The Pneuma Review » contemporary

Presenting the Beautiful Gospel: Ten Theses about Contemporary Christian International Mission and Cross-Cultural Evangelization

Celucien Joseph — Wed, 16 May 2018 15:35:30 +0000

In former times, some missionary efforts were aligned with militaristic imperialism. Are the terrible expressions of colonialism being promoted by contemporary missionaries? Professor Celucien Joseph reminds us there is a better way.

For many years, I have been thinking about the interreligious conflict between Christianity and other religions in the world, and the work of Christian missionaries in international mission and cross-cultural evangelization. In the context of Haiti, for example, the conflict lies in the relationship between Vodou and Christianity, Christians and Vodouizan. As will be observed, the essay below reveals my values, ethics, theology, my understanding of human cultures and cross-cultural friendship, my understanding of the message of the Gospel and its demands upon people, and the infinite value of Jesus Christ and his atoning sacrifice for the world. My target-audience is Christian missionaries who are investing in cross-cultural evangelization and international mission.

Image: Jose Martin

Historically, the practice of Christian mission and evangelization, both at the cross-cultural and international level, has been influenced by American-Western ideology of conquest and an attempt to deracinate the culture and traditions of the people being evangelized. Correspondingly, Christian mission and evangelization has been operating from the foundational philosophy of the superiority of American and European cultures and value-systems, and the belief in the triumphal achievements of Western countries in global history. Also, the rhetoric of Christian mission and evangelization has also been shaped by the rhetoric of dehumanization and demonization, as circulated in American-Western books, media, and news outlets, of non-white and Western people. In short, Christian international mission and cross-cultural evangelization has been detrimental to the values, cultures, and concerns of brown and non-Western people.

Unfortunately, many Christian missionaries originated from powerful Western countries and supported aggressive Western interventions such as wars, coups, economic sanctions and embargoes—often resulting in deaths, abject poverty, and underdevelopment. These Christians claimed they were called to serve as missionaries and evangelists, to the great dishonor of the Gospel of peace, interpreting these human-made tragedies, catastrophes, suffering, and pain as part of the divine plan for the Gospel to penetrate that foreign land. To continue to contribute to the (on-going) misery and suffering of the people one is called to reach is the very antithesis of the Gospel of peace and reconciliation. Such attitudes clearly indicates a grave misunderstanding of the task of the Christian missionary and the essence of biblical Christianity—as if one were to support a politics of human destruction and an ethics of death: social, existential, and physical.

In the same line of thought, the Christian missionary should never sustain international policies and diplomatic-immigration laws that will lead to the obliteration of (foreign) individuals, and the separation and dehumanization of the families of the people they are called to love and reach overseas. Because you are called to be a peacemaker and light of the world, God has also urged you to be on the side of the poor, the vulnerable, the economically-oppressed, and correspondingly, to defend their rights to exist and be free. The Gospel is about the activation of God’s justice and goodness in the world, and the application of divine justice in the social order; thus, the missionary-messenger should be a fierce bearer of human justice and a zealous promoter of God’s intended goal to harmonize everything and make all things right.

Contemporary Applications of Humility from Teachings of the New Testament

Michelle Vondey — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 17:17:04 +0000

A review essay of two books on biblical humility by Michelle Vondey.

Two books: both on humility, both using the Bible as a framework, both of interest to those who study humility academically and who take the need for humility seriously in their vocation. Though similar in topic, the books differ in intended audience and style. This review evaluates both Farley’s (2011) and Feldmeier’s (2014) work on humility.

Farley’s work [William P. Farley, Gospel-Powered Humility (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2011), 199 pages, ISBN 9781596382404] is aimed at those working in Christian ministry, in particular preachers, but also anyone wanting to share the gospel with others. Farley asserts in the preface that God designed the gospel to promote humility, and the gospel should be preached with the goal of humbling sinners. It is not just sinners who need humbling, however, but believers themselves must also allow the gospel to humble them before they can expect or hope to bear spiritual fruit. He argues that humility is the chief virtue, out of which all other virtues flow. Using church history and the first three chapters of Romans, Farley shows how humility is a necessary condition for sinners to come to repentance and for the gospel to bear fruit in people’s lives. The last chapters of the book apply Farley’s thesis to ministry specifically, and discusses why ministry workers fail to preach God’s wrath and judgment for sin and how they should model humility in their own lives in order to cultivate humility in others.

All believers are called to share the good news of Jesus’s sacrifice for all people. In word or in deed, believers must be committed to live out the virtue of humility to be effective.

Farley does not pull any punches, in that he criticizes the lack of sermons preached on God’s wrath and judgment on sin for the reason why believers do not bear fruit. Instead of preaching to convict people of sin, ministers often, he claims, preach to raise people’s self-esteem. Furthermore, Farley argues, the reason why believers lack intimacy with God is due to their lack of humility. Although they believe they are humble, arrogance and pride not only block their ability to find intimacy with God and with others, but also prevent them from bearing spiritual fruit.

William Farley

Farley explains where humility leads believers in their spiritual walk and maturity with God. He also shows where believers end up who do not embrace humility as a virtue. Examining the first three chapters of Romans, Farley argues that Paul starts with the “bad news” of God’s wrath for two and half chapters. It is only in the latter part of chapter 3, Farley says, that Paul shares the “good news” of the gospel. Emphasizing that Paul focused more on the bad news than he did on the good news, Farley concludes that it is imperative that believers start with the bad news of the gospel (judgment for sin) when evangelizing others, so that unbelievers understand why they must repent. Only with an understanding of their own sinfulness and the need for repentance will sinners be able to humble themselves to fully accept the good news of Jesus’s atoning sacrifice.

In Witchbound Africa

Jim Harries — Sun, 12 Jun 2016 13:36:18 +0000

Missionary-scholar Jim Harries discusses contemporary conditions and understandings of witchcraft in sub-Saharan Africa.

Introduction

Questions about witchcraft[1] seem to float threateningly on the edge of most missiological discussions on Africa. Various authors of a recent edition of IBMR (International Bulletin for Missionary research (39(1)) have done us a service by bringing them to the fore. This is a very welcome step and I congratulate IBMR for their boldness in pointing us to this pernicious concern.

Image: Mohammad Yearussaman

From 1988 to 1991 I lived and worked amongst the Kaonde people of Zambia.[2] Whilst there I heard of a book by a British colonial officer Frank H. Melland, that he had written about the Kaonde and that was published in 1923. It is to my knowledge still the most comprehensive account of the customs and traditions of the Kaonde. The title of the book often sticks in my mind: In Witchbound Africa: an account … Melland having written in 1923, one would think things might have changed. More than three generations later this article asks; is Africa still ‘witchbound’?

Is Africa still witchbound?

Stimulated by the above IBMR authors, I would like to write this response to their scholarship. This response arises, subsequent to my above-described stay in Zambia, after having lived amongst the Luo (and to a lesser extent Luiya) people of Western Kenya since 1993. I find clear differences between these people and the Kaonde of Zambia. This especially because the Luo are ethnically and linguistically essentially unrelated to the Kaonde.[3] But there are also enormous similarities. The fact that apparently unrelated people can have such similar beliefs suggests to me that ‘witchcraft’, as it is known in some Western scholarship, is a default product of certain worldviews, especially monistic worldviews that seem to be the norm in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

The question of the definition of witchcraft seems to be almost insoluble. Perhaps it is helpful to say that; witchcraft is a term used in Western scholarship that attempts to align certain practices carried out in the non-Western world with beliefs and traditions apparently once widespread in the West, which the West has in contemporary times come to understand as having been misguided. In terms of its content, witchcraft in Africa is a way of dealing with negatives in people’s character, such as envy (especially) and anger. This means used to deal with such has particular out-workings, including at times accusations regarding use of witchcraft that result in inter-human tensions, accusations, and sometimes physical violence.

Extractive Scholarship

The above introduction suggests that the West has paid some attention to witchcraft. The term itself, witchcraft, has dictated much of the nature of that attention. It has meant that from the start whatever constitutes ‘witchcraft’ is to be considered outdated and rooted in misunderstandings. Implicitly, as in the West, witchcraft accusations are no longer made but were once made, Western scholars are on their front foot, and Africans are on their back foot on considering this set of issues. Western scholars are waiting for Africans to be ‘enlightened’ as ‘we’ already are regarding the folly of belief in witchcraft.

Anthropologists have probably been at the forefront of studies of witchcraft. I have personally greatly valued reading many anthropological texts on this subject. Anthropology has been one of the many scholarly disciplines to have gone through crisis since the advent of postmodernism on the back of the undermining of foundationalism.[4] Prior to about 1950, many Western scholars considered themselves to be writing on firm epistemological foundations. Since that time, at least amongst those ‘in the know’, the claim that science can be the foundation to all knowledge has lost its credibility (Plantinga 1983:4). Anthropologists have as a result been forced to re-examine some of their foundational assumptions, presumably including those on witchcraft.

A Social Anthropologist’s Analysis of Contemporary Healing, Part 2

David Lewis — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:24:49 +0000

The Power of the Cross: The Biblical Place of Healing and Gift-Based Ministry in Proclaiming the Gospel

How do doctors respond to claims of healing? Are there any lasting social effects when people experience divine healing?

Physical and Spiritual Phenomena

Since John White is contributing a chapter to this book concerning the physical manifestations which sometimes seem to accompany the working of the Holy Spirit, here I shall confine myself to a few brief remarks arising out of my own investigations.³²

When some people at a Baptist church in Leeds began to display behaviour such as shaking, weeping or falling over (Jer. 23:9; Dan. 10:10; Neh. 8:6, 9; Jn. 18:6; Rev. 1:10, 17-18)³³ during a healing service led by some of Wimber’s team, a critic later described the events as a case of mass hysteria. This opinion was expressed by a theologian with no training in psychology or psychiatry. However, it led me to include in my follow-up interviews a simple psychological test which gives a preliminary indication of the plausibility of this explanation.

A retrospective study of a case of mass hysteria among some English schoolgirls confirmed the hypothesis of Professor Eysenck that more hysterical individuals tend to rank high on scales of both extroversion and neuroticism.³⁴ However, only twelve out of the one hundred people in my random sample ranked high on both these scales, and all but two of them were only just over the border into the ‘high’ category on only one of the two scales. Nevertheless, virtually all of these 100 people had themselves experienced at least some of the physical phenomena. I found that reports of these experiences were spread across all the different psychological categories of people and were by no means confined to any one psychological ‘type’. This argues against any theory that these physical phenomena can be explained away by a theory of mass hysteria.

It is difficult, and in several cases probably impossible, to explain away these and other kinds of experiences.

Another theory is that these phenomena can be explained away as a form of learned behaviour. A number of experts agree that some form of auto-suggestion can influence such behaviour in at least certain cases. In my questionnaire at John Wimber’s Harrogate conference I asked people to indicate whether or not they had experienced such phenomena in the past or for the first time at Harrogate. The question then arose how to interpret the statistics. For instance, among those who had fallen over in the past, 69% (499 out of 725) did not repeat the behaviour again at the Harrogate conference. It might therefore be argued that this was not ‘learned behaviour’. On the other hand, the fact that 31% did fall over again might be regarded either as ‘learned behaviour’ or else as further genuine ministry from God which necessitated this kind of phenomenon. However, it was clear that ‘milder’ phenomena such as the tingling or shaking of hands, weeping or changes in breathing were much more likely to be repeated or else to be manifested for the first time than were more ‘dramatic’ forms of behaviour such as falling over, screaming or shouting. These ‘milder’ phenomena are often associated with ministry to others (including weeping in the context of intercessory prayer) and are quite likely to be repeated, whereas phenomena connected with receiving ministry tend to recur less often and usually cease once the ministry is completed.

A Social Anthropologist’s Analysis of Contemporary Healing, Part 1

David Lewis — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:50:22 +0000

The Power of the Cross: The Biblical Place of Healing and Gift-Based Ministry in Proclaiming the Gospel

How do doctors respond to claims of healing? Are there any lasting social effects when people experience divine healing?

What kinds of healings are associated with contemporary Christian healing ministries, conferences for training Christians in praying for healing, and such ministry in many evangelical churches? How do medical doctors perceive the healings? How do healings relate to the revelations known as “words of knowledge” (I Cor. 12:8; 14:24-25)¹? Can associated physical phenomena be explained by psychological mechanisms? Why does God appear to heal some kinds of people more often than others?

These are important questions which for the most part have been ignored by critics of healing ministries, who have tended to concentrate on theological and historical questions rather than medical, sociological or psychological aspects.² These are the dimensions to healing which I wish to examine in this chapter, since the theological issues have been addressed by other contributors to this book. In particular I shall present some of the detailed findings from my comprehensive follow-up study of one of John Wimber’s conferences as an example of contemporary cases of healing.

How do medical doctors perceive healings?

In 1986 a detailed questionnaire was given to all those who attended John Wimber’s Signs and Wonders (Part II) conference in Harrogate, England. The questionnaires were collected just before the final session of the conference. Out of the 2,470 people registered for the conference, 1,890 returned usable forms, producing a response rate of 76.5% (which is very high in comparison with most sociological surveys). These were processed through a computer at Nottingham University.

Using a random number table, I then selected from these 1,890 respondents a random sample of 100 people whom I followed up between six and ten months after the conference. With ninety-three of them I was able to conduct in-depth personal interviews, involving my traveling almost literally throughout the length and breadth of Britain. Another seven people had to be interviewed over the telephone or by mail because they lived outside Britain or were unavailable for other reasons. My research combined the breadth of the questionnaire with the depth of the interviews. Some other potentially interesting cases outside the random sample were also followed up by telephone, mail or personal interview. Where appropriate, specialist medical opinions were sought regarding various cases of healing. Although each patient signed a form consenting to the release of confidential medical information, the doctors varied considerably in the extent to which they were willing to co-operate.

Why does God appear to heal some kinds of people more often than others?

Much criticism of evangelical healing ministries and, in particular, of John Wimber and the Vineyard Christian Fellowship has been expressed in print recently. The research described above followed on from the preliminary study which I had undertaken in 1985 of John Wimber’s Signs and Wonders (Part I) conference in Sheffield. My report on that conference was published as an appendix to Wimber’s book Power Healing.³ The report was apparently available to Donald Lewis, who later wrote that his intention was, “to reflect upon my own experience of John Wimber’s conferences, rather than to critique what he has written (although I have read his books). My aim is to evaluate one such gathering from the vantage point of an observer-participant.”⁴

Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology

Wolfgang Vondey — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:42:39 +0000

As appearing in The Pneuma Review Winter 2007

Stanley J. Grenz, Rediscovering the Triune God: The Trinity in Contemporary Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 289 pages.

This book should be in every theological library. Stanley Grenz (1950-2005) offers a splendid account of the story of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. The lucidly written volume is destined to become a standard textbook in colleges and universities. At the same time, it also holds great promise to revive the popular understanding of the Christian God as one god in three persons. Rediscovering the Triune God addresses both historians and theologians and contributes a highly valuable review of both contexts to what the back cover calls “the contemporary revolution in Trinitarian thought.”

The book surveys the development of a renewed interest in the doctrine of the Trinity during the twentieth century. More precisely, Grenz focuses on the time period marked by the publication of Karl Barth’s Epistle to the Romans, in 1919, which is frequently seen as the initial impulse for the renewal of trinitarian thought, and by the publication of T. F. Torrance’s The Christian Doctrine of God, in 1996, which Grenz considers the last comprehensive theology of the triune God of the twentieth century. As a result, Grenz presents the reader with a list of eleven theologians who he considers the most significant contributors to the revival of trinitarian thought. Each of these voices comes from theological giants whose work has influenced much of the layout of the theological landscape since World War I. This list of trendsetters marks the framework for the entire book.

The overview is ordered topically, and the eleven theologians are grouped together in four chapters that follow the historical development of trinitarian thought in the twentieth century. In addition, the first chapter provides a historical basis for the overall theological discussion and sketches out “The Eclipse of Trinitarian Theology,” especially in the West, before the renaissance of the doctrine. The subsequent four chapters tell the story of the rediscovery of trinitarian thought by means of an unexpectedly brief list of central themes: the restoration of the trinitarian center (Chapter 2), the focus on the Trinity in history (Chapter 3), the idea of trinitarian relationality (Chapter 4), and the rediscovery of the immanent Trinity (Chapter 5). A brief epilogue concludes the book.