Understanding Folk Religion: A Christian Response to Popular Beliefs and Practices

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PREFACE

Many books are born out of life experiences. This is one of them. We, the authors, have been involved in church planting ministries around the world, and we have faced similar problems in the lives of many Christians. Paul Hiebert served in South India. He studied Hinduism to communicate the gospel more effectively in rural India, but he found that most villagers knew little more than the rudiments of Hindu theology. He found himself teaching them their theology in order to present Christ as the better way. He also found that much of village religion has little to do with Hinduism. Hinduism stresses ahimsa, not taking life, but many of the village ceremonies involved blood ceremonies. Hinduism has high-caste priests, but many of the priests in local rites are from the low castes and untouchables. Hinduism deals with cosmic gods, but village beliefs focus on the many local spirits that reside in trees, rivers, rocks, and hills. He found that new converts to Christianity left the Hindu temples and attended churches, but they still struggled with the questions of spirits, magic, divination, and ancestors. It became increasingly clear that missionaries must not only study Scripture and the formal religions of the people they serve, but also the day-to-day religious beliefs and practices that rule the people’s lives if they wanted to communicate the gospel as an answer to all the people’s hopes and fears.

Daniel Shaw served as a Bible translator among the Samo in Papua New Guinea. As an International Anthropology consultant for the Summer Institute of Linguistics, he studied the religious beliefs and practices of people in the many small-scale societies of Melanesia to assist translators to communicate God’s word effectively in communities in which local beliefs often center around spirits, magic, divination, and ancestors, and are accompanied by ritual and ceremony designed to bring comfort and security. He sought to understand cargo cults with their focus on a local messiah who often led people to their destruction rather than to the salvation they so eagerly sought. He wrestled with translating the cosmic truths of the gospel for people living in highly particularist religious communities into languages where there was no name for an all encompassing creator God. It became clear that translators had to relate closely to people who held to animistic beliefs, and to demonstrate through their own life experience that God’s power is stronger and more mighty than the strongest sorcerers and evil spirits.

Tite Tiénou has extensive experience in theological education and ministerial formation in Africa and the United States. He is the founding director of a Bible school in Burkina Faso, and the founding President and Dean of a seminary in Côte d’Ivoire. He taught world religions and African religions for more than a decade in various settings: a Bible school in Burkina Faso, study centers and seminars in Africa, and seminaries in Côte d’Ivoire and the United States.

Some books are matured in classes. This is one of them. We have tested many of the ideas in this book in classes and doctoral seminars on folk religion, folk Islam, folk Hinduism, African Traditional Religions, and religions of the Pacific Islands. We owe much to the many participants in these classes and seminars, who contributed immeasurably to our thinking. We also profited greatly from reading the doctoral dissertations on the subject written by missionaries and church leaders serving around the world. Many of them will recognize the results of class discussions in which they participated. Others will see their works cited in the text. To all of them, we offer our deep thanks for their contributions to our thinking.

Much has been written in recent years on various aspects of folk religions, such as demon possession, spiritual warfare, witchcraft, divination, and power encounters. Most of it has approached the subject taxonomically—looking at the different kinds of spirits, powers, divination, and ancestors found around the world. These studies introduce the reader to the bewildering array of beliefs found in folk religions, but they do not help us understand why faithful Christians persist in turning to traditional practices in times of crisis. For this, we need to understand the reasons why people return to old ways. This book is an attempt to look beneath the surface of taxonomies to examine folk religions as legitimate belief systems that do, in some measure, answer the longing of human hearts. This does not mean we believe them to be true or biblical in nature. It does mean we must take them seriously and provide better answers if we want the old ways to die out.

The purpose of this book is not to present ready answers to the questions folk religions pose. Rather, it is to sensitize Christians to the need to deal with folk religions, and to understand them. It is to challenge Christian leaders to think biblically in responding to them. Most attention is given to understanding the nature of folk religions and the reasons why they persist despite centuries of church censure. Some guidelines for theological responses are offered, but more attention is given to analyzing the questions folk religions seek to answer because most church leaders have more knowledge of biblical truths than of human beliefs and practices.

Every book is based on implicit systems of belief. This one is no exception. It is important to make these explicit so that readers know where the authors are coming from, and to keep readers from expecting more than is intended and faulting the authors for not including materials not promised. The writers are committed evangelicals who believe that God has called all people to follow Jesus Christ. Their theological convictions shape the way they respond to folk religions. The authors are committed to the mission that God is carrying out through his church in the world, and they view mission in certain ways.

First, mission is about people, not programs. It is not projects to be accomplished through human engineering and action. It begins with learning to understand people deeply, identifying with them, and building relationships of love and trust. It is to communicate the gospel to them in ways they understand that can help them to critique their old religious ways, and to think biblically in their everyday lives. Those who expect in this book to find formulas or strategies for quick solutions to the problems raised by folk religions will be disappointed.

Second, mission is about principles, not pragmatic answers. It is easy to try alternative solutions to see which works, but to do so is to reduce missions to problem solving. Christianity is about truth and righteousness, not only in the ends it seeks, but also the means it uses to achieve those ends. The medium is an essential part of the biblical message. There is no easy shortcut to the goals of Christian ministry.

Third, mission has to do with the particular, not only the universal. When God spoke, he spoke to Moses on the Mount, David in the field, and Esther in the palace. He addressed them in their languages and contexts. The gospel is not truth in general. It is truth for people who live in specific places and times, and are caught in particular straits in life. In dealing with folk religions it is important to remember that they are incredibly diverse. Models for analysis, such as the one offered in this book, provide broad guidelines for the study of folk religions, but church leaders and missionaries must move beyond these models to understandings and answers specific to their contexts. There are no standard answers that fit all, or even most, of the cases.

Finally, mission is a process, not a task to complete. It is calling people to faith, discipling them, organizing them into living congregations, encouraging them to do theological reflection in their contexts, and sharing with them the vision of God’s mission to the world. It must continue as new fields of ministry are opened, new generations are born, and cultures and societies change. Each generation of Christians in each location must discover for themselves the message of the gospel for themselves and their times and places.

The book is divided into four sections. The first examines theories of religion and develops a model for use in examining folk religions. The second looks at the key questions of folk religions and the answers they give. The third explores the behavioral manifestations that express folk religious beliefs. These two sections approach the study of folk religions phenomenologically to help us understand them in their own terms. The final section examines key biblical principles that Christians can use in dealing with the folk religions around them, and suggests missiological processes for helping Christians move from where they are to where God calls them to be.

Finally, some books have a long gestation period with a large number of people contributing to the whole. This is one of them. A multiauthored book with the authors at different academic institutions puts a special strain on the many who helped in the production and editing of the text. To all these and many more, including our family members who have been patient with our occasional impatience, we are truly grateful. Mere acknowledgment is a woefully inadequate expression of our deep appreciation for all they have contributed, not only to the book, but to our thinking and to our lives.

SECTION ONE

DEVELOPING AN ANALYTICAL MODEL

Around the world Christian churches face the challenge of folk religions. Missionaries brought formal Christianity encoded in systematic theologies, churches, and institutions such as schools and hospitals. They assumed that traditional religions would die out as the gospel displaced animistic beliefs and practices. Today it is clear that old ways do not die out, but remain largely hidden from public view. Christianity is an overlay, and the two coexist in uneasy tension. People affirm orthodox theologies, but go to witch doctors, shamans, diviners, and healers during the week, often in secret for fear of the condemnation of church leaders. They are baptized in the church and initiated in traditional rites in the forest. There is also a resurgence of folk religions in the West, which contradicts the assumption that religions die as science and secularism gain ground. The questions folk religions raise have less to do with heresy than with syncretism—the mixing of different beliefs and practices in ways that distort the truth and power of the gospel.

This book examines folk religions and provides guidelines for churches to deal with them. Section One develops a missiological model for analyzing folk religions. Sections Two, Three, and Four apply this model in the analysis and Christian response to the questions they raise.

SECTION OUTLINE

Section One lays out the theoretical framework for the book.

Chapter 1: Defines the problem and outlines the process of critical contexualization that is the theoretical basis for the book.

Chapter 2: Examines the nature of religious systems and their relationship to cultures and societies.

Chapter 3: Develops a model for examining religious belief systems.

Chapter 4: Looks at the relationships between folk and formal religions and gives reasons for the rise of split-level Christianity.

1

SPLIT-LEVEL CHRISTIANITY

The central concern of this book is the persistence of a two-tier Christianity around the world despite centuries of instruction and condemnations by missionaries and church leaders. Deeply committed Christians faithfully attend church services and pray to God in times of need, but feel compelled during the week to go to a local shaman for healing, a diviner for guidance, and an exorcist for deliverance from spirit oppression. Sidney Williamson writes,

Most Christians live on two unreconciled levels. They are members of a church and ascribe to a statement of faith. But below the system of conscious beliefs are deeply embedded traditions and customs implying quite a different interpretation of the universe and the world of spirit from the Christian interpretation. In the crises of life and rites of passage the Church is an alien thing (Williamson 1965, 158).

Regarding the church in Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia writes,

As one watches the daily lives and activities of the people and takes account of the rites connected with marriage, birth, death, widowhood, harvest and installation of traditional offices, one learns that a great deal of the normal communal activities of the converts lie outside their Christian activities, and that for all their influence, the Christian churches are still alien institutions, intruding upon, but not integrated with social institutions (Pobee 1996, 2).

This split-level Christianity[1] is found in young churches planted among traditional religionists around the world. It is common in churches in the West. It has sapped the vitality of churches and limited Christianity to a segment of people’s lives. How should missionaries and church leaders respond to the persistence of old beliefs and practices long after people have become Christians?

To understand this religious schizophrenia, it is important to understand the history of the modern mission movement that originated largely in the West, which was profoundly shaped by the Age of Exploration and the Enlightenment.

ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM

Like all people, missionaries are shaped by the times in which they live. To understand how Western missionaries in the past century dealt with other ‘religions,’ it is important to understand how the Enlightenment defined the world in the West after the eighteenth century.

THE MODERN

[2] WORLDVIEW

The sixteenth century opened up whole new worlds to European explorers seeking routes to the spices of India. They discovered unknown lands and strange peoples not found on their maps. New questions emerged. Were these creatures of the new worlds humans? Did they have souls that needed to be saved? How did their ways of life relate to those in the West?

One answer to these questions was colonialism. The conquest of lands around the world convinced the people of the West of their own cultural superiority. Western civilization had triumphed. It was the task, therefore, of the West to bring the benefits of this civilization to the world.

A second answer was the Enlightenment separation between ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ realities. This gave rise to sciences that studied this world and gave naturalistic explanations that had no place for God. It also relegated religions to beliefs in the supernatural heavenly realities which were believed to be rooted in faith, not facts. Science was seen as public truth to be studied by all. Religion was a matter of personal choice and private faith. This dualism had no place for this-worldly supernatural realities such as earthly spirits and spirit possessions, witchcraft, living ancestors, and magic, and ridiculed belief in these as fairy tales and sleight of hand.

A third answer was the theory of cultural evolution. If the political solution to the awareness of cultural pluralism created by the age of exploration was colonialism, the intellectual solution was evolutionism, which saw all cultures at different stages of development, some more advanced and others more primitive. Following the lead of A. Comte, cultural evolutionists postulated the evolution of religion from simple animistic beliefs and practices to the complex religions of the present, and attributed this evolution to the growth of human rationality. They divided history into three stages—animistic, metaphysical/theological, and scientific (Figure 1.1).

E. B. Tylor[3] (1913) defined ‘animism’ as the earliest stage in the evolution of religion, and equated it with belief that this world is inhabited by spirits and powers. He attributed the origins of animistic beliefs to primitive humans reflecting on the nature of death, dreams, and invisible realities, and argued that early humans concluded that people have invisible souls, or ‘breath,’ which leave the body and wander to distant places. Later, he argued, primitive people extended this notion of spirit to animals, plants, and even inanimate objects. From a belief in spirits, Tylor argued, it is only a small step to belief in the continuance of these spirits beyond death in an afterworld, their embodiment in objects, their possession of living persons, and the existence of powerful high gods.

James G. Frazer (1922) examined the role of magic in traditional religions and concluded that it is based on belief in impersonal supernatural powers that operate on earth, and two mistaken notions of causality, namely, that of similarity (pouring water produces rain) and contagion (acts performed on one part of a person’s body, such as hair clippings, affects the whole being of a person).

Tylor, Frazer, and others argued that animistic beliefs were the products of primitive, prelogical minds. They believed that over time animism evolved into religions (belief in and worship of a high god), which they saw as explanation systems based on early rational reflections. They also argued that as human investigation became more rational and empirical, religions would be replaced by science and positive objective knowledge.

Evolutionary views of religion deeply influenced Western thought. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most Europeans and Americans believed that the West was civilized and that other people were primitive. They attributed this difference to the growth of human rationality from prelogical to logical, and used this theory to justify the colonial expansion of Western governments and the spread of science and technology around the world. In this view, religious beliefs associated with magic, earthly spirits, living ancestors, witchcraft, curses, divination, and evil eye were seen as superstitions to be eradicated by the introduction of scientific knowledge. Because such beliefs would die out, there was no need to study or understand them as serious explanation systems.

MISSIONARY WORLDVIEW

Western missionaries were influenced by colonialism, the Enlightenment, and the theory of evolution, often unwittingly. Many believed in progress, and assumed the superiority of Western civilization. They saw it their task to civilize and Christianize the people they served. Charles Taber writes,

The superiority of Western civilization as the culmination of human development, the attribution of that superiority to the prolonged dominance of Christianity, the duty of Christians to share civilization and the gospel with the benighted heathen—these were the chief intellectual currency of their lives (1991, 71).

Belief in progress influenced the way missionaries approached other religions. They studied Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and the other high philosophical religions because they saw these as challenges to Christianity. They developed Christian apologetics in response to the abstract philosophical systems of these religions, and debated the superiority of Christianity with their religious leaders. Moreover, missionaries assumed that ordinary Indians were Hindus, Arabs were Muslims, and Chinese were Buddhists. They were often unaware that most ordinary people knew little of the orthodox beliefs and practices of the religions they espoused.

Progress also meant that old animistic beliefs and practices were seen as primitive superstitions and could be ignored. John Pobee observes, "all the historical churches by and large implemented the doctrine of the tabula rasa, i.e., the missionary doctrine that there is nothing in the non-Christian culture on which the Christian missionary can build and, therefore, every aspect of the traditional non-Christian culture had to be destroyed before Christianity could be built up" (1982, 168). Consequently, there was little need to study the religions of ordinary people.

The Enlightenment division of reality into two worlds—supernatural and natural—also influenced the Western mission worldview. Most missionaries taught Christianity as the answer to the ultimate and eternal questions of life, and science based on reason as the answer to the problems of this world. They had no place in their worldview for invisible earthly spirits, witchcraft, divination, and magic of this world, and found it hard to take people’s beliefs in these seriously.

Missionaries often tried to stamp out animistic ‘superstitions,’ but they did not go away. Because they were not consciously dealt with, they went underground. Young converts knew they dare not tell the missionary about their old ways lest they incur the outsider’s anger. So these ways became part of the new Christians’ hidden culture. Christian marriage ceremonies were held in the church, and then the people returned to their homes to celebrate the wedding in traditional ways in private. Amulets were hidden under shirts, and Christians did not admit to Christian doctors that they were also going to the village shaman. The people continued to practice their old ways, but did so in secret to avoid the condemnation of the missionaries. They added Christianity as a new layer of beliefs on top of the old. The result was two-tier Christianity. In the long run, this uneasy coexistence of public Christianity and private paganism led to syncretism. Moreover, today these underground beliefs are resurfacing around the world and creating havoc in young churches as well as in the West.

The Enlightenment separation between supernatural and natural realms also led to the secularization of science. God reigned in the heavens and was concerned with eternal matters, such as creation, sin, and salvation. Science, based on natural law, was used to explain and control the events on earth. Medicine and technology gave answers for the problems of everyday life. Many missionaries brought this dualism with them. They brought the Gospel and planted churches. At the same time they established schools and hospitals that taught an essentially secular science. Much of the world adopted the modern science they brought but rejected the gospel, or, like the Western counterparts, created a dualism between religion, which they turned to in times of crisis, and science, which they used to deal with life.

A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE

How should missionaries and church leaders respond to this two-tier Christianity today? Stamping it out with condemnations and disciplinary actions works no better now than before. Ignoring it and hoping it will die out only leads to weak churches and syncretism. Missionaries and church leaders must deal with the problems, realizing that many Christians live with deep inner dissonance between what the church teaches and what they face in their everyday lives. The problems are multifold, and vary from culture to culture. Some Christians must deal with witchcraft, curses, and ancestors. Others face spiritism, demon possession, and divination. Still others face materialism, secularism, and an obsession with health, wealth, and power. How should Christians in general and missionaries in particular deal with these diverse beliefs and practices?

REJECTION OF OLD WAYS

Historically, one common response has been to reject all old customs as pagan. Drums, dances, traditional rituals, sacrifices to spirits, and divination rites were condemned because they were directly or indirectly related to traditional religions, and were stamped out by means of church discipline.

There was some validity in this rejection of old ways because in most traditional cultures no sharp line was drawn between sacred and secular practices. All of life for the people was embedded in religious beliefs. Consequently, to incorporate old ways into church life was to open the door for unintended syncretism. The simple solution was to reject all traditional beliefs and customs.

Such wholesale rejection of old beliefs and customs, however, creates several serious theological and missiological problems. First, it assumes that the cultural forms of Western Christians are themselves Christian. An uncritical rejection of other cultures as pagan is generally tied to an uncritical acceptance of Western Christian expressions as biblical. A second problem is that new beliefs and practices must be introduced to replace the old ones that have been rejected. This importation of practices from outside has led people in many lands to see Christianity as a foreign religion, and has alienated Christians from their own peoples. It is this foreignness and not the offense of the gospel that has often kept people from following Christ. A third problem is that attempts to suppress old customs generally fail. The old ways simply go underground. Often, over time, these resurface in the church and lead to Christopaganism (Yamamori and Taber 1975).

UNCRITICALLY ACCEPTING OLD WAYS

A second historical response to traditional practices was to accept them uncritically, thereby allowing them into the church. The old cultural ways were seen as basically good, and few if any changes were thought to be necessary when people become Christians.

Those who advocated this approach generally had a deep respect for other peoples and their cultures, and recognized the high value people place on their own cultural heritage. They also recognized that the foreignness of the Christian message was one of the major barriers to its acceptance. Consequently, they stressed the communication of the gospel in indigenous forms and called for little or no cultural dislocation.

Such uncritical acceptance of culture overlooks the fact that sin is found not only in individuals but also in the institutions of society and in cultural ideologies. To overlook this is to bar sin at the front door of the church, but to allow it in the back door. New converts are often more aware of the evils in their old ways and the first to call for transformed lives. An uncritical incorporation of old beliefs and practices into the life of the church opens the door to syncretism of all kinds as well as to cultural and philosophical relativism, which destroys all truth and authority.

CRITICAL CONTEXTUALIZATION

A third approach, and the one we take in this book, is to deal with old beliefs and practices consciously through a process of ‘critical contextualization.’ Critical contextualization involves a four-step process (Figure 1.2).

PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

The first step in critical contextualization is to study the local culture phenomenologically. Before judging people, it is important to understand their beliefs because it is on the basis of these that they act. It is too easy to judge people before understanding them deeply.

As churches become aware of the need to deal with some area, local church leaders and missionaries should guide the congregations in gathering and analyzing the traditional beliefs associated with the questions at hand. For example, in asking how Christians should bury their dead, local Christians should begin by analyzing their traditional rites: first describing each song, dance, recitation, and rite that makes up their old ceremony, and then discussing the meaning of each in the overall ritual.

Studying a culture means understanding the categories, assumptions, and logic the people use to construct their world. This requires careful observation and study. Based, in part, on an anthropological model, missionaries have generally lived among a people, learned their language, studied their practices, and asked them questions. They begin with descriptions and categorizations, and then seek to understand these as parts of larger systems of belief and worldviews. In this process missionaries must reserve judgment on the truthfulness of what the people say until they have understood, at least in part, the world in which the people live. This bracketing, or withholding of judgment, is essential because premature judgments are generally wrong, and because the people will not talk about their deep inner conflicts if the outsiders show incredulity or shock. The purpose here is to understand the old ways, not to judge them.

Having studied the world in which the local people live, missionaries must study their own categories, assumptions, beliefs, and worldview to understand how these shape the way they themselves think. Their views are based not only on biblical truth, but on their cultural assumptions. It is often harder for them to see their own cultural biases than those of other cultures because these biases are what they think with, not what they think about.

These two insider, or emic,[4] views of reality help missionaries and leaders see the world first as the people and then as they themselves see it, but these do not provide a bridge for communication between cultures, nor a framework to compare cultures. By learning to live deeply in two or more cultures, people learn to construct metacultural grids, or analytical frameworks that are outside any one specific culture. This etic view of an outside observer enables bicultural people such as missionaries to translate between cultures and languages, and to compare them.

Emic and etic views of reality should not be divorced from each other (Headland, Pike, and Harris 1990). Missionaries must begin by learning to see the world as the people they serve do. They must also develop metacultural grids for describing and comparing cultures, while, at the same time, constantly returning to emic analysis to make certain they do not misunderstand the particular people they serve. They are participant-observers—as participants they identify with and seek to understand the people they serve, and as observers they study, compare, and evaluate different cultures. Missionaries are culture brokers, seeking to communicate the gospel between specific cultural contexts, helping their sending churches to understand the churches they plant, and the young churches to understand and appreciate the sending churches.

ONTOLOGICAL CRITIQUE

Phenomenology helps outsiders to understand other cultures, and, therefore, to make more informed judgments. It does not provide criteria for making those judgments. To stop with phenomenological analyses is to end with cultural relativism. Cultures are relative to one another in the sense that no one of them can claim to be right. To end up with total cultural relativism, however, is to deny meaningful communication between cultures, tests of truth, or moral judgment of evil. Peter Berger notes that some acts, such as the Nazi gas chambers, are so evil that to refuse to condemn them in absolute terms would offer prima facia evidence "not only of a profound failure in the understanding of judgment, but more profoundly of a fatal impairment of humanitas" (1970, 66). In the end, cultural relativism leads to a total disbelief in science, religion, and all systems of human knowledge. Ernest Gelner points out,

Relativism does entail nihilism: if standards are inherently and inescapably expressions of something called culture, and can be nothing else, then no culture can be subjected to a standard, because (ex hypothesi) there cannot be a transcultural standard which would stand in judgement over it (Gelner 1992, 49–50).

Christians must go beyond phenomenology to ontological evaluations that test the truth claims of different beliefs and values.[5] They can use two tests of truth: the tests of Scripture and objective reality.

THEOLOGICAL CRITERIA

For Christians, the fundamental test of truth is Scripture which reveals God’s view of reality. Consequently, in this step the pastor or missionary leads the church in a study of the Scriptures related to the question at hand. In the example of burial practices, the leader uses the occasion to teach the Christian beliefs about death and resurrection. Here the pastor and missionary play a major role, for this is their area of expertise.

Christians must recognize that they read and interpret Scripture in the categories and logics of their own cultures, but this does not mean that their theologies are totally culturally shaped. The more they read and carefully study Scripture, the more its categories and logic shape their thinking. They must also test for their own cultural biases by studying Scripture with Christians from other communities and cultures, because others often see cultural biases more clearly than individuals do themselves. Such intercultural dialogues help Christians see how their culture has shaped their thinking and their interpretations of Scripture.

There are several ways to study Scripture that can help Christians deal with the problems of split-level Christianity. The first is to do an analysis of the categories, logic, and truths revealed in Scripture itself. This systematic theology helps them develop a biblical worldview and a biblical understanding of reality.

Like all Christian books, this one is based on implicit theological positions. It is important, at the outset, to make these clear. The writers are committed evangelicals who believe that God has called all people to follow Jesus Christ. We take a number of theological doctrines as givens. We accept Scripture as divine revelation, and therefore as fully authoritative. The Bible is our basis for theology, for understanding ultimate nature of reality, and for God’s work in creation, history, and eschatology (2 Tim. 3:16).

We believe that Jesus Christ is the center of theology, for it is through him that we definitively know God. Therefore, we must understand the Bible in terms of the person of Christ, who is the fulfillment and supreme manifestation of divine revelation (John 1:1–5, 18; Heb. 1:1–5). We take seriously the incarnation of Jesus Christ, who was both fully God and fully human (1 John 1:1–3). This mystery of God in human form is the basis of our salvation. It is also the analogy we use to understand divine revelation in human languages, universal truth in particular contexts, and the Christian messenger in non-Christian cultures (Figure 1.3). We affirm the reign of Christ over all creation, and the establishment of God’s kingdom to be the goal of divine history. Mission takes place in this broader framework, calling people to follow Christ and proclaiming the kingdom of God as the culmination of history.

We assume the continuing active work of the Holy Spirit in the world today in the lives of all believers and in unbelievers. The Holy Spirit woos unbelievers to Christ and his kingdom, and convicts them of sin. The Spirit gives believers the power to live godly lives (Rom. 8:1–17; Gal. 5:22).

We believe that all humans are sinners in need of salvation and reconciliation with God and with one another. This is possible only through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The cross and resurrection are central to all Christian understanding of how God works in the world and how he uses power (1 Cor. 1:18–19). God saves those who turn in repentance and seek his salvation. This turning, or conversion, involves a change of fundamental allegiance that makes Christ the Lord in all areas of believers’ lives (Rom. 8:1–8). It leads to a life of discipleship that transforms all areas of human life.

We believe the church is the sign and evidence of the kingdom of God now invading the earth. It is made up of communities of faith that worship, fellowship together, and minister to one another’s needs. The church is also a hermeneutical community. All believers have the right to study and interpret the Scriptures, but they must do so within believing communities where errors in interpretation can be checked. The church is also a mission community. It exists to bring to a lost world the message of God’s salvation, and to invite all into his kingdom. Mission is not a fruit of the church. It is of its essence. Without mission the church is not the church.

A second approach to the study of Scripture is to use the questions and methods of history. Biblical theology is essential to understand the story of creation, fall, redemption, and the restoration of God’s reign in eternity. Here the focus is on the cosmic narrative and how it relates to the histories of churches and biographies of Christians.

Systematic and biblical theologies are essential in seeking biblical answers to the questions Christians face, but they do not provide answers on how to communicate and apply those truths in specific human settings. Missiological theology takes for granted that all humans live in different historical and sociocultural settings, and that the gospel must be made known to them in the particularity of these contexts. Eugene Peterson writes,

This is the gospel focus: you are the man; you are the woman. The gospel is never about everybody else; it is always about you, about me. The gospel is never truth in general; it’s always a truth in specific. The gospel is never a commentary on ideas or culture or conditions; it’s always about actual persons, actual pains, actual troubles, actual sin; you, me; who you are and what you’ve done; who I am and what I’ve done (1997, 185).

The question is, how can the gospel be translated between vastly different languages and cultures without losing its meaning? How can people with other worldviews understand its prophetic message?

Missionaries must cross linguistic, cultural, and social boundaries to proclaim the gospel in new settings. They must translate and communicate the Bible in the languages of people in other cultures so that it speaks to them in the particularities of their lives. They must bridge between divine revelation and human contexts, and provide biblical answers to the confusing problems of everyday life. This process of cross-cultural communication means that missionaries, by the very nature of their task, must be theologians. Their central question is: What is God’s Word to humans in this particular situation?

From these theological assumptions it should be clear that the foundations of this book are based on God’s Word, not social and cultural insights. However, the Bible reflects the historical and cultural contexts of authors across the centuries who penned the sixty-six books. Therefore, to understand the biblical concepts, Christians must also understand the cultural manifestations expressed by those authors. It is only then that theological concepts can be understood and applied to new contexts.

REALITY TESTING

The second ontological test is ‘reality testing.’ All people use empirical verification to test their ideas. One person says there are ten cows in the field, another there are eleven. They count the cows to see who is right. In fact, both may be wrong. Modern science systematizes the use of reality testing, but all cultures have sciences based on observations, rational deductions, and independent verification.

Cross-cultural reality testing forces people to examine both their own and others’ understandings of reality. Most people simply assume that the way they look at things is the way things really are, and judge other cultures’ views of reality before understanding them. These judgments are based on ethnocentrism, which closes the door to further understanding and communication. Furthermore, ethnocentric judgments keep missionaries from examining their own beliefs and values to determine which of them are based on biblical foundations and which on their cultural beliefs.

As noted earlier, understanding other cultures deeply shatters the belief that one’s own culture is right and others wrong, and opens the door for people to move beyond monoculturalism to the development of metacultural grids that enable them, in some measure, to understand different cultures (Hiebert 1999). These grids also enable them to compare and test the truth claims of different cultures.[6]

EVALUATIVE RESPONSE

Returning to the process of critical contextualization, the third step is for churches to evaluate critically their existing beliefs and customs in the light of their new biblical understandings, and to make decisions on the basis of this newfound truth. The gospel is not simply information to be communicated. It is a message to which people must respond. Moreover, it is not enough that the leaders be convinced that change is needed. Leaders may share their convictions and point out the consequences of various decisions, but they must allow the people to participate in the final decisions in evaluating their past customs. If the leaders make these decisions, they must enforce them. People will abide with decisions arrived at corporately, and there will be little likelihood that the customs they reject will go underground.

To involve people in evaluating their own culture in the light of new truths draws upon their strengths. They know their old culture better than the missionary and are in a better position to critique it, once they have biblical instruction. Moreover, their involvement helps them to grow spiritually through learning discernment and applying scriptural teachings to their own lives.

Congregations may respond to old beliefs and practices in any of several ways. They will keep many, for these are not unbiblical. Western Christians, for example, see no problem with eating hamburgers, singing secular songs, wearing business suits, or driving cars. Some practices will be explicitly rejected as unbecoming for Christians. The reason for such rejection is often not apparent to missionaries or outsiders, who may see little difference between the songs and rites the people reject and those they retain. But the people know the deep, hidden meanings of their old customs and their significance in the culture. At some points the missionary may need to raise questions that the people have overlooked, for they often fail to see clearly their own cultural assumptions.

Sometimes people will modify old beliefs and practices to give them explicit Christian meaning. For example, Charles Wesley used the melodies of popular bar songs but gave them Christian words. Similarly, the early Christians used the style of worship found in the Jewish synagogues, but modified it to fit their beliefs. At times local churches substitute Christian symbols and rites borrowed from Christians in other cultures. Such functional substitutes are often effective, for they minimize the cultural dislocation created by simply removing old customs. People may also create new symbols and rituals to communicate Christian beliefs in forms that are indigenous to their particular culture.

It is important for churches to add rituals that affirm their spiritual heritage. All Christians live between two worlds, cultural and Christian. The addition of such rites as baptism and the Lord’s Supper not only provides converts with ways to express their new faith, but also symbolizes their ties to the historical and international church.

Having led the people to analyze their old customs in the light of biblical teaching, the leader or missionary must help them arrange the practices they have chosen into new ways that express the Christian meaning of the event. These rites and practices will be Christian for the people are seeking explicitly to express biblical teaching in them. These will also be indigenous, for the congregation has created it, using concepts and forms the people understand in their own culture.

A word of caution is needed here. The missionary or leader may not always agree with the choices the people make, but it is important, as far as conscience allows, to accept the decisions of the local Christians, and to recognize that they, too, are led by the Spirit of God. Leaders must grant others the greatest right they reserve for themselves, the right to make mistakes. The church grows stronger by consciously making decisions in the light of Scripture, even when the decisions may not always be the wisest, than when it simply obeys orders given by others.

TRANSFORMATIVE MINISTRIES

The final step in missiology is transformative ministries that help people move from where they are to where God wants them to be. Missionaries and church leaders cannot expect people simply to abandon their old ways and adopt new ones. People can only move from where they are by a process of transformation. This is true for individuals as well as social and cultural systems. In Figure 1.2 we called this missiological transformation.

Ministry has to do with the particular, not only the universal. The gospel is truth for people living in specific places and times, and caught in their own dilemmas. In dealing with folk religions it is important to remember that they are incredibly diverse. There are many kinds of witchcraft, divination, spirit possession, ancestor veneration, and magic, and each requires a biblical response that deals with its particular nature. Specific missiological answers must be formulated in specific contexts by the leaders and missionaries involved. This book does not provide ready answers to the many different beliefs and practices of folk religions around the world today. It seeks to provide a conceptual framework whereby Christians can think biblically about folk religions they encounter.

This book is organized around the four steps of critical contextualization. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 develop a model to study religions phenomenologically. This draws heavily on the insights provided by anthropology. In Sections Two and Three, this model is used to examine folk religions in order to understand their beliefs and practices. Only then can missionaries and church leaders provide biblical answers to the questions they seek to answer. The failure to understand folk religions has been a major blind spot in missions, and is, in part, the cause for the split-level Christianity found around the world. Section Four moves beyond phenomenology, and looks at issues associated with the last three steps in the process, namely, ontological critique, evaluative response, and transformative ministries. It offers some brief theological and missiological guidelines for dealing with folk religions, outlines some of the common dangers involved, and suggests steps by which local churches can study Scripture under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and help their people live as faithful followers of Christ in non-Christian settings.

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PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION

The first step in a biblical response to popular religiosity is to seek to understand folk religions phenomenologically. They consist of a bewildering array of rites, festivals, beliefs, symbols, texts, practitioners, institutions, buildings, schools, art, music, and processions. Some of these are seen in public, but many are hidden in private life. Unlike in the West, where religion is often a small segment of life, in most of the world it is the core of the culture and touches every area of people’s lives. How can one make sense out of this diversity? Here the theories and methods of the human sciences can help missionaries understand folk religions in terms of their own internal logic, and compare and evaluate them.

HUMAN SYSTEMS

Folk religions must be understood in the broader context of religions in general, which, in turn, are part of cultures and societies. There are many approaches in the sciences to the study of humans in general, and religions in particular. Theologians and philosophers study humans primarily in terms of their systems of belief and doctrine. Psychologists look at humans in terms of the inner workings of the individuals, and examine the motivations, conversions, emotions, beliefs, and actions of specific persons. Sociologists look at human relationships that maintain religious beliefs and practices, and at the social, economic, political, and legal dimensions of social systems related to religion. Cultural anthropologists look at religions as systems of beliefs, symbols, behaviors, and worldviews, and at the rituals and practices associated with these. Geographers, biologists, and other natural scientists study how time, space, geography, and human biology affect religious practices. Historians look at changes that take place in religions over time. All build on a common empirical methodology, using reason to organize and analyze human observations, but each of these perspectives brings a different focus and a different set of questions, and each sheds valuable light on the complex nature of religions.

How do these different perspectives relate to each other? Taken by themselves, these piecemeal approaches to the study of humans fail to look at the whole. Human societies, cultures, and individuals cannot be separated in reality. The problem is that, given their finite limitations, human minds cannot comprehend the whole of human reality in one picture. It is necessary, for analytical purposes, to focus on one or another aspect