Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity by Lamin Sanneh

Lamin Sanneh was born in Gambia and later immigrated to the United States. Educated on four continents, he is currently Professor of History and World Christianity at Yale University, where he also heads the Council on African Studies. He is an editor-at-large of The Christian Century, an ecumenical magazine, is a contributing editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research and co-editor of the forthcoming The Changing Face of Christianity. He also wrote Faith and Power: Christianity and Islam in “Secular” Britain with Lesslie Newbigin and Jenny Taylor.

Sanneh’s overarching assertion with Disciples of All Nations is that Christianity is an interpreted religion whose message must be translated rather than transmitted between cultures in order to truly take root in the hearts of the people. He demonstrates this by tracing the progression of Christianity through history, pointing out the times when Christian mission has been successful and when it has failed. Sanneh avers that the difference between the two lies in the attempt to translate the Christian message and Scriptures into the heart language, and therefore the cultural worldview, of those to whom the missionary comes.

Sanneh begins his argument by looking at the book of Acts in the New Testament, comparing the early Church’s expectations of Jewish Christians with the expectations of Gentile Christians. He describes how Greek Christians were empowered to practice Christianity in their own, different way rather than having to practice it exactly like the Jewish Christians and he attributes this empowerment to the inclusive actions of the early Church combined with Paul’s ability to translate the core message of Christianity from the Jewish culture to the Greek culture. It seems to me that this is where the original founders of Seventh Day Adventism went wrong. They were trying to transmit the exact practices of early Jewish Christians into their culture rather than translating them. But it also seems to me that Seventh Day Adventism has become its own culture, in a way, which mirrors Jewish culture to a large extent, and so it would not make sense, from a cultural standpoint, for SDAs to reject their practices now without having to also reject their native culture in some way.

Sanneh continues with a discussion of the Church, and then Christendom, up into the Middle Ages, particularly stopping to focus on the spread of Christianity in the British Isles and Iceland. He expresses how the Church Fathers had been “pagan for a purpose (42),” that is, they had deliberately used pagan holidays, symbolism and ideas in order to help them translate the message of Christianity into a form that was culturally understandable to those they were trying to reach. He then begins pointing out areas in which early Christianity did not survive as well, most notable in Northern Africa, asserting that in many of these places, the form of Christianity had been transmitted but that the Scriptures and message had not been translated into the heart language of the people. Thus, with the coming of Islam, thousands of Christians converted. Christianity is, then, dependent not upon practicing the exact right liturgy or conduct (as in legalism), but upon the heart’s understanding of Jesus’ love, which missionaries would do well to remember today.

Jumping forward to the era of colonial expansion, Sanneh further demonstrates his idea of cultural translation through the histories of Latin America and Africa. He shows that there really was no real indigenous attraction to Christianity, the religion of their oppressors, until it was translated into the indigenous culture (via the vision of the Blessed Virgin, Our Lady of Guadalupe). He again demonstrates this aversion to mission due to its attachment to colonization (and thus, transmission of simply the form of Christianity) in Africa with the coming of Catholicism via the Portuguese. However, in this case, the expression of Catholicism eventually died out because no indigenous translation occurred. It was somewhat surprising to me, however, to hear that certain African Catholics of this time chose to be martyred alongside their Portuguese rulers rather than deny their faith in the face of Muslim conquest, a reminder of the prevenient grace of God (in which God is already at work before, despite and through us).

The eventual actualization of African Christianity is then discussed through the use of two opposing models: that of David Livingstone (who advocated for the indigenous people), and that of Cecil Rhodes (founder of the highly discriminatory nation of Rhodesia). While Livingstone lifted the Africans up, Rhodes subjugated them. It was Livingstone that truly made an impact, valuing the Africans enough to take the time to attempt to translate the actual message of the gospel to them in their own culture rather than simply forcing them to practice the shape of Christianity. While it can also be argued in the two cases of Latin America and Africa that Christianity did not spread through the indigenous cultures while it was forced upon them by their colonial rulers, I think Sanneh is correct in his argument concerning linguistic and cultural translation because translation was the catalyst for Christianity when it DID spread naturally into the indigenous cultures.

Following, Sanneh describes the indigenous spread of Christianity throughout Africa. The catalyst for this, unsurprisingly, was the translation of the Scriptures into the native tongues of Africa by Holiness missionaries. The African experience, which knew much of the suffering of body and spirit, resonated with the gospel news of sin and grace; but in order to do so, the message had to be translated into the world view of the African cultures, rather than be simply imposed upon them by outsiders. Thus, translation was empowerment. Indeed, valuing the translated language (and thus the culture and people) is inherent within the act of translation. It is seeing value in the people and trusting them to be able to communicate with God. It also implicitly trusts God to be able to reach these people through their own culture, rather than through an imposed culture or language.

Sanneh then describes the charismatic renewal movements of West Africa and the impact of William Wade Harris, who taught that “salvation-without-strings was the antidote to conversion by civilization (201), but that what mattered more than the thought that the some Europeans were the Africans’ oppressors was the thought that God was their friend. This liberation from the control of European “civilization” brought with it freedom for Africans to interpret the Christian message in their own culture. Again, Christianity is not imposed through transmission, but reinterpreted (translated) in the light of a new culture and in this way, Christianity is to some degree inherently syncretistic, yet retains its essence and will always critique the culture it is being understood by.

Book Review #5

Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger

Eddie Gibbs is the Director of the Institute for the Study of Emerging Churches at the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts at Fuller Theological Seminary and is also Professor of Church Growth there. His book ChurchNext has won a book award from Christianity Today. He has served in ministry in England, Chile and the United States. Ryan Bolger is assistant professor of church in contemporary culture at the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary. He is also the academic director of the Master of Arts in global leadership there. Emerging Churches is the result of Bolger’s PhD research with Gibbs on a distinctively postmodern style of church emerging throughout the United States and United Kingdom.

The main premise of Gibbs’ and Bolger’s book is that this new style of doing and viewing church arises out of their members’ desire to be missional communities while also seeking to be faithful followers of Jesus within their postmodern contexts. They begin by explaining the shift that has been occurring within Western cultures from modernity to “postmodernity” and towards a “network society” as well as the church’s increasing occupation of a place on the margins of society. Reflecting on my experiences as a study abroad student in Scotland, a time in which I had yet to learn the terms “post-Christendom” and “postmodern,” these ideas have actually helped to decipher some of the thoughts expressed to me by my non-Christian friends there about the Church. These experiences also allow me a greater understanding of why emerging churches have responded to the culture and shaped themselves in the ways they have, as Bolger and Gibbs go on to summarize in the next chapter. They briefly follow the gradual development of emerging churches, evaluate three core unifying foci (identifying with the life of Jesus, transforming secular space, and living as a community) as well as six common practices (welcoming the stranger, serving with generosity, participating as producers, creating as created beings, leading as a body, and taking part in spiritual activities).

In their chapter on emerging church’s identification with Jesus, Gibbs and Bolger explain that these churches look to Jesus as the one who initiated the work of the Kingdom of God and view their purpose as pointing to this kingdom in both its “already” and “not yet” state through their communal practices. They are concerned with bringing heaven to earth, which is a trend that I agree with and have seen and helped to implement within my own Nazarene tradition. I find the idea of the gospel as a holistic way of life to be a far more challenging pursuit than that of striving to fill a church’s pews with bodies. This holism is continued within emerging churchs’ endeavour to transform “secular” space. To them, there is no such thing as secular space, but all areas of life are infused with the spiritual. This is something I offhand agree with, but struggle to find the meaning of, especially in regards to the realms of science and politics. Science, which uses methodological materialism within its pursuit of knowledge, is somewhat less hard for me to reconcile because my interactions with my professors as a biology major in undergrad, have allowed me to learn how to draw spiritual implications from discoveries in the natural world (such as drawing the idea of the interconnectedness of all Creation from the idea of common descent). Politics I find to be a confusing realm to begin with and while I agree with the idea of a separation between church and state, I often wonder how involved Christians should be in politics, how a Christian politician could justify their choice in voting according to their personal beliefs or according to the will of their constituency (if the two come in conflict) and to what extent voting according to one’s own personal religious convictions is imposing one’s personal beliefs upon another.

The third focus Bolger and Gibbs describe is living in community, which is something I have felt led to be doing for a while now. Modernity’s focus on the individual created an archipelago society, with each person an island. Humans were created to live in community (another spiritual implication one can draw from the theory of evolution: its occurrence in populations/communities rather than individuals), but I have rarely experienced what that means. Emerging churches practice welcoming the stranger, or as my Mennonite friend Kate has expressed to me about her own tradition: those outside of us are us and we are incomplete without them, therefore we seek them out and welcome them because if we didn’t, we would be incomplete. This is related to the second practice Gibbs and Bolger describe: serving with generosity. Rather than donating money to and developing social programs within their churches, emerging congregations focus on a socially engaged way of life, serving through their vocations and with their time rather than through church-administered programs, seeking to bring wholeness and become “good news people before proclaiming the Good News message (145).” I believe that this shift is a necessary correction to the agenda-minded evangelism of modernity. Rather than valuing a person for the influence we could have over their spiritual life, Christians should value that person for themselves. Our agenda must be lavishing the love of Christ on those around us. If they allow us the privilege and opportunity of speaking truth into their spiritual life, that is wonderful, but that only comes through valuing the person (rather than the body on the pew) and being present with them for their own sake. Otherwise, we are merely selling a product.

Emerging churches practice participation within their churches through production. That is, rather than sitting and consuming the sermon and worship as performed for them by the preacher and worship leader and moving to a different church when they feel that they are no longer personally “getting anything out of” the service, emerging church members take responsibility for the services themselves. The worship becomes an expression of who they are as a people and is their own gift to God. Often, all ages are included (for example, a seven-year-old hosting a dancing circle). I find emerging-style worship particularly attractive as it allows participants to express their full being to God, rather than having the worship dictated to them by a worship leader who strictly worships through music, and their own particular style of music at that. Similarly, emerging churches support creativity and the arts within their services and worship, with members worshipping by giving out of their own creative instincts. I find this idea similar to Catholic theology and its idea of humans as co-creators with God, which has been a particular influence on my own life (another implication from evolution: God created/is creating a world that can create itself and that can partner with Him in creation).

Emerging churches’ leadership structure is generally one of democracy (rather than some form of republican policy as seen in most denominational polities). Consequently they tend to be fewer than 40 people. Although I like small churches, I am not altogether keen on churches that are that small. Thus, I prefer a more republican polity which allows for a slightly larger community to form and can allow for a structured partnership (reflecting the influence modernity has had upon me) with other congregations, because some structure often does need to be in place as extreme democracy tends towards chaos.

Gibbs and Bolger wrap up their study by describing the pull that emerging churches have often found towards ancient spiritual practices, especially those practiced in ancient Celtic churches. They are find these practices (such as candle burning, lectio divina or praying the hours) attractive not because they are ancient or mystical but because they incorporate a spiritual rhythm into daily life. Interestingly, I found these same practices attractive long, long before I had heard of emerging churches or postmodernity, possibly reflecting my own position as a product of my generation (an idea that would take too long to do justice to in this “brief” review).

Quick Reflectifrom Class on 11/30/09

On Monday we discussed Anabaptism as a case study of Free Churches. It was very interesting because I have always found Mennonites and the Amish fascinating but never found the time to look into their histories much. But discussing their rejection of infant baptism as a political statement has helped me realize how many of the traditions within Reformation traditions that I reject are actually rejections of an older tradition that I would also reject.