Can Good Come from Relating to People from other Religions?

A missionary must have a passion for understanding different cultures. As outsiders, we want to influence cultures in ways insiders will consider respectful and helpful. Comparative missiology analyzes how Christianity and other faith traditions have sought to expand and how they justify their efforts (Kim & Fitchett-Climenhaga, 2022, p. 11). 

Questions about Christian mission exist in the general field of religious practices and patterns of diffusion. In a steadily more religiously pluralist world, missiologists can gain insights from other missionary religions like Buddhism and Islam (Kollman, 2022, p. 49). 

Christians can also grow in their understanding of mission by dialogue with non-evangelistic religions like Hinduism, Confucianism, and Judaism (Kollman, 2022, p. 50). Learning how to relate to people from other religions productively should be part of Christian missions (Fitchett-Climenhaga, 2022, p. 10). Have different religions influenced each other in positive ways? As someone engaged in Jewish-Christian relations advocacy, I’m encouraged that Jewish theologians have begun to refer to Christianity and rabbinic Judaism as sister religions. In the first century C.E., these two great faith traditions emerged and developed in mutual influence. And I believe that Christianity and Judaism have much to discover in continued, respectful dialogue (Kedem, 2022). 

Can Good Come from Missionaries Studying the Social Sciences?

The field of missiology emerged as a research-based approach to cross-cultural evangelism which gave special place to the social sciences (Fitchett-Climenhaga, 2022, p. 8). This occurred while theology and biblical studies were becoming scientific studies (Fitchett-Climenhaga, 2022, p. 19). The Anglo-American pragmatic approach to mission studies emphasized the strategic delivery of the gospel. But the German scientific approach to mission emphasized how indigenous peoples were appropriating the gospel in diverse ways (Stanley, 2022, p. 21). As an American Evangelical, I have been steeped in the strategical, project-management orientation to evangelism. But as the baton of Christian leadership passes to the Global South – Latin America, Africa, and Asia – I’m more interested in understanding and encouraging how the gospel is being reinterpreted and reimagined today. And as a student of church history, I’m aware that reinterpretation and reimagination has defined the progress of the gospel as it travelled from culture to culture. 

Missionaries increasingly study diverse fields that are related but not central to evangelism as it has traditionally been understood (Kollman, 2022, p. 51). Some fear that Christian missions will become too fragmented by a multiplicity of terms, theories, and methods (Nagy, 2022, p. 56). The clustering of comparative, historical empirical, and hermeneutical methods across disciplines makes missions studies susceptible to “interdisciplinary miscommunication and misunderstanding” (Nagy, 2022, p. 57). The study of missions mustn’t become so nebulous and vast that it cannot be directed towards practical ends. I find this definition of missiology to be helpful: “the study of the relational, communicative (co)existence between God, humans, fellow human beings and the whole creation across space and time” (Nagy, 2022, p. 60). 

Why Care About Supersessionism?

For the past several years my work has centered on post-supersessionist (PS) advocacy. The Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology describes PS as “a family of theological perspectives that affirms God’s irrevocable covenant with the Jewish people as a central and coherent part of ecclesial teaching” (Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology | Jewish-Christian Relations, n.d.). PS advocacy is described as seeking “to overcome understandings of the New Covenant that entail the abrogation or obsolescence of God’s covenant with the Jewish people, of the Torah as a demarcator of Jewish communal identity, or of the Jewish people themselves” (Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology | Jewish-Christian Relations, n.d.). 

What 

I believe Christians need to discover how God’s particular relationship with Israel demonstrates his desire and ability to love Gentile cultures in all their diversity. This perspective can mitigate against approaches to mission that reproduce cultural Christianities – national, ethnic, or tribal (Nagy, 2022, p. 65). PS advocacy recognizes the roots of supersessionist theology in the Age of Exploration when Western Christianity claimed exclusive identity as ‘people of God’ effectively abolishing the notion of the ‘Gentile’ (Jennings, 2010). 

The history of mission studies’ interaction with colonialism is important to my PS advocacy. It is encouraging to note that voices critical of Christian mission’s connection to Western colonialist were not slow to appear. Protesting voices were heard from Spanish Catholic missionaries in the 16th century for the un-Christian way Europeans treated indigenous peoples (Robert, 2022, p. 385). And Protestant voices rose similar self-accusations targeting the West’s notion of being a Christian civilization (Robert, 2022, p. 387). The culmination of the decline of ‘West to-the-rest’ mentality came in the post-World War II era’s growing anti-colonial movements and nationalism (Robert, 2022, p. 388). I do not lament this undermining of the westernizing foundations of the missionary enterprise, but it is helpful to understand the history when it casts its shadow even today. 

Hospitality from Wanderer to Wanderer

I celebrate the freeing of Christianity from its Western captivity and the unprecedented phase of growth in what came to be known as the church of the Global South (Robert, 2022, p. 389). But I lament that even in the Global South the tendency of Christians to be isolated from people of other religions results from ignorance and fear (Zurlo et al., 2022, p. 74). The statistics reveal the work at hand if Christians are to convincingly support the common human good: 87% of Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims don’t know a Christian (Zurlo et al., 2022, p. 73). Solidarity with our fellow human beings according to the biblical worldview does not mean renouncing the gospel. The church needs to learn to engage the religious and ideological ‘other’ in a way that shows “love, respect, friendship, and hospitality” (Zurlo et al, 2022, p. 74). 

In a time un unprecedented migration and displacement of peoples, it is crucial to know that these phenomena have been foundational to the global spread of Christianity (Fredericks, 2022, p. 670). The reality of cultural diversity is nothing new, but even the most traditionally homogenous societies now feel the strain of pluralism (Wu, 2022, p. 53). And in metropolitan areas that have some of the largest refugee communities, the ease with which Christians can “isolate and occupy themselves away” must be addressed (Wu, 2022, p. 53). PS advocacy must learn from ecumenicists who have emphasized hospitality as the preferred motif of Christian witness (Frederiks, 2022, p. 678). Missionaries are particularly poised to show hospitality to marginalized members of society because of their shared liminal identity. As aliens and exiles in this world, the people of God have a liminal status similar in some ways to that of refugees and immigrants (Pohl, 2003, p. 5). By self-identifying as diaspora persons, missionaries can find solidarity with members of religions who were displaced from their homelands (Sanchez et al., 2021, p. 348). This practice is an effective way of countering the antiquated paternalistic West to-the-rest mission narrative (Sanchez et al, 2021, p. 346). Western scholars have been reminded by Christian leaders from the Global South that evangelization is not the distinct vocation of Westerners, and that even refugees can be seen as missionaries (Sanchez et al., 2021, p. 346). PS advocacy can only benefit from a posture of Christian witness that embodies such humility. 

References

Frederiks, Martha T. (2022). Mission Studies and World Christianity. In Robert, Dana L. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford.

Kedem (Director). (2022, December 17). Christianity & Judaism – When did they actually separate? Prof. Michal Bar-Asher Siegal [Video recording]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dNFAXLC8qw

Jennings, W. J. (2010). The Christian imagination: Theology and the origins of race. Yale University Press

Kim, Kirsteen & Fitchett-Climenhaga, Alison (2022). Introduction To Mission Studies. In Kim, Kirsteen & Fitchett-Climenhaga, Alison (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford.

Kollman, Paul. (2022). Defining Mission Studies for the Third Millennium of Christianity. In Kollman, Paul (Ed.),The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford.

Nagy, Dorottya. (2022). Theory and Method in Mission Studies / Missiology. In Nagym Dorottya (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford.

Pohl CD (2003) Biblical issues in mission and migration. Missiology: An International Review 31: 3–14.

Robert, Dana L. (2022). Mission Studies and World Christianity. In Robert, Dana L. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford.

Sanchez, et al., (2021). Ministry Amidst the Refugee Crisis in Europe: Understanding Missionary- Refugee Relationships. Transformation, Vol. 38(4)

Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology | Jewish-Christian Relations. (n.d.). Spostst. Retrieved July 28, 2024, from https://www.spostst.org

Stanley, Brian (2022). The Changing Face Of Mission Studies Since The Nineteenth Century. In Stanley, Brian (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies. OUP Oxford. 

Wu, Cindy M. (2022). Refugees and the Mission of the Church. International Bulletin of Mission Research, Vol. 46(I)

Zurlo, Gina A.; Johnson, Todd M.; Crossing, Peter F. (2022). World Christianity and Religions 2022: A Complicated Relationship. International Bulletin of Mission Research, Vol. 46(I) 71-80