Christianity in a Multicultural World : Global Encounters and Regional Expressions(2009.10.16-17 한국기독교학회 제 38차 정기학술대회에서 발표)
-Prof. Sebastian Chang-Hwan Kim(York St John University)-
We are currently living through one of the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide… Until recently, the overwhelming majority of Christians have lived in White nations…
Over the past century, however, the centre of gravity in the Christian world has shifted inexorably southward, to Africa, Asia, and Latin America…Christianity is doing very well indeed in the global South – not just surviving but expanding.
The above statement is commonly shared by recent scholarship on religions and sociology because the growth of Christian churches in the Southern hemisphere is set to continue and this affects not only the demography within the Christian church but also the pattern of religious groupings world wide. There are a number of scholars who have studied this new phenomenon, notably Harvey Cox, Paul Preston, David Martin, Grace Davie and Philip Jenkins. These studies are conducted from sociological, historical and political perspectives. They attempt to give a comprehensive picture of past and present trends of Christian movements and direct us to certain patterns of emerging Christianity. In spite of differences in methodology and research outcomes among these scholars, two features can be said to be common. First, recognition of the numerical growth of non-Western Christianity. The mode and reasons for this growth varies from place to place but Evangelicaland Pentecostal(-charismatic) movements are playing the major role in this new phenomenon. Second, as a consequence of the first, an acknowledgement that the ‘centre of gravity’ has shifted away from the West and that the new forms of Christianity will inevitably influence the churches in the West, changing the ‘traditional’ form of Christianity as a whole.
The first feature is less ambiguous since the statistics show quite clearly the numerical strength of the Christian church in Asia, Africa and Latin America and this growth seems to set to continue. In just over one hundred years the map of world Christianity has changed almost out of all recognition. In 1900, it is estimated that 70 percent of all Christians were to be found in Europe, whereas now, as we have seen, Christians are much more evenly distributed around the globe and, if present church growth and population trends continue, by 2025 Africa and Latin America will be vying with one another to claim the most Christians, having about a quarter each of the world’s Christian population. Europe will be in third place, with Asia coming up fast behind. The second feature deserves more attention since scholars do not agree about the mode and outcome of the interaction between traditional Christianity and the more recent forms of Christianity outside the West. In addition, there are also growing concerns regarding the future of Christianity within the (Western) Europe since not only has the decline of the church attendance accelerated greatly in recent years, but also there is increasing pressure from some quarters to exclude any religious affairs from the public sphere. There are two schools of thought on the issue of the interaction between North and South: one, represented by Jenkins, that it will be in the form of confrontational encounters or clashes of different forms of Christianities. The other, represented by Davie, that the rise of Southern Christian will make very little impact on Northern (European) Christianity since the Christianity developed in Europe is unique.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the question of the future shape of Christianity. I will first briefly critique Jenkins and Davies and argue that the interaction between the North and South will be an interaction of interdependency and partnership rather than confrontation or division by remaining as separate entities. I would then discuss this position on the basis of research findings showing the development of distinctive forms of Christianity in a multi-cultural world, and also by giving examples of how Christians have engaged in their societies in India and in Europe. I shall then suggest that developing a ‘public theology’is vital for the church’s contribution to contemporary societies and that the future shape of Christianity is as a greater diversity of Christianities interacting with each other for the enrichment of global Christianity and also the wider global society.
1. Global encounters: confrontational or irrelevant?
Philip Jenkins, in his remarkable survey of the shift of the Christian presence to the South, convincingly argues that the churches in the South have developed distinctive forms of Christianity ‘strictly on their own terms’and that they will inevitably define the features of the ‘next Christendom’ and therefore the shape of Christianity as a whole. He observes that the churches in the South are ‘not just a transplanted version of the familiar religion of the older Christian status: the new Christendom is no mirror image of the Old. It is a truly new and developing entity’. He identifies the distinctive characteristics of the Southern Christianity as traditional (not liberal) on social issues, conservative on beliefs and moral issues, and interested in supernatural and personal salvation rather than radical politics. He holds an optimistic view of the future of Christianity, believing that the rise of the South will be instrumental in the sustenance or even revitalisation of the churches in the North. However, there are two difficulties of his thesis: first, the term ‘Christendom’ is an unfortunate term in that it implies, at least historically, the dominating nature of a particular form of Christianity. Jenkins’ use of ‘the next Christendom’suggests the churches of the South will influence or dominate others after the same pattern as European Christendom. The second difficulty is that, when it comes to the idea of the ‘centre of gravity’ of the Christian church shifting to the South, the argument seems to rely entirely on the numerical growth of the Christian population in this region. I will come back to this point later.
Although in many ways she shares Jenkins’ thesis, Grace Davie, in her survey of the shift of the Christian presence to the South, arrives at a different conclusion. In her book, Europe - The Exceptional Case: Parameters of Faith in the Modern World, Davie deals with the close relationship of modernisation and secularisation in Europe and suggests that secularisation will not necessarily accompany modernisation in the rest of the world. In this sense Europe is the exceptional case. The author persuasively argues that examination of the different patterns of Christian activities in the Americas, Africa and parts of the Asian continent supports her thesis. The basis of her argument lies in the unique development of religious patterns in (Western) Europe. Taking the example of Britain, which she characterises as ‘believing without belonging’, she points out that, though church attendance has drastically declined, the British have not abandoned ‘their deep-seated religious aspirations or a latent sense of belonging’, but instead ‘religious belief is inversely rather than directly related to belonging’and, as the institutional disciplines decline, so ‘belief not only persists but becomes increasingly personal, detached and heterogeneous’. She challenges the notion of Europe being a model for the rest of the world and argues that the religious behaviour of Europeans is distinctive and peculiar to Europe.
I am in agreement with Davie that the patterns of the European religious experience will not be repeated in the same way in the rest of the world, but I am less convinced about the notion that Europeis the exceptional case. The experience of the rest of the world is quite different from the European pattern of modernisation and secularisation. Calling Europe the exceptional case tends to downplay the distinctiveness of other contexts. In the words of Byron Shafer, ‘all societies, observed closely enough, are distinctive, while all societies, observed with sufficient distance, are simultaneously similar’. Each continent may be regarded as exceptional and no two continents are independent of each other. It seems to me that, though the changes may be of different degrees and varied patterns, the future shape of Christianity will be significantly different from the ‘traditional’western form of Christianity. The question of how we understand and interpret these new forms of Christianity in the twenty-first century world-wide church has been a concern for scholars of the subject since the phenomenon arose. What I would like to discuss in my paper is the way Jenkins, Davie and others approach the issue and the nature of their investigations – in other words, their assessment of the impact of the rise of Southern Christianity. Jenkins and other commentators mentioned above focus their studies on the demography of these churches, the reasons for the growth of particular denominations, their socio-political contexts, and the characteristics of their faith. When Jenkins describes Christianity in the South as ‘doing very well indeed’, one understands, in the light of his whole thesis, that his observations are mainly determined by the numerical expansion of Christianity there. The question I would like to address is how we assess Christianity in a given context.
Kenneth S. Latourette, in his monumental work, A History of the Expansion of Christianity, explained the way he interpreted the expansion of Christianity in three perspectives: geographical expansion (according to the numbers of Christians and churches); the vigour of Christianity in any given era (according to new movements and denominations); and the effect of Christianity upon humankind. Most studies – even, I would say, Latourette’s work itself –are done from the first two perspectives, and the last perspective is very difficult to assess indeed, if not impossible. However, the question of how we assess the Christianity in a given context needs to include more than its numerical strength and the study of the ways and means of its expansion. I will argue that evaluating the strength of Christianity in any society has more to do with the integrity of the Christian church, and this has to be constantly re-assessed, however difficult this maybe. In this regard, two vital questions seem to be about the identity and mission of the church –how do Christians themselves understand the purpose of the church and what are the contributions of that church to its society? In addition to analysing Christianity sociologically, observation of the engagement or interaction of theologians and church leaders with the context is vital to understanding contemporary Christianity in a particular part of the world and to predicting its future shape. Here I would like to use our recent research project on distinctive Christianities world-wide from historical and theological perspectives.
2. World Christianity: its characteristics and regional expressions
Our survey of Christianity continent by continent has demonstrated that Christianity is a world religion because it is present across the globe in countless local expressions which are linked by criss-crossing networks. We can identify some emerging features of world Christianity. First, Christianity is now represented in some shape or form in virtually every country in the world. The major exception to this widening spread is the Middle East and some other Muslim countries. Furthermore, it is increasingly also the case that every major expression of Christian faith is present in each country as the faith spreads and migration leads to societies becoming less homogeneous. Since Christianity is essentially poly-centric and multi-traditional, the greater the indigeneity, the more diversity we would expect to see. There are many trans-national and even global organisations and networks that bring Christian leaders of a common persuasion together but the prospect of a single ‘world church’ or another Christendom seems remote.
Second, Christian faith is present in society in many different levels. It is both a personal faith and a public confession. It is practised in homes and in public buildings. It is the faith of both poor and wealthy. The profile(s) of a church in any particular society depends on its particular theology and also the attitude of the state: churches may be established institutions in Europe or underground groups in China, mutually supportive communities in Africa or protest groups in Latin America, businesses in North America or caste groups in India. Given the opportunity and an interest, any kind of church can participate in public life, including those often thought to be apolitical, such as Evangelical and Pentecostal churches.
Third, Christianity is spread primarily by local believers and developed by them in local ways. Attention to the activities of foreign missionaries has tended to obscure this fact, and the present diversity of world Christianity is testimony to it. Within the denominations that resulted from foreign mission activity, local believers – such as black evangelists and Bible women –have built up the church, although those who brought the gospel were often reluctant to transfer leadership. Nowadays it is rare to find foreigners in the leadership of former colonial churches. Although there are usually on-going links with the founding church, these may now be mutual and, in a globalized world, churches anywhere in the world may have multiple international links. Countless new churches and denominations have been founded in parts of the world once considered by Europeans ‘mission fields’, which are entirely locally staffed and funded.
Fourthly, there are strong global flows of Christian influence across the world. Some of these appear to follow political and economic globalization. Roman Catholicism, Protestantism and Ecumenism arose in Europe, Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism arose in North America and these forms of Christianity are embraced in other continents, however the strength of all of these movements arguably now lies outside their continents of origin because of the numbers involved. For example, with 45 percent of all Catholics in Latin America, the policies of the Catholic Church cannot simply be dictated according to European concerns. Within the Anglican Communion, majority African opposition to homosexuality is now putting pressure on North Americans and European Anglicans not only on this issue but also in much wider matters of biblical interpretation and the meaning of Christian Communion. Most importantly, and arguably more characteristically of Christianity, Christian influence flows worldwide along many other currents that arise from below rather than above. The spread of Christian faith from below is because Christianity is primarily a people-movement. Although non-personal forms of communication are used in evangelism, the development of world Christianity as described here is largely the result of personal contact, the formation of communities and migration.
Fifthly, it is increasingly difficult to identify a geographical centre of Christian faith. Jerusalem and Bethlehem continue have special meaning because of their associations with the historical Jesus but they do not function as organisational centres, and most Christians never visit them. The Roman Catholic Church has a clear centre in Rome, but this allegiance is not shared by other Christians. The Orthodox churches have always been multi-centric, and each of the various Protestant denominations has its own headquarters. The most recent movement is the most difficult of all to place; even its origins are in dispute. US Pentecostals tend to maintain that Pentecostalism originated in the USA. but they remain divided as to where: Topeka (1900) or Azusa Street (1906). Some maintain a theory of multiple origins on the grounds that there were many outbreaks of revival in different parts of the world with similar characteristics in that period, including Wales, India, Korea and Chile, resulting in a global movement. Other churches, particularly indigenous churches in Africa but also some in Asia, are co-opted by some scholars under the umbrella of ‘Pentecostalism’because of phenomenological similarities only. They do not have any historical or contemporary affiliation with Pentecostal denominations. It is a case of ‘categories originating from the North being used to explain and somehow take credit for what is going on in the South. Historically and functionally Pentecostalism is a multi-centred movement.
Lastly, looking at Christianity continent by continent shows that it is not a monolithic extension of Western power but a lively meeting-place of many different expressions of faith, which do not have a common political, economic or cultural agenda but only a shared allegiance to Jesus Christ. This allegiance is informed by the Bible (in many languages and forms) and by knowledge of Christian tradition that has been passed on in some way, either through casual contact with other Christians or through intentional mission activities. The message has been received in ways often very different from the transmitted version and, primarily through the efforts of local people, has become part of different societies. The spread and fragmentation of Christianity over two thousand years makes it impossible to trace a singlehistorical tradition. There are different confessions of faith, each arising from the response to the Christian gospel in a particular historical context. However these now exist within very different social and cultural settings from the ones that gave them birth and are taking on local features, so that it is now possible to talk about ‘African’ and ‘Asian’ Christianity as well as about Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism and the Baptists.
The important aspect of the above study for our discussion is that the spread of Christianity world-wide is not serial, that is from one continent to the next continent or from one nation to the other in chronological sequence, but often simultaneous and multi-directional. Furthermore, the ways in which Christianity is received vary from place to place according to local cultures and customs following the patterns of evangelism set by missionaries from outsider. The way Catholic Christianity was introduced into Korea is one of numerous examples of this varied pattern of Christian propagation (ref.). In other words, global Christianity has been diverse throughout its history, in its many developments and in its interaction with Christianities from other countries and continents. This shows itself in the development of Christian theologies and practices in different contexts and for this, I would like to look at the cases of India and the UK which are particularly familiar to me.
3. Indian case – inculturation, dialogue and the problem of conversion
Due to the vast diversity of religious and cultural communities, one of the most difficult public issues in India has been the problem of communal or sectarian conflicts. Though Indians have developed ‘a pragmatic concept of living together and a philosophical concept of finding truth and goodness’ in each other, often communal issues have proved a bone of contention. Indian theological researches are inevitability on this issue of living together and appreciating other communities. This inculturation model can be traced back to the work of Roberto de Nobili, who in the seventeenth century tried to relate Christianity to Hindu beliefs and practices. And in more recent times, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, who was Catholic convert who attempted to find a commonality between Hinduism and Christianity. He described himself as a ‘Hindu-Catholic’, saying, ‘we are Hindus so far as our physical and mental constitution is concerned, but in regard to our immortal souls we are Catholic’. This idea is further developed in Raymond Panikkar’s well-known work, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (1964). Panikkar was convinced that there must be a ‘meeting-place’ between Christianity and Hinduism in the religious sphere. He believed that Hinduism can be and should be a vehicle for salvation because of the presence of the ‘unknown Christ’ within it. Panikkar’s acceptance of Hinduism as a legitimate way of salvation laid the groundwork for Catholic theologians in India to move from ‘Indian Christianity’ to ‘Hindu Christianity’.
The Indian attempt to place Christian theology in Hindu contexts has been expressed in many ways, especially in the arts, due to the Indian tradition of images or seeing as of vital importance to faith. Jyoti Sahi, a Christian artist, points out that Indians are interested in images ‘not just for what they are outside, but for the effect they have on the inner disposition for the believers’ and the ‘connection between inner and outer is vital for the Indian mode of realising faith’. He further argues:
Christianity, therefore, should act like a midwife, and constantly bring to birth in a society the new from the old in a spirit of love and beauty. Christ himself describes this process, using the metaphor of a woman giving birth to a child. In this birth process there is struggle and agony. But the climax of this process [Christ] is a new spirit of joy and celebration.
Perhaps the most important contribution of Indian theological thinking to the global Christian community has been the active exploration of the concept of dialogue as the metaphor for theological discourse. A short definition of dialogue is, ‘commitment to one’s faith, and openness to that of others with genuine respect’. Stanley Samartha, Methodist minister and theologian in India, who became the first director of the sub-unit on dialogue in the World Council of the Churches, articulated his theology of dialogue as an attempt to understand and express our own particularity not just in terms of our own heritage but also in relation to the spiritual heritage of our neighbours of our faiths. His theology is based on his understanding of God’s covenant with his people and also Christ’s incarnation, both of which demonstrate the dialogical relationship between God and his people. A natural expansion of this understanding is that the relationship between different religious communities should be a form of mutual dialogue, and not at all confrontational. Samartha draws his theology from the Indian multi-religious setting, from Indian philosophical approaches of finding truth by consensus, and from an attitude of acknowledging others as partners on the way rather than imposing one’s own truth claims onto others. In his approach, mutual respect of one another’s convictions is of crucial importance in dialogue and this should take place in community, creating a ‘community of communities’. Indian theology of inculturation and dialogue has been immensely influential in our thinking and in Christian approaches to other religious communities. It shows that plurality should be regarded as a blessing rather than an obstacle to harmony, and that active engagement in dialogue with others with respect is part and parcel of, if not essential to any religious life.
The other vital concern for Indian Christians is the conversion issue, in fact since independence in 1947 the most contentious issue between Christian and Hindu communities has been the problem of conversion. The traditional understanding of conversion as manifested in joining the Christian community leads to serious difficultiesin the life of the converts in South Asia, particularly in India, where change of religious community has major implications for relations with the wider Hindu community. Hindu leaders oppose Christian conversion as incompatible with Indian philosophies and social practices, and have countered it by legislation and by the re-conversion of Christian converts. The topic of conversion rose to prominence in Indian Christian theology particularly during the second half of the 1960s and the early 1970s. It became clear that the strength of Hindu opposition to it and the concern of Indian Protestant theologians were more to do with the relationship between the Christian community and the Hindu community, particularly the question of whether converts should leave the Hindu community and join the Christian community, and what joining the church entailed. Thomas strongly criticised the ‘minority consciousness’ of the Christian community in India and urged Christians to overcome their isolation from the national mainstream and live for the larger community. The goal of Christian mission, he argued, should not be to create an exclusive ‘Christian’ culture but an ‘open’ culture.
Thomas further developed his thoughts on conversion and raised the question of the ‘form’ of the Christian community within the human community. He argued that the most urgent task for contemporary Christian mission is to participate in the people’s struggle for the ‘realisation of humanity’ rather than following the traditional missionary task of conversion. He further insisted that the secular fellowship was the ‘point of contact’ and could be in ‘partnership in the struggle’, and he called on the church to break the communal structure and build up a new partnership of Christians and non-Christians – the ‘human koinonia’. In his critique of dichotomic approaches that separated salvation and humanisation – concepts he saw as ‘integrally related’ –he alleged that the main problems of Indian Christianity were ‘pietistic individualism’, which emphasised dogmatic belief and the inner experience of conversion, and the communal tendency of the Christian community, which isolated and closed off Christians from others. He then introduced the concept of the ‘Christ-centred secular fellowship’, a koinonia which was the ‘manifestation of the new reality of the Kingdom at work in the world of men in world history’. For Thomas, ‘secular fellowship’does not mean making the gospel secular. What he intended was not for Christians to lose the religious or spiritual aspect of the gospel, nor for Christianity to be absorbed into Hindu religion but for the secularisation of the Christian community in order to bridge the gap with the wider Hindu community and identify with Hindus. Secular for him meant the Christian community becoming truly ‘religious’ without being ‘communal’.
Christianity in India, despite being a minority in numbers, has made major contributions to nation-building, especially in education, medical work and other social areas. Christian communities in India try to live side by side with their neighbours by fully integrating into the languages and cultures of India, while at the same time affirming their Christian faith and practices, which may be distinctive from others. The future shape of Christianity in India may lie in the balancing of these two aspects of integration and distinctiveness as Christians strive to exhibit their integrity and identity in both public and private life in such diverse and yet often rigid cultures and societies in this region.
4. The European case: responding to the ‘secular monopoly’ in public sphere
In the 1960s the demography of Christianity in Europe changed drastically, though the decline had been gradual over decades. Hugh McLeod identifies this period as ‘cultural revolution’and argues that the cause of this change was the search for greater individual freedom, which led to rejection of moral and doctrinal codes and authority. This was aggravated by social changes such as rapid decline in rural cultures, weakening of the sense of ‘respectability’, and loss of association of social identity with the church. As a result, ‘religious community was ceasing to be a necessary source of identity and support’ to the people of Western Europe. This idea is taken further by Callum Brown, who insists that though Christianity endured the challenge of the Enlightenment and modernity, the decisive decline in church attendance in the 1960s was because ‘respectability’was supplanted by ‘respect’, the traditional moral code was replaced by toleration and greater individual freedom and, crucially, women stopped attending church and sending their children to Sunday school. In Brown’s words, ‘it took several centuries to convert Britain to Christianity, but it has taken less than forty years for the country to forsake it’and, controversially, he claims that in the ‘death of Christian Britain’, ‘Britain is showing the world how religion as we have known it can die’. In a similar argument, about the issue of the impact of modernity on religion in Britain, Steve Bruce observes that modernity changes the world view of the people, bringing ‘rationality’ and ‘subtly altering the way we think about the world so as to make religious beliefs and rituals ever more irrelevant’. He further argues that the pre-industrial form of the church was challenged by sects, which encouraged individualistic religiosity. The sociologists are in agreement that changing socio-cultural contexts in Europe, particularly modernity and economic affluence, played the major role in the decline of church attendance in Western Europe.
However, perhaps we need to go further than looking at church attendance and the decline of church membership. Grace Davie has made a significant contribution to identifying and mapping the situation of contemporary Christianity in Europe to the extent that Europeis exceptional in terms of its secularisation, the decline of Christianity, and its religiosity as a whole. As her table on ‘religious belief’ shows, there is still a remarkably high percentage of people who have an awareness of the presence of God and an interest in matters of faith. In the foreseeable future it is unlikely that the statistics of church attendance will rise, nor is there any reason to expect that religious belief will decrease suddenly. Obviously Christian theology needs to deal with this gap between believing and belonging. Europe has developed theologies which have served the need of European context and have affected the life of its people for centuries. Furthermore, they have influenced the religious quest of the rest of the world a great deal. This public engagement of Christian faith is apparent when Hugh McLeod insists that, in spite of the privatisation of religion in Europe, religion continues to play vital part in motivating and shaping the convictions of public figures in the areas of education and welfare, and in the areas of government policies and moral scrutiny.
Here, I would like to briefly discuss the recent controversy caused by a lecture given by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams last year. Since he took the Archbishop’s role in 2002, he has given numerous lectures, sermons, and written articles not only on church related themes, but also on a variety of socio-political and economic issues. Williams is particularly concerned with secularism and with the position of minority groups. His difficulty has been relating the church to the secular state and to a society which are tending to become increasingly hostile toward any aspect of religion in public.
During February 2008, Britain witnessed an unprecedented debate over a lecture given by the Archbishop of Canterbury on ‘Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective’. His lecture is divided into three sections: first, an overall discussion of the rights of religious groups within a secular state, especially the meaning of Sharia law for the Muslim community in the UK, and their implications; second, questioning the validity of the legal monopoly of the secular state in the context of contemporary plural societies, arguing that this in fact goes against the spirit of the Enlightenment and also does injustice to communities and individuals who hold various affiliations and commitments; and third, dealing with three perceived objections to his proposal and suggesting that the key perspective should be the promotion of what he sees as ‘interactive pluralism’in which a ‘complementary’ legal system helps in the promotion of human dignity for all members of society by allowing the full expression and exercise of their aspirations. Although this idea of implementing various complementary legal systems has been discussed by scholars and implemented in various global contexts and in the UK, the suggestion by the most senior member of the Church of England of incorporating Sharia law into the British legal system brought much controversy.
His main argument was for exploring the concept of ‘interactive pluralism’. He argued that the members of modern society posses 'multiple affiliation' and in that case the present arrangement is ‘a damagingly inadequate account of common life, in which certain kinds of affiliation are marginalised or privatised to the extent that what is produced is a ghettoised pattern of social life, in which particular sorts of interest and of reasoning are tolerated as private matters but never granted legitimacy in public as part of a continuing debate about shared goods and priorities’. He sees the need for accountability to prevent monopolistic claims by specific communities, or by secular government, as established by a ‘non-negotiable human dignity’ so that ‘each agent … could be expected to have a voice in the shaping of some common project for the well-being and order of a human group’.
Williams sees the danger of the marginalisation and privatisation of the Christian church and other religious communities by the secular sate and broadcast media and tries to provide an alternative space other than media; that is a ‘public’ where religious voices are respected and not intimidated by secularists’ accusation of the incompatibility of religion and the state. The ‘interactive pluralism’advanced by Williams has two dimensions of mutual accountability: one explicit and one implicit. On the one hand, it calls for the acknowledgement of the potential contributions of religious communities, the obligation on the state to provide this possibility in the public sphere and the challenge to the state’s holding the monopoly over the conduct of the law. On the other hand, it brings religious communities into the public discussion. Interactive pluralism helps religious communities to be more open for scrutiny of the public and hence encourages them to integrate into the wider society. This should be welcomed as the two dimensions would mutually benefit both religious communities and wider society. Williams is challenging both secular state for monopolising public discussions and the religious communities for their tendency to exclusive approaches to matters relating to wider society.
I have discussed Christianity in the contexts of India and the UK, focussing on church’s theological and practical approaches to society. Though these approaches have their limitations and problems, they represent sincere searches for the answer to the problems of mission and the church. I would argue that the churches in these countries have made an impact on society not because of their growth in numbers but because of Christian principles, initiated by the church, which shaped the direction of the church and in many cases of the whole society. In this regard, talking about the decline of church attendance may not be as important as formulating and redefining the identity and mission of the church. The place of the church and its role in society may not depend on its size but on its contribution to the society and its people.
Most of world’s population now live in plural societies – cultural, social and religious – and Christians do not have a monopoly on public space; they may even be a small minority, but this does not necessarily diminish the public significance of the gospel. When we discuss the situation of the church in a particular region, nation or continent, people often talk about the numbers of churches or Christians as if that is the measurement of the public significance of Christian gospel there. Yes, statistics may give a general picture of the situation, but they do not provide an accurate understanding of the role and impact of the Christian gospel on that society. Many churches around the world, in spite of their small numbers, have made significant contributions to the society and nation, not just protecting their own immediate concerns or concerned about the numbers of their congregations but seeking the public good – which is the basis of doing ‘public theology’.
5. Public theology: Church’s engagement in the public sphere
Public theology is Christians engaging in dialogue with those outside church circles on various issues. It involves urging Christians to participate in the public domain and to converse with citizens on issues wider than religious matters. There is an urgent need for Christian theology to be actively engaged in conversation on public issues with the understanding that it can offer complementary or supplementary approaches, and even alternative solutions, to the very complex issues facing society today. Christian theology, of course, does not have all the answers to these issues, but it can offer moral, ethical and spiritual insights, which are vital for forming a comprehensive approach to problems in modern and post-modern society. The key word for public theology is public conversation contributing to the formation of personal decisions and collective policy-making in economic, political, religious and social realms. In many ways public theology shares some characteristics of different theological discourses such as political theology, social ethics and liberation theology, but it has also established its own distinctive ways to engage in public issues.
One of the key aspects of public theology, in the contexts of post-modern and pluralist societies, is that the church should oppose any monopoly on power – political, economic, social and religious – and support the creation of a public sphere with open access and public debate. The challenge public theology brings to our discussion is universal access to reasoned public debate and this has to be creative and inclusive, which requires a change in the way we do theology. Jürgen Moltmann, in his book, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of Theology, asserts that theology must publicly maintain the universal concerns of God’s coming kingdom because ‘there is no Christian identity without public relevance, and no public relevance without theology’s Christian identity’, and because ‘as the theology of God’s kingdom, theology has to be public theology’ in the mode of ‘public, critical and prophetic complaint to God – public, critical and prophetic hope in God’. Theology, he insists, should exhibit ‘general concern in the light of hope in Christ for the kingdom of God’ by becoming ‘political in the name of the poor and the marginalized in a given society’, by thinking ‘critically about the religious and moral values of the societies in which it exists’, and by presenting ‘its reflections as a reasoned position’. In addition to this, public theology ‘refuses to fall into the modern trap of pluralism, where it is supposed to be reduced to its particular sphere and limited to its own religious society’. For Moltmann public theology is critical, prophetic, reflective and reasoned engagement of theology in society for the sake of the poor and marginalised to bring the kingdom of God.
The idea of the ‘public sphere’ was first articulated by Jürgen Habermas in his classic, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Habermas regarded the ‘public sphere’ as the realm of open forum in the situation where state and market economy dominate the daily lives of modern western societies. His initial theoretical framework was based on emerging male bourgeois societies, and was therefore heavily criticised by feminist theorists, and many of his ideas need to be revised to meet the demand of the contemporary complex situation of plural societies. And the term ‘public’ could be problematic and I shall discuss this later, but in so far as his theory of the ‘public sphere’ can be characterised as upholding the principles of universal access and open debate, it is very significant for our discussion.
If the publicsphere is institutionalised and dominated by a powerful body, it could easily become corrupt and oppressive, as we have seen the medieval Christendom where church dominated the public life of the people or military dictatorships in modern politics of twentieth century. In the modern and post-modern contexts, state (politics), broadcast media, market (economy) tend to dominate public life and monopolise the mode of engagement, rules and regulations. The various forms of broadcast media provide a forum for the public, and this is the strength of liberal democracy, which relies on free and fair access to information and debate through the media. However, in recent events the media has often played the role of judge, asserting their own verdict rather than allowing the public to engage in a healthy debate, or they were driven by the self-interests of profit making. For healthy debate, the provision of a forum for a critical dialogue is vital. But the powerful bodies of the state, the broadcast media and the market tend to incorporate a secular ideology and reject anything to do with religion. In response to this tendency, Bhikhu Parekh, scholar of political science and a member of the House of the Lords, argues convincingly that the secularist’s notions of the strict separation of religion and politics, and also that political debate and deliberation should be conducted in terms of secular reason alone, are problematic because secular reason is not ‘politically and culturally neutral’. Reasons, Parekh continues, are public ‘not because their grounds are or can be shared by all, as the secularist argues, but because they are open to inspection and can be intellectually discussed by all’. He further argues that, in spite of its many weaknesses, religion provides a ‘valuable counterweight to the state’, offers ‘an alternative source of morality and allegiance’, and reminds us that ‘human beings are more than citizens’.
I suggest that public theology serves as a catalyst for this endeavour of the church by constantly challenging dogmatic and exclusive views of the ‘public sphere’which are against universal access and open debate, by reshaping, redefining and expanding the meaning and implication of public forum, and also by articulating practical methods and models for a meaningful engagement in the ever changing and plural societies of our modern and postmodern context.
6. World Christianity in a multicultural world: beyond ‘Christendom’ and
the ‘centre of gravity’
When sociologists discuss the relationship between modernity and the decline of religion (Christianity, in the case of Europe), the underlying assumption is often that the challenge of modernity has been ‘rationality’ (see Steve Bruce). Religion, they argue, does not fit into the category of scientific rationality. Modernisation, in the process of bringing rationality, pushed people into certain modes of thinking and conformed their views to facts and rules. In modernity there is less room for imagination and the metaphysical dimensions of life – it forces us to look at the world through a single lens. In Europe, rationality has replaced the ‘respectability’ enjoyed by the church for many centuries. Now it is respectable to be rational –talking about facts and figures and it is not respectable to be religious –talking about religious experiences and faiths of any kind. Sometimes it seems one can be enthusiastic about any area except religion! The most damaging effect of the European version of secularisation is the deprivation or lack of awareness of spirituality in the life of the people. We may say that they are ‘poor in spirit’ – a very European version of poverty.
William Meissner has observed, the ‘man without imagination, without the capacity for play or for creative illusion, is condemned to a sterile world of harsh facts without color or variety, without the continual enrichment of man’s creative capacities’. The churches in Europe can bring hope in the midst of these ‘harsh facts without color’ and the church is called to respond and provide this colour in the life of the people. As Davie has shown, modernity takes very different shapes and the challenge of rationality has not threatened religion in the same way in other modern countries such as North America, Singapore and South Korea. It is possible to be modern and practise ‘irrational’ religion, just as it is possible to embrace modern science while appreciating art, music and literature.
This aspect of bringing richness of life can also be applied to our discussion of the relationship between the churches in the North and the South. Here I would like assert my disagreement, with all due respect to his thesis, of Jenkins’ employment of the term the ‘next Christendom’ to describe the rise of Southern Christianity. This is neither appropriate nor accurate. His observations that Southern Christianity is traditional (not liberal) on social issues, conservative in beliefs and moral issues, and interested in the supernatural and in personal salvation rather than radical politics are very pertinent, and I am in agreement with his assertion of the influence of Southern Christianity on its Northern counterpart, but not in a way he perceives it. I note that, in the year following the publication of his book, he preferred to use the title ‘The Next Christianity’ in an article. Many criticisms of the term ‘Christendom’have been made, for example, Peter Phan’s recent article in Mission Studies and also Raimundo Panikkar’s classic article on the difference between ‘Christendom’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Christianness’. The concern with the ‘centre of gravity’ and of ‘Christendom’undermines the ethos of the Christian faith as being salt and light of the world, but relies on the mechanics of numbers and dominance, as we have seen in the history of Christianity. Despite the ‘success’ stories of church growth in Africa, Latin America and some countries in Asia, there are vast numbers of small and struggling churches that can hardly be described as constituting the ‘centre of gravity’ or imagining ‘the next Christendom’. It is these small and struggling churches that exhibit a more accurate picture of the Southern Christianity. That this is the case should not be regarded as uncharacteristic of the Christian community, since it is in line with the message of being in weak in Christ that the Apostle Paul preached. The sentiment of ‘Christendom’ and obsession of ‘the centre of gravity’ is far from the spirit of Christianity; it is a distorted concept of how we understand Christianity and mission. It has been the particular concern of mission theologies to examine how it is that, given the vulnerability inherent in the early Christian mission, in later centuries mission has been carried out with this attitude of seeking of dominance, preservation and expansion of Christian territory.
Most of scholars on the subject emphasise the exciting phenomena of churches in the South and the rapid decline of Christianity in the North as forming a contrasting picture. However, the future shape of the church needs to be understood in the context of global Christianity as the body of Christ or household of God. As the Christianity in the North has contributed to the rest of the world through out the centuries to bring a colour –the European or North American understanding of Christian faith to the lives of the many in the rest of the world, so the rise of Southern Christianity has to be seen to bring more colours to the traditional Christianity which are the outcome of their rich Christian experiences in their particular contexts. Nor do I think the churches in the North have exhausted what they have to contribute to the rest of the world. In the words of David Bosch, ‘we need new relationships, mutual responsibility, accountability, and interdependence (not independence!)’.
The integrity of the church lies not in where majority of Christians are, but in how the church is ‘salt and light’in the given society, and this does not depend on the number of Christians and churches, and certainly not on the shift of the ‘centre of gravity’.As there is no doubt that the churches in Europe have made vital contributions to the Christianity in the rest of the world, so these contributions should continue regardless of changes in the situation in Europe. Churches in the rest of the world can appreciate aspects of what the Northern churches have offered to their churches and societies, which cannot just be dismissed as colonial advancement or church expansion. At the same time, for Christians in the North, there is much to appreciate about the rise of Southern Christianity and it has much to contribute to the North. For example, European churches are finding it hard to get used to the situation of being a minority in society –but this experience is not unusual in the history of Christianity in theSouth and the lessons can be drawn for Europeans. In the household of God and in a globalised world, we all are inter-dependent and are influenced by one another, and perhaps this is the most exciting aspect of the church’s new identity and mission.
Coming back to the question of the future shape of Christianity, my thesis has hinged on the question of the integrity of the Christian church. As I see it, the future shape of the church will not be a series of confrontational encounters or clashes of different forms of Christianity, as many have predicted. Nor will it be the situation that the North and South will exhibit such distinctive characteristics that there is little in common between the two. I do not regard these two notions as in line with the spirit of Christianity or as an accurate assessment of ground reality. Rather, the different traditions and expressions of faiths will form a mosaic of Christianity as a whole, as each contributes their own distinctive colour to the wider community. This notion is not merely an ideal vision or a theological assertion of how global Christianity ought to be. The sharing of theological insights and findings is already taking place between the North and the South; in fact this has been the case throughout the history of Christianity as a whole. In fact, as we seen, the distinction between Northern and Southern Christianity is becoming less relevant in the discussion of global Christianity. The case of Christianity in South Korea is an example of this, since she could be regarded as situated both in the North, in terms of numerical and financial strengths and with regard to her contribution to churches worldwide in mission and ecumenical activities, and also in the South, in terms of church history, theology and her experience of interacting with Christianities in other nations and continents. Reflecting on the diversity of and vibrant nature of world Christianity, and on the interaction between different Christian communities, the future shape of Christianity can be imagined as a mosaic within a mosaic, with a greater variety of colours being added into the whole Christian community.
