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Evangelisation and Culture
Aylward Shorter WF
Chapter 1: Evangelisation and
the Kingdom
Evangelisation > preaching.
à to make known the
Good News, it must be celebrated and lived.
A recent survey, conducted by the ecumenical body Churches Together in
The Good News of the Kingdom
The ‘social gospel’ and gospel praxis is an indispensable part of
evangelisation. Therefore we have to take a preferential option for the poor.
Because God loves the poor, we must to. God uses the poor to teach us what he
wants. The poor speak of God’s humanity and of our inhumanity. The preferential
option, which characterizes the Kingdom, is an option for the whole Christian
community. But the poor have also to make this preferential option. While they
do not deserve to be oppressed or to live in inhuman conditions, their ultimate
salvation does not consist in becoming materially rich themselves.
Evangelisation as proclamation
Evangelisation consists of proclamation as well as acting. Therefore
learning the local language is important. This is true for evangelisers in
foreign countries as well as evangelisers at home. Languages are on the move,
and evangelisers must use the vocabulary and idiom of those it addresses. And
just as language has to be renewed, so must evangelisation.
Evangelisation and praxis
If evangelisation is to be true it must verify that it sets people free.
Jesus wanted to liberate the oppressed. Evangelisation is community building.
It is about caring for one another.
Evangelisation and prayer
Prayer> prayers. It is the living communion with God in the
community.
Liturgy is a powerful context for evangelisation. Worship is the realm
of encounter with the divine mystery. Once mind and heart are raised to God,
new insights are revealed and new levels of conviction ad commitment are
attained. Prayer is the starting point of evangelisation because God owns the
process of evangelisation.
Chapter 2: Integral elements
of evangelisation
An evangelisation experience
Dialogue is important. Interreligious dialogue is an important aspect of
evangelisation. It may also bring liberation.
Dialogue also refers to inculturation. This is the ongoing dialogue of
faith and culture. In Ch. 2 we look at the nature, relevance and relationships
of inculturation, dialogue and liberation.
Inculturation is an integral element of evangelisation. The Churches
understanding of culture has evolved. Originally culture was seen as a single,
universal, normative criteria, according to which humans where adjudged
cultured or uncultured, and Christianity was seen as the perfection as human
culture. Nowadays culture is seen as empirical, pluralistic.
Meaning of inculturation
Part of inculturation is to express the gospel in forms and terms proper
to a culture. Inculturation is often associated with syncretism. But one has to
be careful not to invalidate the gospel values. Therefore inculturation implies
desynchronisation.
There are different possible bases for a theology of inculturation, e.g.
creation and history, incarnation of the Paschal mystery, the universal mission
of the Church, authentic tradition and the magisterium. The last two belong to
the realm of ecclesiology. It is here that translating inculturation theory
into evangelisation practice is at its most acute.
Ecclesiological bases of
inculturation
One approach of inculturation in the universal mission of the Church is
that of loving God and loving your neighbour. This means to love others in
their differences. This is an extension of the preferential option for the
poor. This option provides an entry into the world of the poor.
The lived plurality, which confronts the church, is not confined to
national and ethnic cultures, but include other cultures or subcultures, such
as those of women, youth, and other religions. Catholicity implies a true
communication of meaning. The used language must be the language of he local
culture. In a truly catholic Church there cannot be a universal, standardised
language. This raises questions to the role of a centralised magisterium.
Another question is that of the universal tradition of the Church. What is the
substance of this universal tradition, and has it any cultural significance?
To grasp developing insights (such as dogma’s) it is necessary to decode
the faith-statements of other ages and places, and to reformulate and live them
in the cultural language of our own faith.
Evangelisation and dialogue
Inculturation is the ongoing dialogue between culture and religious
faith. It is important to underline that the church does not enter into
dialogue for ulterior motives, to annex or to take over other religions. The
Church undertakes interreligious dialogue in order to be saved, in order to
grow in Christ, in order to cooperate with the Holy Spirit at work in other
religions. The church has no monopoly of the process. The partners enter into
dialogue in strict fidelity to their own traditions, but with a common
commitment to a future horizon of truth.
Therefore, a first prerequisite for dialogue is self-identification.
Then there are basically four outcomes of dialogue: “The discovery of
agreement. The area of disagreement. A possible divergence of interests.
Convergence.” The divergence of interests is the most interesting area in the
dialogue, because it is through learning new interests from one another that
religious traditions can bring about conversion.
Another approach to dialogue is from Peter Berger. It is ‘induction’. A
process by which our own tradition grows by being authentically reinterpreted
as a result of the exchange with others traditions. This is also conversion.
As Christians we cannot speak of God’s activity in other religion
traditions without reference to Christ as the foundation and norm for the
revelation of who God is.
Therefore, we do not reject other religions as vehicles of
salvation-revelation, nor do we abandon the definitive character and
particularity of salvation-revelation in Jesus Christ. We believe that Jesus
Christ has many things yet to say to us.
There are four types of dialogue:
“1) The dialogue in which people share their human problems and
preoccupations (the dialogue of life). 2) The dialogue one thinks of when the
term is mentioned. 3) The dialogue, which JP II started in
Dialogue with a world
religion: Islam
Dialogue with other religions is rendered difficult. Hinduism and
Buddhism because of their unsystematic nature. With Islam it is difficult for
other reasons:
Christianity and Islam have developed historically in a different way.
Christianity has developed a critical self-understanding by liberal and
scientific thought, whereas Muslims haven’t.
Muslims don’t find dialogue with Christians really necessary. They are a
bit suspicious towards the West (after colonisation).
Muslims feel they already know the truth about Jesus Christ in the
Qu’ran, and Qu’ran sees Christians as unfaithful to the teachings of Jesus and
that they added secondary beliefs, such as Trinity, Incarnation, and
Redemption.
There is disagreement between Muslims and Christians about freedom of
conscience.
Dialogue with traditional
religion
The Catholic Church has not taken often African Traditional Beliefs
(ATB) seriously. But as any real religious dialogue with ATB is to happen, it
must be seen as an autonomous religious system, apart and distinct from
Christianity.
Sects and new movements
The two major challenges to the church are those with Christian
fundamentalist sects and the Independent Churches. Their ideas are often
directly opposed to a catholic understanding of evangelisation, but they begin
to infiltrate the Catholic Church in some countries.
Independent churches are often not offshoot from missionary churches.
They are often independent inventions of prophetic founders, and they may be
very different from one another.
Evangelisation and liberation
The Truth will set you free. The Good News liberates. The best synonym
for liberation is resurrection. The faith in Christ’s resurrection liberates us
and empowers us to continue the struggle against evil. Our faith in Christ
brings us to commitment and action. The gospel is a call from the poor to the
non-poor to enter the world of the poor and to discover their values. It is the
answer to the question: “How do we tell the poor that God loves them?”
(Guttierez). We can only do so through practical deeds of human love.
Evangelisation, therefore, brings solidarity.
True liberation is not only measured by political chance, because they
are never lasting. The call to liberation and conversion is a constant one. And
here prayer is important. It is important to listen what God asks us to do.
Chapter 3: Evangelisation and
the Christian vocation
Evangelisation and Christian
initiation
When people are initiated into the Christian life they should also be
initiated into the task of evangelisation. What is needed however, is a
pastoral involvement at the parish level, a form of junior ministry in which
young people can evangelise through proclamation, prayer and praxis, and which
might become breeding ground for vocations.
Evangelisation, a community
responsibility
Community building is linked to evangelisation, and evangelisation is a
community responsibility. The main purpose of basic communities is that they provide
an immediate life context within which Christians can practise their faith and
carry out their vocation to evangelise. They are a new way of being church, and
of building the
In general it is easier to set up basic communities in rural areas and
urban areas where is cohesion. This could be with the poor. Issue groups could
be set up (e.g. social justice, health, etc.).
Pastoral evangelisation
This means the activity of establishing God’s kingdom in the home community,
and is often called ‘pastoral care’. It requires constant reflection and social
analysis, because the human phenomenon is always changing. Pastoral
evangelisation involves dialogue with many different traditions and worlds.
There is dialogue with the reigning socio-cultural ethos or philosophy of life.
In Euro-America this is materialist and secularised.
Missionary evangelisation
We cannot live without borders. They define differences of sex, culture,
language, ethnicity, and religious experience. But there are also borders,
which have been created by human beings. They are often discriminatory barriers
between classes and castes, between races, and between rich and poor. They are
often the consequence of perversity and injustice. Mission is not only abroad,
it is also in our own countries.
Thomas Kuhn identified a succession of paradigms in the history of
science. This can also be applied on developments in theology. In the catholic
church we are witnessing a current shift
from one paradigm of mission to another.
The new paradigm offers the model of a koinonia church. There are no
geographically defined mission territories.
In the new paradigm, missionary activity is multidirectional, and there
is a growing interdependence or partnership among local churches.
Missionaries always cross frontiers. They are the voice of the
voiceless. They are often the first to become aware of structural injustice and
the denial of human rights.
Formation of the missionary
evangeliser
Missionaries request a highly professional and specialised training,
particularly in social and cultural anthropology. This must be combined with an
immersion experience. Above all, missionaries need to learn how to observe and
interpret other cultures and the people.
Pre-evangelisation and primary
evangelisation
Pre-evangelisation is the term used for the preparatory phase, during
which research is carried out, languages learned, contacts made and the ground
prepared for primary evangelisation.
Primary evangelisation follows the path of interreligious dialogue.
Secularism and the new
evangelisation
In the West we live in a post-Christian world. Some people reject the
///Christian message. Why? Often people say they are relating to a Christian
world and values. Yet, it seems rather that a modern technological culture is
fundamentally subversive of Gospel principles. So, how to counteract the
dehumanising and dechristianising effects of technology.
Chapter 4: Obstacles to
evangelisation
Unity or uniformity
The most serious obstacles to evangelisation/inculturation do not come
from without the church, but from within.
The hierarchy understands the difference between unity and uniformity,
but they seem to find it hard to abandon their yearning for uniformity.
The requirements of a
culturally polycentric Church
The Latin Church must renounce its superiority complex and monopoly of
forms and expressions (J.-Y. Calvez).
What are the characteristics and requirements for a culturally
polyvalent Church? The gospel should be transposed into cultural or
anthropological language, and not merely into a semantic or literary one. An Indian
theologian said:
Christianity, with its universal message, cannot grow as a religion
today, unless it abandon its preference for Western culture, with its rational,
technically minded, masculine bias, and opens up to the feminine, intuitive
understanding of reality in the east. (S.M. Michael).
Eurocentrism versus
polycentrism
Historically, Christian evangelisation has enjoyed its greatest
successes wherever there was a technological culture-difference between
evangeliser and evangelised. This culture-differential also underlies the
contemporary consciousness of a ‘global village’. Euro-American technocratic
culture is a totalitarian world process. At the global level, cultural
diversity is disappearing. Problem is that there is no alternative. It also
undermines human sensibilities and renders people less compassionate.
Therefore, the church must uphold human and religious values, as a basis and
inspiration of culture in a secular and technical world. The church has also to
stand on the side of those who feel threatened.
Eurocentrism official
inculturation theology
Some in the church still find that the European culture is supreme while
“Christian faith is communicated through western culture and that this culture
is ‘fused’ with the evangelised culture.
They take refuge in abstract and minimalist versions of inculturation
theory, while upholding Eurocentrism in practice.
The dynamic of inculturation
praxis
There is a dangerous tendency in official church documents to imply that
the patrimony of the church’s history is a culture, and even to equate it with
a universally significant Euro-American culture.
Secrecy and censorship in the
Church
Often the Church receives a bad press, because of the secrecy it often
operate. It has to learn to communicate in an open way, to the laity, to the
world, and to the press. Often the hierarchy feel that the catholic press
should only reflect what they say.
Therefore they exercise a kind of unnecessary censorship.
Evangelisation is the responsibility of the whole people of God, and
there is no reason why the media for evangelisation should be monopolised by
the clergy or hierarchy, or why they should be sensitive about divergent
matters.
There are also other very good means of communication, such as songs,
dance, storytelling, etc.
Chapter 5: An evangelising
model of Church
Power of love versus love of
power
Jesus’ new commandment is “to love others as he has loved us”. It
provides the impulse of evangelisation. This love has the power to attract
people. Love wants us to be poor with the poor and others with the others.
Also, the first Christian communities was distinguished by its live for one
another.
Through this vocation of love, it desires to make cultural traditions
more genuine and true.
The contemporary malaise in
the Church
Many people in the Church love the Church, but are also very much hurt
by it, because the way the hierarchy deals with people. Therefore, the Church
needs to undergo a profound conversion, and adopt even a new model of Church.
A new model of Church
In a Church communion characterised by true communion and mutual
ministry, it is essential that the relationships between the local churches be
on an equal footing. The bishop of
A culturally polycentric church is really convinced of the need for
dialogue. It is convinced that evangelisation is a two-way, and not one-way
process. It is a Church that believes that God speaks to her through other
cultures and faith traditions, especially when he speaks with the voice of the
poor. It is a Church that is humble enough to reflect deeply on its encounter
with ‘otherness’, and even to rethink the formulation of its own message in the
light of this encounter.
Chapter 5:Evangelisation from
below
God comes to us from below
Genuine inculturation cannot come from above. It must originate with the
local community. We can also apply this idea ‘from below’ to the whole of
evangelisation. Evangelisation originates in the Christian community from which
the evangelisers themselves emerge, and from the experience of Jesus in the
community who sends them from its midst.
à experience of blind guy
Also liturgy has its role in evangelisation. Often, non-believers are
impressed by the liturgy. It might be a starting point for the conversion of
people.
Evangelisation works through ordinary relationships and ordinary
experiences. God works through the ordinary processes and structures of human
society. How society responds to the evangeliser’s effort is very different.
Conversion therefore does not count only one’s effort of evangelisation.
Evangelisation and basic
communities
Evangelisation is most effective when it operates through
interpersonally. Ideal is it via the family or via peer groups. In urban
setting life is more characterised by ego-centred networks than by communities.
In this case neighbourliness can be an important line of interpersonal
relationships.
The basic Christian community is essentially a cell of committed
Christians at the service of the church and of the world. It is first concerned
of how to be a Christian in a given life context. It is involved in dialogue
with other cultures, traditions and religions. It strives to rekindle the flame
of faith in the neighbourhood and to restore the awareness of God’s presence in
society. It is engaged in liberation. It tries to analyse and identify the
causes of social problems.
The basic Christian community operates within the church’s structure
(parish, deanery, diocese), and are subject to hierarchical authority. At the
other hand, they are not a structural part of the parish. They are
free-floating groups of committed Christians who have joined together freely.
Their first goal is the achievement of community itself and they search for
committed leaders and followers.
This kind of church is opposed to a totalitarian model of church.
Initiatives can come from below. The apostolate of the laity is effective,
because it is inserted in the actual life.
Evangelisation and
collaborative ministry
Collaborative ministry means bringing together different conditions,
sexes and classes of people in order to make evangelisation more effective. It
means working together on footage of equality.
In the first place: collaboration of sexes. The free-floating character
of the basic community is gives it greater freedom, more spontaneity, and a
dynamism that is lacking in the church’s official structures.
Important as well is collaboration with the youth. New roles and
ministries should be created for young people. They can take up vital roles in
evangelisation.
Basic Christian communities cut across many human barriers, such as age,
language, race, ethnic group, class.
Renewal from below
Often the church is seen as ‘the magisterium’. But the church is much
more than that. The universal church is made up of local churches, and it is
these, which represent the church’s everyday face. This face is a human face,
for the community-based local church is in touch with real life situations.
The new model takes human culture seriously, and s in dialogue with real
human life contexts and patterns of thought. It doesn’t impose a message from
above, but elaborates it and lives it from within human societies and cultural
traditions.
Plan
of the Book
Chapter 1: Evangelisation and
the Kingdom
The Good News of
the Kingdom
Evangelisation as
proclamation
Evangelisation and praxis
Evangelisation and
prayer
Chapter 2: Integral elements
of evangelisation
An evangelisation
experience
Meaning of
inculturation
Ecclesiological
bases of inculturation
Evangelisation and
dialogue
Dialogue with a
world religion: Islam
Dialogue with
traditional religion
Sects and new
movements
Evangelisation and
liberation
Chapter 3: Evangelisation and
the Christian vocation
Evangelisation, a
community responsibility
Pastoral
evangelisation
Missionary evangelisation
Formation of the
missionary evangeliser
Pre-evangelisation
and primary evangelisation
Secularism and the
new evangelisation
Chapter 4: Obstacles to
evangelisation
Unity or uniformity
The requirements of
a culturally polycentric Church
Eurocentrism versus
polycentrism
Eurocentrism
official inculturation theology
The dynamic of
inculturation praxis
Secrecy and
censorship in the Church
Chapter 5: An evangelising
model of Church
Power of love
versus love of power
The contemporary
malaise in the Church
A new model of
Church
Chapter 6:Evangelisation from
below
God comes to us
from below
Evangelisation and
basic communities
Evangelisation and
collaborative ministry
Renewal from below