Inculturization
in Mission
The term “inculturation” has been in
missiological circles since the 1960’s. Since 1974 it has been popular among
Jesuit study circles and in their documents. The Asian bishops used it for the
first time in their Statement after the first Plenary Assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops’
Conference (FABC) in 1974. The Statement reads: “The local Church is a Church
incarnate in a people, a Church indigenous and inculturated.” It appeared for
the first time in a Church, when at the close of the Synod of bishops in 1977,
the bishops issued a Message for the whole Church. It says: “The Christian
message must find its roots in human cultures and must also transform these
cultures. In this sense we can say that Catechesis is an instrument of
inculturation.”[1]
Definition
of Inculturation
The concept of
inculturation has both theological and anthropological aspects. “Inculturation
is a two-way process, namely, assimilation of the Christian message and the
Christian way of life into the culture of a particular people, and assumption
of the local culture together with the local Christian living into the Gospel
message, thereby transforming it into a new creation of unity and communion
within the local Church as enrichment of the Church universal.”
In short,
inculturation is the dynamic relation between the Christian message and diverse
cultures; an insertion of the Christian life into a culture; an ongoing process
of reciprocal and critical interpretation and assimilation between them.[2]
Elements
of Inculturation
Some
important elements of inculturation of the Christian message are:
·
It is a two-way
process – a process of assimilation of the Christian message in the particular
culture of the people and a process of assumption of the local Christian living
in the Christian message.
·
It is a process
of transformation of the culture of the local Christian community into a new
creation of unity and communion.
·
It is an
enrichment of the local, as well as the universal Church.[3]
Inculturation is a process, because the assimilation of the
Gospel message in a particular culture, and its transformation by the same
message is continous. Inculturation can never be a finished product. All the
living cultures are dynamic. They change with the passage of time and the
process of inculturation goes along with it.[4]
Inculturation is assimilation of the Christian message
into a particular culture “without the slightest betrayal of its essential
truth”. Through the assimilation of the christian message, “the Christian
community becomes a sign of God’s presence in the world” and offers to all, the
salvation brought by Jsus Christ.[5]
In inculturation, the Christian
message becomes a part of the culture of the people but not identical,
“transforming humanity from within and making it new”. This transformation, in
effect, is an enrichment of the local Church and the particular culture as well
as of the universal church.[6]
Stages
of Inculturation
One could
visualize some stages of the pocess of inculturation in a particular cultural
context, such as:
a. In
the first stage, the Christian message is brought into a particular culture by
missionaries who belong to another culture. In the ensuing process of
culture-contact or acculturation, the local people and the missionaries assimilate
elements from each other’s culture. The missionaries meanwhile learn the
languages, customs and do the translations. It is likely that some people would
accept the gospel message from the foreign missionaries and in all probaility
the local community would bear a foreign look in many elements.
b. But
at the second stage, as the local community grows in number with a sufficient
number of clergy, and since the principal agent of inculturation is the local
Church itself, inculturation at a deeper level would follow. It can happen that
at these incipient stages the local community might remain passive to the
surrounding culture and even defensive, in view of its survival.
c. However,
at a later stage, the local Church should be free to act more creatively, transforming
the very local culture. A.A. Roest Crollius calls these three stages translation, assimilation and transformation,
and the whole process of inculturation, as integration of the Christian faith
and life in a particular culture, and these new forms of Christian living in
the life of the universal Church.[7]
Towards
Inculturation
In earlier
models of mission, it was the Western missionaries (agent) who either induced
or benevolently supervised the way in which the encounter between the Christian
faith and the local cultures was to unfold. In inculturation, however, the two
primary agents are the Holy Spirit and the local community, particularly the
laity. The missionaries no longer participate as the ones who have all the
answers but are learners like everybody else.[8]
Inculturation
consciously follows the model of incarnation. This incarnational dimension, of
the Gospel being “en-fleshed”, “em-bodied” in a people and its culture, of a
“kind of ongoing incarnation” is very differenrt from any model that has been
in vogue for over a thousand years. In this paradigm, it is not so much a case
of the church being expanded, but of the church being born anew in each new
context and culture.[9]
The earlier
models did indeed suggest an interaction between Gospel and culture, but one in
which the theological contecnt of the interaction remained obscure. The
coordination of gospel and culture should, however, be structured christologically. Still the missionaries
to not just set out to “take Christ” to other people and cultures, but also to
allow the faith the chance to start a history of its own in each people and its
experience of Christ. Inculturation suggests a double movement: there is at
once inculturation of Christianity and chritianization of culture. The Gospel
must remain Good News while becoming, upto a certain point, a cultural
phenomenon, while it takes into account the meaning systems already present in
the context. On the other hand, it offers the cultures “the knowledge of the
divine mystery”, while on the other, it helps them “to bring forth form their
own living tradition original expressions of Christian life, celebrations and
doubt”. A more appropriate metaphor may therefore be that of the flowering of a
seed implanted into the soil of a particular culture.[10]
Limits
of Inculturation
Inculturation
does not mean that culture is to be destroyed and something new built up on its
ruins; neither, however, does it suggests that a particular culture is merely
to be endrosed in its present form. In a very real sense, however, the Gospel
is foreign to every culture. It will always be a sign of contradiction. But
when it is in conflict with a particular culture it is important to establish
whether the tension stems from the Gospel itself or from the circumstances that
the Gospel has been too closely associated with the culture through which the
missionary message was mediated this point in time. Authentic inculturaton may
indeed view the Gospel as the liberator of culture; the gospel can, however,
also become culture’s prisoner.[11]
Inculturation is a rare dictionary word that gained popularity
after the Second Vatican Council.
Inculturation provides the fertile ground for incorporating the
culture of particular peoples into the life of the Church. This disconnects
evangelization with the missionary concept of evangelization as a one-way
traffic and connects to a process that is interactive and complementary. It is
through inculturation that the church would reappraise her evangelizing mission
so as to maintain and exceed the present successes and redefine its
orientations and goals.
Enculturation
and Mission
One
of the most important insights of the Vatican II was the understanding of
mission not as something which people in the church do, but what church itself
is. The church is not just a fixed form
and structure but an outgoing church.[12] As a
result of revolutionary change in communication, we have come to know more
about other cultures and religious systems than we ever did before. This means we are to take seriously the
plurality and complexity of our religious world. We can no longer claim that we
are right and the rest wrong. What
upsets many traditional missionaries is not so much that many are ignorant of
the Bible and the life of Christ, but that increasingly people know about the
gospels and even acclaim them but still consciously decide not to become
Christian.[13]
It happens to missionaries because they do not sense enculturation in their
mission.
Gospel and Culture
Richard Niebuhr, a theologian has
helped us to identify different Christian attitudes to culture. They are as follows:
1. The gospel is
opposed to cultures.
2.
The gospel
and culture are the same.
3.
The gospel recognizes cultures-it judges and transforms.[16]
Some believe that the gospel is
repressed to all human cultures. Those
who have this attitude believe that cultures are totally under the influence of
Satan. They believe that all elements of culture are bad and demonic and so
they would perfect a life excluded from everything in the world. However, it cannot be that all cultures are
demonic, since God is the creator of all; hence a human’s culture cannot be
fully demonic. Some also believe that
the gospel is part of all culture, Christ is in every culture and He is for all
culture. Nevertheless, over all, the
Gospel is the power that transforms and judges, for every culture has both good
and bad elements. Therefore, it cannot
be fully accepted and also cannot be fully rejected. And thus, in presenting
the Gospel, the presenter should allow the message to judge the culture and be
transformed.[17].
Inculturation as a theological concept
According to Walligo (1986), Inculturation means the honest and
serious attempt to make Christ and his Gospel of salvation ever more understood
by peoples of every culture, locality and time. It is the reformulation of
Christian life and doctrine into the very thought patterns of each people…. It
is the continuous endeavour to make Christianity ‘truly feel at home’ in the
cultures of each people.
Imperatives for
inculturation in the scripture Jesus who is the Christ, the apostles, the
Church Fathers in sowing the Gospel had respect for other peoples’ cultures.
Jesus and his apostles came from the Jewish background whose religiosity,
prayers and practices of worship were well defined.
St Paul was talking about missiology, and at the same time using
the language of contextual theology in which lies the theology of
inculturation: bringing the Christian experience into the culture of the
people, a process that makes alive the dynamic and eternal motion of the
incarnation
The challenges of inculturation
A community of factors have clung to the wheels of inculturation,
either reducing the speed of its implementation or stopping its movement
completely. According to Nathaniel, factors that have constituted obstacles to
the development of inculturation include:
(a) The problem of language
Language identifies a people more than other traits, including
customs, traditions, dressing, attitudes and other behavioural patterns. It is
therefore a very significant instrument of inculturation.
(b) The Problem of skepticism
Problem of adapting the Christian religion to the mentality and
lifestyle of the people such as in the area of liturgy: sacred music, dancing,
drumming, the devotional prayers and hymns to suit the people mode of worship
and needs.
(c) Fear of syncretism
Syncretism as the union of two opposite forces, beliefs, systems or
tenets so that the united form is a new thing. This agrees with the
understanding of Schreiter, who defines syncretism as the “mixing of elements
of two religious systems to the point where at least one, if not both, of the
systems loses basic structure and identity Syncretism occurs when basic
elements of the gospel are replaced by religious elements from the host
culture.
Inculturation - Call for a Prophetic Role in Indian Church
The emerging culture of India is greatly influenced by
globalization, the mass media and internet, and these are providing
opportunities as well as challenges to traditional Indian cultures and values.
A growing secularization and materialism are silently undermining the values
and principles of India’s traditional cultures. In the process of
inculturation, local Christians play a vital role in giving direction to
cultural change through their selective assimilation and cultural continuity.
Inculturation must also imply a prophetic role by challenging (transforming)
the oppressive cultural values in Hindu traditions. The Christian commitment to
equality, fraternity and dignity by abolishing poverty, ignorance, injustice,
and other forms of deprivation calls for deeper and varying methods of
inculturation. The recognition and empowerment of Tribal and Dalit and other
ethnic communities’ cultures are also very important. Inculturation must pay
attention to this pluralistic cultural reality of India. The values and the
world-views of indigenous peoples (Tribals) are particularly significant. Their
sense of community, solidarity, rejection of greed and eco-friendliness embody
a humanism that is holistic and life-giving.
Dynamic Nature of Culture and Inculturation
The process of inculturation must take account of
the dynamic nature of culture. Culture is never a finished product. All
cultures are dynamic, adapting themselves to ever new situations. India cannot
isolate itself. In modern times, the world has been transformed by information
technologies into what we call the global village. In essence, globalization is
an ever-growing, finely meshed network of interconnections and
interdependencies that characterize modern life due to the increase of
communication systems, cultures are exposed to one another, and there is a kind
of universal culture in the making. On the other hand, increasing nationalistic
tendencies seize every opportunity to mobilize their people in their unique and
specific cultural identities and heritage. Inculturation takes place in this
context of universal and particular cultural realities. Since Christianity is
universally present with specific cultural identities, the inculturation
process must include universal Christian symbols and rituals to express its
universal faith, morals and celebrations, as well as particular cultural
expressions in theologically acceptable symbols, rituals and celebrations.
Hence, inculturation is both universal and particular. That is why the
interaction between Gospel and culture is a process of inter-culturation.
[1] Joseph Prasad Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities: An
Indain Perspective (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 1985), 11-12.
[2] Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities, 12-13.
[3] Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities, 15.
[4] Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities, 15.
[5] Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities, 15.
[6] Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities, 16.
[7] Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities, 18-19.
[8] David J. Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in
Theology of Mission (1991; repr., New York: Orbis Book, 2002), 453.
[9] Bosch, Transforming Mission, 454.
[10] Bosch, Transforming Mission, 454.
[11] Bosch, Transforming Mission, 455.
[12] J. Sahi, “Culture in Relation to
the Mission”, Mission Today Oct-Dec, 1999, Vol.1, No.4 (Shillong:
Vendrame Institute Publication, 1999), 322.
[13] Ibid, 322.
[14] Rene Padilla, The contextualization
of the Gospel,” ed, Charles H. Kraft and Tom N. Wisely, Reading in Dynamic
Indigenity…, 306-307.
[15] Ibid, 307-308.
[16] Ibid, 237.
[17] S. Devasagayam Ponraj, Church
Growth studies in Mission…, 65-66.
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