Send or to Share?” The terms “West” and “Westerner” have their inadequacies, and International Review of Mission 92 (July 2003): 370. “Global South” is not yet in universal use, but unless the context is 4. The key source is Stephen F. Bayne, Jr., ed., Mutual Responsibility and more specific, I use those terms in this article. Interdependence in the Body of Christ (New York: Seabury Press, 1963). 11. Martin Repp, “For a Moratorium on the Word ‘Partnership’: Towards 5. Ibid., pp. 21–23. a Paradigm Shift in the Relationship Between Japanese Protestant 6. “Basic Principles: A Synthesis Taken from the United Church of Churches and Overseas Missions and Churches,” Japan Christian

July 2010 153 Review 64 (1998): 32. This is what I have frequently heard when Exploration of Receiving Relationships,” Currents in Theology and Episcopalians have talked about diocesan companion links with Mission 16 (October 1989): 353. churches in the Global South. 24. Daniel Rickett provided a list with which these are somewhat 12. Bosch, “Towards True Mutuality,” p. 293. compatible: Have a vision for the partnership and frame it in terms 13. Philip H. E. Thomas, “How Can Western Christians Learn from of achievable goals; cultivate trust by practicing respect and integrity Partners in the World Church?” International Review of Mission 92 in every detail; and evaluate the relationship by measuring outcomes. (July 2003): 384. Daniel Rickett, “Seven Mistakes Partners Make and How to Avoid 14. Amon Eddie Kasambala, “A Critical Diagnosis of Partnership in Them,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 37 (July 2001): 317. Light of Inequality and Independence: A Third World Problem,” 25. Funkschmidt, “New Models of Mission Relationship and Part- Princeton Seminary Bulletin 25 (2004): 162. nership,” p. 568. 15. Ibid., p. 169. 26. Reissner, “The Dance of Partnership,” p. 5. 16. One Canadian seminary is also a part of SCOM. 27. “International Partnerships Among Seminaries: Some Observations 17. I acknowledge with gratitude a grant from the Conant Fund and and Recommendations to the Seminary Consultation on Mission of the support of the Diocese of North Carolina. the Council of Deans of Episcopal Seminaries in the United States” 18. To my knowledge, no comprehensive listing of seminary partner- (2008), p. 63. ships exists. Historic examples of informal Anglican and ecu- 28. “Partnership and the Millennium Development Goals,” Doing menical partnerships include a link between Seabury-Western Theology: A Bi-monthly Theological Reflection from the School of Ministry (Evanston, Ill.) with Renk Bible College in the Sudan; General Theo- of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, no. 11 (February 2006). logical Seminary (New York), with Msalato Theological College in 29. Kasambala, “A Critical Diagnosis of Partnership,” p. 162. Tanzania; Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry (Ambridge, Pa.), 30. “The Third Anglican Global South to South Encounter,” Anglican among others, with St. Paul’s University (formerly St. Paul’s United Communion News Service, October 31, 2005. Theological College) in Kenya; Episcopal Divinity School (Cam- 31. E-mail communication from Michael Wilkie, September 10, 2008. bridge, Mass.), with the evangelical seminary at Matanzos, Cuba; and 32. Andrew Wingate, Does Theological Education Make a Difference? Global a number with the College of the Transfiguration in . Lessons in Mission and Ministry from India and Britain (Geneva: WCC 19. Anglican and ecumenical examples include Trinity Episcopal School Publications, 1999), p. 106. for Ministry with Uganda Christian University; the Kirchliche 33. Bosch, “Towards True Mutuality,” pp. 291–93. Hochschule Bethel in Germany, and the Lutheran Theological 34. E-mail communication from Martin Conway, May 30, 2008. Seminary in Philadelphia, with the United Theological Seminary, 35. Notes on interviews with Titus Presler, February 12, 2008; Ian ; and Canterbury Christ Church University with the Douglas, February 20, 2008; Walter Brownridge, February 25, 2008; Anglican Church in Zambia. and John Yieh, May 19, 2008. 20. Obviously there can be movement in either direction. A personal 36. E-mail communication from Sandra McCann, July 29, 2008; and relationship may evolve into a formal partnership; similarly, a for- notes on interview with Grant LeMarquand, February 15, 2008. mal agreement may wind down but be sustained by informal per- 37. E-mail communication from Martin Conway. sonal bonds. 38. Mortimer Arias, “Mutuality in Global Education,” in The Globaliza- 21. Anne Reissner, “The Dance of Partnership: A Theological Reflection,” tion of Theological Education, ed. Alice Frazer Evans, Robert A. Evans, Missiology 29 (January 2001): 9. and David A. Roozen (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993), p. 348. 22. Michael McCoy, an Anglican missiologist in South Africa, calls for 39. Notes on interviews with Grant LeMarquand, Richard Jones, and “restoring mission to the heart of theological education”; perhaps Walter Brownridge. what I found, and did not find, in the literature confirms both the 40. Arias, “Mutuality in Global Education,” p. 348. need for that and the movement in that direction. See Michael McCoy, 41. “International Partnerships Among Seminaries,” p. 63. “Restoring Mission to the Heart of Theological Education: A South 42. From Mission Issues and Strategy Advisory Group II, Toward African Perspective,” ANITEPAM Journal 48 (November 2005): 3–16. Dynamic Mission: Renewing the Church for Mission (London: Anglican 23. Norma Cook Everist, “Dependency Hinders Development: An Communion Office, 1993).

IBMR E-journal—a Helpful Resource for Print Subscribers

In January 2010 editor Jonathan Bonk announced that the Bulletin of Missionary Research (1977–80), are now available in International Bulletin of Missionary Research turned PDF format at www.internationalbulletin.org. The most recent “a conceptual corner” when it was transformed into “an online issues are also online in HTML format. journal—freely accessible to all—with a published print option Features available only in the e-journal edition include a available for paying subscribers.” With this transition, he said, color version of photographs, Web links to journal advertisers, “the scholarly research for which the IBMR is well known now an option for online paid advertising, and the ability to print becomes freely available to readers around the world, even an article or save a paragraph for future reference. To be added those whose economic circumstances do not permit them the in coming months are a link for e-mailing articles to others luxury of a subscription.” and an easily searchable index of all article titles and authors. A free resource available to mission scholars, practitioners, The yearlong effort of transforming a respected print jour- academics, and students, the IBMR e-journal can also be a nal into a dynamic, user-friendly online publication received helpful resource for those who have and plan to continue a recognition from an association of religious editors in May print subscription. If you are away from your study or school 2010, when Associated Church Press, at its 2010 convention in library, the IBMR online serves as your gateway for checking Washington, D.C., gave the IBMR its third-place recognition a fact or printing out an article from any issue of the journal. in the Web Site Redesign category. Print subscribers and others are invited to register by The print edition of the IBMR will continue to be pub- going to www.internationalbulletin.org/register. Select a user lished, but all readers and mission-minded persons are invited name and password to read from any computer at no cost. to register also for the e-journal. All issues of the International Bulletin of Missionary —Daniel J. Nicholas Research (1981–present) and its predecessor, the Occasional Managing Editor

154 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 There is a tension between reaching the unreached and teaching them all that Jesus has commanded—between search and harvest theology. In the Great Commission, Jesus sends us to evangelize, but also to teach. Choosing one over the other is a false dichotomy; complete obedience demands a balanced approach.

“Ultimately it is my prayer that those who read Reaching and Teaching will gain an understanding of how to balance the tensions of time, the need, and faithfulness that results in Kingdom advance and faithfulness to what Jesus has commanded us to do.”

-David Sills, D.Miss., Ph.D reachingandteaching.org The State of Mission Studies in India: An Overview and Assessment of Publications and Publishing Siga Arles

rom the first millennium of the Christian era in India, of Indian indigenous theology. His Introduction to Indian Christian Fonly mere fragments of Christian literature have survived, Theology (1969) has become the standard textbook at the B.Th. held at places such as the Orthodox Seminary in , and B.D. levels for the course in Indian Christian theology. In . Cyril Bruce Firth lists the few items that are available, The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance (1969), Thomas mentioning other authors who have summarized the material.1 demonstrated that even some from outside of the church The situation does not change up through the first half of the affirmed Christ and his significance, including Ram Mohun second millennium; Firth again remains our source and guide. Roy, Vivekananda, Radhakrishnan, and M. K. Gandhi.7 The situation begins to change with the arrival of Francis Such explorations into the early formation of indigenous Xavier to the Indian subcontinent in 1542. Some information from theology ultimately led to the kind of mission studies that gave the following century and a half has survived relating to Roman rise to an indigenous missiology for India. We will not be able Catholic mission activities.2 By the time Protestant missionar- to pursue the argument, but we should note that some reject ies Bartholomew Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plutschau entered the idea of an autonomous missiology, claiming that theology India in 1706, the art of printing made it possible for writings to properly includes missiology, or vice versa. For them, there is a be preserved and widely read. Ziegenbalg translated the New smooth transition from Indian Christian theology to missiology. Testament and printed it within a short span of two decades at Others hold that missiology is distinct from theology, although the beginning of the eighteenth century. theological insights may be included within the formation of missiology, depending on the specific context. Missiological Literature in India Before 1947 The National Council of Churches in India (NCCI; founded in 1914 as the National Missionary Council; in 1923 becoming When William Carey and his team developed an educational the National Christian Council of India, Burma, and Ceylon; and enterprise at , West , they were able to assemble bearing its present name since 1979, following the separation a surprisingly large number of printed books. These volumes are from it of the Councils of Burma and Sri Lanka8) has played a still available at the Carey Library and Research Centre (CLRC) central role in Indian mission studies. Kaj Baagø highlights the at (founded in 1818).3 The very first major NCCI’s achievements, mentioning in particular the Lindsay Christian literature work in India was the Bible translations Commission’s study Christian Higher Education in India (1931), that Carey undertook in the early nineteenth century. The first Waskom Pickett’s Christian Mass Movements in India (1933), and apologetic writings were the correspondence between Carey’s Charles Ranson’s The Christian Minister in India (1945), all of associate and Raja Ram Mohun Roy.4 Christian which deepened thought on mission and ministry in India.9 Mis- colleges and their founders gave added impetus to the develop- sion understanding, methodology, and practice in India prior to ment of Christian literature in India.5 independence benefited from the founding of the By the middle of the nineteenth century indigenous writers Institute of Islamic Studies in 1930 and the attempt to initiate a were appearing such as Lal Behari Day, Keshub Chandra Sen, similar center for the study of Hinduism.10 K. M. Banerjee, and, later, Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya. A few, At the 1923 All India Conference of Indian Christians, K. T. such as Pulney Andi, who had the vision of a national church of Paul, the conference president, spoke on the topic “The Respon- India, gave thought to indigenous shaping of the church. Until sibility of Christian Citizenship in India.” Later, at the 1930 the twentieth century, however, there was almost no indigenous Serampore Convocation, Paul asked, “What is the place of the Indian Christian literature. Most written documents were pre- Church of Christ in the currents of India’s thought and feeling pared by Western missionaries and colonial masters, with very and aspirations and action? Is it an effective factor in determining few by Indians. The materials were exploratory, apologetic, India’s standards, in the evolution of its corporate conscience? and evangelistic in nature. Kaj Baagø, Robin Boyd, and M. M. What is the contribution of Christian citizenship to public opinion Thomas—as noted by D. A. Thangasamy—have done excellent in India?”11 We could thus justifiably say that mission study in the work in summing up the nineteenth- and twentieth-century roots Indian setting was holistic right from the start. Prominent names from which Indian Christian theology was to grow.6 Baagø iden- contributing to its growth include in particular J. G. Shome, E. C. tified early Indian Christian writers in his Pioneers of Indigenous Bhatty, , Narayan Vaman Tilak, O. Kandasamy Theology in India (1969). Boyd continued the survey in his doctoral Chetti, H. A. Krishna Pillai, P. C. Mazoomdar, R. P. Dutt, Manilal research at Edinburgh, summarizing the earliest contributors and C. Parekh, and Vedanayakam Samuel Azariah. then moving on to consider the early, middle, and later pioneers On August 15, 1947, the colonial period ended, and India became independent. The Indian National Congress took control Siga Arles is Director of the Centre for Contemporary of administering the nation, in keeping with the mood of the age. Christianity, Bangalore, India. He is the author of The church in India likewise experienced freedom and began Missiological Education: An Indian Exploration to take charge of its ministry and mission. Six weeks later, on (CfCC, 2006). —[email protected] September 27, five major church groups united to become the , thereby taking a step toward overcoming Western denominational divisions. A similar unification of seven major church groups took place in 1970 with the founding of the Church of North India.

156 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 The church in India faced the need of developing both indig- the meaning of Kraemer’s Christian Message in a Non-Christian enous leadership and indigenous theology. A question commonly World.14 The neoorthodox defense against the growing liberalism raised is, Was the church at heart a pro-British group, or were of Western scholars, along with the Indian Christian response, Christians fully engaged in the political struggle for freedom? began to lay the foundations of Indian Christian theology. The Arthur Jeyakumar proves that in the Tamil Christians neoorthodox impulse rejected culture religion and any program were as much involved in the freedom struggle as their Hindu of merely earthly betterment, insisting on the radical otherness neighbors.12 of the Gospel. Facing the challenge of the times, the National Christian Council of India tackled these issues by setting up Mission Studies After Independence the Christian Institute for the Study of Society (1951) and the Committee for Literature on Social Concerns (1954) among In the mid-twentieth century we begin to feel the heartthrob of other structures. The NCCI also promoted exploration of the the church in India as its theological leaders search for identity, understanding of ministry and mission in the Indian context by purpose, and expression. What is Christian identity within the sponsoring conferences, study programs, and symposia. pluralistic context of India? What is the church as a commu- Arguing for a Christian concern for society, P. D. Devanandan nity within the factional communalism—of casteism, linguism, desired to create a theology that reaffirmed a positive approach regionalism, , tribalism, and religious divides—that is to other religions and cultures. He proposed that Christian social rampant in India? What is the mission of the church in India? concern should be not merely political or economic but primarily These questions were at the forefront for the Indian Christian theological, rooted in and governed by the insight that “our faith church as the British were preparing to leave the country. At stands for the redemption of the whole man,” here and now.15 in 1942 the Indian Theological Conference considered the E. Stanley Jones argued that movement of social justice to the topic “Our Theological Task.”13 The members of the Rethinking forefront of secular preoccupations was evidence of the present Group in Madras addressed the theme “Rethinking Christian- reality of the kingdom of God.16 Devanandan and, later, M. M. ity in India” at the time when the Western world was exploring Thomas took this social mission seriously and developed the ideal of the church’s mission as social action for justice. Under their leadership the Christian Institute for the Study of Reli- Abbreviations gion and Society (CISRS), set up in 1957, began to develop the various aspects of this theology for the mission of the church. ATA Asia Theological Association, Singapore / Bangalore / Manila CISRS grew dominant, and as Philip Potter attested, it impacted BTESSC Board of Theological Education of the Senate of the way the World Council of Churches developed its contextual Serampore College, Serampore and Bangalore theology of mission.17 CDSS Centre for Dalit and Subaltern Studies, Delhi The literature produced by CISRS could well be identified as CfCC Centre for Contemporary Christianity, Bangalore the inaugural set of books for mission studies in India. The titles CIME Consortium for Indian Missiological Education, below indicate the kind of studies that were undertaken; they Bangalore covered the social, political, economic, and religious challenges CISRS Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and facing the church in mission. Society, Bangalore CLS Christian Literature Society, [Madras] by P. D. Devanandan: The Gospel and the Hindu Intellectual CLSC Committee for Literature on Social Concerns, Bangalore (CISRS, 1958); Resurgent Hinduism: Review of Modern Move- CLRC Carey Library and Research Centre, Serampore ments (CISRS, 1958); Our Task Today: Revision of Evan- College, Serampore gelistic Concern (CISRS, 1958); The Dravida Kazhagam: CMS-UBS Centre for Mission Studies at Union Biblical A Revolt Against Brahminism (CISRS, 1959); The Gospel Seminary, Pune and Renascent Hinduism (SCM, 1959); Christian Concern COUNT Christian Outreach Uplifting New Tribes, in Hinduism (CISRS, 1961); Christian Issues in Southern Asia (Friendship Press, 1963) CSS Christava Sahitya Samiti, Tiruvalla by Devanandan et al.: Presenting Christ to India Today (CLS, ECC Ecumenical Christian Centre, Whitefield, 1957) Bangalore edited by Devanandan and Thomas: Cultural Foundations of FOIM Fellowship of Indian Missiologists, Pune IMA India Missions Association, Hyderabad Indian Democracy (CLSC, 1955); India’s Quest for Democ- ISET Indian School of Ecumenical Theology, racy (CLSC, 1955); Community Development in India’s Bangalore Industrial Urban Areas (CLSC, 1958); The Changing Pat- ISPCK Indian Society for Promoting Christian tern of Family in India (CISRS, 1960); Problems of Indian Knowledge, Delhi Democracy (CISRS, 1962) MEB Mission Educational Books, Chennai by M. M. Thomas: Salvation and Humanisation (CISRS, 1971); NCCI National Christian Council of India, Nagpur The Secular Ideologies of India and the Secular Meaning of SAIACS South Asia Institute for Advanced Christian Christ (CISRS, 1976); Towards an Evangelical Social Gospel Studies, Bangalore (CLS, 1977) SATHRI South Asia Theological Research Institute, compiled by Thomas: Christian Participation in Nation- Bangalore SCM SCM Press, London Building (NCCI, 1960) TBT Theological Book Trust, Bangalore edited by Thomas and H. F. J. Daniel: Human Problems of TTS Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, Industry in Bangalore (CISRS, 1964) UBS Union Biblical Seminary, Pune edited by Thomas and R. W. Taylor: Tribal Awakening UTC United Theological College, Bangalore (CISRS, 1965)

July 2010 157 In addition, CISRS published numerous articles in its journal As indicated, the Christian Literature Society (CLS) became Religion and Society and in the National Christian Council Review.18 the publishing house for the Theological Text Books Programme. During the same period the Ecumenical Christian Centre With early pioneers of literature ministry such as J. N. Farquhar, (ECC) was founded at Whitefield in Bangalore. The ECC held CLS has had a long history of providing Christian literature for numerous conferences and published books and reports, all of India. But this role appears to have faded, for it lacks contem- which also contributed to mission studies in India.19 It sponsored porary vibrancy. In 1958 the British Society for the Propagation a variety of programs, some of which were politically oriented: of Christian Knowledge established its Indian wing, ISPCK, which also has a glorious history of publishing missional and Democratic Socialism, Democracy, and Dynamics of Change theological books that have significantly helped the church in Federalism in India mission. A noble venture that ISPCK undertakes is to donate a Food and Hunger Crisis set of books to each first-year theological student in India. ISPCK The Judiciary and the also partners with institutions to bring out fresh books in theol- Media and Politics ogy and missiology. National Goals Besides the work of NCCI, CISRS, ECC, and publishing Panchayat Raj as an Instrument of Democracy houses such as CLS and ISPCK, India has seen a trend of vari- Pedagogy of the Oppressed ous theological institutions holding mission consultations and Secularism in Indian Constitution and Practice conferences and then publishing the essays presented, along with Women in Indian Politics After 1947 additional evaluatory reports and interpretative introductions. Such a series has come out of the Centre for Mission Studies Other programs were more sociologically oriented: (CMS) of Union Biblical Seminary (UBS), in Pune, published by ISPCK. Begun in 1982, this effort has so far produced a dozen The Bengali Novel and Social Life books, which have made important contributions to Indian mis- The Cancer of Corruption siological literature. This scholarly series, which is mainly from an The Christian Family in the Industrial Society evangelical perspective, has been particularly valuable because Cinema and Social Change evangelical mission literature in India has otherwise been almost Communalism in Indian Politics exclusively devotional or promotional in nature. This UBS effort Concept of Liberation in South India Fiction has thus been most welcome and, it is hoped, can be sustained. Dialogue on Eradication of Underdevelopment The series includes: Harijan Oppression in Independent India Health Service The Church in India: Its Mission Tomorrow (1996) Human Rights Good News to the Poor: The Challenge to the Church (1997) Social Responsibility : Search for Liberation and Identity (1998) Value of Human Life in Suicide, Violence, and Abortion Ecological Challenge and (1998) Conversion in a Pluralistic Context (2000) Mission concern was expressed in programs such as The The Indian Church in Context: Her Emergence, Growth, and Christian in a Secular World, Christian Responsibility, Mission Mission (2002) in the Light of Emerging Theology, The Role of the Laity, What Persecution and Suffering: Christian Reflections and Responses Is Mission? and What Mission Is Not. ECC also explored the (2002) wider role of mission and education. For example, the program Leadership and Mission (2004) for village school teachers studied education as a key to social Nationalism and Hindutva: A Christian Response (2005) change. During the third quarter of the twentieth century, the Missiological Education: Theological Integration and Contextual ECC studied concerns specific to women, youth, the media, and Implications (2009)21 the law, each of which provided much food for thought for the church in mission in India. The ECC offers its seminar reports as In honor of Ben Wati, UBS also published a Festschrift, Mission books, as well as publishing thought-provoking papers from its and Missions (1998), which brought together essays relating events in its journal Theology for Our Times. Each issue focuses on a leadership, ethics, and the task of mission.22 main theme involving areas of concern for the church in mission. Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Three of the themes have been “Evolving a New Paradigm in Institute, Chennai, developed Summer Institutes, which have Theology for Asia” (June 1998); “Economics, Ecology, Ecumenism, enabled its faculty members to interact each year with special- and Religion” (August 1999); and “Religious Fundamentalism: ists on selected mission topics, particularly in the Indian context. Ethical Challenges” (July 2008). The result has been a series of books, including Frontiers of Dalit Paralleling the efforts of NCCI, CISRS, and ECC, the Senate Theology (1997) and New Horizons in Christian Mission: A Theologi- of Serampore College established its Theological Text Books cal Exploration (1999). Earlier, the institution published Debate on Programme and began to publish study books for theologi- Mission (1979).23 cal students at the B.Th. and B.D. levels. Some of these were The Tamilnadu Theological Seminary (TTS), Madurai, directly helpful as mission studies material, especially Cyril has published a series of books relating to the many challenges Bruce Firth, An Introduction to Indian Church History, 3d ed. facing Christian mission in India. Their titles include: (CLS, 1976); Gabriel Dietrich and Bastiaan Wielenga, Towards Understanding Indian Society (Centre for Social Analysis, TTS, by Dhyanchand Carr: Gospel Through Dissent (1985) 1997); and Henry H. Presler, Primitive Religions in India (CLS, by : Good News to the Poor (1984); Let Justice 1971).20 During the 1960s and 1970s this series accomplished Roll Down like Waters (1984); First World Fundamentalism much good work but became less active in the 1980s. Now it Frustrates the Poor (1987) mainly reprints older titles. by Robinson and Carr: Solidarity of the Oppressed (1981)

158 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 edited by Robinson: For the Sake of the Gospel (1980); Influ- sharing mission study material. Much mission-related informa- ence of Hinduism on Christianity (1980); Communicating tion has appeared, for example, in the reports and articles in the the Gospel Today (1986) following journals (* = irregular or short-lived in appearance). by TTS: Living, Learning, Witnessing (1984); Called to Obedi- ence (1985) Asian Journal of Theology, SATHRI, Bangalore Bangalore Theological Forum, UTC, Bangalore Also, an earlier volume edited by , A Vision Dharma Deepika, Deepika Educational Trust, Chennai for Man (CLS, 1978), belongs in this series of TTS publications. In Indian Church History Review, Church History Association addition, Siding with the Poor (Madras: CLS, 1989), by TTS faculty of India, Bangalore member Gnana Robinson, is an excellent resource for anyone *Indian Journal of Missiology, Indian Institute of Missiology, interested in the area of mission among the poor. Trichy, Bangalore This seminary has been active in exploring a variety of *Indian Journal of Theology, Serampore College and Bishops ways that the church might enter society with the Good News College, of Jesus Christ, some of which have been expressed in multiple Journal of Tribal Studies, Eastern Theological College, Jorhat, programs, including: Assam National Council of Churches Review, NCCI, Nagpur Arulagam (“House of Grace”; a home for destitute women Religion and Society, CISRS, Bangalore and their children) Theology for Our Times, ECC / ISET, Whitefield, Bangalore Education for the Social Welfare of the Oppressed *TRACI–ETS Journal, TRACI, Delhi Inba Illam (“Home for the Old and Needy”) UBS Journal, Union Biblical Seminary, Pune Makkal Nagar (a home for Sri Lankan refugees) Peoples Association for Social Action Individually, the impact of these journals varies. The strongest Peoples Movement for Women’s Rights are Religion and Society, Indian Church History Review, Bangalore Rural Theological Institute Theological Forum, and National Council of Churches Review. Siloam Farm (a home for lepers) Among Roman Catholic publications, four journals have TECCA: Theological Education for Christian Commitment been among the most popular publications for mission studies: and Action Indian Missiological Review (later Mission Today), Integral Liberation, Jnanodaya, and Third Millennium. A flow of reports, articles, and books has emerged from the The Indian Social Institute at Delhi and Bangalore, as well as activities, experiences, and struggles of these many programs, the Centre for Social Action in Bangalore, has done tremendous which have pursued mission in various settings. They have pro- service by producing contextual studies and relevant research vided the rudiments of an authentic and indigenous missiology, writings to help the cause of mission. I encourage each of my exactly what the Indian church needs for its reflection, learning, missiology students to buy the series of works published by and involvement. the Centre for Social Action because of their general relevance. Other institutions have also published relevant studies that Important books in this series include the following: relate broadly to mission. An important one is Ecumenical Missiol- ogy (2002), from United Theological College, Bangalore.24 Also, by John Desrochers: Christ the Liberator (1977); Education for its journal Bangalore Theological Forum discusses theology and the Social Change (1987); The India We Want to Build, 2 vols. concerns of contextual ministry that underlie mission activities. (1994–95); The Social Teaching of the Church in India (2006) Several of its current and former faculty members have probed by Desrochers and George Joseph: India Today (1988) deeply into a variety of mission-related topics. Here we could by John Maliekal: Indian Political Parties and Ideologies (1977) mention Christopher Duraisingh, Franklyn J. Balasundaram, by Bastiaan Wielenga: Introduction to Marxism (1984) Arvind Nirmal, Gnana Robinson, Jayakiran Sebastian, John Mohan Razu, Nalini Arles, and Sathianathan Clarke, who have Other books deal with caste, the eco-crisis, the five-year plans had significant impact in areas such as Asian theology, Dalit of the government of India, industry, medical needs, and slums. theology, patristic theology, globalization, counseling, pastoral These studies provide crucial contextual knowledge for mission care, and theological education. students concerned with developing action plans. The South Asia Institute for Advanced Christian Studies The Fellowship of Indian Missiologists (FOIM), formed in (SAIACS), also in Bangalore, has published a series of books, 1991 at the initiative of Jacob Kavunkal and some of his associ- some from theses written by their students and others by faculty ates, soon began to hold conferences for missiologists from all members and visiting scholars. Here we could mention four titles, the churches of India. Papers presented were later published in all published by SAIACS Press: Insights into Openness: Encourag- a FOIM series. At first they were unrelated collections of essays, ing Urban Mission (2000), by Atul Y. Aghamkar; Bridges Across but in later years they were tied to a theme. Volumes published Cultures (2003), by Achenkunju Pappy, , and George so far have been: Edward; Welcoming the Gospel in Jharkhand (2003), by R. George Edward; Tribes in Transition (2004), edited by F. Hrangkhuma; Bible and Mission in India Today (1993) and Road to Delhi: J. Waskom Pickett Remembered (2005), by Arthur Christ and Cultures (1994) G. McPhee. Founded in 1981 as a center specializing in missiol- Dimensions of Mission in India (1996) ogy, SAIACS has evolved into an institution for postgraduate Mission and Conversion: A Reappraisal (1996) theological studies, Christian leadership training, and research. Mission Trends Today: Historical and Theological Perspectives Among other degrees, it offers the doctor of missiology. (1997) Other educational institutions and cooperative enterprises Blossoms from the East: Contribution of the Indian Church to have also published journals that have been a major avenue for World Mission (1999)

July 2010 159 Missiological Approaches in India (1999) by A. Wati Longchar: The Tribal Religious Traditions in North In the Shadow of the Cross: Christians and Minorities in India East India: An Introduction (2000) Encounter Hostility (2002) edited by Longchar: No More Guns! People’s Struggle for Creative Ministries: Exploring New Frontiers in Mission (2004) Justice: Focus on North East India (2000) Emerging Indian Missiology: Context and Concept (2006) edited by Longchar and Larry E. Davis: Doing Theology with Christ Among the Tribals (2007) Tribal Resources: Context and Perspective (1999) Building Solidarity: Challenge to Christian Mission (2008)25 by S. Devasagayam Ponraj: Tribal Challenge and the Church’s Response (1996) Similar to the efforts of the Senate of Serampore College to by K. Thanzauva: Transforming Theology: A Theological Basis produce textbooks for students, the Asia Theological Association for Social Transformation (2002) and Theology of Community: (ATA) established the Theological Book Trust (TBT), which has Tribal Theology in the Making (2004)28 successfully produced and marketed about fifty books in the last twenty years. These books, some of which are of mission studies, Dalit studies have taken center stage in recent years, for the are low-cost productions aimed to help theological students at the issues have been portrayed as an example of apartheid, and the bachelor’s and master’s levels. Books for mission study include world community has increasingly been interested in the plight several by Ken Gnanakan: Kingdom Concerns: A Biblical Exploration of the oppressed untouchables of India and has desired their Towards a Theology of Mission (1989; 4th ed., 2002), The Pluralistic liberation. I list here seven recent studies: Predicament (1992), Proclaiming Christ in a Pluralistic Context, rev. ed. (2002), and Responsible Stewardship of God’s Creation (2004). The Dalit Christians: A History, 2d ed. (1994) Other important TBT titles are Doing Mission in Context (1995), Frontiers of (1997) edited by Sunand Sumithra and F. Hrangkhuma; Missionary of Dalit Consciousness and Christian Conversion (1999) the Indian Road: The Theology of Stanley Jones (1996), by Paul A. J. Asian Dalit Solidarity (2000) Martin; and Media in Church and Mission: Communicating the Gospel Frontiers in Dalit Hermeneutics (2005) (1998), by Viggo Søgaard. Also, Christava Sahitya Samiti from Essays on Dalits, Religion, and Liberation (2006) Tiruvalla in the recent past has developed a series of missional Dalit Pentecostalism: Spirituality of the Empowered Poor (2008)29 books and has become an attractive low-cost publisher. Beside textbooks, the Board of Theological Education of the These books, which are but the tip of the iceberg, all deal with Dalit Senate of Serampore College (BTESSC), along with its doctoral theology and its implications for mission and mission studies. center, the South Asia Theological Research Institute (SATHRI), One important area needing much further work is docu- Bangalore, has published books to enhance scholarship and mentation and histories of the various Indian mission fields research. Some of these publications have particularly impacted and mission organizations, of which India has a large number. mission studies in recent years, especially Frontiers in Dalit Herme- Most have no written history. We have a desperate need to neutics (2005) and Mission in the Past and Present: Challenges and document the vision, purpose, founding, early struggles, later Perspectives (2006).26 Books dealing with tribal, feminist, Dalit, and growth, challenges, and prospects of each of the groups laboring other concerns relevant to the mission of the church in the Indian throughout India. When I was chairman of the board of gov- setting are being released by the research scholars at SATHRI. ernors of Christian Outreach Uplifting New Tribes (COUNT), The Delhi-based Centre for Dalit and Subaltern Studies (CDSS) Hyderabad, we released two volumes during the Silver Jubilee has partnered with other similar ventures. The Journal of Tribal celebrations giving the history of COUNT and acknowledging Studies, published by Eastern Theological College, in Jorhat, those who were instrumental in setting its vision.30 The India Mis- Assam, presents research on tribal issues. Gurukul Lutheran sions Association (IMA, founded 1977), the national federation Theological College has made special efforts to publish on Dalit of missions in India, has occasionally prepared statistical data and women’s concerns. on either state or national levels. It has published Transforming For women’s studies, there are numerous efforts; here are the Indian Cities: Profiles of Selected 100 Cities (2004),31 as well as four of special note. Prasanna Kumari edited a volume in honor several hundred profiles of Dalits and megapeople groups. Such of Florence Robinson entitled Women in Church and Society efforts are overdue; we need initiatives and support structures (1999). After Prasanna Kurami’s death, her husband, Samuel to accomplish this task as soon as possible. Meshack, edited a volume entitled Mission with the Marginal- Beside institutional efforts, we must acknowledge that many ized: Life and Witness of Rev. Dr. Prasanna K. Samuel (2007). individuals have done important research and have published Lalrinawmi Ralte and others compiled essays in the volumes their findings, adding to the collection of mission study litera- Women Re-shaping Theology: Introducing Women’s Studies in Theo- ture. For instance, F. J. Balasundaram presented his EATWOT in logical Education in India (1998) and Envisioning a New Heaven Asia: Towards a Relevant Theology (1993), based on his doctoral and a New Earth (1998),27 giving voice to the explorations and study at the South Asia Theological Research Institute.32 Milton thoughts of women theologians. Such works form an important Jeganathan wrote Mission and Education (2002), Lalsangkima area of mission studies touching, as they do, half of all the people Pachuau wrote Ethnic Identity and Christianity: A Socio-Historical on the face of the earth! and Missiological Study of Christianity in North East India with Spe- Tribal mission studies has also been a theme addressed by cial Reference to Mizoram (2002), and Mary Schaller Blaufuss various scholars, particularly from Northeast India. Here we can wrote Changing Goals of the American Madura Mission in India, mention the following: 1830–1916 (2003), all three arising from their doctoral studies at Princeton. My own doctoral thesis from the University of Aber- edited by F. Hrangkhuma: Tribes in Transition: Indian Chris- deen was published as Theological Education for the Mission of the tians Reflect on the Original Inhabitants of the Land (2004) Church in India: 1947–1987 (1991), with a second edition titled edited by Hrangkhuma and Joy Thomas: Christ Among the Missiological Education: An Indian Exploration (2006).33 Tribals (2007) In some cases, scholars outside of the church have contrib-

160 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 uted works that are valuable for mission studies. These include January 2010, twelve volumes have been published. By year of Kancha Ilaiah’s Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva publication or reprinting by CfCC, they are: Philosophy, Culture, and Political Economy (1996; 2d ed., 2007). Another is Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas P. Solomon Raj, A Christian Folk Religion in India: A Study of (1994), by Arun Shourie, a prominent Indian economist and politi- the Small Church Movement in Andhra Pradesh, 2d ed. (2004) cal writer. In it Shourie presents a history of misinterpretations H. L. Richard, Exploring the Depths of the Mystery of Christ: of Hinduism by Christian missionaries. It provoked a vigorous K. Subba Rao’s Eclectic Praxis of Hindu Discipleship to response from Vishal Mangalwadi in his Missionary Conspiracy: Jesus (2005) Letters to a Postmodern Hindu (1996).34 A. Christopher Smith, The Serampore Mission Enterprise (2006) In some cases Festschrifts have made valuable contributions Siga Arles, Missiological Education: An Indian Exploration to mission study. These include volumes honoring the following (2006) individuals: Mathew Philip, The Unique Christ: Dialogue in Mission (2006) Geomon K. George, Religious Pluralism: Challenges for Pen- Ben Wati: Mission and Missions (1998) (mentioned above) tecostalism in India (2006) Brian Wintle: Biblical Theology and Missiological Education M. T. Cherian, Hindutva Agenda and Minority Rights: A in Asia (2005) Christian Response; Study of Hindu Fundamentalism and Sam Kamalesan: World Evangelization and Christian Leader- Its Impact on Secularism in India from 1947 to 1997 (2007) ship (2005) John Parry, The Word of God Is Not Bound: The Encounter of Saphir Athyal: Integral Mission: The Way Forward (2006) Sikhs and Christians in India and the United Kingdom (2009) Narendra John: Striving for Excellence: Educational Ministry D. Arthur Jeyakumar, Christians and the National Movement: in the Church (2007).35 The Memoranda of 1919 and the National Movement, with Special Reference to Protestant Christians in Tamil Nadu, Several consultation reports have appeared as books with 1919–1939 (2009) collections of essays. Wisdom from many scholars has been made Ebenezer D. Dasan, The Impact of the Gospel on the Adivasis available for all to learn from and to incorporate in forming mis- of South Gujarat (2009) sion theology and praxis. An example of this kind of mission Anand Veeraraj and Rachel McDermott, eds., Pilgrims at the studies is Education as Mission (2004), a report of a consultation Crossroads: Asian Indian Christians at the North American held at Ishvani Kendra (Center for the Word of God) in Pune. Frontier (2009) Another is Emerging Indian Missiology: Context and Concept (2006), Siga Arles and I. Ben Wati, eds., Pilgrimage 2100: A Self by Joseph Mattam and Joseph Veliamangalam.36 Such “emerging” Reflection on Indian (2009; orig. 1995) is accentuated by many initiatives, as identified above. So far, we have only a few textbooks for missiological studies Some of these were Ph.D. dissertations written at major institu- in India. We could mention, however, volumes edited by Sebas- tions such as Aberdeen, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and SATHRI tian Karotemprel, Following Christ in Mission: A Foundational that either were not published or were prohibitively expensive Course in Missiology (1995); Abraham P. Athyal and Dorothy in their original publication. CfCC has brought them out in Yoder Nyce, Mission Today: Challenges and Concerns (1998); affordable editions. It seeks to identify and publish any research Yesudas Athyal, Mission Today: Subaltern Perspectives (2001); and document that is of value for the continuing development of Roger E. Hedlund and Paul Joshua Bhakiaraj, Missiology for the mission in India. Presently, the theses written for the Consortium Twenty-first Century: South Asian Perspectives (2004).37 for Indian Missiological Education (CIME) are being processed S. Devasagayam Ponraj established Mission Educational for publication, the first of which was by Ebenezer Dasan as Books (MEB) in 1987 and has published mission training books noted above. for grass roots missionaries, including the writings of missiol- A second series produced by CfCC is its Missiological Clas- ogy graduates such as Samuel Jeyakumar, J. J. Harris, and J. N. sics Series which reprints significant older works (and some Manokaran. Books published by MEB include: fresh works), making them available to the increasing number of mission students in India. Thus far the series has published S. Devasagayam Ponraj, Introduction to Missionary Anthro- David Bosch, Transforming Mission; Jan Jongeneel, Missiological pology (1993, 2004) Encyclopedia (2 vols.); Luis Bush, The Catalysts of World Evan- J. J. Harris, Evangelicals Are True Ecumenicals (2006) gelization; Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, Liberating the Samuel Jeyakumar, Dalit Consciousness and Christian Con- Nations; and Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non- version (1999) Christian World. Forthcoming volumes include G. V. Job et al., J. N. Manokaran, Christ and Cities: Transformation of Urban Rethinking Christianity in India; O. G. Myklebust, The Study of Centres (2005); Christ and Missional Leaders (2007); Christ Mission in Theological Education (2 vols.); and other books by and Transformational Missions (2008); Christ and New authors such as Andrew Walls, Jan Jongeneel, Wilbert Shenk, Generation Youth (2009) Charles Van Engen, and Charles Kraft. M. Ezra Sargunam, ed., Christian Contribution to Nation In 2009 CfCC started the quarterly Contemporary Christian as Building (2006); Mission Mandate II (2006) a means of promoting the publication of relevant themes, case studies, and methodological insights for mission in present-day In 1994 I founded the Centre for Contemporary Christi- India. anity (CfCC), with a vision of working toward the renewal of Overall, mission study in India has steadily progressed. In ministry, mission, and theological education. CfCC initiated the the past it was hobbled by divisions between Roman Catholics, series Studies in the Gospel Interface with Indian Contexts to evangelicals, and those supporting the ecumenical movement. publish mostly postgraduate research documents dealing with Increasingly, however, the various groups have been more will- the Indian situation in mission history and methodology.38 As of ing to learn from each other and have demonstrated a greater

July 2010 161 willingness to engage in cooperative ventures. Mission study together. The missiology we need should be holistic from the start. is occurring more holistically; overall, there is much hope for It should appeal to the total human need and total creation to be Christian mission in India. Some in India do still hold to old-style redeemed. Instead of an unnatural dualistic outlook, we need to conservative thinking, wishing to shape mission in patriarchal or make sure that we view evangelism and social transformation colonial ways. But relevance is becoming a key factor, and many as the two sides of a coin, as the two partners in a wedding.40 are active in research and publication with a goal of helping the Specific tasks and priorities for the future include: church to learn, profiting as much as possible from the modern emphasis on efficiency and productivity. Contemporary humanity • documenting existing indigenous missions and their requires, not a message that is heard as mythological or mystical, work in India but one communicating realistically and authentically about the • developing archives to preserve the available literature God who cares and renews. A missiology of this type, which in • systematizing bibliographic indexing of books and arti- our broken world strives to reflect Jesus Christ, the crucified and cles for research living one, is the kind of Indian missiology that key leaders will • creating a master list of libraries and their holdings increasingly be exploring and fostering in the days to come.39 • collecting oral histories before the present older genera- tion is gone The Future of Mission Studies in India • training proper librarians, archivists, and Web researchers • training a sufficient number of postgraduates to be The church in India has long been introverted and isolated. We teachers could characterize its mission approach as remaining within the • holding consultations to bring together theoreticians and four walls of its respective denominations, relying on pamphlets practitioners and posters to invite people to come to its meetings. Despite the • conducting field research to and preserve data voices that emerged asking the church to become involved in for study and missional work nation building, the overarching tendency was to stay away • identifying methods of mission involvement that are from the world (which God so loved) and to try to missionize most relevant in the Indian setting through campaigns, crusades, and conventions. Much of the • overall: developing an authentic, indigenous missiology missionary attempt has been sporadic, based on emotion and for India enthusiasm, without thoughtful training or insightful effort to undergird it. Mission theory itself has been undeveloped— All branches of the church—Roman Catholic, ecumenical, indeed, hardly considered. evangelical, Orthodox, and charismatic—should unite their The need is urgent now for us in India to produce the mis- efforts in constructing a missiology that will lead the way into siology that would make us relevant and effective. Missiology the future. Missiology’s vision should be large, not settling for should be taken up in unity and integrity. Such unity is not to be the narrow goal of expanding a denomination, but aiming confined within the ecclesial community but should spread even high to infiltrate and shape the entire Indian community with to the wider world of our common humanity. Such a venture the salt, light, leaven, and wisdom of the eternal Gospel, truly should bring the theoretician and the practitioner to work closely reflecting Jesus Christ, the living Head of the church.

Notes 1. Cyril Bruce Firth, An Introduction to Indian Church History (Madras: 1969); Robin H. S. Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology CLS, for the Indian Theological Library of the Senate of Serampore (Madras: CLS, 1969); Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ (2d ed., College, 1961). Madras: CLS, 1976), see chaps. 1 and 6–8. 2. For information on this period, see Anthony Mathias Mundadan, 8. See www.nccindia.in/aboutncci/vision.htm. History of Christianity in India, vol. 1, From the Beginning Up to the 9. See Kaj Baagø, The History of the National Christian Council of India, Middle of the Sixteenth Century, new ed., and Joseph Thekkedath, 1914–1964 (Nagpur: NCCI, 1965); A. D. Lindsay, Report of the Com- History of Christianity in India, vol. 2, From the Middle of the Sixteenth mission on Christian Higher Education in India (London: Oxford Univ. Century to the End of the Seventeenth Century, new ed. (Bangalore: Press, 1931); J. Waskom Pickett, Christian Mass Movements in India: Church History Association of India, 2001). A Study with Recommendations (New York: Abingdon Press, 1933; 3. A beautifully constructed modern building on the Serampore Col- Lucknow: Lucknow Publishing House, 1934); Charles W. Ranson, lege campus houses the CLRC archives. These are a gold mine for The Christian Minister in India: His Vocation and Training (Madras: mission history, but being difficult to access they are used mostly CLS, 1945; London: Lutterworth Press, 1946). by local research students from universities in West Bengal. The 10. Located at Hyderabad and now named the Henry Martyn author was professor in charge of the CLRC while teaching at the Institute–International Centre for Research, Interfaith Relations, and college from 1998 to 2002. Reconciliation, the institute continues to offer seminars, courses, 4. See the elaborate discussion of the literary debate (both friendly and degree-oriented programs. It also publishes the scholarly Journal and scholarly) between Roy and Marshman in M. M. Thomas, The of the Henry Martyn Institute. Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance (London: SCM, 1969), 11. K. T. Paul, quoted in H. A. Popley, K. T. Paul: Christian Leader (Calcutta: chap. 1, pp. 1–37. YMCA, 1938). Cf. Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ, pp. 274–75, 283. 5. The educational work of Scottish missionaries Alexander Duff, John 12. See D. Arthur Jeyakumar, Christians and the National Movement: The Wilson, William Miller, and others provided the foundation for the Memoranda of 1919 and the National Movement, with Special Reference nation of India, as well as the mission task of the church. See J. C. to Protestant Christians in Tamil Nadu, 1919–1939 (Calcutta: Punthi Ingleby, Missionaries, Education, and India (Delhi: ISPCK, 2000). Pustak, 1999; repr., Bangalore: CfCC, 2009). This volume is based on 6. Siga Arles, Missiological Education: An Indian Exploration (Bangalore: Jeyakumar’s doctoral thesis submitted to the Senate of Serampore. CfCC, 2006), chap. 2, “Development of Indigenous Christian Theol- 13. See the findings of the Pune conference, summarized in Marcus ogy in India,” pp. 63–73. Ward, Our Theological Task: An Introduction to the Study of Theology 7. Kaj Baagø, Pioneers of Indigenous Christianity in India (Madras: CLS, in India (Madras: CLS, 1946).

162 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 “The PhD in Intercultural Studies program trains students to be both theologically astute and anthropologically sensitive, so that they can better apply the Word of God critically in any human or cultural context. The faculty are all experts in their own right, and they contribute to the richness of the program not only by their theological insights but also by their years of significant intercultural experience. The diversity of the students, both in terms of their cultural background and their cross-cultural ministry experience, creates a unique community where theological and missiological thinking is forged in a highly stimulating context.” —Doctoral student How-Chuang Chua came to Trinity after four years of church planting work as a missionary in Japan.

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IBMR Trinity Evangelical Divinity School 05 | 13 | 2009 [email protected] 14. See Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World Growth in Indian Mission Context (1991); Church Planting Approach to (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1938; repr., Bangalore: CfCC, Mission: Principles and Practices of Planting Churches in an Indian Rural 2009), written in preparation for the 1938 meeting of the International Context (1991); and An Introduction to Missionary Anthropology: The Missionary Council, held in , India. Principles and Practices of Communication of the Gospel in Cross-Cultural 15. P. D. Devanandan, “Report from the Christian Institute for the Study Contexts of India (1993). Thanzauva’s volumes were published in of Society” (1951), quoted in Arles, Missiological Education, p. 77. Bangalore by the Asian Trading Corporation for the Academy of 16. E. Stanley Jones, “On the Tambaram Conference,” Guardian, March Integrated Christian Studies, Aizawl. 23, 1939, p. 164. 29. John C. B. Webster, The Dalit Christians, 2d ed. (Delhi: ISPCK, 1994); 17. Philip Potter, “Jubilee Convention Address,” Religion and Society 30, V. Devasahayam, ed., Frontiers of Dalit Theology (Delhi: ISPCK, 1997); nos. 3–4 (1983): 2. Samuel Jayakumar, Dalit Consciousness and Christian Conversion 18. For bibliographic data, see Arles, Missiological Education, entries for (Delhi: ISPCK; Chennai: MEB, 1999); Laxmi N. Berwa, Asian Dalit P. D. Devanandan and M. M. Thomas. Also consult A Catalogue of Solidarity (Delhi: ISPCK, for Dalit Liberation Education Trust, Chennai, CISRS Publications: A Complete Listing of CISRS Publications, 1953–2006 2000); James Massey and Samson Prabhakar, eds., Frontiers in Dalit (Bangalore: CISRS, 2007). Hermeneutics (Bangalore: BTESSC/SATHRI, 2005); A. M. Abraham 19. See Arles, Missiological Education, chap. 6, “The Contribution of the Ayrookuzhiel, Essays on Dalits, Religion, and Liberation (Bangalore: Ecumenical Christian Centre,” pp. 129–39. The reports, books, and Asian Trading Corporation, 2006); V. V. Thomas, Dalit Pentecostalism journal that follow can be obtained directly from the ECC. (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2008). 20. There were several streams in this textbook series. They were writ- 30. See C. V. Elliott, Too Great . . . to Count: A History of God’s Faithfulness ten by various authors, edited by the committee, published by the Through COUNT (Secunderabad: Count Ministries, 2003); see also Senate of Serampore College, and printed by the CLS, Madras. Siga Arles and Gollapalli John, eds., Transforming Links for Mission 21. The UBS Centre for Mission Studies publishes these volumes in (Hyderabad: COUNT, 2003). collaboration with ISPCK. The author has contributed several articles 31. D. Sathyaraj, ed., Transforming the Indian Cities (Hyderabad: IMA, to this series, including “Perspectives on Theological Education,” in 2004). The Church in India, ed. F. Hrangkhuma and Sebastian Kim (Delhi: 32. Publication details: Jeganathan (Chennai: Church of South India, ISPCK, 1996), pp. 194–206; “The Place of Missiology in Theological Department of Mission and Evangelism, 2002); Blaufuss (Frankfurt: Education,” in Leadership and Mission, ed. Mark T. B. Laing (Delhi: Peter Lang, 2003); and Balasundaram (Bangalore: Asian Trading ISPCK, 2004), pp. 169–83; and “Historical Developments of Corporation, 1993). Missiological Education in India” and “Impact of the International 33. The first edition, published in Frankfurt by Peter Lang, was too expen- Missionary Council in Reshaping Missiological Education,” in sive for wider circulation. I therefore prepared a second edition, pub- Missiological Education, ed. Ebenezer D. Dasan and Frampton F. Fox lished in Bangalore by the CfCC. It includes an epilogue covering (Delhi: ISPCK, 2009), pp. 1–26 and 27–38. developments from 1987 to 2005. 22. Mission and Missions, ed. Jey J. Kanagaraj (Pune: UBS, 1998). 34. Publication details: Ilaiah (Calcutta: Samya, 1996; 2d ed., 2005), 23. V. Devasahayam, ed., Frontiers of Dalit Theology (Madras: Gurukul Shourie (New Delhi: ASA Publications, 1994; Rupa, 2006), and Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute; Delhi: ISPCK, Mangalwadi (Mussoorie: Nivedit Good Books, 1996). 1997); Victor Premasagar, ed., New Horizons in Christian Mission 35. Siga Arles, Ashish Chrispal, Paul Mohan Raj, eds., Biblical Theology (Chennai: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research and Missiological Education in Asia (Bangalore: Asia Theological Institute, 1999); and Herbert E. Hoefer, ed., Debate on Mission Association, TBT, and CfCC, 2005); J. T. K. Daniel, ed., World (Kilpauk, Madras: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Evangelization and Christian Leadership (Delhi: ISPCK, 2005); C. V. Research Institute, 1979). Matthew, ed., Integral Mission (Tiruvalla, Kerala: Christava Sahitya 24. Lalsangkima Pachuau, ed., Ecumenical Missiology (Bangalore: Samiti, 2006); and Siga Arles and Brian Wintle, eds., Striving for United Theological College, 2002). Excellence (Bangalore: CfCC, for ATA, 2007). 25. These books are available from FOIM. The earlier volumes were 36. L. Stanislaus, ed., Education as Mission (Delhi: ISPCK, for Ishvani printed by St Paul’s, , and the later ones were published Kendra, Pune, 2004); J. Mattam and J. Veliamangalam, Emerging by ISPCK, Delhi. Indian Missiology (Delhi: ISPCK, for FOIM, 2006). 26. James Massey and Samson Prabhakar, eds., Frontiers in Dalit 37. Publication details: Karotemprel (Bombay: Pauline Publications, Hermeneutics (Bangalore: BTESSC/SATHRI; Delhi: CDSS, 2005); 1995), Athyal and Nyce (Chennai: Gurukul, 1998), Athyal (Tiruvalla, Samson Prabhakar, ed., Mission in the Past and Present (Bangalore: Kerala: CSS, 2001), and Hedlund and Bhakiaraj (Delhi: ISPCK, for BTESSC/SATHRI, 2006). Mylapore Institute of Indigenous Studies, 2004). 27. Publication details are as follows: Kumari, ed. (Chennai: Gurukul 38. To order CfCC publications, contact the Centre at Cfcc94@gmail Lutheran Theological College, 1999); Meshack, ed. (Tiruvalla: .com. Christava Sahitya Samthi, 2007); Ralte et al., Women Re-shaping 39. Such a missiology was explored by the International Association Theology (Bangalore: United Theological College; Delhi: ISPCK, for Mission Studies (IAMS) at its tenth conference, held in 2000 in 1998) and Envisioning a New Heaven and a New Earth (Nagpur: Hammanskraall, South Africa, under the theme “Reflecting Jesus NCCI; Delhi: ISPCK, 1998). Christ: Crucified and Living in a Broken World.” For an account 28. The volumes edited by Hrangkhuma are a SAIACS consultation of this conference and also IAMS, see Siga Arles, “Reflecting Jesus report and a FOIM conference volume; both were published in Ban- Christ—Crucified and Living in a Broken World: A Report of the galore. Longchar’s titles were published in Jorhat, Assam, by the Tenth IAMS Conference,” in Indian Journal of Theology 42, no. 2 Tribal Study Centre, Eastern Theological College. Ponraj’s volume (2000): 212–23. was published in Chennai by Mission Educational Books (MEB), 40. This was exactly the point made in Lausanne Occasional Paper an initiative to produce mission training books for grassroots 21 (1982): Evangelism and Social Responsibility: An Evangelical missionaries of India. Also in the MEB series Ponraj has published Commitment, a joint publication of the Lausanne Committee for Church Growth Studies in Mission: Principles and Practices of Church World Evangelization and the World Evangelical Fellowship.

164 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 My Pilgrimage in Mission Anthony J. Gittins

istorically, pilgrimages were communal undertakings, were real missionaries. I first met them when I was about six Hand their value—from long before Chaucer’s Canter- years old and they were visiting my aunts. I vividly remember bury Tales to long after—owed as much to one’s faith and one’s being captivated by their larger-than-life personalities, their tales company as to the shrine at destination’s end. Pilgrims would of Africa, and—as I would recall in later years—their palpable certainly know where they were bound, but relatively little else. sense of joy and fulfillment. One looked like a bodybuilder They believed that grace did not depend on completion or arriv- and mesmerized me with tales of snakes and wild animals. Of al but on the firmness of intention and singleness of purpose, course I knew that missionaries, whether in “darkest Africa” or whether one actually arrived or died en route.1 This image has in China, were not only cast in the heroic mold but were saintly always been a powerful stimulus to my sense of being called as as well as fearless and adventuresome, but I was attracted by a disciple and sent to participate in God’s mission as Jesus was: the combination of wholesome holiness and courageous com- vocation and co-mission are two sides of a single coin. But over mitment to a noble cause. the years I have significantly modified my understanding of When I was about eleven and in school in Manchester, our pilgrimage and of my part in the missio Dei. religion teacher, a priest with flair, assigned a topic—a “project,” he would say—to everyone in class: we had the whole term to Initial Preparation compile a file or scrapbook to illustrate it. To my great dismay, my topic was “Father Peyton’s Rosary Crusade,”2 which I had Born in 1943 in Manchester, England, into a Roman Catholic never even heard of. The boy next to me was no less dismayed family some generations deep, I grew up with no doubts about at his topic: “African Missions”; he, also, had no idea what that Christianity in principle, yet with gradually developing concerns entailed. For me, this was too good an opportunity! I asked if he about some of the practice I witnessed or heard about. The life would swap topics; he, having no knowledge of either, had nothing and actions of Jesus always seemed far more attractive than the to lose and graciously agreed. And with that slight subterfuge, rather pedestrian or prosaic lives of many people I knew. Even my pilgrimage in mission entered its earliest conscious stage. before 1960, materialism and increasing consumerism were Immediately I wrote to the two African missionaries, excit- magnets for many, and I was by no means immune to the attrac- edly telling them of my project. I soon received a package with tion; yet I wanted something different, though I was unclear as exotic postage stamps of , (designed by to exactly what. In my own immediate family, thank God, there another Holy Ghost Father), containing dozens of photographs were many role models: honest, upright people who were law- of the mission compound, building works in progress, the abiding, socially responsible, and religiously faithful. hospital my two aunts supported, and “missionary-in-action” In that era, when American Westerns romanticized the photos aplenty. They told me that the people in the photos were Wild West and young English boys wanted nothing more at the Mende, though that meant little to me. I spent the following Christmas than a sheriff’s badge and a toy six-gun, or a bow and weeks mounting photographs and including careful explanations. arrow and Indian headdress, the figure of the missionary and Given the rather exotic circumstances of the African missionaries the image of “the missions” were also romanticized. “Mission- and of my project, I aced the course and treasured the scrapbook ary” applied only to professionals (which, for Catholics, meant for years after. priests, brothers, and nuns/sisters), so any boy knew perfectly By now, though, the “missionary thing” was becoming part of well that the way to be a missionary was by becoming a priest or me. And when—not entirely by chance, as I later felt—yet another brother. Celibacy would later be understood as a distinguishing Holy Ghost Father came to my school on a promotional-cum- feature of missionaries, but a youngster would have little or no recruitment drive, I signed up immediately. When, subsequently, real grasp of what that implied until the hormonal tides began he visited my home, he and my father discovered they had been to flood. Catholic families might pray for a son or daughter to at the same school (my current school) at the same time nearly be called to this life, for the vocation was deeply respected, but thirty years before. At this point, I begged my parents to let me there were no priests in the generations above me. One aunt was go away to study to become a missionary. Devout and dedicated a nun, but she lived in England, which meant to me that she was though they were, they quietly refused, saying that my grades not a missionary, because for that she would have to leave home, were not good enough and that I was not (yet) the kind of stuff family, and fortune forever! In any case, out of sight (as she was, of which good missionaries were made; I could not go until I in the convent) was largely out of mind. improved substantially. It was excellent psychology. I repeated Two other aunts were generous benefactors of two missionar- the grade, came out near the top, and within a year had devel- ies who actually worked in Africa and belonged to a missionary oped a real taste for study, and had begun to believe that I would community called the Holy Ghost Fathers. For me, these men be able to meet future academic challenges. The following year, short of my fifteenth birthday, I left home for the junior seminary, Anthony J. Gittins, C.S.Sp., is currently Professor of in which over the next four years I completed my high school Theology and Culture at Catholic Theological Union, education and began to think much more concretely about the Chicago. —[email protected] call to the missionary life. Looking back, I always had a strong desire to help people, and an equally strong aversion to proselytism or deviousness of any kind. Whatever “salvation” might mean, I was convinced that God—who by definition was just and loving—already cared about and “saved” the people long before I might show up, and

July 2010 165 that their eternal chances certainly did not hang on my arrival. intense year of discernment, spiritual direction, and initiation I was quite familiar with the mantra “outside the church no into a religious order. We learned about the vowed life, and we salvation,” but it was never convincing as stated, and never the thought, prayed, and attempted to discern whether the mission- reason for my wanting to be a missionary. My first conscious ary call (along with lifelong celibacy) was possible, desirable, and motivation was simply to work for people less fortunate than fulfilling. After that year I did make the vows of poverty, chastity, myself because of poverty or straitened circumstances; Africa and obedience, with the hope of making them permanent after to me represented a continent of “have-nots,” which seemed to three years. Returning via Paris to England, we “newly professed” be unjust and remediable. Insofar as helping others (loving my students were graciously received and hosted by Archbishop neighbor) was also a Christian thing to do, I did indeed expect Marcel Lefebvre, the just-elected general superior of the Holy to work within the context of a Christian community—indeed, of Ghost Fathers. Three months later Vatican II began, and he would a Roman Catholic mission. But I knew that much of Africa was set his face against the impending changes, soon resign his post, Muslim, and I cannot remember ever thinking that evangeliza- and become known worldwide as the founder of a breakaway tion justified proselytizing, although certainly it would entail group, the Confraternity of Pius X. But my memories of that brief working with, for, and among anyone—of whatever faith—I encounter remain golden: he was kindness itself. encountered. If people were interested, I would be happy to The years of Vatican II (1962–65) coincided with my study instruct them in the faith and receive them into the church, but of philosophy and theology in England, and I was ordained a that was not a primary motive. priest in 1967, completing my studies the following year. This was a heady decade: the “swinging sixties,” with student riots in Seven Years of Theology Paris and Chicago and the aftermath of Vatican II, which brought sweeping changes to the liturgy, ecumenical relations, and the In 1961, having “taken the habit,” I left England along with six understanding of the place of the church in the modern world. By others for the novitiate in south-central France. This was an now my peers were getting married and pursuing their careers;

Noteworthy

Announcing at the University of San Francisco’s Center for the Pacific Rim, The Missions Institute of Orthodox Christianity was inau- will hold an international symposium entitled “Legacies of the gurated April 29, 2010, and is located at Holy Cross Greek Book: Early Missionary Printing in Asia and the Americas.” Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline, Massachusetts. Luke The conference, September 24–26, 2010—which is being held Veronis, adjunct professor of missiology at Holy Cross, was to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the death of the named executive director. He is also of Saints Constantine Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci (1552–1610)—will outline “a and Helen Greek Orthodox Church, Webster, Massachusetts. comparative cultural typology of books printed in the sixteenth The institute announced that its first missiology course will to eighteenth centuries in the context of Christian missions be “The Missiology of Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos beyond the boundaries of Europe as a means of transmission of Albania and Practical Evangelism in Albania,” taught of faith, knowledge, and culture,” according to a symposium by Veronis. This course is offered in cooperation with the announcement. A display of rare original imprints and other Orthodox Christian Mission Center (OCMC), St. Augustine, missionary artifacts at the university’s Thacher Gallery and Florida. A member of the Board of Trustees of the Overseas Gleeson Library Rare Book Room will complement the sym- Ministries Study Center, Veronis was an OCMC missionary posium. For details, go online to the Ricci Institute, http:// to Albania for more than a decade. Yannoulatos is an IBMR usf.usfca.edu/ricci/institute/legacies2010.htm. contributing editor. “God’s Mission, Many Faces: A Portrait of U.S. Catholics The Berlin Society for Mission History (www.bgmg.de/ in Mission” is the theme for Mission Congress 2010, which bgmg-e/) and the Department for the Study of Religion, Mis- will be held October 28–31 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. sion, and Ecumenism at Humboldt University, Berlin, will hold The Mission Congress is sponsored by the Catholic Mission an international conference, “Mission History as History of Forum, whose members include the United States Catholic the Globalisation of Knowledge,” September 16–18, 2010. Mission Association, the Catholic Network of Volunteer Case studies, conducted in German and English, will consider Service, the Pontifical Mission Society, the U.S. Conference the “transcultural appropriation and transmission of knowl- of Catholic Bishops Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, edge” by Christian missionaries in Africa and Asia from the and other organizations. For details or to register, go to www seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. For additional .uscatholicmission.org. information, go online to the journal Social Sciences and Missions Christianity in India will be the focus of two academic (www2.unil.ch/lefaitmissionnaire) or contact Ulrich van der conferences. One is the first annual consultation of the South Heyden, Humboldt University, [email protected]. Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies (SAIACS), to be The Evangelical Missiological Society will hold its 2010 held November 9–12, 2010, at the SAIACS conference center national meeting September 23–25 in Charlotte, North Caro- in Bangalore. The theme for the conference, which is cospon- lina, in conjunction with the meetings of CrossGlobal Link sored by the Institute for Religion and Society in Asia, Oxford, and The Mission Exchange. The EMS theme is “Diversity in U.K. (www.irsa.co.uk), is “Indian and Christian: Changing Evangelical Mission Today.” For EMS meeting details, go to Identities in Modern India” (details at www.saiacs.org/sac www.emsweb.org. .htm). The second conference, to be held February 4–6, 2011, The Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru Univer-

166 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 for me it was a time of intense introspection and discernment. the course than triumphant arrival, more about being part of a By the 1970s the enormous social and ecclesial changes were confraternity than being a lone ranger, and more about waiting bringing a massive and widespread shift in the understanding for the slower and more needy members than striding briskly of the individual, of freedom, and of the Christian vocation. As ahead. A pilgrimage’s success was measured by the daily com- some of the clerical elitism was challenged and as new mantras mitment to remain faithful to the journey, not simply by reaching were chanted, particularly “the church is missionary by her very the journey’s end. Lessons like these were taught implicitly as I nature” and “every Christian is missionary by baptism,” the learned the meaning of community life, an essential component religious orders suffered a quite unforeseen, dramatic, and very of the Catholic missionary tradition. rapid decline of about 40 percent across the board as many people I also learned that the future unfolds in quite unexpected left and far fewer came to join the ranks. This was widespread ways. Members of religious orders, theoretically at least, anticipate across Europe and North America, and it signaled the end of this fact when—attempting to discern the will of God through an era of overseas missionary work that, in the Roman Catholic the directives of their superiors—they vow obedience. Although experience, had started about 150 years previously. a person chooses a particular religious order consistent with the vocation to which he or she feels called, people do not choose Becoming a Missionary (1967–72) precisely where they will serve or the terms of their service. I had been accepted into the Congregation of the Holy Ghost, which had Occasionally still, an overly romanticized view of pilgrimage been founded in the 1840s for the evangelization of Africa, and I allowed me to imagine myself striking out on a long, lonely, and hoped to serve there. But it gradually became clear that I would arduous bush path somewhere in “darkest Africa,” plodding be required to continue with further studies after ordination. on with gritted teeth and grim determination, but sure to arrive That was fine because I assumed the studies would point me in at journey’s end and certain to become a hero. But gradually I the direction of Africa and help me become a better missionary. learned that real pilgrimages are more about steadfastly staying But one day, quite unexpectedly, I was told that I would be sent

sity (JNU), New Delhi, will explore the history of Christianity on the International Council of the World Evangelical Alliance in India and South Asia from multidisciplinary perspectives, (then WEF) and served as chairman of the council. He was under the theme “Encounters, Engagements, and Experi- chancellor of the recently formed Africa International Univer- ences in India and South Asia.” For details, contact Joy L. K. sity. Earlier he served as principal of the Nairobi Evangelical Pachuau, [email protected]. Graduate School of Theology during its formative years. After The Centre for Mission Studies invites submission of retiring from AEA, he founded and was executive director of abstracts for proposed chapters in a forthcoming book “Wit- the Centre for Biblical Transformation, which provides training nessing to Christ in Diverse Contexts,” which also will be the for African church leaders. Born into a royal Muslim family, theme of a consultation being planned for January 12–14, 2011, Adeyemo committed his life to Jesus Christ in 1966 after lis- at the Centre for Mission Studies, Union Biblical Seminary, tening to a tent evangelist. Adeyemo is author of Salvation in Pune, India. The consultation and book will examine how the African Tradition (1997) and general editor of the Africa Bible “understanding of the concept of witness and related terms Commentary (2006). such as evangelism and mission vary in modern understand- Died. Steven de Gruchy, 48, South African theologian and ing. The impetus of witness is related to the theology of the head of the School of Religion and Theology at the University of Holy Spirit,” according to the announcement from the CMS KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Pietermaritzburg, February 21, 2010, 2011 coordinator, Frampton F. Fox, [email protected]. of drowning while river rafting in South Africa. Known for The Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology research on the social history of Christianity in South Africa, (NEGST), now part of Africa International University, will he addressed interdisciplinary issues involving the dialogue offer a Master of Theology in World Christianity degree. The between faith and development and the interface between fifteen-month program, commencing in September 2011, fo- religion and public health. De Gruchy conducted research for cuses on theological and historical developments primarily in the World Health Organization and UNAIDS. Since joining Africa and Asia, with some reference to Latin America and the UKZN in 2000, he contributed to discussion of the Christian Global North. Mark Shaw, James Nkansah, Diane Stinton, and church on issues such as poverty, environment, food security, Stephen Morad are the faculty for the M.Th. program. NEGST’s and HIV/AIDS. Ph.D. in Intercultural Studies program will also offer a World Died. John W. Witek, S.J., 76, historian, author, and pro- Christianity track beginning in 2011. NEGST is sponsored by fessor of history at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C., the Association of Evangelicals in Africa. For program infor- January 31, 2010. Witek was known as a historian of Jesuit mis- mation, write to Shaw at [email protected]. sions in China. His major monographs are Controversial Ideas in China and in Europe: A Biography of Jean-François Foucquet, S.J., Personalia 1665–1741 (1982; Chinese trans., 2006) and Ferdinand Verbiest Died. Tokunboh Adeyemo, 65, evangelical African mission (1623–1688): Jesuit Missionary, Scientist, Engineer, and Diplomat leader, scholar, and general secretary of the Association of (1994; Chinese trans., 2001). He coedited Monumenta Sinica, Evangelicals in Africa (AEA), March 18, 2010, in Nairobi, Ke- vol. 1 (1546–1562), published in 2002 as part of Monumenta nya. Adeyemo was AEA general secretary from 1978 to 2002, Historica, a compendium of early Jesuit history. Witek taught during which time he represented AEA (www.aeafrica.org) in Georgetown University’s department of history, 1975–2010.

July 2010 167 to study canon law in Rome. The idea upset me deeply. Not only to me before. The aggregate of time spent as hospital chaplain did I have absolutely no inclination toward law studies, but also was about five years, and it probably sowed a seed that would I knew that such studies would lead to a desk-bound teaching later germinate as I became involved in primary health care in position, something else I had no attraction to and had never even rural Sierra Leone. considered. I wanted to be a “bush missionary” like the priests I graduated, still expecting to be sent to Nigeria. But that who had been my initial inspiration and who were, in the 1960s, country was still in turmoil, my community there was disrupted, still in Sierra Leone. But I had indeed taken a vow of obedience. and I chafed and waited impatiently for six months. Then I asked Nevertheless, the changes initiated by Vatican II included to go to Sierra Leone and the Mende people if a visa was not the complete revision, and then the consequent suspension, of forthcoming for Nigeria. It was not, and to my immense surprise all courses and degrees in canon law! I felt that this development and gratification, I was sent to Sierra Leone, arriving by sea late was indeed providential. I was then told that I must still do fur- in 1972, almost twenty-five years after having been mesmerized ther studies, but to my astonishment, I was invited to suggest by the two missionaries visiting Manchester. an appropriate subject. As the word “anthropology” sprang to my lips, my superior sprang to his feet: for an instant I thought Sierra Leone (1972–80) he was actually going to hit me. In fact, he virtually embraced me (something totally out of character for both of us) and said The of Freetown (another Holy Ghost Father!) sent me a enthusiastically that I should apply to universities immediately! formal letter of invitation and, knowing that I had recently gradu- So in 1968 I went to Edinburgh, Scotland, for an M.A. in ated in anthropology, posted me “as far away as possible” from anything he construed as civilization. I found myself in a remote area, but among the same Mende people my uninspiring profes- sor had spoken about in Edinburgh. The situation was perfect: I wanted to be a “bush no roads, no electricity, almost no English spoken other than by missionary” like the priests local teachers—and an open-ended apostolate. There were over who had been my initial 240 villages or hamlets, and gradually I worked out a schedule. I would ask the local chief’s permission to talk to the people, and inspiration. if—dimly echoing Abraham in his bargaining with the Lord—I could find twenty-five, twenty, ten, or even six who showed any interest, I would visit that village every month. Thirty villages was social anthropology. The professor was an expert on the Mende the most I could manage, trekking normally twenty to twenty-four people of Sierra Leone. Years before, when he was doing his own days each month. Evangelization meant lots of walking, staying research in Africa, the priests I had known from childhood had overnight in the villages, and speaking with the people about the given him hospitality! He was also the most boring lecturer I ever Christian faith and its relation to their actual lives. Some were heard. The irony was that he was speaking of the very people interested, most were not, but virtually everyone was warm and I had seen in the photographs that constituted my cherished courteous. I did have a Christian community where the mission scrapbook more than fifteen years earlier. station was located and another across the river ten miles further In my second year in Edinburgh I knew two things for north. Most weeks we would have Eucharist there. We also had sure: that when I went to Africa, it would be to Nigeria, where a network of Catholic primary schools, open to all, from which it the members of my English Province were now working; and was hoped that some pupils would grow into mature Christians. that my recent discovery of linguistics (through a single elective My work was absorbing, but in eight years I believe I baptized course) would be life changing. Nigeria should not be a problem, only eleven people: two were a married couple and another five especially as my anthropology professor had dulled my enthu- were from a single family. siasm for the Mende people; but after taking the linguistics elec- I was also doing ethnographic research, having received a tive, I was invited by that professor to concurrently do another scholarship from the Social Sciences Research Council in England; M.A.—in linguistics. This was my second year of a four-year my subject was Mende traditional religion. In 1977 I received my M.A. program, and from then on everything I studied became doctorate from the University of Edinburgh for a dissertation intensely interesting and stimulating as I learned many things entitled “Mende and Missionary (1864–1977),” an account of the I came to believe would be of critical importance to my “real” contact and relationships between the missionaries of the Holy missionary life later. Anthropology and linguistics introduced Ghost Fathers and the Mende people (later published as Mende me to worlds and ways of thinking I had never imagined, and Religion [Nettetal, Ger.: Steyler Verlag, 1987]). On returning to to theorists and practitioners who would shape my future as Sierra Leone in late 1977, I simply continued with conventional missionary, theologian, and teacher.3 missionary work in the villages and a continuing commitment In 1971 I proposed writing my M.A. thesis, which was to to gaining deeper anthropological understanding of the people. be on a topic in either linguistics or social anthropology, on the phonology of an unwritten Nigerian language. But the Nigerian Sierra Leone, London, Chicago civil war, which had ended in 1970, had disrupted the whole country, and I could not get a visa. After some reworking of the In 1980, when I really did feel a deepening affinity with the Mende dissertation topic, I went to Albany, New York (where I had worked people, whom I had repeatedly assured that I would stay with as a hospital chaplain the previous two summers), to research all my life (that was the usual expectation of Catholic missionar- the topic “Patterns of (Verbal and Non-Verbal) Communication ies), my English superior came on visitation and, to everyone’s in the Care of Terminal and Dying Patients.” It fit the academic surprise, appointed me as director of theology students in bill and set me on course for spending many of the following England. The very respectful and highly formal representations twenty-five summers there. This was like a second or parallel by the people who begged him to let me stay fell on deaf ears. pilgrimage and an aspect of mission that had never occurred A month later I was in London, already co-opted to teach mis-

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asburyseminary.edu 800.2ASBURY siology at the Missionary Institute, London. I remained for four Union, then a full professorship in 1990, and then in 1998 the years, discovering to my surprise that I enjoyed teaching. Also, Bishop Francis X. Ford Chair of Missiology. After a quarter I was becoming increasingly convinced of the great importance century I am still in Chicago. Although a substantial part of my of anthropology, not to say linguistics, in the training of future ministry is teaching mission theology and anthropology, I have missionaries. In 1984, ready to return to Africa, I was invited to also, during those years, visited and taught in countries across Duquesne University, Pittsburgh (run by the Holy Ghost Fathers). the Americas and from Africa to the Pacific. I have been blessed I also received an invitation from Catholic Theological Union, with opportunities for anthropological and theological research in Chicago, for one year. Chicago proved to be my destination, (enculturation and inculturation in Kiribati, Pakistan, Tanzania, but I fully expected to be back in Africa after this “sabbatical.” and the Trobriand Islands) or teaching, and for workshops or My pilgrimage in England had also taken me in a new direc- retreats (in , Japan, Philippines, , and tion: working with young people in a local parish and on renewal Europe). And I have discovered the joy of writing more than a courses and retreats. So when I came to Chicago, a priority was to dozen books, both academic (Bread for the Journey [1992], Life and find a suitable ministry to tide me over until my return to Africa. Death Matters [2000], Ministry at the Margins [2002]) and more I was familiar with “armchair anthropologists” who spent thirty popular works (A Presence That Disturbs [2002], Called to Be Sent years rehashing past experiences, and I was keenly conscious [2008]). of not wanting to become an armchair theologian. Fortunately Along the way, I also became father to an adopted daugh- for me, Edwina Gateley, founder of the Volunteer Missionary ter and grandfather to her four children—perhaps the most Movement and someone I already knew in England, had recent- unforeseeable chapter in my pilgrimage in mission. Yet my ly started Genesis House in Chicago for women attempting to anchor remains the basement of a church in Uptown Chicago, escape prostitution, and was looking for a suitable male pres- where I regularly cook for and serve forty-five homeless women. ence in the community. I worked there, spending three or four Years ago, when the men were being moved to a larger facility, days and nights a week, for over a decade. the women “ordered” me to stay with them: after all, they said, But I was also spending time at a shelter for homeless people. it had taken them two years to get to know me, and they did not On January 3, 1985, one of the group, Josie, froze to death outside want to have to do it all over again (and there was that vow of a McDonald’s, hands still on the dumpster from which she was obedience)! That was in 1986. trying to retrieve food. After trying for several weeks to have The possibilities for real engagement in mission are endless; her body released for a Christian funeral, some of us succeeded mission can start wherever we start. But if there is any credibility in arranging a wake and burial service for her. All the homeless to my own teaching, any bringing down to earth of the theol- people were invited, and more than a hundred enjoyed a ban- ogy I teach, it is due in large measure to fellow pilgrims I have quet of fresh beef, fresh vegetables, and “real” mashed potatoes, met over the past fifty years, but especially to what a changing cooked by several of us. It was at that meal that, using a fork population of homeless women has taught me by their words, borrowed from one of the men, I contracted hepatitis B, and my their silence, their pain, and their hope. As much as homeless life and ministry, indeed my pilgrimage in mission, took yet women hunger for nourishing food, so much does today’s world another unexpected turn. need women and men who hunger and thirst for justice. Theol- After several months recovering but not able to return per- ogy that fails to put an edge to the appetite is worth very little. manently to Africa, I was offered tenure at Catholic Theological The pilgrimage continues. Notes 1. John Eade and Michael Sallnow, eds., Contesting the Sacred: The Bombay to Manila and Nairobi to New York, the Rosary Crusade Anthropology of Christian Pilgrimage (London: Rutledge, 1991). sponsored giant rallies and generated popular fervor. It was still 2. Father Patrick Peyton, whose slogans were “the family that prays vigorous when John Paul II was pope. together stays together” and “a world at prayer is a world at peace,” 3. In anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Edward Evans-Pritchard, initiated a “crusade” in the aftermath of World War II. Whole families Mary Douglas, and Victor Turner; in linguistics, Ferdinand de Saus- would commit to praying the Rosary for family unity and world sure, Noam Chomsky, David Abercrombie, and David Crystal, to peace. Hollywood stars (Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, James Cagney) name the most significant. and church dignitaries (Cardinal Spellman) popularized it, and from

OMSC Seeks Director of Program and Community Life The Overseas Ministries Study Center seeks a missiologically represent OMSC at conferences and consultations concerned informed, academically competent, editorially proficient, and with world mission; conduct research on current trends and professionally respected team player for a new senior staff issues in the Christian world mission; and engage in research position—Director of Program and Community Life. and writing projects for the purpose of publication. The successful candidate will participate in general plan- Candidates interested in this position, which commences ning, program development, and administration; be respon- in mid-2011, are asked to send a résumé, a cover letter, and sible for publicity, recruitment, registration, and logistics for three references that provide opinions about their academic, OMSC’s mission seminars; share in lecturing, tutorial instruc- administrative, and editorial skills and experience to Dr. tion, planning and leading worship, and advising international Jonathan J. Bonk, Executive Director, either by e-mail (bonk@ missionary residents and church leaders; nurture relationships OMSC.org) or by regular mail (Overseas Ministries Study with churches, academic institutions, and community agencies; Center, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511 USA). foster OMSC community life by helping to coordinate resident Deadline: September 1, 2010. programs and social activities and by participating in them;

170 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 Who Cares About Mission History? or, The Elder Who Refused to Let the Word “Heathen” Pass His Lips Paul Jenkins

was part of a morning prayer session of former missionar- the Gospel. They created a new Zeitgeist rather than following Iies. The leader for the occasion had recently returned from the culture around them. abroad to parish work “at home.” He began with a story about More and more, though, my thoughts also turned to the ques- one of his church elders who, a few weeks before, had refused tion of whom such arguments were being directed at, anyway, to read the Bible passage set for the coming Sunday morning and why that church elder was being marginalized by having his service because it included a word he was not prepared to let objections pushed to one side. Is it really enough for us Christians pass his lips—Heiden (“heathen”). He had sent an e-mail to his to discuss on our own the centuries of mission that lie behind us, pastor and the other members of the parish council arguing that, doing so behind walls that protect us, for example, from the rage if you started talking about “the heathen” again, you might just that possesses many people when they hear the word “heathen”? as well reintroduce the whole battery of words of prejudice and I remembered an adapted slogan: questions concerning mission discrimination that had dropped out of normal usage since the are far too important to be left to comfortable discussion among collapse of colonial pretensions. One of the others started with mission enthusiasts. The test of the appeal to the biblical under- “N” in both German and English. standing of a word like “heathen” is not whether the definition I suppose the point of this anecdote is that, in lively con- we are offered is correct and true—“truths,” of course, being a gregations, “mission” can be a much-debated issue. But the highly debatable issue in this context. I am surely not the only story set off strong echoes in my own head and memory. As Christian to find the nationalism we meet in parts of the Bible an English-speaking mission archivist in a German-speaking highly unpalatable and no reflection of Gospel truth. The test we world, I have spent much of my life translating from German need to use is whether this kind of discussion helps or hinders into English—thousands of photo captions, to start with. I very open contact in mutual respect with other faith communities. rarely translated the Heiden or heidnisch of the nineteenth-century The utility of referring to the missionaries as “children of their German mission writers into its literal English equivalent. I time” has to be judged not least by whether it contributes to the would, in other words, agree with that church elder. The word incorporation into discussion among Christians of the widely “heathen” is too loaded everywhere, too liable to stop conversa- varied reputations mission has in non-Christian circles. tion before it has really started. It is also liable if used freely in the present tense to turn too many researchers away from using Three Attitudes Toward Mission History mission records in their work—an important point for a mission archivist. Instead, in my translation work I usually use the more Looking back on my experience as a former mission archivist and neutral term “non-Christian.” educationalist, people in the West can, for the sake of argument, I listened with one ear to my colleague’s attempt to justify be divided into three categories when one starts to talk about the having that biblical passage read in the set traditional translation; history of missions. There are those who are loyal and pro-mission “heathen,” he seemed to be arguing, meant something different and who have never really allowed themselves to be confronted and less insulting when it was used in the biblical texts. And with the serious problems that many exponents of mission have anyway, the nineteenth-century missionaries who used the word created in the past. Others are strongly anti-mission, intellectually “heathen” so constantly were “children of their time,” and much and emotionally, and short of a light on the road to Damascus are had to be forgiven them because of that. hardly likely to change their views. But there are many people I fear my mind was too full of skepticism for worship that between these two categories. They may be critical and active morning, and too concerned that Christian self-criticism—in Christians, like the elder who refused to let the word “heathen” my view, a key root of the dynamics of renewal—should not be pass his lips. Or they may be people with no Christian identity blunted by easy excuses and special pleading. How far can an but ones who can be won for a critical, balanced, well-informed, exposition from a Bible dictionary really negate what the people and open-ended discussion of mission’s past, and its present, concerned may well feel have been centuries of insult? And as for too. These categories stand up to examination when I think of “children of their time,” surely all conscious Christians aim to be my experience in Europe. children of God. They look for, and try to contribute to, signs of his The pro-mission loyalists seem to live in a world in which, I kingdom in the world around them, rather than conforming to suspect, the end intended justifies the means, so that the critique whatever populist discourses are promoted by powerful people of past mission effort vanishes into insignificance over against who set agendas in public life. Modern mission was launched the need to applaud and build up Christian witness now. My by people who learned to see new and highly critical truths in sense is that the erosion of the significance of postcolonial cri- tiques of mission in such circles has reached a point at which Paul Jenkins was archivist of the large numbers of people and significant amounts of money get (1972–2003) and concurrently, from 1989, lecturer in invested in a kind of retro style of mission that sees no need for African history at Basel University, Basel, . a clear distinction between the mission style of the nineteenth He co-led a project to upgrade the preservation and century and that of today. accessibility of historical photographs in the Basel The anti-mission exponents of a “never again!” attitude are Mission archive. Earlier he taught at the University mostly dominated by a perpetrator/victim view of what hap- of Ghana (1964–72). —[email protected] pened in the past, with mission(aries) as the active factor, indig- enous people as victims. They have no room in their minds for

July 2010 171 the idea that “receiving” communities may well have had their Christian identity. Expanding this sentence would immediately own policies about what to do with missionaries, which they lead us into complications, for it would involve formulating sepa- followed according to the possibilities open to them, and which rate comments for the Orthodox, the Roman Catholics, and the made missionaries and their message vectors in changes that Protestants. But the basics would be true for each. Each Christian indigenous communities were interested in attempting. Many identity maintains an affirming and largely uncritical attitude people in the ranks of these refuseniks also have, consciously toward its past.2 (Bob Frykenberg’s observation that the story or unconsciously, an often unspoken mission of their own: the of St. Thomas in India is canonical among Orthodox Christians abolition of any kind of religion. They are apostles of secular- could probably be extended, with appropriate substitutions, to ism, and if they are involved in a discussion of a past in which many other confessional/regional foci of identity.) The thesis is institutions of mission were involved, they will adopt a radically also complicated by a sense of the tensions between the formal negative, indeed nihilistic, stance or, alternatively, downplay the founding myths of each regional confessional identity and the importance of mission by passing over it in silence—an attitude informal oral know-how about how to survive as a minority that makes assessing missions’ past performances much more group in each different regional constellation of powerful reli- difficult than it would otherwise be. gious and caste groups. Because of this tension, by no means all But then there is the middle group, which can be interested pro-mission loyalists in India are committed to a retro style of by seeing that innovative analyses of mission are possible, not mission activity that would attempt to emulate the aggressive least, of mission’s past. They may have a degree of dormant tactics of the founding fathers. Nevertheless, the general attitude Christian identity, not satisfied with the Christian activism they toward the past mirrors the minority status of Christians in India see around them, knowing about systemic problems with mission in the past but open to the idea that Christian insights may lead to new forms of activism that make sense in the new situations that are constantly evolving around us. Or they may well be There is the middle group totally outside the churches and have no Christian identity but which can be interested nevertheless have an eye for effective new social and educational by seeing that innovative programs, as well as a readiness to reconsider the activities of past idealists that have been painted in too dark colors by their analyses of mission are detractors. Archives that are run by people prepared to develop possible, not least, of new ideas about what has been going on in mission can do a lot to create new and positive profiles for the idea of mission. An mission’s past. example would be to make use of the postindependence insight that churches with indigenous roots have developed in the past in and around Western missions—that there is such a thing as and holds to an outlook enmeshed in unresolved issues revolv- the history of indigenous Christian communities.1 ing around the traditional Christian claim that evangelization is In view of the size and potentiality of this middle group, a legitimate whether the evangelized communities agree to it or mission archive where the staff is prepared to respond positively not. On the other side stands the widespread Hindu feeling that to all questions, even the most critical ones, and can develop evangelization and conversion are always illegitimate—without innovative ideas about how to answer them has, to my mind, being careful to define what is meant by these terms. a major role to play in presenting mission in public life in the The anti-mission voice in India is strong and has evidently West. And as our “mainstream” Protestant missions celebrate existed as an organized body of thought and practice at least their bicentenaries, one could argue that one of their main tasks since the early nineteenth century.3 In the last couple of decades is to promote nonsuperficial discourse about a past that, in the it has achieved a degree of mobilization never seen before, way it has linked grassroots communities here and there over among other things being given prominent political voice by many generations in the search for the meaning of a common the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, the Hindu nationalist ideal, presents a unique history of supranational fellowship. We party), which was established specifically to represent the Sangh should also be heavily involved in the analysis of past idealists, Parivar—the community of pro-Hindu and anti-Christian, anti- to try to make sure they are fairly treated in the literature and to Muslim, and anti-Buddhist groups in national and state politics.4 learn from them about the fundamental conditions under which It is thus not difficult to hear voices in the Indian media arguing we modern idealist-activists try to live and act. that the real threat to India is conversion (as, for instance, was being asserted by a Hindu leader in at the beginning The Study of Mission History in India of the campaign for the recent general election). The intellectual scope of Hindu nationalism is quickly evident, with its insistence So much for the West. When I retired in 2003, my former employ- that real India is Hindu India (including a campaign to rewrite ers encouraged me to work to develop relations between Indian Indian history with an overwhelmingly “saffron” wash) and its scholars—both inside and outside the churches—and the archive willingness to produce strongly argued (if wrong-headed) tracts I had been running. India was a country that, up to then, had against Christianity, like Arun Shourie’s massive and hostile been only on the margins of my consciousness, and indeed on the statements of what he believes is the essence of Christian theol- margins of work in the archive I was running. I was fascinated ogy and missionary motivation.5 to find that the same threefold classification of mission history’s But what about the middle ground? Indian secularists are “public” obtains in India, and that if we are aware of this, then more alarmed by Hindu fundamentalism, most visible in the BJP, we are faced with an invitation to take part in a very interesting than by anything else.6 Christians, with their claim under the and challenging Indian dynamic. Indian constitution to enjoy nondiscrimination in the setting of There are pro-mission loyalists in India, and they must general , have the kind of political attitudes represent the greater part of the population of Indians with a that correspond to the secular values adopted with Indian inde-

172 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 pendence. And people sensitive to the question of historical this question without the imperative to act immediately in a truth—a large community in a country with such a huge and pressing modern situation. talented body of critical intellectuals—have been provoked by BJP pretensions to ask questions. They are against the BJP’s picture A Broader Role for Mission History? of Hinduism as the victim of colossal Muslim and Christian aggression and seek to clarify the real history of religious interac- What is the conclusion of this attempt to distill several decades tion in India. They look for a balanced assessment of the causes of promoting research on mission history from a seat in a mission that have operated to develop, out of the decay of the Mughal archive? As long as people are devoted to the search for truth Empire, a major modern nation, “the world’s largest democ- (rather than hoping to be able to make propaganda points), one racy,” and one of the intellectual and technical powerhouses of cannot cast the net too widely in the effort to reignite the study the world. This involves a search for the roots of rationality and of the history of missions and their successor churches as a major modern education, which in turn leads to a reassessment of the discipline in the terms suggested here, pointing in new intellectual role of missions in the history of India in the last two or three cen- directions vital for renewal in our twenty-first-century Christian turies. I meet secular non-Christian intellectuals who are curi- identity. Views of mission history that differ from one’s own ous, indeed passionate, about getting access to the Basel Mission should not be regarded as a distressing diversion from a truth we archive in order to work on the questions they find important; all know already. They are often a reminder that other communi- they are passionate about having a balanced mission history ties have their valid versions of the history of Christian missions, rewritten as part of a general new approach to the history of reli- often remembering less creditable sides of what our ancestors did, gions and their institutions in India. which we conveniently forget. Being prepared to be told about A caveat needs to be entered here, however, with huge impli- these is a valuable antidote to too-simple and too-comfortable cations for the potential dynamic of a multilateral reassessment views of the past developed within a specifically Christian, and of mission history that would give India its proper place in our indeed often within a specific confessional, discourse. They are general scheme of things. Work with mission documents from also a valuable spur to thinking new thoughts and developing India during the period of high colonialism—say, from the begin- a mission history that encompasses all the people touched by a ning of the nineteenth century till the interwar period—involves process of mission, not simply those who joined the mainstream reading the products of a form of mission with unpalatable institutions involved. colonial characteristics. On the whole, we see an overvaluation If, indeed, one is associated with the kind of mutual history of thoughts that went on in white heads, and an undervaluation that has grown up over generations of supranational contact of thoughts on the part of what one Basel Mission pastor called linked to the work of one missionary society (as is the case with “brown people.” And the attacks written by most missionaries the Basel Mission in parts of Karnataka and Kerala), I believe that against Hinduism are often shocking in their aggressive, Old one has a moral duty to explore and clarify such relationships.8 Testament–style despising of deities people held dear—and in Nobody should be allowed to disparage such a history without huge numbers still hold dear.7 A broad-based reassessment of meeting strong and articulate replies. Rather, reanalyzing it and the work of nineteenth-century missionaries requires on our re-presenting the product of mutual exploration should be seen side that we distinguish between the parts of nineteenth-century as a major part of the witness that missionary movements, along mission with which we identify ourselves, and those we must with their indigenous counterparts, can give to the power of leave behind us. The overriding question that would come up for Christian insights and motivation. Protestants in a discussion with people of the middle ground is And if secular tendencies are creating a broad curiosity about one that concerns many of us, though not enough: How should mission archives and a preparedness to think new thoughts about Christians like us approach the beliefs of other faith communities? mission history—as seems, judging by my experience, to be the Involvement in a multifaith discussion of mission in nineteenth- case in India—it would be a betrayal of what we stand for to let century India would offer us an interesting space to reflect on such an opportunity for productive encounter pass us by.

Notes 1. This is just one example of the kind of theme that can interest a Christian Apologetics in Early Nineteenth-Century India (Vienna: De broad range of people. Others are the whole tangled but fascinating Nobili Research Library, 1981). history of mission and women, the place of mission education in 4. People who follow Indian politics closely will know that the BJP each nation’s history of modernization, the intellectual history that suffered painful defeats in the last two Indian general elections, and happens everywhere when Gospel impulses become the subject that conflict within the party has, since the election in the spring of broad discussion inside and outside the churches, and mission of 2009, been acute and angry. We should not regard this as a sign, contributions to practical development. however, that the BJP is losing its potential to influence political and 2. During the colonial period the criticism among Christians in India social life, for it still contains highly talented politicians and through of unreformed colonialist missionary pretensions grew and grew, an activist organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is but the impact of Independence has been to create many church deeply rooted in the life of most districts in India. There is, however, situations fully free of overseas missionaries. This development a real question about its ability to command stable majorities. As has allowed what was once a sharp critique to change into an a Hindu nationalist party, it is bound to take sides in tensions idealization of distant figures seen through a kind of golden haze. between castes. It may succeed in buying off lower-caste and Dalit (As I wrote the first draft of this paper, I was receiving photographs groups—Brahmin politicians have been doing just that for a couple of the consecration service of a new bishop of the Karnataka South of millennia! But to an important extent, the BJP’s poor showing in Diocese of the Church of South India, the old heartland of the Basel the last two general elections is probably due to the mobilization of Mission there. In a large cathedral in , full of people, not the lower-caste and Dalit population against the pretensions of the one white face was to be seen.) “twice born,” implicit in the existence of the BJP. Uncertainty about 3. See Richard Fox Young, Resistant Hinduism: Sanskrit Sources on Anti-

July 2010 173 how the BJP should react to this dilemma is probably the issue at have become so complex that I should perhaps make clear that the root of its present conflicts. the heritage of the Basel Mission in the West has been divided, for 5. For instance, Arun Shourie, Harvesting Our Souls: Missionaries, Their all practical purposes, between Mission 21 in Basel and the Evan- Design, Their Claims (New Delhi: ASA Publications, 2000). gelisches Missionswerk in Südwestdeutschland (EMS, Association 6. This is not least so in the lively daily and periodical press—in of Missions and Churches in South-Western Germany) in Stuttgart. newspapers like The Hindu (in spite of its name) and the Deccan These have inherited, respectively, the Swiss and German parts Herald and in the fortnightly news magazine Frontline. of the movement that grew up in support of the Basel Mission. 7. All Christians interested in the history of mission in India should Responsibility for contact with the former Basel Mission fields has have an eye open for literature that helps to explain the nature and been divided between these two organizations, and it is EMS in appeal of popular Hinduism. A good example is a book by anthro- Stuttgart that carries on the work of the Basel Mission in India in pologist and photographer Stephen P. Huyler, Meeting God: Elements ways appropriate to the situation since 1947 and in partnership of Hindu Devotion (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1999). with the Church of South India. 8. Over the last twenty years mission alignments in this part of Europe

Christians in the Age of Islamic Enlightenment: A Review Essay Lamin Sanneh

merging bedraggled from imperial repression and of the Christian world, and therefore of Christian consciousness. Ereeling from the sudden inrush of Greek science and No such fate overtook Mecca, Muhammad’s birthplace, thanks philosophy, Christianity achieved at the hands of Constantine a to Islam’s territorial ascendancy and to the institution of the measure of guarded cohesion before splintering further under annual pilgrimage rite. Justinian in the sixth century. The Christological controversy, Befuddled historians since Edward Gibbon have tried in which had taken its toll by the time of the rise of Islam in the vain to explain the surprising ease and rapidity with which seventh century, survived into the Islamic phase with renewed Islam overwhelmed Christianity in its heartlands. By contrast, vigor. Rather than flinching, the it is much easier to account for fledgling Islamic movement set the changes that left only traces upon the Christian world from Christian Doctrines in Islamic Theology. of Christianity in their wake two different directions: from and where the outcome is without, by the sequestration By David Thomas. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Pp. viii, 392. €135 / $200. self-evident. Islam’s territo- of territory, in the east against rial gains in , the Near The Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā: Eastern Christian Byzantium and in the west Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam. East, North Africa, and Con- against Spain; and from within, stantinople, for example, are by Islamic criticism of Christian By Barbara Roggema. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Pp. xii, 579. €169 / $249. permanent and as easily ac- Scripture and of Christian doc- counted for. Yet in its cumula- trines. In the centuries following tive historical expansion and the collapse of the Roman Empire, Christianity was consolidat- in its contention against the incarnation and the Trinity, ing its hold on the Mediterranean before the rise of Islam in the Islam has pursued the church everywhere, mounting an attack seventh century challenged it seriously. In time, the caliphate on the doctrinal system that has sustained Christianity both long proceeded to hold the papacy to ransom for a hundred years, before the rise of Islam and subsequently. and for much longer Europe danced to the tune of the caliph Once the Muslims succeeded in breaking down Byzantine and, later, to that of the Sublime Porte in . Meanwhile, power, they exposed the Greek intellectual structure of Chris- Islam held tenaciously to the view that Christianity is a cor- tian thought by demanding an answer to Islam’s objections to rupted religion whose doctrines are invalid. Muslims may for the church’s teaching. Since the church employed Greek ideas expedience tolerate Christians, but they may not countenance the and concepts in propounding its doctrines, Muslim scholars religion. Split in that fashion, Christians were granted protected could employ the same ideas in attack once they gained access status as a matter of social policy while the religion remained to Greek philosophical sources from the ninth century, which is under legal restriction. Nowhere is the double fact of territorial precisely what happened with the scholastics of Islam, among disinheritance and religious disqualification more evident than them the Mu‘tazilites. The Mu‘tazilites were prickly defenders in Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace and for centuries belonging in of God’s unity and oneness, which put them at loggerheads the Muslim sphere. It continues to lie on the remote, exotic rim with Christian teachings, but also with mainstream Islamic orthodoxy in respect to the subordinate status the Mu‘tazilites Lamin Sanneh, a contributing editor, is D. Willis gave the Qur’an in preserving the divine unity. The Mu‘tazilites James Professor of Missions and World Christianity, floundered on the issue of the Qur’an. In any case, it helped the Yale Divinity School, and Professor of History, Yale Islamic argument of falsehood that such Christians as Nestorians, University. —[email protected] Jacobites, and Melkites, for example, were in bitter contention among themselves, and it did not escape the attention of the theologians that the language of Christianity was the language of the pagan Greeks and Romans, not the language of Jesus. It is interesting that in Muslim arguments there is little interest in

174 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 Christianity’s historical claims as such, including the measure because the truth claims of Islam make reconciliation and resurrection, a reflection, perhaps, of Christianity’s acute with Christianity’s theological system impossible. The Muslim intellectual Hellenization out of its Jewish Palestinian milieu. Ter- argument thrives from a double advantage—for one thing, with ritorial landmarks simply vanished in the rarefied atmosphere of disagreements among Christians proving intrinsic contradic- Greek philosophical abstraction, allowing Islam to offer material tion, and for another, with the reinforcement that comes from peace in place of the bitter Christological disputes that brought Christians’ acknowledging the truth of those parts of the suffering to the people. Qur’an in which they recognize themselves. In this way Islam In Christian Doctrines in Islamic Theology, David Thomas, a outflanks Christianity in its incompleteness and in its professor of Christianity and Islam at the University of Birming- disagreements. ham, England, collates some of the earliest representative Islamic The story of Baḥīrā, which lends support to the argument texts on Christianity’s doctrinal teachings, introduced here in a of the incompleteness of previous revelations, is the subject of parallel Arabic-text-and-translation format, with introductions Barbara Roggema’s The Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā. Roggema, at that place the texts and their authors in historical context. The four John Cabot University in Rome, is a lecturer in the history of such texts assembled here attest to claims of Islam’s intellectual the Islamic world. In this book she offers critically annotated self-confidence, as well as to its territorial ascendancy, showing texts in Syriac and Arabic, with accompanying translation and Christianity to be only a marginal threat that is undeserving of introductory commentary, on the legend of Baḥīrā. In Muslim serious intellectual attention. Islam’s political advantage gave sources Baḥīrā is the Christian of Syria who, endowed it impunity to reduce Christianity to an incoherent bundle of with foreknowledge of Muhammad’s call to prophethood, contradiction as a leftover religion Muhammad came to finish off. singled him out for future greatness when he hosted the young Under Muslim pressure, Christians were unable to make much of Muhammad and his uncle, Abu Talib, to a meal on one of their the historical priority of Jesus or to offer a satisfactory explana- caravan trading trips to Syria. As the one who saw in Muham- tion for Islam. The Qur’an and the traditions laid explicit stake mad exalted marks of prophethood, Baḥīrā is proof of Christian- to the Christian ground; it would be anachronistic to expect any ity’s foreshadowing the coming of Islam, indicating the conclu- parallels in comparable Christian sources. This reduced Christi- sion also of the mission of Christianity. Muslim apologetics anity to an enclave religion now subsisting on foreign ideas and prefers to see Baḥīrā as the quintessential true Christian in order concepts adopted outside and against the religion’s birthright. to seize him as a stepping-stone to Islam. Appropriately, Baḥīrā Muslims sensed an inherent advantage in this situation. fulfills his function by testifying to the fullness of time for the Islamic arguments about Jesus are driven by the desire to culmination of Muhammad’s prophetic witness. rehabilitate him fully and finally as a figure of the Qur’an, an In their effort to resist being delegitimized, the Eastern action that discountenances Christian claims; and with Christi- churches responded by disseminating stories of Baḥīrā as an anity discounted, Muhammad can claim the final word on any ample Christian mouthpiece well positioned to refute Islamic number of subjects. In contrast to Islam’s strict monotheism, for claims. In effect, the Christian Baḥīrā exuded the confidence of example, the Trinity is adjudged to be wrong and indefensible, the Muslim original. The historical setting is the eighth-to-ninth making Christology the rock of stumbling. The false view of century, which is the period of the high Islamic Enlightenment, prophethood that Christology propagates is remedied by the a time when for the first time Christian theologians bestirred status of Muhammad as prophet and magistrate and by Islam’s themselves from their complacent view that Islam was a laugh- defense of God’s unity: God does not beget, nor is he begotten ing matter to the realization that the religion was a formidable (Q 112). In the fourth and last text of Thomas's book, ‘Abd al- force that could not be dismissed or ignored. Christians realized Jabbar, the renowned Mu‘tazilite scholar writing in the tenth that the most serious challenge was Islam’s contention that it century, mounts a spirited attack on the Trinity, saying that God has a fuller, truer account of Abraham and Jesus, making it the cannot be at the same time internally differentiated as three per- fulfillment of their message and thus a transcending of both sons and uniform as one substance, as Christians contend. Much Christianity and Judaism. In his correspondence with Caliph of this theological disputation is directed to Muslims who share ‘Umar II, the Byzantine emperor Leo III, for instance, elects on the confused and confusing picture of Christianity it portrays historical grounds to ridicule Muslim claims that Abraham saw rather than to Christians in terms of engaging them with respect and visited the Ka‘bah. For their part, Muslims promoted the to their own theology. Abrahamic tradition of the Ka‘bah by appealing to the author- The works Thomas has so ably collated and discussed with ity of the revealed, impeccable Qur’an. This put Leo III in the impeccable erudition bring into full view the nature and range awkward position of having to contend with the Muslim view of of Islamic refutations of Christianity, and it is impressive to the Qur’an as infallible against his own historical observations think that the basic thrust of these refutations, often presented about Abraham. as unassailable proofs, has withstood the test of time. Islamic The fruit of her dissertation, Roggema’s book is a meticu- theology has not budged from this position for over a millen- lous and skillful compilation of relevant materials in Syriac and nium now, and it is for that reason sobering to reflect that, even Arabic. The Legend of Baḥīrā is the church’s way of providing in with the post–9/11 burst of Western scholarship on Islam, the retrospect for Muhammad’s Christian catechism, and thus indi- ground has scarcely shifted. The only difference is that Western cating a reinstatement of Christianity against Islam. It draws on apologetics have tended to veer toward panegyrics by endorsing Islamic sources and models and refocuses them toward Eastern anti-Christian Islamic strictures either explicitly or by default, Christological apologetics. Accordingly, the role of Mary in the which would lead anyone to wonder how pertinent all this is Qur’an as Virgin Mother (Q 3:38, 40; 4:168; 19:17; 66:13)1 is fleshed to Islam’s territorial view of religious authenticity, not to say out with the story in Luke’s Gospel. Christian polemics here is anything about its willingness to take seriously a Christianity defensive, with apologists using the Qur’an against Islam for that has long been dispossessed of the birthplace of its founder. that purpose. The common themes between the two religions fissure These scholars used the prayer of guidance in the opening predictably into contested claim and counterclaim, in large chapter of the Qur’an, for example, as proof that Christianity

July 2010 175 is the guidance in question, as the Qur’an testifies (Q 5:50). 15:86, 90–91, 103–6; 20:111; 25:33; 39:29; 41:44; 43:30; 56:76–77). The view that the Qur’an implicitly acknowledges the merit of As such, the idea is roundly and in timely fashion condemned Christianity was a critical element of Christian apologetics, even in the ninth-century magisterial hadíth collection of Bukhari, for though Muslims view such evidence as proof of Islam’s finality. example. In either case it is obvious that both Qur’an and hadíth Muhammad for that reason brings a revelation so that “the People are occupied with refuting interested charges of invention and of the Book may know that they have no power over anything of prevarication. God’s bounty, and that bounty is in the hand of God; He gives The controversy of Baḥīrā is germane to the early Christian it unto whomsoever He will” (57:29–30). Christian critics must estimate of Islam’s authenticity, so that apocryphal imputations now contend with the argument that the legitimacy of Islam is to Baḥīrā of views Christians preferred that he had professed nothing less than a function of God’s unfettered bounty. The served the purpose of an apologetic response to Islam’s expanding weak side of this argument, however, is how consistent God’s mission. Christians could not let the claim stand that Muham- bounty is with Islam’s own claim of finality, with Muhammad mad obtained any valid religious teaching from Baḥīrā, for that as indispensable. Closing the door after Muhammad seems would buttress Islamic claims of finality, nor could Baḥīrā simply arbitrary, given the reasons for forcing the door in the first be dismissed out of hand, lest that play into the argument that place. Christians could not face the truth, even if it came from one of Reflecting the reality of Islamic power, theLegend has Baḥīrā them. Accordingly, Baḥīrā is reclaimed as a repentant monk after appealing for protection of Christians under Islamic rule. For his collusion with Muhammad, with the tone of his rehabilita- example, Baḥīrā speaks of a future age in which Muslim rule tion acquiring the exaggerated style of a penitent whose early will exempt monks from payment of taxes, a reference to the death interrupted his fledgling mission to Islam. The well-known actual historical situation. An interesting discussion concerns Apology of al-Kindi belongs to this apologetic genre and betrays worldly pleasures in paradise, with Muslim apologists drawing a level of desperation that shows an alarming thinning of Chris- on Gospel accounts to support the qur’anic picture of physical tian ranks on the religious front. Islam had by then virtually closed gratification. Christian exegesis of the Qur’an in the eighth century off all the major corridors of circulation around the Mediterra- played a crucial role in the evolution of Muslim exegesis, and it nean, forcing European states, including the Carolingians under is plausible to believe that such exegetical work helped shape the Charlemagne, to sue for concessions from . That was earliest biography of Muhammad. Job of Edessa, a ninth-century how Constantine-Cyril and Methodius reported to Baghdad for Christian scholar of Greek science and philosophy, offered a permission to embark on their mission to Moravia and beyond. dissenting opinion by propounding a spiritual view of heaven The Apology of al-Kindi became a staple of European medieval in which physical laws operate on matter in a fashion that our polemic against Islam. When we remember that by that time present finite state cannot allow us to comprehend, thus offering Europe was slowly being awakened to the intellectual treasures a picture of heaven uncluttered by contingent sense impression. that Muslim scholarship was making accessible in Arabic trans- In later centuries and drawing upon such ideas, Avicenna and lations, from Gerard of Cremona and Hermann the German to Ibn al-‘Arabi, for example, came to a similar conclusion. Michael Scott and John of Palermo,2 the accompanying polemic The figure of Christ understandably dominates the intel- even of Dante was necessarily defensive and reactionary. The lectual exchange of Christians and Muslims, whether relating alleged unreasonableness of Islam was in spite of Islam’s dem- to Christ’s prophetic role in history or to his status as the incar- onstrated intellectual excellence. Europe complained because nate image (surah), sometimes the “veil” (hijab), of God. One Europe had fallen behind, with major disasters of war, plague, Christian theologian uses “veil” in this sense for the incarnation: the witch craze, and fire lurking just beyond the horizon. When wa-tattakhidha lahá hijában, “so he betook for himself a veil.” It the Dominican William of Tripoli warned of the menace of Islam, evokes the line “veiled in flesh the Godhead see” of Charles he might have been referring with equal credibility to the Wesley’s Christmas . Peter of Bayt Ra’s of the ninth century lethargy and divisions of Christian Europe. As Sir Richard Southern answers his Muslim critics by contending that in the incarnation pointed out, when the curia condemned the ideas of Dante and divine sovereignty is abated out of mercy, justice, and wisdom to Meister Eckhart, among others,3 and European princes turned on subdue Satan and to redeem man. God does not have to hoard one another instead of uniting against Islam, for example, it showed or flaunt his power to possess it, such being the prerogative of Europe’s cultural impulse flagging.4 Despairing of a splintering being all-powerful. This produces the interesting argument that Christianity and its worldly distractions, John Wycliffe added the incarnation is islam, that is, ultimate divine “submission,” his own aggrieved twist by giving voice to this sense of Western with some apologists arguing that “faith” as imán (Q 49:14) flows uncertainty vis-à-vis the Islamic world, declaring, “We Western from this source, of which Christ is the ultimate expression. Mahomets, though we are only a few among the whole body of Theodore, a Christian apologist, says that the qur’anic verse here the Church, think that the whole world will be regulated by our shows that the submission (islam) Muhammad called for is judgment and tremble at our command.”5 It was that attitude that intended to be a foreshadowing of faith (imán) in God that Christ provoked Islam into existence, Wycliffe challenged. The remedy taught. In that sense, as Patriarch Timothy said to Caliph al-Mahdi, for Christianity, he felt, was a return to suffering and poverty as the Qur’an was intended for those called the ummiyyún, that is, Jesus taught, values that were the opposites of worldly power, people not acquainted with the Scriptures, which is why there secular dominion, and self-will. The church had followed Islam exist veiled, abstract qur’anic references to scriptural themes in making laws for aggrandizing power and in requiring blind suitable for those needing a rudimentary introduction to the full obedience from believers. Christendom had reduced orthodoxy truth awaiting them. to a tawdry matter of morals and practice and made a commod- The report that Baḥīrā accurately foretold the prophetic ity of doctrine. It is little surprising, Wycliffe insists, that warfare vocation of Muhammad lends itself to the idea that Baḥīrā also should find ready soil in the church, for by embracing the world taught Muhammad the little he knew about the Religion of the the church embraced the values from which sprang the impulses Book, which contradicts Muslim claims of the Qur’an as an of war. infallible, unmediated revelation (Q 4:84; 10:16–19, 38–44; 12:1; The habit of heresy hunting and sectarian animus among

176 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 Who is planting new churches Native missionaries serving among unreached towns and with indigenous evangelistic Q. villages of India? A. missions.

Who provides financial Christian Aid is assisting more than 200 India missions. assistance to the indig- They are winning souls and planting new churches Q. enous missions of India? A. among more than 400 different tribes and nations. For more than 50 years Christian Aid Mission has been Q. How is Christian Aid financed? sending financial help to indigenous evangelistic ministries A. Christian Aid is supported entirely by based in unevangelized countries. Currently more than freewill gifts and offerings from Bible- 700 such ministries are being assisted in Asia, Africa, Latin believing, missionary-minded Christians, America and Eastern Europe. They deploy more than 75,000 churches and organizations. native missionaries who are spreading the gospel of Christ among unreached people within more than 3000 different Q. Are other indigenous missions in need tribes and nations. of financial help for their missionaries? A. Christian Aid is in communication with Christian Aid Mission more than 4000 indigenous missions, some P. O. Box 9037 based in almost every unevangelized coun- Christian Charlottesville, VA 22906 try on earth. They have over 200,000 mis- . . . because we 434-977-5650 sionaries in need of support. All Christians love the brethren. Aid www.christianaid.org who believe in Christ’s “Great Commission” are invited to join hands with Christian Aid in finding help for thousands of native mis- When you contact Christian Aid, ask sionaries who are now out on the fields of for a free copy of Dr. Bob Finley’s the world with no promise of regular finan- 285-page book, REFORMATION IN FOREIGN MISSIONS. cial support. Christians was hard to kick, and before long the encounter with to the fascinating role of Sergius Baḥīrā as the Islamic nettle that Islam revived the old Christological conflicts, and Sergius Baḥīrā Christians were all too eager to grasp, only to be stuck with him was recruited to serve the part of factional catalyst. Cranked up after he ceased to be of any evident advantage. in turn as Arian monk, Nestorian partisan, Jacobite insinuator, It is unlikely, though no less regrettable, that current interest hostile witness, guileless victim, and interfaith mercenary, in Islam as a touchstone of Western tolerance and open-minded- Baḥīrā comes full circle, having meanwhile executed an adroit ness will rise much above press and media obsession, including errand for the beleaguered Christian imagination. The Islamic President Obama’s much-admired Muslim peace offensive, to the epicenter was the pivot of the literary epicycles depicting his level of critical reflection and balanced engagement, the point at diverse roles, proving that Islam was no laughing matter after all, which the books reviewed here will prove their real value and but also that the initiative for serious engagement had drained merit. The Islamic Enlightenment was not simply a convenient itself in a tide of fabrication of anti-Islamic polemic and mutual cargo delivering Greek learning to the West; it was a profound Christian recrimination. intercultural event in which the Christian world saw itself Al-Ghazali wrote about the importance of a religious perspec- reflected in surprisingly bracing and self-revealing ways. The tive on philosophical arguments over the fundamental claims of books noted here are installments of the Brill series “History of religion, saying that if faith were based on a carefully ordered Christian-Muslim Relations.” In these times of retrenchment in argument about miracles as supernatural proofs of prophecy, it academic publishing, it is a thankless entrepreneurial invest- is likely that faith would be negated by an equally well-ordered ment to commit to this scale. It is all the more reason to wel- argument showing how difficulty and doubt could undermine come the series as an invaluable service to scholarship and to such proof. As an object lesson, that procedure can be applied interfaith understanding.

Notes 1. The qur’anic verse numbering I am using is the Flügel version used William of Ockham, and the Franciscans; see R. W. Southern, in Blachère, Bell, and Arberry, among others. It is a slight variation Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: Har- of the Cairo edition. vard Univ. Press, 1962), p. 73. 2. Charles Burnett, “Arabic into Latin: The Reception of Arabic 4. Harvard historian Myron P. Gilmore describes how rivalry and Philosophy into Western Europe,” in The Cambridge Companion conflict among European princes impeded papal attempts to mobilize to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor a united front against Islam’s strategic challenge to Europe (The (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2005), pp. 370–404. See also World of Humanism, 1453–1517 [New York: Harper & Row, 1962], W. Montgomery Watt, The Influence of Islam on Medieval Europe pp. 15–20). (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1972). 5. Southern, Western Views of Islam, pp. 79–80. 3. The condemnations included the ideas of Marsilius of Padua,

Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies Takes a New Approach to Doctor of Missiology

In 2006 Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Intercultural relevant to the topic and followed by writing of a paper Studies, Pasadena, , introduced a new approach to that lays the groundwork for an aspect of the dissertation. study for the doctor of missiology degree. Incoming students Throughout the program students critique each other’s work form nonresidential cohorts built on a significant commonal- both in writing and in oral responses to student presentations ity, and they work together throughout their four years in the made as part of the modules. Between the annual seminars program. Often students come from a common region or share students go online to communicate with professors and other a common research interest. In some instances they may come members of the cohort. They use the Internet to participate in from the same mission or denomination, enhancing solidarity threaded discussions, to share their critiques of the readings, among the students as they work through the program. and to conduct research. The program builds on the master of A strength of the nonresidential-cohort approach to arts program in global leadership, which also uses a cohort/ doctoral study is that it enables students to remain within modular format. their ministry context while completing their studies. They Members of the School of Intercultural Studies’ first co- can both continue in ministry and obtain a doctoral degree. hort have now completed their dissertations. The number of Each cohort meets yearly for an intensive two-week seminar students enrolled has grown to the point that more students facilitated by School of Intercultural Studies faculty. Twice are now enrolled in the D.Miss. program than for the Ph.D., during the program the students travel to Fuller’s campus which is primarily an on-campus program. The cohort ap- in Pasadena; the seminars during the other two years may proach around which the D.Miss. program is built affirms be held at predetermined sites germane to the purpose and the field orientation and focus that led Donald McGavran to goals of the cohort. found the school in 1966. The program followed by the cohorts consists of four For detailed information about the doctor of missiol- modules that focus in turn on (1) missiological foundations ogy program, go to www.fuller.edu/academics/school-of- and program design, (2) relevant theoretical literature and intercultural-studies/dmiss/about-cohorts.aspx. research methods, (3) the nature of leadership in relation to —R. Daniel Shaw the organizational, topical, or regional focus of the cohort ______and the dynamics of change, and (4) integration of the previ- R. Daniel Shaw teaches anthropology and translation, with special ous three years’ work into a coherent whole that results in a emphasis on doctoral research methods, at the School of Intercultural completed dissertation. Studies, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California. The annual two-week seminar is preceded by reading —[email protected]

178 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 Book Reviews

Handbook of Christianity in China. Vol. 2: 1800–Present.

Edited by R. G. Tiedemann. Leiden: Brill, 2010. (Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 4, China, 15.) Pp. xxxviii, 1,050. €249 / $369.

It is difficult to know whether the the hundreds of different prefectures of a biographical essay by Fredrik Fällman magnificent second volume of the and vicariates apostolic. Even here, on the Swedish Protestant mission is Handbook of Christianity in China will be though, it is useful to have the pinyin presented as a foil to understandings of of greater value to scholars or to students. names of districts alongside the earlier mission driven by imperial goals. Other This grand tome of a reference volume, Romanization and the characters, as it is to essays are useful because they distill a weighing in at over four pounds, has have a reference list of the Chinese names well-known period or topic into a concen- been long awaited in the ever-growing of all the Protestant mission societies. trated few pages of value to the general world of Chinese Christian studies. Given Snapshot data sets—such as statistics on reader: P. Richard Bohr’s article on Taiping its size and cost, the volume is clearly the numbers of priests, brothers, sisters, religion is an excellent example of this. aimed at libraries, but it will be a truly catechumens, and churchgoers by district In such a full historical survey, there impoverished library that cannot afford in 1940, or the number of Protestant places are inevitable imbalances. Whereas the to stock such a comprehensive work of of worship or communicant members late Qing period enjoys some 400 pages scholarship. Following on from volume 1 in 1950—give a basis for understanding of essay text, and the Republican era 300, (2001), edited by Nicolas Standaert, Gary growth and for teaching about the reach the period from 1949 to the present is Tiedemann’s volume, which will surely of the Chinese church. And someday allotted a rather scant 100 pages. This may remain the reference work on late Qing someone may need to know that, while be a function of the quantity of material and twentieth-century Christianity for the first mission society operating in available, but it betrays one of the volume’s some time to come, picks up the story just China was the Order of Friars Minor in inherent biases: toward missiological and before the first Protestant missionary steps the thirteenth century, the latecomers in historical studies. There is almost nothing foot in China in 1807. Catholic, Protestant, the Society of St. Sulpice (1934) and the on worship or liturgy in the church, for and Orthodox histories are all covered in Order of Discalced Carmelites (1947) had example, and very little on the theology both the reference material and a series of barely arrived before they were expelled. of the emerging independent Chinese analytic essays. Tiedemann generously thanks his advisory church. I would have liked to see a more It is worth taking some time to grasp board and assistants, but he should take detailed treatment of the thought of some the structure of this volume of a thousand- the credit for this immense task of data- early twentieth-century theologians, such plus pages, since much searching among gathering. Students at undergraduate and as Wu Leichuan or T. C. Chao, and more the indexes, appendixes, and sections might graduate levels now have a first port of coverage of the establishment of the be saved by doing so. The book follows call to help them with source queries for Three-Self Patriotic Movement church in a three-part overall structure, separating almost any question related to Chinese the 1950s. Only one mainland Chinese out the late Qing China, Republican Christianity. Since no researcher in the historian appears among the essay writ- China, and the People’s Republic (PRC). field can be aware of all of the sources ers, although several are from Hong A coda presents a concluding essay on the available in each language, including the Kong. The acronyms of the Western mis- Bible in China across the two centuries, a various European languages included, sion societies are allotted several pages of welcome theological survey to complete whose resources have been underutilized, space, but there is no attempt at a list of an overwhelmingly historical volume. the volume also serves as a reference tool contemporary Chinese churches. Given The three-part political/chronological for experts. the expertise of the editor and the diffi- division is mainly functional, and each part For the general reader and for most culty of providing accurate contempo- comprises four parallel sections: Sources, students, the essays and articles will be rary data, this is understandable, but a Actors, Scene (i.e., background situation in the focus of interest. Fifty essays, by thirty shortcoming nevertheless. China), and Themes. The “Sources” section leading scholars in the field, cover topics The foreign-centeredness of the dis- for each era lists Chinese primary sources from conversion methods, to opium, to course is at times a question of ordering. (histories, plus provincial, municipal, communities of Chinese women religious. The first article in the section “Actors” in the and local archives) and Western primary The geographic scope is widened in post-1950 part, by Beatrice Kit Fun Leung, sources, both printed and manuscript, the PRC section to include , is devoted to missionaries, although they listed by denomination and country, Macao, and Taiwan. The concentration were definitely not the key players in the alongside translations, periodicals, and of such scholarship in one volume is its church in this period. Leung’s article is, special collections. As Tiedemann notes, forte; in short but authoritative essays, moreover, old-style mission history, a play the proliferation of mission societies (to the reader can trace key historical events of religious orders and numbers. History more than 400) in the early twentieth from the Taipings, to the Boxers, to the is ever interpretation, but noting at the century means that some players are listed effects of the Korean War, and can learn outset that “the exile of Chinese clergy with only bare details in the appendixes. of the key figures and actors and follow and religious was not due to expulsion The achievement in producing this wealth the ideological debates that accompanied but flight from the hardship imposed on of up-to-date reference material in the such events. Some of the essays are helpful them in political purges” (p. 795) obscures Handbook should not be underestimated; because of their rare perspective; a short the greater story of those Chinese clergy it is a major strength of the volume. chapter by Alexander Lomanov on the who did not take flight, and Leung’s Some data are fairly specialized, such rebuilding of the Russian Orthodox story immediately shifts to Hong Kong as the table in the appendix of Roman mission, 1900–1917, covered a gap in my and relief programs rather than staying Catholic Jurisdictions, 1924–46, listing knowledge, for example, and the inclusion with those who remained. In contrast, in

July 2010 179 Alan Hunter and Chan Kim Kwong’s as that of Alan Miller, which discusses the adherents, where even state churches article on the growth of the Chinese church main Christian studies centers in China, may run Bible studies, house groups, since 1949, they acknowledge that many is already dated. and English-language worship services details of their subject “will probably There is one debate on which readers led by lay preachers, in a context (in the remain forever a mystery” because much might expect to distill enlightenment but Protestant church, at least) where many of it was of necessity undocumented and that is covered cautiously in the Handbook: churchgoers now attend both TSPM and underground. Hunter and Chan’s essay that of tension between the official and house-church services. A reference volume is helpful in reminding us that Chinese unofficial churches in the PRC era. It is still cannot really allow itself the luxury of intellectuals and Christians (as well as perhaps too soon to adequately assess the polemic discourse, a further reason why many foreigners) did not need prodding record of division and bitterness between the late Qing and the Republican eras are to support the Communist aims and ideals those who acceded to Communist Party covered more strongly and in more detail. early in PRC rule. demands and those who did not. Articles I began with the difficulty of gauging Although the title of the Handbook by Dunch, Tiedemann, and Miller, among which audience this second volume proclaims its scope as 1800–present, others, touch on these debates, without of the Handbook of Christianity in China there is very little on recent church a strong party line emerging. The status would appeal to more. Another difficulty movements and politics, in part because of the underground Roman Catholic has arisen: that of doing justice to this much of the growth since the 1990s is still Church and the official church vis-à-vis splendid volume in a short review. I can filtering through academic minds and Rome is likewise treated with kid gloves. only recommend that anyone interested in publications. The lag time means that The closest the volume gets to a view on the recent history of Christianity in China the proliferation of academic works in the divided church appears in Chan’s take a trip to the nearest academic library Chinese, for example, on topics such as article: “We feel it mistaken to regard the and dip into the Handbook—it will prove Christian philosophy or the sociology of TSPM and all connected with it simply a long and absorbing visit. Christianity, is barely attested, and there is as puppets, even though many Chinese —Chloë Starr minimal mention of new phenomena such Protestants do not recognise the TSPM as as the megachurches. An inherent prob- a legitimate church leadership” (p. 878). Chloë Starr is Assistant Professor of Asian Theology lem of survey publications is that they can- This is surely too negative a statement to and Christianity at Yale Divinity School, New not be kept current, and so an article such represent the present situation for most Haven, Connecticut.

A History of Bible Translation. environment to national approaches in a postcolonial/missionary era. By its very Edited by Philip A. Noss. Rome: Edizioni nature, Bible translation (BT) implies di storia e letteratura; New York: American ongoing research in the changing dyna- Bible Society, 2007. Pp. xix, 521. €55 / $75; mics of scholarship and living languages. paperback $60. This includes a critical discussion of the shift from Nida’s mid-twentieth- More than just a “history,” this edited and theory, methodology, and “The Field century dynamic equivalence approach to volume is a veritable library of material Today.” Robert Hodgson, Jr., dean of a contemporary use of relevance theory. reflecting on the background, theories, the Nida Institute, writes the foreword; Debates over the style and focus of the text methods, and experiences of Bible Philip Noss presents an introduction reflect arguments that have raged through translators from the to the and overview, and a section editor the entire history of BT. present. The book, the first in a series introduces each section. Chapters are Theological issues are paramount of publications by the Eugene A. Nida written by subject specialists who in translations of the Bible. Translations Institute for Biblical Scholarship, New discuss the history, arguments, theoretical by their very nature are intended to be York, and well summarized by Dieudonné controversies, and principles relevant used, and they reflect how people apply Bessong and Michel Kenmogne in not only to understanding their topic but Scripture to their lives. Controversy their chapter on contemporary Africa, also to enabling application to readers’ over the development of so-called local encompasses a “history, though not interests, whether historical, theoretical, theologies springing from vernacular chronological . . . [and] critical analyses geographic, or cultural. Following this translation has permeated BT history. hinging on the examination of . . . structure entails some repetition, which Indeed, BT means doing theology, as Noss translators’ competencies and training, readers may find somewhat distracting. points out. technology, manuscript preparation, The writers are not afraid of contro- This volume, then, presents past communication, cultural politics, media versy, citing secular and Christian theo- experience and current thinking on what and the Bible translation perspective” reticians, as well as critiquing issues from is recognized as the greatest translation (p. 353). A wonderful collection of plates translator identity to the use of computers enterprise in the history of the world— depicting ancient translations, regional and the relevance of the medium in which making God’s Word available in the examples, and photos from the annals of a translation appears. Clearly, “translators world’s languages. It delineates long- the American Bible Society, as well as an never work in a pure and clean, ahistorical standing controversies, contemporary extensive bibliography and three indexes . . . world in which they follow translation- challenges, and ongoing sociocultural (Scripture references, languages, and theoretical agendas. Rather, they serve and ethical issues that will continue subject-author), all contribute to the value commissioners and audiences in specific to characterize translation in its role of the book, which I will gladly recommend times and places” (p. 273). as mission. Noss and his Bible Society to my translation students. Of central importance is a clear associates clearly and forthrightly reflect The volume is organized into four recognition of a shift from missionary/ on issues that translators face as they sections delineating history, epistemology expatriate approaches in a colonial render God’s communication to all

180 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 humankind into the particulars of a ver- The research for this dissertation Born Again: Evangelicalism in nacular, whether Greek (third century and resulting book is comprehensive and Korea. b.c.e.), Gothic (fourth century c.e.), Eng- deep. Björkgren-Thylin’s work is, in short, lish (fourteenth century), or Samo (twenty- excellent. By Timothy S. Lee. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai‘i first century). —William J. Yoder Press, 2010. Pp. xvi, 228. $40. —R. Daniel Shaw William J. Yoder, a retired missionary of the PCUSA, South Korea occupies a unique position on R. Daniel Shaw, Professor of Anthropology and served in Thailand for forty-seven years. He is Dean the religious map of the world. Normally Translation, School of Intercultural Studies, Fuller Emeritus of the McGilvary College of Divinity, a country is either secular, like China, or Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, served Payap University, Chiang Mai, Thailand. He also it is dominated by one particular religion, as a missionary in Papua New for twelve volunteers as Liaison for Southeast Asia for the as in Buddhist Japan, Islamic Indonesia, years. He is the author (with Charles Van Engen) PCUSA. He was born in Canton, Ohio, and resides or Hindu India. Korea is neither. Official of Communicating God’s Word in a Complex in Chiang Mai. census records show that over half of the World: God’s Truth or Hocus Pocus? (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).

Miracles, Missions & From Pioneer Mission to American Pentecostalism Autonomous Church: Lutheran GARY B. McGEE Mission Cooperation and Church “Historical scholarship at its best....will serve profitably Building in Thailand, 1976–1994. in undergraduate courses in religion, in seminary courses in church history and missions, and in doctoral courses By Marika Björkgren-Thylin. Åbo, Finland: in historiography and historical method.” Åbo Akademi Univ. Press, 2009. Pp. 434. €31. —Grant Wacker, Duke University Divinity School The American Society of Missiology978-1-57075-854-6 Series paper $30.00 Marika Björkgren-Thylin’s book is an insightful, detailed, and readable The Gospel Among the Nations adaptation of her doctoral thesis. It is unusual among dissertations for being A Documentary History of Inculturation so well written. ROBERT A. HUNT The author shows an understanding “An invaluable collection of primary and secondary of the Thai cultural and religious milieu documents....An extremely useful resource for anyone that is quite remarkable for someone who attempting to engage in mission authentically and has not lived in Thailand except for the contextually.” — Dr. Catherine Rae Ross months she did her research. Her analysis International Association for Mission Studies of the religious situation, particularly the 978-1-57075-874-4 paper $35.00 Christian churches already in existence and the Norwegian and Finnish Lutheran reactions to these preconditions, is The Gospel Among Religions unprejudiced and on the mark. She, like Christian Ministry, Theology, and many of us, including the first missionaries Spirituality in a Multicultural World from the Norwegian Missionary Society, DAVID R. BROCKMAN and RUBEN L.F. HABITO wonders what the necessity of founding a rival church was. Was the reason only Explores writings from the New Testament through today to make certain that there was a Lutheran to show how Christians historically relate to and engage church in Thailand? Personally, I do feel religious “Others” in a constructive way when carrying the Lutheran Church in Thailand, the out the tasks of mission and ministry. indigenous church resulting primarily • Coming in October 2010 • 978-1-57075-899-7 paper $34.00 from the Norwegian Mission Society and the Finnish Lutheran Mission in Thailand, has provided a dimension, particularly in liturgy and theology, lacking in the older A Christian View of Islam Protestant churches in Thailand. Thailand is a thoroughly Buddhist Essays on Dialogue by Thomas F. Michel. S.J. society. To the extent the Christian Edited by IRFAN A. OMAR church does exist, it is surprisingly Foreword by JOHN L. ESPOSITO strong and influential, but it also bears “This book sheds positive light on the demanding path of a clear resemblance to American folk mutual understanding and in-depth dialogue.” Protestantism, which is “low church” in —Tariq Ramadan, Oxford University worship and simple in doctrine—that 978-1-57075-860-7 paper $34.00 is, not very compatible to Lutheranism of any sort, particularly Scandinavian Faith Meets Faith Series Lutheranism. These are the realities that At your bookseller or direct: ORBIS BOOKS any new Christian mission arrival must www.maryknollmall.org Maryknoll, NY 10545 face. Björkgren-Thylin understands the A World of Books that Matter 1-800-258-5838 situation well.

July 2010 181 South Korean population has adopted especially evangelical Christianity, became for salvation not only from sin but also a specific religious affiliation, so Korea the most vibrant religious force in South from the many secular problems Koreans cannot be called a secular society. Yet Korea in the second half of the twentieth encountered in the twentieth century, such no one religious community dominates. century. Lee argues that a tradition of as Japanese colonial rule and the threat of According to those same census figures enthusiastic revivals, dating back to the Communism from the north. The result is (from 2005), 22.8 percent of Koreans said first decade of the twentieth century, has a South Korea with many more Protestant they were Buddhists, and 29.2 percent said drawn Koreans into evangelical churches churches than Buddhist temples and with they were Christians. Moreover, in a part and, once they were there, filled them 75–90 percent of the people in the pews of the world in which countries that have with proselytizing fervor, which has of those Protestant churches professing substantial Christian communities, such then brought even more Koreans into an evangelical approach to Christianity. as the Philippines and East Timor, tend those churches. Koreans found those This book is trying to understand to be predominantly Catholic, in Korea revivals, and the evangelical Christianity why evangelical Christianity has been so Protestants outnumber Catholics almost behind them, attractive for a couple of much more successful in South Korea than two to one. reasons. First of all, modernization had elsewhere in Asia. Timothy Lee, a professor at Brite rendered traditional religions irrelevant —Don Baker Divinity School at Texas Christian Uni- to many Koreans in search of spiritual versity, Fort Worth, Texas, is the leading guidance in a rapidly changing world. Don Baker is Director of the Centre for Korean authority in North America on Korean In addition, evangelical Christianity, Research and Associate Professor of Korean History evangelicals. In this insightful study he seen as a manifestation of modern—that and Civilization in the Department of Asian Studies, explains how Protestant Christianity, is, Western—civilization, offered hope University of , , Canada.

Helen Barrett Montgomery: The Mapping Messianic Jewish Global Mission of Domestic Theology: A Constructive Feminism. Approach.

By Kendal P. Mobley. Waco, Tex.: Baylor Univ. By Richard Harvey. Colorado Springs, Press, 2009. Pp. xi, 335. Paperback $39.95. Colo.: Paternoster Press, 2009. Pp. xiii, 316. Paperback $22.99. Helen Barrett Montgomery was a woman “world friendship” (p. 202) emphasized of the middle way. She deftly positioned ecumenism in Christian mission and and the Gospel at the End her reform efforts on behalf of women working together with women of other of History: A Tribute to Moishe between the radical feminism of the post– religions for the common good. That Rosen. Civil War era in the United States and broadening influence led to success both the model of the middle-class Victorian with the Women’s Jubilee in 1910 (the Edited by Jim Congdon. Grand Rapids: Kregel wife and mother. Her Baptist upbringing women’s alternative to Edinburgh 1910) Publications, 2009. Pp. 271. Paperback $18.99. formed her theological center. At Wellesley and with work of the Rochester’s Women’s College she discovered the twin ideals of Educational and Industrial Union (WEIU) Richard Harvey, the academic dean and academic rigor and Christian womanliness for economic justice for working-class tutor in Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies (p. 28). With those ideals, Barrett became a women. at All Nations Christian College, in Ware, social reformer who emphasized women’s Scholar and pastor Kendal Mobley Hertfordshire, England, has produced emancipation through the Gospel of Jesus brings Montgomery’s story to life without a remarkable study of the history and Christ (p. 3). sacrificing accuracy or critical reflection development of Messianic Jewish theology Montgomery took a passionate based on in-depth research. This book that will be a standard reference for many yet pragmatic approach to problems speaks from another era, illuminating years to come. Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok, of education, working-class women’s issues we grapple with today—education, professor of Judaism at the University of rights, women’s equality, and ecumenical equality, economic justice, ecumenism, Wales, who was Harvey’s doctoral adviser, mission. As a school board member in and Christian mission. Elizabeth Barrett judges this to be “an outstanding study Rochester, New York, she spearheaded Montgomery presents a model for of seminal importance” (quoted on the reforms that created kindergartens and contemporary women who want to be front cover). emphasized group learning geared to feminist but not radical, Christian but not Harvey describes Messianic Judaism students’ ability (p. 164). Her “domestic fundamentalist. as “the religion of Jewish people who feminism” uplifted women as wives, —Frances S. Adeney believe in Jesus (Yeshua) as the promised mothers, and spiritual leaders, claiming Messiah. It is a Jewish form of Christianity that the methods and virtues involved Frances S. Adeney is the William A. Benfield Jr. and a Christian form of Judaism”; it is “a could reform the political process (p. 81). Professor of Evangelism and Global Mission at bridge between the worlds of Judaism As a leader and apologist for the women’s Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Christianity” and, as such, “presents ecumenical movement, she argued that Louisville, Kentucky. She is the author of Chris- a challenge to the self-understanding of women could work together without tian Women in Indonesia: A Narrative Study both the Church and the Synagogue” sectarian divisiveness for the sake of the of Gender and Religion (Syracuse Univ. Press, (pp. xi–xii, 1). It is estimated that there Gospel (p. 31). Montgomery advanced 2003) and, with Terry Muck, Christianity are 150,000 Jewish believers in Jesus mission theory, expanding the idea of Encountering World Religions: The Practice worldwide; “more than 100,000 are in the foreign missions to include statecraft, of Mission in the Twenty-First Century (Baker USA, approximately 5,000 in , the philosophy, art, and the history of the Academic, 2009). remainder being found throughout the kingdom of God (p. 204). Her theories approximately 13 million world Jewish of “woman’s work for woman” and population” (p. 2).

182 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 After a critical review of the most allowing literature distribution at the Jesus, concludes the book with a challenge significant studies of Messianic Judaism Los Angeles International Airport. As about the importance in mission to since the 1970s, Harvey discusses the key a young Jewish believer, Cohen had proclaim not only the first coming of our theological issues facing the Messianic learned a lesson from Rosen about how Messiah but also “the second coming of movement, namely, “the doctrine of God, obedience, with opposition, “brings Christ to our Jewish people,” which is “our the person of the Messiah, the theory good opportunities to broadcast the blessed hope” (p. 264). and practice of the Torah and the future gospel!” (p. 70). Cohen joined the staff Moishe Rosen, a legend in modern of Israel” (p. 12). In his mapping of the of and later founded the missions, died May 19, 2010. theological territory in these most needed Apple of His Eye Mission Society, which —Gerald H. Anderson areas, he limits his resources to theological he directs for the Lutheran Church– material written by Messianic Jewish Missouri Synod. Gerald H. Anderson, a senior contributing editor, theologians who have been active in the David Brickner, successor to Moishe is Director Emeritus of the Overseas Ministries modern Messianic movement, which Rosen as executive director of Jews for Study Center. shows where the movement is today. He concludes with an assessment of the future of messianic theology and offers questions for future research. Well written and richly documented, Harvey’s work will be widely appreciated IntErnAtIonAl HEAltH and used as a valuable resource for understanding the Messianic movement and the challenges it presents. And trAvEl InSUrAncE Jews and the Gospel at the End of History is a Festschrift honoring Moishe Rosen, the influential founder of the Messianic for anyone…going anywhere Jewish mission “Jews for Jesus.” In addition to a personal tribute to Rosen by Susan Perlman, there are fourteen essays With 30 years of overseas by scholars from both inside and outside experience and options the Messianic movement. They address Jewish, Messianic Jewish, and Christian offered by 12 major issues in three areas: evangelism, ethics, international health and eschatology. Three brief examples: insurance carriers, Good J. I. Packer argues that in the Letter Neighbor Insurance can meet to the Romans Paul “laments stubborn your health insurance needs. unbelief on Israel’s part when confronted with the gospel” but “looks ahead to a great ingathering of Jews into the We also provide coverage believing community at some future for medical and political date” (pp. 21, 25). Paul urges Jewish and evacuation, terrorism, trip Gentile Christians together to join him “in cancellation, furlough and glorifying God for his wisdom in what is happening” (p. 26). settling back into the USA. Steve Cohen, in his compelling essay on Jewish evangelism “Opportunity, Plans for internationals Opposition, and Obedience,” tells of visiting outside their home an incident in the 1970s when he saw country – including visits to Moishe Rosen being arrested by police and given a citation to appear in court the USA – are also available. for distributing evangelistic literature in the Los Angeles airport. This led eventually to a victory in the Ninth n Career and Short-Term Health and District Federal Court and ultimately to Travel Plans for Individuals and Families the unanimous Supreme Court decision n Large and Small Group Coverage n Short-Term Teams n Term Life Please beware of bogus renewal notices. A genuine IBMR renewal n Miscellaneous Plans to suit your needs notice will have a return address of Denville, NJ 07834 on the outer envelope, and the address on the reply envelope will go to PO Box 3000, Denville, NJ 07834-3000. Please e-mail [email protected] Phone in USA 480.813.9100 • Fax 480.813.9930 or call (203) 624-6672, ext. 309, with www.gninsurance.com • Email [email protected] any questions. Thank you. Blog www.gntravelinsurance.com

July 2010 183 India and the Indianness tudes of Indian Christians toward their of Christianity: Essays on Hindu neighbors. Understanding—Historical, The book introduces some crucial Theological, and Bibliographical— but largely unknown figures, such as in Honor of Robert Eric Abdul Masih of , Rayanayakkan of Frykenberg. Tranquebar, and Ragaviah of Mysore, who contributed to the formation of the Edited by Richard Fox Young. Grand Rapids: Indian church. Unearthing these almost Eerdmans, 2009. Pp. ix, 283. Paperback $45. unknown figures and highlighting their contributions suggests that there are The excellent essays collected in India and very valuable chronology and highlights many more “hidden” Indian personalities the Indianness of Christianity have been the academic contribution of “Bob” whose contributions have yet to be presented in honor of Robert Frykenberg, Frykenberg, and the final two chapters discovered. At the same time, fresh insights a long-time friend and a historian of high provide crucial archival information on are provided on issues of syncretism, caliber who has contributed significantly Indian/South Asian collections in the interdenominational proselytism, and toward a better understanding and United Kingdom and the United States. the struggles of Indian Christians in pre- interpretation of Christianity in India. These essays, carefully chosen to and postindependence India. All of these Ably introduced and edited by Richard highlight key aspects of the emergence issues have relevance for the contemporary Fox Young, an Indologist who teaches and development of the Indian church, Indian church. the history of religions at Princeton provide unique information about Unfortunately, the essays almost Theological Seminary, this volume individuals who contributed to the entirely neglect the reality and significant highlights some important but largely Indianness of the church. The volume presence of the Dalit population in the neglected personalities, historical events, carefully points to “Indian” participation Indian church and the contribution of and theological issues, and it opens up in enabling, sustaining, and promoting Dalit leaders in shaping the church. new avenues and perspectives for further Christian mission in India, at the same Furthermore, one could have wished investigation into the church and mission time showing the “ancient Indian church’s” for more Indian contributors. Overall, history of India. Its fifteen significant essays struggle with modern missions. It further however, this volume is extremely valuable by prominent historians and theologians attempts to show how Hindu pundits for providing insights that are unique but from around the world include two who played a role in providing knowledge (or largely unknown, highlighting significant have Indian roots but are not residents of mis-knowledge!) of Hinduism to Western but little-known Indian Christians, and India. Young’s introduction provides a missionaries, and it highlights the atti- providing fresh clarity and directions—if

Six books from which to choose:

Art by Asian Christians For the Least of These: The Art of Soichi Watanabe Gift Publications at Affordable Prices Soichi Watanabe, Japan 96 pages, $19.95

Reflections on God’s Redeeming Love Hanna Cheriyan Varghese, Malaysia. 96 pages, $19.95

Think on These Things: Harmony and Diversity (includes a 28-minute video) Wisnu Sasongko, Indonesia 96 pages and a DVD, $29.95

Christ on the Bangkok Road: The Art of Sawai Chinnawong Sawai Chinnawong, Thailand 80 pages, $19.95

Look Toward the Heavens: The Art of He Qi He Qi, China 128 pages, $19.95

A Time for My Singing: Witness of a Life Nalini Marcia Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka Overseas Ministries Study Center 128 pages, $19.95 http://secure.omsc.org/books (203) 624-6672, ext. 315

184 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 not new methods of reinterpreting the founded dozens of missions in what the society’s history there were far more history of Christianity in India from an is now , Bolivia, , and Jesuits involved in teaching than in Indian perspective. Paraguay which eventually functioned as indigenous missions or scholarship. Also, —Atul Y. Aghamkar quasi-independent indigenous republics the distinctive Jesuit vow of obedience for 180,000 Indians. Despite constant to the pope needs more attention. While Atul Y. Aghamkar is Professor and Head of the threats from Spanish and Portuguese Jesuit founder Ignatius of Loyola pledged Department of Missiology and Urban Studies at colonists who wanted to enslave the to call black white if the pope told him South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies, mission Indians and to steal their land, to do so, Jesuit liberation theologians, Bangalore, India. the Jesuits managed to foster prosperous, in particular, appear to have adopted a culturally rich Christian societies that more critical attitude in recent decades. featured vernacular music, drama, and For instance, in 1985 Juan Luis Segundo catechesis and that defended themselves wrote a book rejecting the pronouncements with their own militias. Klaiber’s three of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican’s themes also apply well to the twentieth enforcer of orthodoxy and the future Pope The Jesuits in Latin America, 1549– century, when Jesuits played a leading Benedict XVI, asserting that Ratzinger 2000: 450 Years of Inculturation, role in defending the rights of workers, was destroying the teachings of Vatican II. Defense of Human Rights, and peasants, and indigenous groups. Priests Klaiber notes Segundo’s ideas but does Prophetic Witness. such as Miguel Pro (Mexico) and Ignacio not deal with the obvious question of how Ellacuría () gave their lives in Latin American Jesuits came to understand By Jeffrey L. Klaiber. St. Louis, Mo.: Institute the defense of the poor and oppressed in their vow of obedience to the pope. of Jesuit Sources, 2009. Pp. viii, 463. Paperback situations of grave injustice, while many —Todd Hartch $28.95. other Jesuits such as Juan Luis Segundo and played leading roles in Todd Hartch, Associate Professor of History at Jeffrey Klaiber’s history of the Jesuits in the development of . Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky, Latin America emphasizes inculturation, Klaiber’s three themes, however, teaches Latin American history. He has written the defense of marginalized groups, do not seem to be the most helpful Missionaries of the State: The Summer Institute and creative adaptability. These three perspectives through which to view the of Linguistics, State Formation, and Indigenous themes serve him well in explaining the Jesuits’ traditional vocation of educating Mexico, 1935–1985 (Univ. of Alabama Press, Jesuits’ spectacular successes during elites. He does not devote enough attention 2006). the colonial period. In the seventeenth to analyzing the Jesuit role in education, and eighteenth centuries the Jesuits even though during many periods of

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July 2010 185 REGNUM BOOKS Mother Tongue Theologies: INTERNATIONAL Poets, Novelists, Non-Western Christianity.

Edited by Darren J. N. Middleton. Eugene, HOLISTIC MISSION THROUGH Ore.: Wipf & Stock, Pickwick Publications, SCHOLARLY ENGAGEMENT 2009. Pp. xvi, 235. Paperback $28.

Mother Tongue Theologies is a collection, Occasional mistranslations that neglect Edinburgh 2010: in five parts, of fourteen literary the basic message of the Gospel in non- Mission Then and Now interpretations of writings of mostly poets Western contexts block its internalization David A. Kerr and novelists, covering Orthodox Russia, by both its bearers and its recipients Kenneth R. Ross Africa, the Caribbean, Central and South (p. 173). America, Asia and the Pacific Islands, and The reader who anticipates encoun- Native America. The focal point in each tering authors in the collection theologiz- part is the engagement of Christianity ing in their mother tongues may, at first with local cultures, as interpreted by the glance, consider the first part of the title, authors. While addressing the important Mother Tongue Theologies, somewhat mis- emerging issues and challenges of leading. However, the for Christianity through literature, the essays Darren Middleton’s selection lies not only are meant to reflect global differences in in the personal, religious, and sociological the ways Christianity has been received themes treated by the authors but also worldwide. in the intricate link between works of This volume’s essays show how fiction and non-Western Christianity. cultural contexts, through their intrinsic Noticeable in the authors’ interpretations elements, provide the vehicle for the trans- are their “intuitive associations” (p. 107) lation of Christianity across cultures. Con- with biblical images and symbols, while versely, translation allows Christianity to employing indigenous linguistic forms infuse the mother tongues of its adher- and cultural categories. The collection ents with theological content. Just as the makes interesting reading and will be faith is able to break out of its Euro-Western greatly appreciated by students of theology mold to “embrace the recipient culture and literary enthusiasts in any culture. without losing its original gospel message” —Maureen Iheanacho (p. 172), it also invariably subsumes literary creation in non-Western contexts. Maureen Iheanacho, a Nigerian, is on the staff of the Edinburgh 2010: The writers’ experiences of appropriating Akrofi-Christaller Institute of Theology, Mission, Witnessing to Christ this process of “Christianity’s cross- and Culture, Akropong-Akuapem, Ghana, where she Today cultural transaction” (p. 172) thus sharpen has served in mission for fourteen years as Executive Daryl Balia & Kirsteen Kim the interpretative tools they employ. Assistant to the rector.

Redeemed by Fire: The Rise of Popular Christianity in Modern China.

By Lian Xi. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2010. Pp. xv, 333. $45.

This is truly a landmark book. I believe it both from the missionary movement of will become one of a handful of must-read the early twentieth century and, more books for anyone interested in the church in important, from the well-established China in the twentieth century and today. Chinese religious inventory of traditional So why is the book so important? popular religious movements. It is not just because it is meticulously Lian covers all the groups that should researched, or because its main ideas are be touched on from the early 1900s on: presented cogently and persuasively, or the True Jesus Church, the Jesus Family, that it is written in an elegant style that the “spiritual gifts” movement, the major makes it a pleasure to read. Indeed it is conservative evangelists such as Wang To order online go to all of those things. But its real importance Mingdao and John Sung, always setting www.ocms.ac.uk/regnum lies in the new ideas it conveys in our them in context, especially comparing them with the missionary-led sector of Phone: 01865 556 071 understanding of Chinese Protestant Christianity in the twentieth century, Protestantism. He is especially perceptive Fax: 01865 517 722 including the decades down to the on and the local church Email: [email protected] very recent past. Essentially, Lian Xi (or Little Flock). His hypothesis is that describes sectarian, apocalyptic, and all of these tapped into the potent, and millenarian characteristics deriving potentially antigovernment, millenarian

186 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 traditions of native popular religions to the Three-Self movement. The popular fashion creatively powerful movements appeal of these cults (e.g., the “Shouters,” that resonated deeply with Chinese “Established King,” and “Three Grades Education dynamics already present on the popular of Servant”) is striking. This book is truly scene. essential for understanding China today. In the last part of the book Lian —Daniel H. Bays transforms brings the continuation of these popular movements right down to the early twenty- Daniel H. Bays, a contributing editor, is Professor of first century. He establishes conclusively History and Director of the Asian Studies Program lives. that the Watchman Nee tradition was the at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is source of practically all of the “evil cults” working on a history of Christianity in China from that have bedeviled both government and the beginning to the present.

Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora.

Pier M. Larson. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009. Pp. ix, 378. $99 / £55; paperback $35.99 / £19.99.

Madagascar, Africa’s largest island (with “intellectual apprenticeship” to a surface area two and a half times that this indigenous world to gain some of Britain), features prominently in the comprehension of African spiritual history of the western Indian Ocean. Ocean priorities, which required learning the of Letters provides a fascinating historical vernacular tongues. Significantly, the account of the Malagasy people from the earliest translation of the entire Bible into mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth an African language was the Malagasy century, focusing on how their vernacular Bible produced by British Protestant languages survived in a context of slavery missionaries in 1835. Such a translation or forced dispersion, colonization by suc- validated African concepts and gave rise cessive European powers, and Christian to Malagasy refugee evangelists. mission. This carefully researched study Larson, who grew up in elucidates elements of the African story in as the son of Protestant missionaries, the colonial context that are less well known writes as a historian of Madagascar. His to historians of Christian mission than the familiarity with local idiom and use well-documented concurrent develop- of archival sources lend considerable ments on the Atlantic coast of Africa. credibility to his carefully developed In the period spanning 1501 to 1900, arguments. He also avoids unhelpful nearly half a million Malagasy slaves were revisionism. Some colonial administrators taken to a variety of destinations on the and even foreign missionaries were Indian Ocean, some as far as Indonesia. vociferously opposed to vernacular This book focuses on the Malagasy slave literacy, and the process of translation populations that ended up in European often assimilated the native tongue to colonies and settlements around the new ecclesiastical concepts in ways that, at Eastern offers undergradu- Indian Ocean. Its central argument is that, least initially, befuddled nascent Christian contrary to the persistent assumption communities. He makes clear, however, ate and graduate degree that vernacular languages in enslaved that in the richly diverse cultural milieu of programs that prepare stu- societies were lost through processes of colonial society, the Malagasy made active dents to become effective creolization or hybridization, the ancestral choices that allowed participation in the leaders committed to trans- languages of the Malagasy survived creolization process without sacrificing beyond emancipation due as much to ancestral languages and cultural practices. forming the lives of people forms of indigenous resistance as to In this fascinating account, Larson throughout the world. colonial interests and Western missionary demonstrates how scholarship in African purposes. In essence, the imperialist proj- languages can add considerably to our ● ● ect and foreign missions were complicit understanding of the African experience faith reason justice in a program of vernacularization that in contexts of globalization and missionary reinforced indigenous cultural identity, expansion. even in exile. —Jehu J. Hanciles For European missionaries (both Roman Catholic and Protestant), evan- Jehu J. Hanciles, a Sierra Leonean, is Associate gelizing mission encountered an African Professor of the History of Christianity and religious universe that permitted broad Globalization, and Director of the Center for penetration, but often on African terms. Missiological Research, at Fuller Graduate School of 800.732.7669 Missionary effectiveness required Intercultural Studies, Pasadena, California.

July 2010 187 Transnational Biblewomen: Asian and African Women in Christian Mission.

Edited by Deborah Gaitskell and Wendy Urban-Mead. Special issue, Women’s History Review 17, no. 4 (September 2008).

This issue of articles on “Biblewomen”— They provide examples of women finding national women engaged in direct pastoral sources of empowerment that enabled or evangelistic ministry, specifically in them to function in the less hierarchical Asia or Africa—is a valuable contribution mission and cultural contexts of Africa. to the larger study of women in Christian This volume makes an invaluable mission. Although scholars in recent contribution to the ongoing effort to decades have made clear progress in reconstruct the history of women in addressing this topic, writings specifically mission. Their contributions have indeed ANNOUNCING on Biblewomen are still difficult to obtain. been indispensable for the churches, but This special issue of Women’s History their names and stories have too long Review brings together rare historical remained unknown and untold. studies of Asian and African Biblewomen, —Katherine H. Lee Ahn The Martens as well as stories of women who had significant influence in the two continental Katherine H. Lee Ahn is Adjunct Assistant Professor Latin American contexts. This volume expands Dana of Church History at Fuller Theological Seminary, Robert’s Gospel Bearers, Gender Barriers Pasadena, California, and the author of Awakening (2002), which broke valuable new ground the Hermit Kingdom: Pioneer American Scholarship with the introduction of studies on Asian Women Missionaries in Korea (William Carey women. Library, 2009). Thanks to a generous gift from Seven of the nine articles in Trans- Peter and Rachel Martens the national Biblewomen were presented in Overseas Ministries Study Cen- preliminary form at a conference in Lon- ter announces the Martens Latin don that considered the role of indigenous American Scholarship. Martens female evangelists in the expansion of Christianity in Asia and Africa. The Evangelization and Religious Scholarships are designated for organizers of the conference were also Freedom: Ad gentes, Dignitatis Latin American Christian leaders interested in “links between devout humanae. with a minimum of ten years of women activists in . . . nineteenth-century ministry experience. Cross-cul- Britain and mission models evolved in By Stephen B. Bevans and Jeffrey Gros. New tural missionaries are especially other parts of the world” (p. 492). Such York: Paulist Press, 2009. Pp. 259. Paperback encouraged to apply, but appli- interest is on display throughout the $21.95. cations from church leaders and collection and the content of the articles, for they discuss not only indigenous Evangelization and Religious Freedom is theological educators are also women evangelists but also nineteenth- part of an eight-book series by Paulist welcome. Scholarships require a century British and American women’s Press that commemorates the fortieth residency at OMSC of eight to groundbreaking missionary activities anniversary of Vatican II. The book ten months. Furnished accom- that promoted the expansion of roles for has two sections: Stephen B. Bevans modations and a modest living national women in the mission fields. on Ad gentes, Decree on the Church’s stipend are provided. Scholar- Six of the nine articles focus on Asian Missionary Activity, and Jeffrey Gros ships are granted on a competi- women (three in China and one each in on Dignitatis humanae, Declaration Burma, Korea, and India), and two on on Religious Freedom. Following the tive basis and are awarded on the African women (in Kenya and Zimbabwe). pattern of the series, each document is condition that recipients attend Two of the studies of Asian women—on explored through a four-part process: the each of OMSC’s weeklong semi- a group of Chinese Catholic laywomen contextual and historical development of nars in cross-cultural ministry. called “institute of virgins,” by R. G. the document, major points to be noted, At the end of their year of resi- Tiedemann, and on Korean Biblewomen, how the implementation of the document dence awardees submit a written by Christine S. Chang—are particularly has been or has not been realized, and the evaluation of their experience at excellent. They reveal the authors’ vast current state of questions that the church knowledge of the larger historical, cultural, OMSC, indicating how they ex- needs to consider. What strikes the reader and religious context of the period, as well is the extraordinary tension and turbulent pect the program to affect their as their comprehensive research. history of the development of each text and future ministry. The two articles on African women, how this tension continues to be lived out by Elisabeth McMahon and Wendy Urban- as the church reflects on forty-plus years For additional information, go to Mead, focus on individual women leaders of implementation. www.OMSC.org/scholarships. whose lives reveal ways that African Bevans points out that Vatican II women found to participate in pastoral and needs to be understood as a missionary To apply for a scholarship, contact: evangelistic ministries. These two articles council, for “mission is what gave the Jonathan J. Bonk, [email protected] also provide some answers to the question council its basic direction” (p. 3). While OMSC, 490 Prospect Street of empowerment, which is discussed in the Ad gentes (AG) must be understood in the New Haven, CT 06511 USA introduction as one of the main questions context of other key council documents considered by the original conference. that also strive to address the evangelizing

188 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 When indigenous mission of the church, the importance in the teaching of the council” (p. 188). of AG to the church’s understanding of Gros identifies a number of questions believers are itself as “missionary by its very nature” that were “left intentionally open by equipped with is unrivaled. Bevans names all the hot the council” around the role of freedom buttons of contemporary theology and human dignity, including its role in the tools and of mission, such as inculturation (or the procedures of the church, pluralism, contextual theology), proclamation and and ecumenical implications. Gros also skills to serve their dialogue, and interreligious dialogue, names the hot buttons, particularly the and he notes the broader contexts of issues raised by Dominus Iesus (2000), communities, globalization, migration, and women in in which other religions were declared that is mPOWER™ mission. Recognizing that the tension “objectively speaking . . . gravely deficient.” . around inculturation has not diminished Noting the time required for change to be over the decades since AG, he identifies at implemented in the church, Gros projects, least three perspectives of mission that are “We will learn how the Second Vatican competing and is hopeful that a synthesis Council is interpreted as the centuries may emerge. progress” (p. 193). Gros provides an excellent historical Bevans and Gros succeed in recording context for the development of Dignitatis the scene, providing rich context, and humanae (DH) and, as with AG, how raising the questions for readers to think the tension of divergent views present critically and evaluate these two important during the drafting process continues Vatican II documents. They provide no to the present day. Gros notes that in panacea—just judicious questions that can affirming the need for religious freedom, assist in shaping constructive and ongoing Leave an impact for DH “makes a remarkable statement of conversation. fact” by recognizing “the past failures —Gerard M. Goldman generations on your of the Church” (p. 187). Gros suggests next short-term trip... that “distancing the Catholic Church Gerard M. Goldman is Principal and Director of The from centuries of dominance . . . may be Broken Bay Institute, Sydney, Australia, affiliated considered one of the most dramatic turns with the University of Newcastle, Australia. Train national believers to implement community dental care in 6 days or The Evangelical Movement community sight care in : Resistance and Resilience. in just 2 days...

By Tibebe Eshete. Waco, Tex.: Baylor Univ. Press, 2009. Pp. v, 525. $54.95. All for the cost of adding one more To best enter the lives of Ethiopians and for the privilege, there is an enormous understand their worldview, one must growth and expansion. As the author notes, person to your trip. study their religion, for “religion has “Persecution had long constituted part always constituted a vital part of Ethiopian of the spiritual repertoire of evangelicals Visit us online society” (p. 1). Unfortunately, however, in Ethiopia” (p. 276). Furthermore, when Ethiopists—both foreign and national— Christianity clothes itself in the local mpowerapproach.org have given scant scholarly attention to culture, speaks in a heart language of this major aspect of the society. Tibebe the recipients, and pervades the values Call for information Eshete’s work, in both its content and its and norms of the nationals so that they 1-502.365.5540 scope, is very exceptional and represents actually become transformed into the a real breakthrough. people of God, the impact is deep and This work of Eshete, an Ethopian lasting. “People could read the Bible . . . scholar, thus for the first time brings the and apply [its words] to their daily life” evangelical movement in Ethiopia into (p. 76); its message was “reappropriated the academic orbit. As the bulk of his and contextualized” (p. 89). Generalizing, research indicates, the movement was we can say that Christianity is more limited to the grassroots level and was effective when it is translated than when mainly contained in oral tradition. Even it is transplanted. though Eshete’s main focus is the history I have found this to be a seminal of evangelical Christianity in Ethiopia, and timely study, one that is fully in step he gives significant attention also to with—and that contributes richly to—the general church history and to the history history of global Christianity. of missions in the country. As academ- —Alemayehu Mekonnen ic disciplines, these are three distinct subjects. Eshete gives us all three in one Alemayehu Mekonnen, an Ethiopian, is Associate volume. Professor of Missions, Denver Seminary, Denver, Tools for Transformation Often when the Gospel is preached Colorado. and those who receive it pay a high cost

July 2010 189 Aunt Tena, Called to Serve: least as catechists) and the emergence of Journals and Letters of Tena A. grassroots organizations (notably, Base Huizenga, Missionary Nurse to Christian Communities) also earned the Nigeria. church many plaudits, even when such initiatives were sometimes treated with Edited by Jacob E. Nyenhuis, Robert P. suspicion by the hierarchy back in the Swierenga, and Lauren M. Berka. Grand Old World. The church also championed Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Pp. xxxii, 944. $49. human rights, acted as a peacemaker, and did much to lay the seedbed of Latin Tena Huizenga was a missionary nurse The third point to be made is that these American democracy. Such contributions working under the auspices of the materials collectively offer a most helpful reaped rich rewards, and Cleary reveals Christian Reformed Church of America picture of social life on a mission station that, among the region’s institutions, the (CRC) from 1937 to 1954, mostly at and the interpersonal dynamics between Catholic Church ranks higher in opinion the Lupwe mission station in British missionaries and African Christians, polls than the government, the media, the . Aunt Tena, Called to Serve expatriates and indigenes. Coming from police, or the military. reproduces an extensive selection of her a thickly layered social universe in Dutch Cleary sees Catholic spiritual life in correspondence during her career. Aunt Chicago, Aunt Tena endured a loneliness Latin America as brimful of confidence Tena was an energetic letter writer with a that was palpable in her early writings. in its popular religiosity, encounters Yet the book has very few missives from with indigenous faith traditions, and the last stages of her career. Perhaps this more recently the Catholic charismatic is because as matron (some of her African movement. The region’s theology has OMSC’s free online database, compiled in coop- correspondents addressed her “Mother”) also matured beyond all expectation: forty eration with Yale Divinity School Library, lists to an equally complex social universe in years ago it was “derivative” (p. 106); over 6,100 doctoral dissertations in English Nigeria, she found little time to write. today it is one of the engines of Catholic on mission and world Christianity. Search by —Andrew E. Barnes thought. Cleary is sometimes a little too author, title, subject, keyword, and institution dismissive of the Pentecostal challenge, at www.internationalbulletin.org/resources. Andrew E. Barnes, Associate Professor of History, and occasionally too devoted to past Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, is the victories, but he amply demonstrates that author most recently of Making Headway: The rumors of Latin American Catholicism’s sharp eye for the pathos of everyday life Introduction of Western Civilization in Colonial impending demise have been greatly and some real skills at narration. She was Northern Nigeria (Rochester Univ. Press 2009). exaggerated. also someone who (as the letters to her —Jonathan Wright attest, especially those from her African mentees) exuded a Christian spirit of Jonathan Wright, an independent scholar from caritas. This collection offers at once both the United Kingdom, is the author of The Jesuits: a glimpse of the nurturing Christian world Missions, Myths, and Histories (Harper Collins, that sent her out as a missionary nurse and How Latin America Saved the Soul 2004). the evolving Christian world she helped of the Catholic Church. create in Nigeria. Three things should be emphasized By Edward L. Cleary. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist about Aunt Tena, Called to Serve. First, it is Press, 2009. Pp. iii, 220. Paperback $22.95. a very large book. Aunt Tena wrote lots of letters. And others, most particularly Despite the dramatic rise and evangelical her brother Peter, wrote almost as many energy of Pentecostalism (a movement Dissertation in return. Most of these letters are printed that has won many converts at Rome’s as part of this collection. expense), Latin American Catholicism is Second, the book was not edited with still, by Edward Cleary’s calculation, in Notices a scholarly audience in mind. Aunt Tena vigorous health. The number of Catholic achieved some renown in the CRC as one priests in the region increased by 40 percent Anderson, Richard. of their most dedicated and successful between 1964 and 2004 (in Mexico, it “How Do Chaplains and Leaders Stay missionaries. A biography, In the Master’s doubled), and the number of seminarians Faithful to Their Evangelical Service: The Life of Tena Huizenga, by Shawn sextupled in the thirty-two years after Distinctives in the USAF?” Brix, was published in 1994. Much of 1972. Crucially, the Latin American D.Min. Columbia, S.C.: Columbia the material published here is of such a church is taking on an increasingly indig- International Univ., 2008. detailed, personal nature that it would enous aspect. One of the most obvious resonate only with fellow members of signs of vibrancy is the transformation Kipuke, Esaho. the Christian communities in which from a religious culture that once only “Membership Decline Crisis and Aunt Tena participated. This point can be received foreign missionaries to one that Proposed Solutions for the Retention applied especially to the three hundred now sends its own missionaries to other in the Central Congo United Methodist or so pages of letters to Tena from her parts of the world. Cleary sees this as an Church.” brother Peter. The Huizengas grew up as indication that the church is “reaching a D.Min. Columbia, S.C.: Columbia part of the Dutch Reformed community key point in its maturity” (p. 171). International Univ., 2008. of Chicago, and Peter’s letters provide a Cleary does an excellent job of wry social commentary on life within that charting the revitalization of Latin Sinclair, Paul. community in the years before, during, American Catholicism over the past four “Factors Influencing North American and after the Second World War. With her decades. Liberation theology, with its Missionary Men to Remain Sexually fellow missionary and close friend Jen- commitment to righting social wrongs, Pure.” nie Stielstra, Aunt Tena also exchanged undoubtedly struck a popular chord. D.Min. Columbia, S.C.: Columbia hundreds of letters over the years. The new roles offered to the laity (not International Univ., 2008.

190 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 34, No. 3 From All Nations, To All Peoples Seminars for International Church Leaders, Missionaries, Mission Executives, Pastors, Educators, Students, and Lay Leaders

September 13–17, 2010 November 8–12 How to Develop Mission and Church Ethics and Mission in an Era of Globalization. Archives. Dr. Peter Kuzmič, Gordon-Conwell Theological Ms. Martha Lund Smalley, special collections Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts, and librarian at Yale Divinity School Library, New Evangelical Theological Seminary, Osijek, Croa- Haven, Connecticut, helps missionaries and tia, from firsthand experience leads participants church leaders identify, organize, and preserve in reflection on ethical challenges facing mission essential records. today. Cosponsored by Greenfield Hill Congrega- tional Church (Fairfield, Connecticut), St. John’s September 20–24 Episcopal Church (New Haven), and Trinity The Internet and Mission: Getting Started. Baptist Church (New Haven). Mr. Wilson Thomas, Wilson Thomas Systems, Bedford, New Hampshire, and Dr. Dwight P. November 15–19 Baker, OMSC associate director, in a hands-on The Church on Six Continents: Many Strands workshop show how to get the most out of the in One Tapestry—II. World Wide Web for mission research. Dr. Andrew F. Walls, honorary professor, Uni- versity of Edinburgh, and former director of the October 11–15 Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non- Nurturing and Educating Transcultural Kids. Western World, presents OMSC’s sixth Distin- Ms. Janet Blomberg and Ms. Elizabeth Stephens guished Mission Lectureship series, five lec- of Interaction International help you help your tures with discussions. Cosponsored by American children meet the challenges they face as third Baptist International Ministries, Evangelical culture persons. Cosponsored by Park Street Covenant Department of World Mission, Mission Church (Boston). Resource Center of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, SIM USA, and Wycliffe International. October 18–22 Culture, Interpersonal Conflict, and November 29–December 3 Christian Mission. Leadership, Fund-raising, and Donor Dr. Duane Elmer, Trinity Evangelical Divinity Development for Missions. School, Deerfield, Illinois, helps Christian work- Mr. Rob Martin, First Fruit Institute, Newport ers strengthen interpersonal skills and resolve Beach, California, outlines steps for building conflicts among colleagues, including host coun- the support base, including foundation funding, try people. Cosponsored by Baptist Convention of for mission. Cosponsored by Eastern Mennonite New England and Naugatuck Valley Community Missions. Church (Naugatuck, Connecticut). December 6–10 October 25–29 [ NOTE CHANGE OF DATE ] Russian Church-State Relations: Challenges Doing Oral History: Helping Christians Tell and Opportunities for Mission. Their Own Story. Dr. John W. McNeill, Providence College, Otter- Dr. Jean-Paul Wiest, director of the Jesuit Bei- burne, , and a senior mission scholar in jing Center, Beijing, China, and Ms. Michèle Sigg, residence at OMSC, examines points of tension Dictionary of African Christian Biography project and cooperation between church and state over manager, share skills and techniques for docu- the sweep of Russian history. menting mission and church history. Cosponsored by St. John’s Episcopal Church (New Haven). All seminars cost $175. Full information—including content descriptions, seminar cosponsors, directions, schedules, and links to register—may be found at OVERSEAS MINISTRIES www.omsc.org/seminars.html or e-mail [email protected] For a FREE subscription to the award-winning STUDY CENTER International Bulletin of Missionary Research e-journal edition, 490 Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06511 go to www.InternationalBulletin.org/register Book Notes In Coming Chojnacki, Ruth J. Indigenous Apostles: Maya Catholic Catechists Working the Word in Highland Issues Chiapas. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. Pp. 205. Paperback €40 / $56. Mission Is Ministry in the Dimension of Difference: Daughrity, Dyron B. A Definition for the Twenty- The Changing World of Christianity: The Global History of a Borderless Religion. first Century New York: Peter Lang, 2010. Pp. xiii, 290. Paperback $34.95 / SFr 35 / €22.50 / £20.30. Titus Presler De Neui, Paul, ed. Can Christianity Authentically Family and Faith in Asia: The Missional Impact of Social Networks. Take Root in China? Some Lessons Pasadena, Calif.: William Carey Library, 2010. Pp. v, 338. Paperback $19.99. from Nineteenth- and Twentieth- Century Missions Fuller, Harold. Andrew F. Walls Sun like Thunder: Following Jesus on Asia’s Spice Road. Reconfiguring Home: Telugu Bible Bangalore, India: Centre for Contemporary Christianity, 2010. Pp. xxxi, 652. Paperback Women, Protestant Missionaries, $40 / Rs 600. and Christian Marriage George, Sherron Kay. James Elisha Taneti Better Together: The Future of Presbyterian Mission. Beyond Contextualization: Toward Louisville, Ky.: Geneva Press, 2010. Pp. xv, 107. Paperback $16.95. a Twenty-first Century Model for Enabling Mission Hamrin, Carol Lee, ed., with Stacey Bieler. R. Daniel Shaw Salt and Light: More Lives of Faith That Shaped Modern China. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2010. Pp. xii, 239. Paperback $28. The Missiology of Covenant Hayman, Arnolis. Edited, with an introduction, by Anne-Marie Brady. Stuart J. Foster A Foreign Missionary on the Long March: The Memoirs of Arnolis Hayman of A “New Breed of Missionaries”: the China Inland Mission. Assessing Attitudes Toward Western Portland, Maine: MerwinAsia, 2010. Pp. xxxviii, 160. Paperback $32. Missions at the Nairobi Evangelical Kling, Fritz. Graduate School of Theology The Meeting of the Waters: Seven Global Currents That Will Propel the Future F. Lionel Young III Church. Ferment at the Margins: Philippine Colorado Springs, Colo.: David C. Cook, 2010. Pp. 233. Paperback $16.99. Ecclesiology Under Stress Paul D. Matheny Kozelsky, Mara. Christianizing Crimea: Shaping Sacred Space in the Russian Empire and Beyond. In our Series on the Legacy of DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois Univ. Press, 2009. Pp. xiii, 270. $42. Outstanding Missionary Figures of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Martin, Kathleen J., ed. Centuries, articles about Indigenous Symbols and Practices in the Catholic Church: Visual Culture, Thomas Barclay Missionization, and Appropriation. George Bowen Farnham, Surrey, Eng., and Burlington, N.Y.: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. xxvii, 271. £55 / Hélène de Chappotin $99.95. Lydia Mary Fay Russell, Letty M. Edited by J. Shannon Clarkson and Kate M. Ott. Carl Fredrik Hallencreutz Just Hospitality: God’s Welcome in a World of Difference. Arthur Walter Hughes Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. Pp. xvii, 138. Paperback $19.95. Thomas Patrick Hughes Hannah Kilham Scott, Waldron Byron. George Leslie Mackay The Renewal of All Things: An Alternative Missiology. Lesslie Newbigin Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2009. Pp. xiii, 221. Paperback $26. Constance Padwick Stansell, Ron. James Howell Pyke Missions by the Spirit: Learning from Quaker Examples. Pandita Ramabai Newberg, Ore.: Barclay Press, 2010. Pp. 280. Paperback $24. George Augustus Selwyn Troll, Christian W. Translated by David Marshall. Dialogue and Difference: Clarity in Christian-Muslim Relations. Carl Thurman Smith Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2009. Pp. vii, 182. Paperback $34. James Stephen James M. Thoburn Veronis, Luke. M. M. Thomas Go Forth: Stories of Mission and Resurrection in Albania. Harold W. Turner Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2010. Pp. 225. Paperback $18.95. Johannes Verkuyl