Study and identify with the local
culture
Culture
Culture is a term used in many
varied ways. It can mean a particular way of life which is collectively held
and shared by a particular group of people. It can also define as the ‘complex’
of values, ideas, attitudes, and other meaningful symbols created by people to
shape human behavior and the artifacts of that behavior, transmitted from one
generation to the next. Culture comes from the Latin verb colere meaning to
nurse, to cultivate. As social beings we cannot live without culture, there are
no cultureless people. There is no hierarchy of cultures, all the cultures are
equal and should be equally respected. Cultures without interactions with other
cultures tend to become stifled and are slow in the adoption of innovations. As
a result, most cultures have evolved in interaction with other cultures.
Christopher Geertz, the
famous anthropologist defines culture as a ‘historically transmitted pattern of
meaning embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in
symbolic forms by means of which human beings communicate, perpetuate and
develop their knowlwdge about, and attitude toward life’. Edword Taylor
defines cultures as the ‘complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by human as
members of society.’ Louis J. Luzbetak defines culture as “a design for
living.” Marvin K. Mayers defines “culture is everything with which an
individual is concerned and involved in a society.” In the Willowbank Report
a document prepared by the Lausanne Committee for world Evangelization,
comprising of theologians and missiologists who gathered to study the impact of
gospel on culture, defines culture that contains several dimensions:
1. Culture includes an integrated
system of belief (about God or ultimate reality)
2. It also comprehends values
focusing on what is true, good, beautiful, and normative
3. Customs are specified on how
to behave, relate to others, talk, pray, dress, etc.
4. Institutions are developed to
bind society together and give it a sense of dignity, identity, continuity and
security.
Cultural Anthropology
The word anthropology is derived
from the Greek word anthropos- man and logos- word, which means the study of
the science of human beings. According to Eugene Nida “anthropology is
essentially the science of learned human behavior.” Kroeber defines
anthropology as “the study of groups of people, and their behavior and
productions.” M.J. Herskovits defines anthropology as “the science of humans
and of his work.” The study of cultural anthropology distinguishes human beings
from animals. It is understood as a system, independent form rules and
techniques. It is a primal fact that individuals use vulture but culture also
determines individuals.
The study of anthropology is
about people, their relationships, and how they live together as members of
society. A study of anthropology helps us to understand and explain why people
behave in particular ways. It increased the awareness of the uniformity and
diversity in human responses to the challenges of daily life, and challenges in
times of stress and conflict. It creates a mindset which enables people to
think innovatively about human interaction. It promotes understanding between
people in all aspects of life, and challenges across the boundaries which may
separate them. Anthropology is labeled as the most comprehensive of all the
social sciences.
Importance of Culture
Anthropology
Anthropology differs from the
study of sociology and psychology. Sociology is primarily concerned with humans
as social beings and their organized social relationships. Psychology primarily
deals with people as psychological beings. It is concerned with such areas as
personality, attitudes, and behavior. Anthropology has many of the same concerns
of both sociology and psychology. It is concerned with every aspect of human
beings- their origin, past, present, and future. Although all behavioral
sciences have human beings as their object of study, one of the major
differences between anthropology and other behavioral sciences is that of
approach. Anthropology uses a comparative approach. It studies humans across
time and cultures.
Missionary anthropology differs
from that of the secular anthropologists. Missionaries understand people from a
biblical perspective that humans are created in the image of God and as such
are a spiritual being as well as a physical being. Missionary anthropologists
are concerned with the totality of the person: body, soul, mind, and spirit,
and with cultural, social, economic and political life in the context of
spiritual needs. Missionary anthropologists are those who study other cultures,
appreciate them and see their good elements. At the same time they try to bring
about a desired change according to both the biblical standards and cultural
values.
Role of the Cultural Anthropology
in Christian Mission
Over the last few decades there
has been an increasing awareness of the relevance of the study of cultural
anthropology for an effective ministry. Cultural anthropology may contribute in
at least four ways to an effective strategy:
1. It gives the missionary
understanding of another culture.
2. It aids the missionary in
adapting one’s life style and methods of approach to the cultural context of
the people.
3. It helps in communicating the
gospel meaningfully and relevantly within the context of people.
4. It helps in the process of
planting indigenous churches.
A
missionary who intends to minister to another culture needs to become familiar
with the other culture by entering into the given culture. Paul Hiebert
commended, “humans are created as whole beings with soul, mind, feelings, wills
and bodies. We must take all of these dimensions seriously. We need to
understand the biological, psychological, social, culture and the spiritual
principles according to which people function as well as the interaction
between these.” There is a gulf between ourselves and the people to whom we
minister. There is an even greater gulf between the Bible’s historical and
cultural settings and the contemporary life. To breach these gulf and make
possible the effective cross-cultural and cross-historical communication of the
gospel, we need to understand the gospel in its historical and cultural
settings, at the same time we also need to understand the contemporary human
settings.
The central task of mission is to
present the gospel in an exclusive manner to all people and not to presents
one’s own culture. The role of cultural anthropology is to ensure that the
message is communicated in a culturally comprehensive way.
The variety and unity of Humanity
All human beings has several
dimensions- people at all levels of society, it also includes people in all of
history past, present and the future. Only within this broad picture can we
begin to understand what it means to be human. This study of people in all
their settings has made missionaries and anthropologists aware of the many
differences between human beings. People differ in their biological and
psychological makeup. They differ in their societies they organize and the
culture they create. These differences raise profound philosophical and
theological questions. There is also commonality in humanity. Humans share most
physiological functions. Without such human universals it would be impossible
for people in one culture to understand and communicate with people in another.
Recognizing our common humanity with other people is the first step in building
relationships. To these the Christians adds oter human universals- all have
sinned, salvation through death and resurrection of Christ, the opportunity to
respond to the gospel, the church as one body of believers, one gospel under
different languages, one worship under different forms of worship, one church
under different cultural settings. Peter Wagner says “to enter into a new
culture one must realize that all cultures are relative and that in no sense
one is better than the other.
Gospel and Culture
Jesus commanded te church to go
and make disciples of all nations. In Greek the word ‘nations’ refers to tribe,
caste and different people group. Each people group represents a particular
distinctive culture to make disciples of all nations a cross culture mission.
Leslie Newbigin emphasizes the importance of cross culture mission in order to
reach out to different communities with the gospel. The gospel is God’s
revelation of himself in history through his deeds and through his incarnation.
The relationship of God’s revelation in the scripture to human culture is
understood by the analogy of Christ’s incarnation. Just as Christ was fully
God, but became fully human without losing his deity, so also the gospel is
God’s revelation, but is communicated by means of human cultures without losing
its divine character. There are three principles to understand the dynamic
tension between the gospel and human culture.
1. The gospel must be
distinguished from all human cultures for it is divine revelation and not human
speculation.
2. The gospel must be away from
western imperialism. When religion is used to justify political and cultural
practices, it is a ‘civil’ religion.
3. The third danger in equating
gospel and culture is to distinguish gospel with sin. As cultural definitions
change if we do not distinguish biblical norms from those of our culture we
cannot affirm the absolute nature of biblical defined standards.
Although
the gospel is distinct from human cultures, it must always be expressed in
cultural forms. The gospel must become incarnate in cultural forms in order to
be rooted in the minds of the people. On the cognitive level, the people must
understand the truth of the gospel. On the emotional level, they must experience
the mystery of God. And on the evaluative level, the gospel must challenge them
to respond in faith. This process of translating the gospel into a culture is
known as indigenization or contextualization. The gospel also calls all
oppressive culture to change patriarchy, class division, exploitation, etc.
Cultures are the identity of the people. If culture is lost identity is lost.
Culture should be in line with the gospel. If it is not so, we are in danger of
losing the gospel truths.
Paul
Hiebert, in his works ‘Anthropological
Insights for Missionaries’ define culture as “the prices of the elite members
of a society”. Anthropological definition states that Culture is more or less
integrated system of learned ideas, feelings and values, encoded in patterns of
behavior, signs and products created and shared by a community of people.
Hiebert
states that Gospel and culture are interrelated and culture should not
underestimate. The relationship between Gospels and human cultural contexts can
be summarized into three principles:
(a) We must not equate the Gospel with
any culture and cultural forms.
(b) The gospel must be expressed in
culture and cultural forms to be heard.
(c) The Gospel is not simply
information to be believed, but a call to be obeyed and be transformed.
Missions
in cultural context
(a) We need to present the Gospel in
cultural contexts for it to be understood.
(b) We need to present it in all three
dimensions- cognitively, affectively and evaluatively. Conversion is people
responding to cognitive and affective appeals.
(c) So long as we work within our own
culture we are largely unaware of it and how it shapes our thinking and
ministry. It is hard to see our culture because it is what we think with, not
what we think about.
Lesslie
Newbigin in his book ‘The Gospel in a
Pluralist Society’, Newbigin pointed out just how pluralistic our society
is, and what role the gospel and its believers should play within such an
environment. Pluralistic culture, which he defined as “embracing different
choices in life without passing any absolute value judgment”. He then addressed
how this mindset worked against the gospel.
Newbigin
suggested that the concept of a secular society is merely a myth, where in fact
we live in a pagan society that replaced God with other gods of the world in an
attempt to fulfill the needs of the human spirit. According to Newbigin, it is
difficult to preach the gospel in the contemporary context since any claims to
announcing the gospel as true will be dismissed as ignorance and arrogance,
with Christianity evaluated as a value and not a fact. Newbigin re-defined
missions as not only something we do far away from home, but an action plan for
local churches of the Western world, set amidst political correctness and
religious diversity. Newbigin proposed “contextualize without compromise,”
which means even though we need to be sensitive to the needs of others, it
should not be a factor that overrides the Scripture.
He
argues that we are in a cultural context, and with that cultural context comes
a set of assumptions about the way the world is. Each culture has its own way
of seeing the world. Newbigin borrows a phrase from sociologist Peter Berger:
“plausibility structure”. A plausibility structure is more or less a worldview
shared by a society which lets everyone know, pre-cognitively, what is
plausible, and what is not, it is the unspoken rules and assumptions about what
is real. The important thing about a plausibility structure is that every
society has their own, but it is basically invisible to the insider. It is like
a pair of lenses—when I am wearing them I do not see them. In fact, am
basically unaware that I am even wearing anything at all. What I see through
them seems to me to be simply what is. What I do not see, I easily believe,
simply does not exist. Of course, you would be able to see that I am wearing
glasses. This is how it is with plausibility structures. It is precisely in the
encounter between different cultures, between different plausibility structures
and lenses that it becomes apparent that neither of us is merely seeing things
as they are—free from interpretive lenses; we are both seeing things in a way
totally shaped by the culture and traditions of which we are a part. For
Newbigin, one of the key things to know about the culture of contemporary
Western world is that it is “pluralist.” By “pluralist” he means not only that
in our context there is a great variety of cultures, religions and life styles
which are included, but that this plurality is deliberately celebrated,
approved and cherished.
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