I began this paper by explaining my advocacy for mission as intercultural reconciliation. MIR is a post-supersessionist of Christian mission that recognizes the nefarious contribution of the church towards modern race theory. If the vision of the one new man (Eph. 2:14-18) is to be taken seriously, addressing racism in an essential aspect of the gospel. For two thousand years of church history, fragmentation and ethnocentrism have distorted the vision of unity that Christ said would identify his followers (Jn. 17:22-23). Instead of embodying intercultural harmony in deference to the special role of the Jews, the white European church assumed the people of God as their exclusive racialized identity.

But Christianity has become a global religion with deeply indigenized expressions among peoples of every biological variety. Therefore, addressing the legacy of racism in the church requires different approaches for different cultural contexts. The US-American civil rights movement, critical race theory, and Jennings’ ORS theory make valuable contributions to the global fight against racism. But as I serve in Europe and, more specifically the Iberian Peninsula and its colonial diaspora, I perceive different attitudes towards race. In Europe, the place of racial discussions in US-America is occupied by discussions of xenophobia, antisemitism, and islamophobia. There is the ancient thinking of the West as superior to the East, even within Europe itself. West Germans are wary of East Germans as not really of the same culture (Kalmar, 2022). Poles think of themselves as Central Europe, Ukrainians think of the “East” beginning only at the Russian border, and then there is the phenomenon of Russophobia (Kalmar, 2022). All these types of xenophobia are between the white peoples of Europe.

We have seen the merits and limitations of Jennings thesis that supersessionism is the source of the modern concept of race, i.e., ORS. I have argued that ORS is helpful to my vision of mission as intercultural reconciliation, but it requires adjustment to engage the European/Iberian context. The European appropriation of the gospel as an exclusive possession of its own culture is a distortion that continues to turn its contemporary populations away from the church. The black-white binary common to US-America has incompatibilities applied to Europe, but the latter has plenty of its own intercultural conflicts. These social problems have not been solved by secular strategies of color-blindness, and this proposes an opportunity for MIR. Europeans are attracted to postcolonial ideologies, and post-supersessionism is a rejection of evil distortions of Christian doctrine that provided the underpinnings of colonialism.

Portugal and Spain have recently become immigrant nations and thus feel the strains of intercultural tension. Jennings’ ORS hypothesis draws attention to aspects of Iberian Christian history that must be addressed to build a harmonious pluralistic society. We have read that the greatest reference for racism in Europe is antisemitism. In this case, ORS is extremely helpful in pointing to the connection between the church’s rejection of Jews and the development of modern race theory. As modern secular Portugal and Spain seek a basis of a more inclusive pluralistic society, MIR is a winsome approach to Christian witness. The one new man vision rejects the ideal of seeking national/religious identity in favor of seeking a land that is “married”:

No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called Hephzibah [my delight is in her], and your land Beulah [married]; for the Lord will take delight in you, and your land will be married. (New International Version, 2011, Is. 62:4)

References

Bamji, A., Janssen, G. H., & Laven, M. (2013). The Ashgate Research Companion to the Counter-Reformation. Taylor & Francis Group. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/biola-ebooks/detail.action?docID=5207533

Benitez, I. (2015). A Critique of Critical Legal Studies’ Claim of Legal Indeterminacy. Lambert Academic Publishing.

Bernier, François (1684). “A New Division of the Earth” from Journal des Scavans, 24 April 1684. Translated by T. Bendyshe in Memoirs Read Before the Anthropological Society of London, vol. 1, 1863–64, pp. 360–64.

Critical race theory (CRT) | Definition, Principles, & Facts | Britannica. (2024, November 15). https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory

Critical race theory in the academy / edited by Vernon Lee Farmer, Evelyn Shepherd W. Farmer. (2020). Biola Library ebooks.

Cunningham, P. A. (2017). The Sources behind “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable” (Rom 11:29): A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate (No. 4). Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 12(1), 1–39, 12-13

Delgado, R. (2012). Critical race theory: An introduction / Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic ; foreword by Angela Harris. Biola Library ebooks, 3, 5, 5, 3-5

Farmer, Vernon L. & Farmer, Evelyn S. (2020). Critical race theory in the academy / edited by Biola Library ebooks. https://research.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=6ff1bdc8-1406-30a2-a78d-ea3f135d2afa, 21, 20, 20, 20, 21, 21, 21, 21, 21, 24, 20, 21, 21

Feros, Antonio (2017). Speaking of Spain: The Evolution of Race and Nation in the Hispanic World. Harvard University Press; eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), 1, 1-2, 2, 2-4, 6, 6-7, 9, 9, 280, 281-2, 282, 283-4, 2, 9, 280-1, 283

Garros, Joel Z. (January 9, 2006). “A brave old world: an analysis of scientific racism and BiDil”. McGill Journal of Medicine. 9 (1): 54–60.

Golden, Timothy J. (2022). Racism and Resistance: Essays on Derrick Bell’s Racial Realism. SUNY Press; eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost), 32, 32, 33, 33-4, 34, 36, 195, 207-8, 32, 32, 34

Jennings, W. J. (2010). The Christian imagination: Theology and the origins of race / Willie James Jennings. Biola Library ebooks, 33, 33, 31, 32, 33, 33, 36, 60, 60, 61, 62, 63, 63, 63, 65, 97, 97-98, 61

Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate (No. 4). Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 12(1), 1–39.

Kalmar, I. (2022). White But Not Quite (1st ed.). Bristol University Press; JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2fjwpz8

Levaeau, Rémy, Mohsen-Finan, Khadija & Wihtol de Wenden, Catherine, (2002). Introduction, in NEW EUROPEAN IDENTITY AND CITIZENSHIP ix (R~my Levaeau, Khadija Mohsen-Finan & Catherine Wihtol de Wenden eds. 2002).

Lindsay, J. A. (1917). “The passing of the great race, or the racial basis of european history”. The Eugenics Review. 9 (2): 139–141.

McDermott, Gerald. (2023). Is Supersessionism the Source of Race? Challenging a Popular Paradigm. In J. Kaplan, J. M. Rosner, and D.J. Rudolph (Eds.), Covenant and the People of God: Essays in Honor of Mark S. Kinzer (Pages 144-55). Pickwick, 2023.

Morley, S. P. (2022). Connecting Race and Empire: What Critical Race Theory Offers outside the U.S. Legal Context. UCLA Law Review Discourse, 69(1), 100–117. HeinOnline, 101, 101, 102, 102, 104, 104-8, 101, 102-8

Moschel, M. (2007). Color Blindness or Total Blindness—The Absence of Critical Race Theory in Europe. Rutgers Race & the Law Review, 9(1), 57–128. HeinOnline, 65, 66-9, 70, 72, 72, 72-5, 80, 80-95, 100, 100-115, 124, 124, 65, 66-8, 72, 72-5, 80, 81-4

Rubin, Edward L. (1999) Book Review:Jews, Truth, and CriticalRace Theory, 93 Nw. U. L. Rev, 525, 531, 525, 531

Scholar, R. (2006). Divided Cities: The Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2003. Oxford University Press, 52, 53, 53, 53-4, 55, 55, 52, 53, 55, 55

January 14, 2025February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

Theory of Race and Iberian Christendom, part 3

Supersessionism and Critical Race Theory

Intro to CRT

CRT is predominantly a US-American field of study. It originated in the writings of several American legal scholars, including Derrick Bell, Patricia J. Williams, Alan Freeman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, Cheryl Harris, Charles R. Lawrence III, and Mari Matsuda (Critical Race Theory (CRT) | Definition, Principles, & Facts | Britannica, 2024).

According to Richard Delgado (2012), whereas traditional civil rights envision gradual progress, CRT questions this possibility in a society founded on modern liberalism. In examination here are concepts such as equality, legal argument, Enlightenment rationalism, and the neutral precepts of institutional law. Delgado (2012) describes key early developments in the emergence of CRT, beginning with the notion of legal indeterminacy – that most cases can be decided either way according to emphasis of one line of authority versus another (Delgado, 2012). While law has an alleged impartiality, it is used as a tool of privilege and power. In other words, law is politics, merely a tool for oppression (Benitez, 2015).

CRT also incorporated a “skepticism of triumphalist history”, and the notion that favorable precedent tends to decay through bureaucracy (Delgado, 2012). CRT also built upon feminism’s insights into the relationship between power and the formation of social roles, patriarchy, and other forms of domination. Lastly, from conventional civil rights thinking CRT drew a concern for addressing historical wrongs and the need to seek legal and practical action. Although initially focused on black American issues, other subgroups soon emerged within CRT including Asian, Latinex, and Queer. Writing in 2012, Delgado describes relations between different groups represented within CRT as being mostly good, maintained through regular meetings. Other ethnic groups having joined in smaller numbers include Native American and Middle Eastern (Delgado, 2012).

CRT drew from the earlier work of W. E. B. Du Bois, who was highly skeptical of supposed scientific or biological bases of race. Scientific racism or biological racism is a pseudoscientific theory systematized in the 19th century. It posits that categories of distinct “races” exist in the human species, and that racial discrimination can be justified by empirical data (Garros, 2006). Early in the Enlightenment, thinkers such as François Bernier had divided humanity into four different races, based simply on his observations as a world traveler (Bernier, 1684). A long canon of Western racial theory developed in Europe and North America, producing such abhorrent theories as Nordicism, promoted by American eugenicist Madison Grant and used to justify immigration restrictions (Lindsay, 1917).

Du Bois coupled his suspicion of scientific racism with radical political views and critical social theory (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). Rather than searching for a scientific definition of race, as a black man Du Bois sought to find or create a means for the social, political, and cultural survival of his people. Being rooted in Du Bois’ work, initially CRT was almost wholly directed towards African American studies (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).

Du Bois developed gift theory which emphasized that “each race has specific and special ‘gifts’ to contribute to national and international culture and civilization” (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). The concepts of race proposed by Du Bois were not biologically determined, but “predicated on historical, cultural, social, and political ‘common’ characteristics and ‘common’ experiences shared by continental and diasporan Africans”. These characteristics represent gifts or “race-specific and culture-specific contributions” to global humanity and the growth of civilization (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).

Rather than promote one political solution to problems of racism, Du Bois, “empirically developed a discourse on race in order to critique racism and provide a discursive point of departure for African American and Pan-African radical politics and revolutionary social movement” (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). He sought to offer models of discourse that could help critically understand race and mitigate against anti-black racism in contemporary society (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).

Du Bois was also a precursor for what would come to be known as critical white studies. Skillfully and boldly, he pointed to the essence of whiteness, chronicling its prominence related to understandings of race. To be white was to be raceless, powerful, or at least to have restrictive access to power (Farmer & Farmer, 2020). Du Bois described the colonial logic of the white world as considering race something that stains the social status of “sub-humans”, i.e., non-whites. This logic pollutes the political thinking of whites, thus reducing them to a state of impotence, irrationality, and needing clear paradigms about their identity and the nature of the world. The implication is that since whites are not negatively affected by race, they have been “burdened by God” with the task of leading the “lost, raced ‘natives’, ‘barbarians’, ‘savages’, and sub-humans” to the “lily-white ‘heaven’ of humanity”. And of course, God is also white according to the colonial logic of a “white supremacist world” (Farmer & Farmer, 2020, p. 21).

Du Bois was also an early advocate of the race/class thesis that argued that the class struggle present for centuries in human history had been coupled with the modern concept of race, capitalism, and colonialism with the effect of exacerbating race/class conflicts. For Du Bois, the West’s weapon of choice in its efforts to establish global capitalism were theories of race and racism (Farmer & Farmer, 2020).

Key Thinkers of CRT

When CRT did emerge in the U.S. in the 1970s, one of its most important proponents was Derrick Bell. Bell was raised as an Evangelical Christian but went on to write critically about the relation between racism and Christianity (Golden, 2022). Bell explored how Christianity was used to inspire racist ideologies, such as the Old Testament curse of Ham as a justification for slavery of blacks and the New Testament acquiescence to slavery as an “earthly institution”. Bell referred to racism as an “idolatrous faith” whose focus moves from worshipping God to worshipping the self. The focus of devotion becomes the “superiority of the white self and white race”. Bell describes the superiority of this faith as connected with the insistence that Whiteness is a “property right”. Whiteness affords whites with a privileged status that they seek to protect. In this idolatrous faith, “the true spirit of Christianity becomes divorced from its implementation” (Golden, 2022).

Throughout his work, Bell recognized that eliminating racism is an endless challenge (Golden, 2022). For Bell, the religious basis for racism is both a historical and contemporary reality which most racist Christians will not recognize. He observed how racist theology offers a comprehensive system of “meaning, value, and loyalty” providing “stability and reassurance” in a world of economic inequality. This faith perspective can justify the lack of common economic interests across races, with those of lesser means. In conceiving of racism as faith, Bell expresses its “deep cognitive structure”. This is especially important considering Enlightenment approaches to eradicate racism through reason. But the postmodern refutation of the secularist hypothesis demonstrates that racism will have to be dealt with as “enduring and foundational” (Golden, 2022).

Bell also explored the relation between racism and religious structure, “the transposition between the positive, originating spirit of Christianity and its institutionalization, the difference between a faith and the organizational structure developed to perpetuate it” (Golden, 2022). Towards the end of his life, Bell posited that Jesus recognized that the revolution that was needed was more about spiritual reformation than political change. This task begins with personal responsibility but also leads to instigation of change in others. The crucial discovery is how to create spiritual reformation in others that converts the perspective of a minority into the consensus of the majority. It is impossible to challenge racism without promoting spiritual reformation. At the same time, we must recognize that faith and spirit can also motivate resistance to change related to racism. The mixture of faith and racism prevents some From seeing (Golden, 2022).

Bell’s idea of radical racial realism argued that “race is not an anomaly to American structures but constitutive of American sociopolitical life. Racism is a permanent part of the DNA of America” (Golden, 2022). He asserted that black people would never achieve full equality in the U.S. But Bell did not see racial realism as denying hope, rather, he means for it to help readers “rethink our strategies of resistance and languages of hope”. By this perspective, expectations regarding racial justice must be grounded in “transcending racism instead of eradicating racism”. Bell describes this transcending task as defiance, which views victory against racism considering agency. Such advocacy is committed to not letting racism have the last say. He describes this as a defiant hope that helps oppressed racialized communities to reclaim their humanity and agency as they envision better worlds (Golden, 2022)

The second CRT scholar whose thought we will briefly explore is Patricia J. Williams. Williams argues that at the heart of myths and media sensationalism around African Americans in positions of authority and of crimes involving blacks is a “crippling fear of the other which divides societies against themselves, to everyone’s loss and no one’s gain” (Scholar, 2006). She argues that American cities are divided according to race stemming from a settler history where good and evil are perceived battling for control. Thus, while crises of urban crime and poverty are portrayed as rooted in individual causality, the true causes are structural (Scholar, 2006).

In the case of terrorists, the evildoers among the population are rooted out in a “secularized casting-out-of-demons from the Beloved Community” (Scholar, 2006). But while individual human rights are asserted, they are endangered by the fomentation of fear directed towards certain enemies of the good. Williams writes on America’s history of lynching or scapegoating blacks, Jews, or Catholics where police permitted vigilante justice. She sees a similar paradigm playing out on the global stage since 9/11 that undermines America’s reputation and security (Scholar, 2006).

Williams proposes that the color-blind society desired by liberals is impossible until the reality of racism is dealt with (Scholar, 2006). Personal experience and actions are related to structural dynamics, and each of us must answer for our actions. Although color-blindness is a legitimate goal at some point in the future, at present we need accountability. To fulfill the vision of human rights in the American Constitution, we must put away fear, seek public and private accountability, and be creative and imaginative in seeking solutions (Scholar, 2006).

References

January 14, 2025February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

Theory of Race and Iberian Christendom, part 2

Brief Presentation of Jennings’ ORS Thesis

The Connection Between Supersessionism and Theory of Race

Let us begin with some key sections of Jennings work on the connection between supersessionsm and theory of race. Jennings (2010) analyzes various Iberian Catholic supersessionist texts from the colonial era, one of which is the writings of Jesuit missionary Alessandro Valignano. Writing in the 16^th century, Valignano was concerned with whether colonized peoples’ adoption of Christian practices came from the effects of salvation or was a mere facade to cover either ulterior motives or impregnable ignorance. Not only in question was the natives’ possibility of salvation, but future candidacy for ecclesiastical office. Jennings argues that supersessionism was foundational to such questions related to race in Iberian Catholicism. He sees supersessionsim as “a distortion that was growing in power and extension with each new generation”, but that had reached an inflection point during the early colonial era. Jennings goes as far as to describe supersessionism as “the most decisive and central theological distortion” existing not only in the church of Valignano’s time, but also today (Jennings, 2010).

According to Jennings (2010), during Valignano’s time the predominant theology claimed that for God Israel has been replaced by the church. This meant that Christian identity was encompassed by the white European race. As such, the people of God were wholly removed from Jewish and Muslim identity. In Iberian Catholicism, these were the two deeply suspect groups related to Christian conversion. The converted Muslims were referred to as moriscos (“moorish”) and converted Jews as conversos or marranos (“swine”). But the legitimacy of Jews and Arabs conversion to Christianity was suspect from the time of the Reconquista and the Inquisition. This suspicion was rooted in the theology that had discarded Israel from its constitutive place in Christianity. The result was a vacuum that was filled by the white European. Israel’s election had now been transferred to a new geographic home with its visual contours and symbols. Just as Israel had been chosen as the fulcrum from which Christianity projected, supersessionism established Europe as the fulcrum from which salvation emanated (Jennings, 2010). Jennings states that during the age of discovery and conquest,

supersessionist thinking burrowed deeply inside the logic of evangelism and emerged joined to whiteness in a new, more sophisticated, concealed form. Indeed, supersessionist thinking is the womb in which whiteness will mature. Any attempt to address supersessionism must carefully attend to the formation of the racial scale and the advent of a new vision of Christian social space (Jennings, 2010)

The Emergence of a White-Black Binary

During the colonial era, Iberian Catholicism’s self-perception was as the agent of redemptive, divine change ordained by God. The churches of Spain and Portugal saw their position as those who condition the world rather than those who are conditioned by it. And in this way Iberian Catholicism mirrored the role and action of God in creation (Jennings, 2010). Jennings argues that the decisive point here regarding the origins of Western race theory is that “creative authority, a creative regime” was “channeled through white presence”. And all peoples involved in the colonial project were touched by this creative administration. Thus, racial being was conceived of as an act of continuous interaction where becoming is oriented around whiteness. The white colonialists imagined a world of interlocking cultures which they were somehow separate and distinct from (Jennings, 2010).

Jennings (2010) describes a white-black binary representing opposite ends of a spectrum. Therefore, just as the colonial landscape must be refashioned, ethnic identity must be refashioned as well. The indigenous peoples needed to be brought from “chaos to faith”, just as the colonial territories had to be “cleared, organized, and brought into productive civilization”. The only stable state possible from such a perspective is one of transition founded on racial attribution. Jennings states that “reciprocity of racial being was in play in the formation of the New World racial order, but that reciprocity must never be construed as creative equality”. Racial being existed in its becoming within the dual realities of “conference” and “creativity”. And this becoming is not mere assimilation, but an agency that arises in the racial imagination made possible by whiteness. As I understand him here, Jennings is saying that whereas white race was a fixed reality, all other races developed upon a continuum related to whiteness. And upon this continuum each non-white race upgraded or degraded in relation whiteness (Jennings, 2010).

Key to understanding the importance of the emergence of Jennings’ (2010) concept of whiteness is the new order let loose by colonialism. The identity that comes from the “life-giving collaboration (…) between place and bodies, people and animals” is lost. Jennings describes this as the “reimagination of bodies”. This does not presuppose that native existence was unchanging prior to colonialism. Jennings describes this loss in the present tense as a consequence that continues till the present. Thus, what is lost is the possibility of identity developing in engagement with new spaces. Indigenous peoples are beckoned towards a progressively narrowing identity and narrative (Jennings, 2010).

According to Jennings (2010), modern populations ever since have lived in a “dual trajectory of constantly shifting geographic spaces made more mutable by the dictates of capitalistic logic and racial identities that are free-floating and changeable, yet constantly stabilized through the reciprocity of racial being”. Without land as a root of identity, historical racial classifications continue to provide a rationale for collective intervention in the former homelands and traditional cultures of indigenous peoples (Jennings, 2010).

The Disappearance of the Gentile

Jennings (2010) also explores the writing of Jesuit missionary to South America José da Acosta Porres. Acosta thought of himself as representing the Old Testament people of God adhering to covenant and teaching true worship from false. Israel had received the revelation of the one true God. Acosta saw Iberian Catholicism as replacing Israel and assuming the role of denouncing all non-Christian religious practice as idolatrous. As such, Acosta is unable to remember both himself and the Spanish people as Gentiles that were once in the same position as the indigenous Americans. To remember oneself as a former Gentile ignorant of the gospel does not imply acceptance of idolatry and denial of demonic presence in indigenous religion. But remembering his own Gentile origins could have made Acosta open to points of contact between indigenous religion and Christianity. Supersessionism, therefore, blocked Acosta from seeing the possibility of new expressions of Christian life emerging in the Americas. Such expressions could have introduced the gospel while accepting compatible contributions from indigenous culture. According to Jennings,

What triggers this demonic imagination and conceals redemptive cultural analogies is Acosta’s vision of native intellectual and cultural inferiority. The symbolic Christian imaginary within which Acosta functioned believed Indians lacked intelligence because they lacked European languages and especially their signifiers for God. (Jennings, 2010, p. 97-8)

I end this section on Jennings’ ORS theory transitioning to its contextualization within academia and racial activism. Not only because Jennings is a black US-American theologian speaking against racism, but because of antecedent ideas he draws upon, I propose seeing ORS within the lineage of US-American civil rights theory and praxis.

References

January 13, 2025February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

Vertical, Horizontal, and Circular Reconciliation

Major Ideas of Al Tizon’s Whole and Reconciled and Application to Ecumenism

Tizon (2018) proposes that in our diverse, fragmented, and globalized world the ministry of reconciliation is central to a current concept and practice of mission (p. xvi). The church’s mission must be holistic in a way that goes beyond uniting word and deed, but that puts the world back together (p. xvi). As a work of missiology, Tizon defines the term as the investigation of the point of contact between faith and culture which informs those who promote the fruitfulness of this interaction (p. 1).

A globalized world needs to experience the love of God in the small actions of individual believers (p. 19). This world can be described as post-Christendom as the faith has lost coherence in societies significatively founded upon its influence. On the bright side, this reality makes the need for a mission of reconciliation a clear priority. Current post-colonial ideology poses a challenge to the church as it rightfully disassociates itself from shameful distortions of mission while seeking to restore the true biblical vision. The practice of collective repentance is proposed as a legitimate practice accompanied by practical restitution wherever possible. False and half gospels of bigotry, prosperity, apathy, and social liberation lead millions of sincere seekers astray from the essence of the biblical vision (p. 63). A kingdom vision can be summarized as manifest where God’s reign exists, resulting in reconciliation with God, with fellow humans, and with creation – vertical, horizontal and circular (p. 28-86).

The biblical vision of human being is integral, consisting of body and soul as inseparable, ideally in communion with God, others, and creation (p. 98). The trinity is the foundation for the church’s mission as an expression of God’s nature, in wholeness, community, diversity, and reconciliation. As the church has spread across the globe this reconciling mission places it in a prime position to spread this intergroup healing wherever conflict exists. This mission is only possible through the power of the Holy Spirit, sustaining joy in suffering and bringing holistic transformation. But such spirituality does not ignore the historic and present injustices that exist between human individuals and groups. Although the non-holistic concept of mission is largely a Western one, it has been largely exported to the church of the Global South, and therefore must be addressed across the globe. A complete vision of mission has developed through emphases such as societal transformation, signs and wonders, ecumenism, and social justice. This vision can be seen ultimately in Revelation 7 in what can be termed the Great Reconciliation (p. 112-168).

Holistic mission cannot be reduced to a reconciliation of streams in Christianity that argue for the supremacy of evangelism versus social concern, beyond a balance between word and deed (p. 173). Again, the vision of integral mission must be vertical, horizontal, and circular – moving from a concept of Great Commission to Whole Commission. In conclusion, in a world of fragmented groups that shock against each other in a sea that all share, the church cannot ignore the mission of reconciliation. This must be done on the individual, intimate level of human relationships, not on big picture notions of ideological unity. This will require humility, vulnerability, confession, forgiveness, lament, and continuous steps towards justice. And all these efforts must be done in the fellowship of Christ’s body, not realized bey separate groups self-satisfied with their good works independent of their global brethren (p. 176-205).

Questions After Reading

During the reading, I wondered about how the author’s experience has been different than my own as a person of color. As an immigrant to the U.S. from the Philippines, Tizon has experienced alienation and marginalization that a while male like me has not. Reading this book caused me to question how much I am aware of my privilege in US-American society, even as a missionary overseas for most of my life. Tizon does not shy from critical analysis of many aspects of Western Christianity, particularly US-American Evangelicalism. Tizon explores the extension of Western Evangelical doctrinal and practical phenomenon to missions. As a product of US-American missions I was stung by some of Tizon’s denunciations and wondered if he ran the risk of dishonoring a valuable legacy.

I wondered if certain aspects of Western Christianity that can be seen in the Global South – such as megachurches, individualism, and disembodied rationality – should be seen as the product of collaboration and synergy. Someone like Tizon and myself who have been steeped in the experience of US-American Christian institutions may erroneously diminish the agency of Global South Christianity as it has developed. Care should be taken against this type of reductive analysis even when the church of the Global South shares similarities to Western Christianity in several key areas.

Implications for My Research on Iberian Postcolonial Ecumenism

I have been engaged in the Iberian diaspora world of Spanish and Portuguese speaking post-colonial nations from childhood through my career as a missionary. My research includes addressing questions of race and identity among descendants of both the colonizers and colonized in the Spanish and Portuguese speaking world. This is a vast demographic, but they are linked in ways that are particularly important for theories of race that still divide the world and the body of Christ. As I travel between Ibera and Latin America, I seek to bring awareness to the distortion in church history that resulted from the treaty of Tordesillas that gave the Spanish and Portuguese empires a colonizing mission directly from the Vatican. Tizon’s work is relevant to the question of the identity of the people of God as it was conceived by the Spanish and Portuguese colonizers. These sailors, traders, and missionaries received an identification that abolished the notion of Jew and Gentile described by Paul in Ephesians 2:12-17 as the new man. Instead of the body of Messiah being seen as the reconciliation of two formerly exclusive and adverse groups, the first division in the history of the church occurred.

As I advocate at ecumenical gatherings of Catholics, Orthodox, Protestant, Messianic Jewish, and Pentecostal believers in Christ, the motif of mission as reconciliation is central. Tizon’s vision goes to the heart of what the ecumenical projects I serve in Europe and the Americas seek to address. However, I feel a sense of caution when critiquing the foundation of modern missions which I inherited. I consider myself to be someone standing on the shoulders of missionary giants who went before me. I am aware of the liability that the color of my skin and eyes, my language and my sex, all of these represent those of the Western Christian colonizer in all its ambiguity. Tizon’s work encourages me to seek constant awareness of the privilege I enjoy – even as to say these seems today like a politically correct troupe of self-abasement. However, Tizon’s contribution, in comparison to much postcolonial writing, is highly practical and specific. Therefore, this work provides me with not mere guilt and speculation of the sickness and wounds that are present in the global church today. Tizon provides a roadmap towards healing that Christians from many streams of the faith can follow.

References

Tizon, Al (2018). Whole and Reconciled: Gospel, Church, and Mission in a Fractured World. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

January 10, 2025February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

Jewish Legacy and Race Relations in Portuguese Catholicism

The declaration Nostra Etate of the Second Vatican Council recognizes that many of the church fathers espoused supersessionist theology until it became the standard formulation of Catholicism’s relationship with Judaism in the Middle Ages. This theological position is described as such:

the promises and commitments of God would no longer apply to Israel because it had not recognized Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God but had been transferred to the Church of Jesus Christ which was now the true ‘new Israel’, the new chosen people of God (Cunningham, 2017, p. 12-13).

Nostra Etate presented the relationship between the Catholic church and the Jewish people in a new theological framework. Previously there were great reservations between the Catholic church and Judaism due to the history of Catholic antisemitism, forced conversion, pogroms and the holocaust that occurred in Christian Europe (Cunningham, 2017, p. 3). But the holocaust prompted the Catholic church to reevaluate their relationship to the Jewish people. Since Vatican II these two mutually skeptical communities made progress towards friendship and partnership. In 1974, pope John Paul VI established the Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews entrusted with the task of “accompanying and fostering religious dialogue with Judaism”. This endeavor is theologically connected with the Council for Promoting Christian Unity considering the perception that this is the “first and most far-reaching breach among the chosen people” (Cunningham, 2017, p. 3).

Crucially, Nostra Etate declares the intention of the Catholic church to “become acquainted with Judaism as it defines itself, giving expression to the high esteem in which Christianity holds Judaism and stressing the great significance for the Catholic Church of dialogue with the Jews” (Cunningham, 2017, p. 4). The Catholic-Jewish dialogue that has developed has led to an awareness that:

Christians and Jews are irrevocably inter-dependent, and that the dialogue between the two is not a matter of choice but of duty as far as theology is concerned. Jews and Christians can enrich one another in mutual friendship. Without her Jewish roots the Church would be in danger of losing its soteriological anchoring in salvation history and would slide into an ultimately unhistorical Gnosis. Pope Francis states that “while it is true that certain Christian beliefs are unacceptable to Judaism, and that the Church cannot refrain from proclaiming Jesus as Lord and Messiah, there exists as well a rich complementarity which allows us to read the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures together and to help one another to mine the riches of God’s word. We can also share many ethical convictions and a common concern for justice and the development of peoples. (Cunningham, 2017, p. 8).

In Majority Catholic Portugal where I live, Catholic supersessionism represents not only a theological problem for the church but is linked to postcolonial racism. Willie Jennings posits that the church replaced a rejected Israel leading to a Western ethnocentrism which coopted the gospel for colonialist ends (Jennings, 2010, p. 10). During the 15th century, blood purity laws related to Jewish “New Christians” eradicated the notion of “Gentiles” in Iberian Catholicism. During the subsequent colonial period, Western Christianity simply understood itself as the “people of God” (Supersessionism, Nations, and Race: Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology 2021 Annual Meeting – YouTube, n.d.). This attitude was an essential aspect of the justification for Western colonialism and the construction of racial theory with its continuous negative effects on Portuguese society.

Analysis of Supersessionism in Portugal through Postcolonial Theory, and this Theories Limitations

One of the earliest theories of decolonization and postcolonial theory emerged from French Algerian Frantz Fanon. Fanon described the “racialized subjectivity and the structural conditions that sustain racial domination” (Kohn & Reddy, 2024). According to Fanon, “nothing but a clear break would solve the psychological as well as social, political, and economic problems brought by the colonizer to the colonized” (Rynkiewich, 2011, p. 135). Violent uprising by the colonized against the colonizer was posited as the only solution. The rationale being that it was the colonizer who had created the native’s prohibitive world (Rynkiewich, 2011, p. 135). And Fanon placed the church in a position as fully complicit in the colonial relationship.

Following Fanon, several other theories were developed addressing the racial tensions that existed after decolonization. The Tunisian Jew Albert Memmi argued that the colonizer and colonized have “created each other, and thus the colonizer is as much caught in trap as the colonized”. Therefore, the only way to resolve the situation is for the colonizer to join forces with the colonized in the fight for independence (Rynkiewich, 2011, p. 136-7). Memmi argued that the entrapped colonizer could only be freed through a process he described as repentance (p. 137). Prospero and Caliban argued that over generations colonialism had produced two groups of people with character traits that made independence and development impossible. This was because both had been educated into a state of interdependence but simultaneously incapable of working together” (p. 137). Andre Gunter Frank proposed that the original condition of the indigenous peoples before colonialism was preferable, i.e. more “developed”. This countered the idea that the situation after colonialism was an underdeveloped native population, unless the term referred to a state caused by colonialism itself (p. 138). Wallerstein theorized that colonialism resulted in a paradigm of economic development consisting of “commodification of land, labor, and resources”, a formulation of value completely incompatible with premodern traditional cultures (p. 138).

Majority Roman Catholic Portuguese society must come to grips with the residual effects of colonialism that still affect race relations there today. Although one of the smaller Western European countries, Portugal has an oversized colonial legacy. It is still the focus of immigration from former colonies in Africa, Asia, and South America. The notion that the Western colonizer rightly educated and civilized the inferior indigenous peoples is something that Portuguese Christians need to face. Acknowledging and denouncing this historical attitude and action would do much good for race relations by acknowledging and denouncing. The Catholic Church should recognize that missionaries in their former colonies were complicit in imperial interests which were subsequently discarded as soon as hegemony was established over indigenous peoples (p. 142).

However, extreme ideologies such as settler colonialism promoted by Patrick Wolf (2006) are not a way forward for majority Catholic Portugal. Wolf argued that invasion is a structure, not an event. Therefore, all citizens of nations resulting from colonial endeavors actively participate in exploitation. The only apparent alternative is revolution and national reset, as Wolf elaborates:

As practiced by Europeans, both genocide and settler colonialism have typically employed the organizing grammar of race. European xenophobic traditions such as anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or Negrophobia are considerably older than race, which, as many have shown, became discursively consolidated fairly late in the eighteenth century. But the mere fact that race is a social construct does not of itself tell us very much. As I have argued, different racial regimes encode and reproduce the unequal relationships into which Europeans coerced the populations concerned. (Wolfe, 2006)

Postcolonial theory rightly denounces historical offenses committed with the Catholic church’s involvement that contributed to current racial tensions in Portuguese society. However, the idea that only the inheritors of oppression and systemic racism have an objective and helpful voice is not a promising approach. To remedy problems related to race in Portugal such as immigration and class struggles all inheritors of the postcolonial situation must speak and be heard. It should be obvious that extra attention should be given to hearing the colonized as the greater victim in a decolonized society.

References

Cunningham, P. A. (2017). The Sources behind “The Gifts and the Calling of God Are Irrevocable” (Rom 11:29): A Reflection on Theological Questions Pertaining to Catholic-Jewish Relations on the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Nostra Aetate (No. 4). Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations, 12(1), 1–39.

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

Kohn, M., & Reddy, K. (2024). Colonialism. In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.

Rynkiewich, M. A. (2011). Soul, Self, and Society: A Postmodern Anthropology for Mission in a Postcolonial World. Cascade Books.

Supersessionism, Nations, and Race: Society for Post-Supersessionist Theology 2021 Annual Meeting—YouTube. (n.d.). Retrieved April 22, 2024, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDlFvKAGGTo&t=2601s

Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387–409. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623520601056240

December 27, 2024February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

Different Legacies of Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Colonial Missions

Catholic Counter-Reformation Missions

During the 15-16th Catholic Spain and Portugal became the richest kingdoms in Europe (Cooper, 2016, p. 86). They were given papal authorization to appoint priests and bishops in the Americas, Africa, and the Asian colonies. The Italian church also greatly enriched from treasures coming from Spain and Portugal, even as it reeled from the effects of the Reformation. But through all the changes during and after colonialism, Catholicism still thrives and expands across world till the present (p. 86).

The Treaty of Tordesillas pope divided all newly discovered land between Spain and Portugal, separating the West and East respectively (p. 94). The main Christian influence in Latin America to this day is Spanish and Portuguese Catholicism. In the Caribbean, exploitative colonization led some Spanish monks to criticize settlers treatment of native peoples. But many priests benefitted from slavery, which only ended with the coming of English and Dutch colonies. The coming of Protestantism fragmented the Islands along national and ecclesiastical lines. In Cuba, the enduring presence of African cults, the failure of Catholicism to connect with locals, and the church’s association with Spain lead to a very low percentage of Christians in Cuba today (p. 94-96).

The Catholics dominated Central America during colonialism, building banks, convents, churches, schools, and towns. The Catholic church became the largest landowner through tithes and taxes, but this changed after individual nations gained independence and the separation of church and state (p. 98). Protestant missions established a church that favored liberalism versus Catholics conservatism. But in the 20th century the Catholic Church made peace with liberalism and was able to minimize Protestant influence (p. 100).

In South America, the Spaniard Pizarro conquered the Aztec and Inca Empires. Religious orders flooded the continent and the Catholic Church amassed huge wealth at the same time it was manipulated by totalitarian regimes. However, some prophetic voices of critique emerged from within the church having “marginal success” at curbing exploitation (p. 101); Protestantism came in the 19th century, gaining converts primarily among the middle class. Pentecostals followed with greatest response from the poor, and together with liberation theology these movements have been most influential in Latin American Christianity. The colonial connotations among Pentecostals are limited because in countries like Brazil the emergence of independent native leadership was almost immediate (p. 101-102).

Protestants Enter the Scene

In Oceania British colonists constructed a modern world in Australia and New Zealand in which Christianity was initially foundational (p. 114). Among the natives of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia are some of the highest percentages of Christians in the world. This is remarkable since these island regions comprise one of the least evangelized parts of the world. Protestants were the first to send missions to Oceania n the 18th century followed by Catholics in the 19th century. Amidst a backdrop of historical isolation and warfare among diverse native peoples, Oceania is now united by Christianity, albeit influenced by rivalries of Protestant denominations (p. 114-115).

The end of slavery deprived Europeans of forced labor outside Africa, but within the continent colonial powers imposed forced labor upon indigenous peoples during the “Scramble for Africa” (p. 124). When the end of Western colonialism came, the church in Africa unexpectedly grew and spread once the Europeans left. Christianity reentered Africa in the 15th century with Islam already present. From the 17th to 20th centuries European (and later North American) Protestants came, with Portuguese missions in 16th century. But in the 20th century Africans dispossessed Europeans and established independent countries (p. 124-125).

Formerly Christian Northern African is the region of greatest Muslim dominance in Africa today, but this transition occurred over centuries (p. 132). Western missions of the 19th century were seen as bringing a foreign, Western religion. Missions, however, were a small factor in the larger colonial project in North Africa, and those that did succeed were largely abandoned during decolonization after World War II (p. 132).

Southern African countries today with Christian majority are those colonized by the English (p. 134). The Dutch Boers resented the English overlords when slavery abolished in the early 19th century. The Boers then embarked on the “Great Trek” out of British controlled areas seeing it as a form of biblical Exodus “leaving Egypt”. But those lands were inhabited by African tribes, and subsequent discovery of diamonds added to conflicts in the region. Afrikaners and British fought during the Boer Wars in late 19th and early 20th centuries, leading up to the establishment of an apartheid state with Dutch Reformed church approval. Western Africa is divided among Islam and Christianity because of Muslim conquest followed by Christian missions in the 15th century. The first Christian missions were the Catholic Portuguese along the coast, followed by the Spanish, Dutch and English (p. 135-136).

Russian Orthodox Expansion

In Central Asia expansion of Russian empire brought Orthodox faith from the years 1500 to 1900 followed by era of religious repression under the USSR (p. 143). Eastern Asia saw the “Christian century” in Japan with Catholic missions from 1549-1650. This, however, was followed by expulsion of missionaries as the church was accused of being involved in political subversion. During this time from 5 to 6 thousand Christians were massacred. In Southeastern Asia the Portuguese, Spanish and French brought Christianity in 16th century with the Dutch and Germans bringing Protestantism in the 19th century. The pope granted Portugal religious jurisdiction over the East and Spain in West with the treaty of Tordesillas. The legacy of colonialism and Christian missions in Western Asia includes the domination of the church by foreign rulers for centuries – Islamic, Western Christian, and Ottoman. Many Christians ended up converting to Islam because of religious oppression. Although Christianity in Asian continues to grow consistently, it still largely bears association with Western imperialism (p. 144-154).

References

Cooper, D. (2016). Introduction to World Christian History. IVP Academic.

May 22, 2024February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

The Science of Mission and the One New Humanity Vision

The roots of contemporary missiology are found in the era of higher criticism when all branches of theology were subject to scientific analysis. Scripture was studied according to the rigors of historical and archaeological verification. Similarly, Christian mission began to be studied according to the rigors of the social sciences. From that time till now – for better or for worse – missions studies have been approached scientifically. Evangelicals like myself follow a pietistic impulse that view the biblical narrative as a supernatural, all-encompassing, divinely revealed narrative. I accept the level of circularity that exists in my presupposition of faith – I believe the Bible because it affirms itself to be the word of God. This, however, does not preclude the profound evidence of my own experience walking with Jesus the Christ.

But studying mission according to principles that arose during the scientific revolution is not anathema to biblical faith. I believe the academic inquiry and scholarship are essential aspects of a humanity created in God’s image. The Oxford Handbook of Mission Studies is perhaps the most comprehensive source for current scholarship and theory related to missions.

In this article I will dialogue with chapters 3 and 4 of the handbook in relation to the biblical vision known as one new man or one new humanity based on Ephesians 2:

11 Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— 12 remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, 15 by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, 16 and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.

For the purpose of this article, one new humanity (ONH) refers to the belief that the rejection of the Jewish part of the ekklesia by the Gentile believers was the first division in the body of Christ, laying the foundation for subsequent fracturing. Jewish followers of Jesus have been present in the ekklesia for all of its history, but most often absorbed into the Gentile church and taught – even forced – to abandon all practices of Judaism as a prerequisite for faithfulness to Christ. Note that I use the term ekklesia to refer to what the Catholic Church has described as the community of those called to Christ ex circuncisione and ex gentibus (Nina Rowe, 2011).

Participants in ONH hold that the emergence of the Messianic Jewish movement in the 1960s and its subsequent development are foundational to the restoration of the unity of the ekklesia. The use of the term ekklesia is important because Messianic Jews increasingly refer to themselves as practicing a form of Judaism and not as Christians or members of its church. Therefore, the restoration of ekklesia refers to the initial vision of Ephesians 2 which did not last past the second century. As an ingrafted “wild olive shoot” the apostle Paul exhorted the Gentile believers to honor the unique calling and future destiny of the Jewish “olive root” (New International Version, 2011, Rom. 11:17).

Unfortunately, by the second century a distinctly Jewish part of the ekklesia disappeared due to their rejection by both the nascent Gentile church and Rabbinic Judaism. The parting of the ways describes the alienation of the Jewish Jesus-believing from their Gentile brethren (Enslin, 1961), the subsequent suffering of which was compounded by the rejection of the former by emergent Rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the temple. Participants in ONH believe that with emergence of Messianic Judaism in the mid 20th century the Gentile church has a legitimate interlocutor towards which repentance can be directed and reconciliation sought. What is less known is how participants in ONH view its implications for missions – how it may affect its conceptualization and application? How have participants in ONH applied this vision to mission and what have been the results?

Chapter 3 of the current version of the Oxford Handbook for Mission Studies was written by Paul Kollman (2022), titled Defining Mission Studies for the Third Millennium of Christianity. Kollman (2022) cites three probable trends in the future of missions studies: interest by a “growing diversity of scholars”, influence applied to “more areas of Christian life and scholarship”, and new insights coming from “innovative comparative approaches” (p. 46). The emerging field of anthropology of Christianity looks at “the various social changes that Christianity – often linked to mission – fosters in diverse situations” (Kollman, 2022, p. 47). How might the fulfillment of the ONH vision impact societies and cultures? Currently Christianity is expressed around the world with an impressive cultural diversity. The Bible has been translated into most of the world’s languages and worship is shaped according to local customs and creativity. However, just as the gospel was transferred from Jew to Gentile, it was then transferred from the Roman World to the New World. In the 20th century unprecedented church growth in the Global South (Africa, Asia, and South America) signified the transfer of primary Christian leadership to the Non-Western world. Unfortunately, however, the pattern or cultural hegemony has been present throughout church history, with the national/enthnic centrality of the gospel shifting from one supreme Christendom to another.

Kollman (2022) also describes how recent missions studies have interacted with social movement theory (p. 47). Some theorists have explored the benefits of integrating the study of complex or formal organizations and the study of collective action and social movements (Gerald F. Davis et al., 2005, xiv). It has been proposed that concepts developed in the domains of organizational theory and social movement theory are useful to each other (Gerald F. Davis et al., 2005, xiv). When looking at a phenomena such as ONH from a social science perspective, is it unique or just one of many similar religious movements? It can be argued that the history of the church is a succession of grassroots social movements that evolved into formal organizations. These religious institutions then followed the pattern of all religions – they were challenged and replaced or reformed by prophetic movements from the margins. My passion for ONH flows from my belief that the Ephesians 2 vision is truly unique in world religions and has yet to be fulfilled as Christ desired.

Kollman cites recent studies of the Didache that show how mission concerns existed in the first century (Kollman, 2022, p. 48) when a Jewish and Gentile community of believers still existed. The Didache was written by Jewish Jesus-believers to instruct their Gentile brethren in religious practice (Nessim, 2023, xiv). The Didache’s articulation of how the Torah was applicable to the Gentile believers gives a motif for considerate and effective Jewish-Gentile relations within the ekklesia before the parting of the ways.

A steadily more religiously pluralist world due to globalization has led missiologists to seek what insight might be gained from comparative dialogue with other missionary religions such as Buddhism and Islam (Kollman, 2022, p. 49-50). Comparative study is being made of the missionary practices of these religions, as well as analyzing the reasons that other religions such as Hinduism, Confuscianism, and Judaism have less impetus for self propagation beyond a particular people group (Kollman, 2022, p. 50). One question related to my research on ONH is how Messianic Jews see mission and evangelism. Messianic Judaism is rooted in a more ethnically centered religion, therefore their increased presence within the ekklesia could affect the missionary impetus. Many Christians struggle to reconcile the missionary vision they were taught in church in light of religious pluralism and secularism. It is hard for Christians to understand non-missionary religions, including the relatively inward-focused nature of rabbinic Judaism. What might Christians learn from dialogue with these other faith traditions? Nany anthropologists today are studying how “mission-generated social change produces new cultural forms” (Kollman, 2022, p. 51). The theme of reconciliation has been extremely influential in missions studies over the past 50 years. Perhaps it can be argued that mission-generated social change led to ONH as an example of a new cultural form.

Kollman (2022) describes the gravitation in missiology towards fields that are related but not centered on Christian mission as “engaging mission tangentially” (p. 51). In this, missiology is predicted to follow the trend of other academic fields. This means that missiologists increasingly make connections to other social sciences that would have been considered irrelevant. This freedom is expanded by the trend towards missions studies including scholarship from other disciplines or under the labels of “intercultural studies, contextual theology, and world Christianity (Kollman, 2022, p. 51).

There is an increased censuses that the missio Dei is the foundation of mission, while not disregarding the link of mission to human activity (Kollman, 2022, p. 51). Based on missio Dei, mission is open to unlimited possibilities while at the same time particular mission foci can exist (Kollman, 2022, p. 52). The understanding of mission as any human cooperation with divine action in the world grounds mission studies in “empirical realities” that can be analyzed within non-theological systems (Kollman, 2022, p. 52). Intergroup conflict studies is one example of an observed phenomena that relates directly to ONH.

Chapter 4 of the Oxford handbook was written by Dorottya Nagy (2022), titled Theory and Method in Mission Studies / Missiology. Nagy (2022) cites the fragmentation of missiology derived from the “multiplicity of terms referring to theory and method in missions studies” (p. 56). Nagy (2022) proposes that an “interdisciplinary awareness” of missions studies methodology may improve interdisciplinary dialogue and partnership (p. 56). By methodology, Nagy (2022) refers to “the logical reasoning and the theological/philosophical assumptions that underlie academic work” consciously or unarticulated (p. 57). Methods, distinctively, are the orienting research techniques and procedures that are drawn from methodology (Nagy, 2022, p. 57). There is a trend in research toward clustering comparative, historical, empirical, and hermeneutical methods across disciplines, causing the challenge of “interdisciplinary miscommunication and misunderstanding” (Nagy, 2022, p. 57). Nagy (2022) describes theory as pointing to “contemplation, observation, and consideration, aiming at an understanding of reality” (p. 57). In considering missions studies theory then, we face the principle of ontological and epistemological plurality within the academic world (p. 58). Thus the discussion of method and theory in missions studies is another validation of using interdisciplinary methods and recognizing epistemological plurality in my study of ONH.

Nagy (2022) indicates that missions studies are conditioned by institutionalization and contingency (p. 58). Here contingency refers to the influence of particular innovators and trends in the soft and hard sciences. Missiology combines knowledge production education that is both academic and theological-missiological (Nagy, 2022, p. 59). Consequently, missions studies are being situated in a “newer, larger, fashionable field of study”, with the strategic move of re-articulating missiology as “intercultural theology or world Christianity” (Nagy, 2022, p. 59). Nagy (2022) observes that these strategic moves require “methodological awareness and accountability”, especially regarding the epistemological ambivalence inherent in interculturality (p. 59). Thus although the breadth of social sciences available to missions studies steadily grows, interculturality requires sensitivity to epistemological contradictions. The “conflictive plurality within identities” (Nagy, 2022, p. 59) will be present in my engagement with with Messianic Judaism and Jew-Gentile relations in the ekklesia.

With interculturality as an “epistemological locus”, Nagy (2022) sees a possible working definition of missiology as “the study of the relational, communicative (co)existence between God, humans, fellow human beings and the whole creation across space and time” (p. 60). Therefore, at its core missions studies deals with “an understanding of God and relationality with God” (Nagy, 2022, p. 60). For example, missions studies engages theories about salvation in other religions and how this affects missionaries’ communication of the gospel. ONH can be seen as motif of mission as intergroup reconciliation, therefore how this vision is interpreted by diverse cultures is foundational to my research. One area of my inquiry is how God’s particular relationship to Israel demonstrates his desire and capacity to love all people groups in their unique cultural identities. In this sense the relationship of God to human groups – not just individuals – is a key aspect of ONH.

Nagy (2022) proposes that love is relevant to method and theory not as an uncontaminated emotion but as an “ontological drive of separated beings towards union (p. 60). Missions studies are concerned with the nature and action of God and the implications for how humans should think and live (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). Thus missiology is normative, always expressed in a “situational, actual, and empirical-intercultural manner” (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). The normativity of missions studies has to be placed “against the constellation of other modes of normativity, and is thus “always partial and becoming in relationality” (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). Missiological normativity is closer to discernment, rooted in spirituality, which makes it an “open-ended discipline, one which does not hide the researcher behind the research” (p. 62). This spiritual open-ended discipline does not presume that the researcher has a neutral position but exposes the “entanglement, power issues, and issues of representation” (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). However, this spiritual open-ended discipline also demonstrates the legitimate desire to love God and his world (Nagy, 2022, p. 62). This normative, spiritual, open-ended conception of missions studies means as a researcher I do not need to detach myself as a religious devotee.

Nagy (2022) refers to interculturality as “the ways through which the various agents act, interact or relate in co-creation (p. 62). Context and culture are still foundational concepts for developing missiological theory and method, but they can be problematic (Nagy 2022, p. 63). The “wide interdisciplinary interest in the spatiality of societal and cultural phenomena” has strongly influenced missiology (Nagy, 2022, p. 63). Nagy (2022) advocates for missiologists’ engagement and dialogue with scholars who come from different epistemological frameworks (p. 64). However, Nagy warns against understanding locality primarily in terms of “owned/claimed territory” as this would interpret culture primarily through “tribal, ethnic, and national lenses” instead of understanding locality in its “spatial relationality/interconnectednness” (p. 64). In my research of ONH, I must make sure not to interpret participants’ concept of locality in ways they never would. Nagy cites Steve Bevan’s work on the dangers of Western attempts to attribute meaning to cultural identity “which is not the lived experience of the culturally identified people” (p. 64). In spite of the influence of Bevan’s research, “Christian identities, informed by academic theology, keep producing and reproducing cultural (i.e., national, ethnic, or tribal) Christianities” (Nagy, 2022, p. 65). Nagy (2022) suggests that theories of culture that consider interculturality and space may be helpful in “overcoming the homogenous and homogenizing principles” that have caused “reproductions of nationalistic forms of Christianity”, such as in Europe (p. 65). Participants of ONH have contended that a key impetus for supersessionist theology arose during the Era of Exploration when the people of God replaced the notion of Gentile (Jennings, 2010).

Lastly, the spiritual turn in missions studies described by Nagy is key to ONH because from its inception it has been a prayer movement with Charismatic practice uniting Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Messianic Jewish, and Pentecostal church leaders (Hocken, 2007). Nagy (2022) describes the spiritual turn in mission studies as overlapping with increased attention given to Christian spirituality in relationship with other spiritualities, and the researcher’s spirituality (p. 66). Thus,

mission does not aim primarily at the propagation or transmission of intellectual convictions, doctrines, moral commands, but at the transmission of the life of communion that exists in God…The Holy Spirit is incompatible with individualism, its primary work being the transformation of all reality to a relational status (Nagy, 2022 p. 67).

This anti-individualist conception is highly relevant to ONH’s contention that biblical mission does not consist primarily of reconciliation between human persons and God. Instead, biblical mission is fundamentally about reconciliation between human groups in fulfillment of God’s expressed desire and for his ultimate glory.

References

Enslin, M. S. (1961). The Parting of the Ways. The Jewish Quarterly Review, 51(3), 177–197. https://doi.org/10.2307/1453437

Gerald F. Davis, Doug McAdam, W. Richard Scott, & Mayer N. Zald. (2005). Social Movements and Organization Theory. Cambridge University Press; eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=nlebk&AN=132352&authtype=sso&custid=s6133893&site=ehost-live&custid=s6133893

Hocken, P. (2007). TOWARD JERUSALEM COUNCIL II. Journal of Pentecostal Theology, 16(1), 3–17. Academic Search Premier.

Jennings, W. J. (2010). The Christian imagination: Theology and the origins of race. Yale University Press; Biola Library ebooks. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat08936a&AN=bio.ocn808346478&site=eds-live&custid=s6133893

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

Nessim, D. (2023). Torah for Gentiles? [Electronic resource]: What the Jewish Authors of the Didache Had to Say. Lutterworth Press, The; Biola Library ebooks. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=cat08936a&AN=bio.on1391441015&site=eds-live&custid=s6133893

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

New International Version. (2011). BibleGateway.com. http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-International-Version-NIV-Bible/#booklist

Nina Rowe. (2011). The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century. Cambridge University Press; eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=sso&db=e000xna&AN=435252&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=s6133893

April 9, 2024February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

God’s Desire: a Beauty of Diversity Rooted in Distinction

The knowledge that biblical prophecy indicates an intensification of persecution before the end can have varying effects on the church’s attitude towards its participation in the mission of God. Dispensationalism which emerged in Britain with John Nelson Darby (Sweetnam, 2009, p. 569) in the late 19th century has been expressed in diverse ways. This theology is, however, generally characterized by onlookers as emphasizing soteriological matters over transformation of society. In contrast, the American Social Gospel movement includes those who believe that the church is currently living in the millennial reign promised in Revelation 20 (Edwards, 2015, p. 203). I appreciate missiologist Arthur Glasser’s (2003) balanced approach:

Revelation was written for Christians in every age to assure them that God is working both in their day and particularly when the tempo of persecution intensifies just before the end. God will not turn back from his goal of consummating his purpose in his time and in his way (p. 360)

The New Testament’s exhortation regarding the essential nature of the unity of the body of Christ to the mission of God must be of prime consideration for the church. Glasser (2003) describes this as “Christ’s abiding concern”, for only by avoiding division can the church avoid the failure exemplified by Israel in its call to illuminate the world lost in darkness (p. 362). I would caution that Gentile Christians should be careful when describing the errors and guilt of the Jewish people, since this has historically been the source of much antisemitism.

In Revelation 14 a message of hope is given to the faithful in a moment when the kingdom of darkness seems to realize complete victory over the earth. However, the saints are encouraged that in spite of this the Lamb is still on the throne and “the consummation of history is seen as firmly in his hands” (Glasser, 2003, p. 365). This should serve as a warning to all forms of Christian triumphalism. This may take the form of a Fundamentalist celebration that the spoils of victory await in another time and world. Or it may manifest in a “Liberal” belief that the church has the capacity to bring the kingdom and needs to get on with it as soon as possible, seeing a recognition of God’s sovereignty as a hindering notion.

The amillenial view holds that the church is already living in the period of the reign of Christ on earth, a spiritual reign that will last until the return of Christ when the New Heaven and Earth are established. This view perhaps offers less hope than what the Bible expresses. According to Glasser (2003) the amillennial flaw is not awakening hope in the glorious reign of Christ on earth:

Although it claims that the earth and the nations will enjoy their jubilee, it provides no assurance that this will ever take place. Imagine the violence of the twentieth century having been part of the millennium (p. 368).

The desire of God for worshippers from every people group is something that I sense a deep need to understand more profoundly. John Piper (2020) describes cultural diversity among God’s worshipers in the eschaton as “greater than the beauty that would come to him if the chorus of the redeemed were culturally uniform or limited” (p. 264). Piper (2020) believes there is something about our call to cross-cultural mission that humbles us and helps us experience God’s grace (p. 265). I believe this is rooted in the promise of Ephesians 2 regarding the one new humanity in Christ, formed from Jew and Gentile, two groups formerly separated by mutual enmity. One may contest that it was God that inspired the aversion of Jews towards Gentiles in the Mosaic Law and covenants of the Old Testament. On the other hand, the Jewish understanding of separation (even superiority?) over other nations can be attributed to a Jewish misinterpretation. However, the truth seems to lie in the middle, in that God separated a people unto Himself and called them to be a dynamic lesson on the world stage regarding human reconciliation. What reconciliation would be needed, or how deep would it be, if it only consisted of superficial religious or philosophical matters? Instead, God created a motif of reconciliation between groups that could never imagine a deep communion of equality and mutual embrace.

God desired a beauty of diversity rooted in distinction: a cultural diversity that would not be melted into a uniform whole, but would maintain the distinction of people groups. The story of Israel reveals the value God places on a people with a proper name, whose identity will last forever. Indeed, our Savior Jesus is and always will be both a universal Messiah for all peoples, and a Jewish Messiah for Israel.

References

Edwards, W. J. D. (2015). The social gospel as a grassroots movement. Church History, 84(1), 203–206. Atla Religion Database with AtlaSerials. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0009640715000050

Glasser, et al. (2003). Announcing the Kingdom. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Piper, John (2020). Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions. Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Sweetnam, M. S., & Gribben, C. (2009). J.N. Darby and the Irish origins of dispensationalism. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 52(3), 569–577. Atla Religion Database with AtlaSerials.

January 2, 2024February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

Uniting the Gentile Church as They Face the Elder Brother

Introduction

In this article, I explore the innovation of the Towards Jerusalem Council II – its proponents and accomplishments. I also look at factors that led to change as well as barriers that threatened to impede the work of TJCII. During this process, I was able to integrate some principles of diffusion and innovation research. My hope is that the research of TJCII may yield lessons from what worked in the past. And I desire to discover key challenges related to diffusion where innovation research may be helpful.

Who Was the Change Agent?

The initial visionary of the TJCII movement was Marty Waldman, rabbi of Baruch HaShem Messianic congregation in Dallas, Texas. Waldman’s parents were holocaust survivors who immigrated to the U.S. after the war (Psalm133, 2017). In the 1960s Waldman had a radical and unexpected conversion during the Jesus Movement. He had been taught all his life that the New Testament was a source of antisemitism and never had any interest in reading it. However, one day he decided to investigate the New Testament and found that it was an entirely Jewish book. Waldman concluded that the only controversial aspect of the New Testament for the Jewish people was whether Jesus/Yeshua was in fact the long-awaited Messiah. The more he read he became convinced by the Holy Spirit that Yeshua was in fact the Jewish Messiah. Understandably this event was a horrible shock to Waldman’s parents who felt their son had chosen the path of ultimate betrayal to his family and the Jewish people. But Waldman did not waver in his decision and ended up enrolling in an Evangelical Bible college. Upon graduation he began his ministry as part of the nascent Messianic Jewish movement of which his story is representative (Psalm133, 2017).

What Was the Change?

Waldman would go on to pioneer Baruch HaShem Messianic Synagogue and rise to a place of leadership in the Messianic Movement (Baruch HaShem Messianic Synagogue, n.d.). In 1995, he was preparing a teaching he would give at that year’s Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations annual conference (TJCII, 2010). His text was Acts 15 which describes the Jerusalem council that dealt with the issue of Gentile inclusion in the Body of Messiah. Waldman felt the Lord speaking to him regarding His desire for “the full coming together of Jewish and Gentile believers” through a second council of the ekklesia (TJCII, 2010). At the first Jerusalem council the Jewish believers extended a generous welcome to the Gentile converts imposing the minimum requirements, “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you” (New International Version, 2011, Ac. 15:28). In Waldman’s vision,

The second Council will be a gathering of both Jews and Gentiles, fully accepting one another within the one Body of Jesus the Messiah (Yeshua haMa-shiach). In such a gathering, the Gentile leaders would recognize the Jewish believers in Jesus, personally and corporately, as an integral part of the church while remaining as contiguous members of the Jewish Community and indeed as those representing the elder brother who had been given the first place (Rom. 1:16). Since at least the fourth century C. E., the Christian Church had not allowed the expression of a Jewish identity within the body, excluding any expression of Jewish identity and prohibiting all forms of Jewish practice by Jewish believers in Jesus, the Son of God (TJCII, 2010).

This reconciliation would not be simply Gentile and Jewish believers accepting each other, but an acknowledgement and honoring by the Gentiles of the unique place of the Jews. This represents a complete reversal of the contempt and pride with which the younger brother had treaded the elder brother, not heeding Paul’s warning that the branches not boast over the root (Rom. 11:18). According to TJCII literature, “Such a restoration of the Jewish believers to their rightful place would enable them to restore the God-given calling of the Jewish people to be a blessing to the nations and would encourage the Messianic Jewish community to preserve the sign of the Abrahamic Covenant and to observe the traditions of their fathers” (TJCII, 2010).

TJCII affirms the existence of many initiatives of Christian repentance for all expressions of antisemitism which provoked persecution, pogroms, and eventually the holocaust (TJCII, 2010). TJCII also recognizes calls for Christian repentance from the distortion of Scripture resulting from not seeking the original meaning in Hebraic context. The matter that has been ignored by other initiatives, however, is the rejection of the Jewish believers in Yeshua by the Gentile church (TJCII, 2010). It is the healing of this ancient wound that TJCII feels called of God to work towards.

New as well was the vision of TJCII regarding the implications of the restoration of the one new humanity vision of Ephesians 2:14-18. Its participants proposed that this movement may be “tapping into the mystery of the ages” described in Ephesians 3 (TJCII, 2010). As Gentile Christians come to understand themselves as sharers with the believing Jewish remnant, a great mystery was being revealed (New International Version, 2011, Eph. 3:6). This mystery is “the manifold wisdom of God” which is to be “made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (New International Version, 2011, Eph. 3:10) according to the eternal purpose of God fulfilled in Christ.

Proponents of the TJCII vision also believed its fulfillment could lead to a major advance in evangelism. After all, it was after the declaration of the original Jerusalem council that God “opened wide the floodgates of Gentile evangelism for Paul and his companions” (TJCII, 2010). The harvest among the Gentiles came after the message that they did not have to convert to Judaism to enter the Body of Messiah. TJII proponents hoped that God would pour out a new anointing for harvest among the Jews as the true message of the gospel was restored and communicated to them. They felt that the Jewish acceptance of Messiah was so exciting because of Paul’s question, “If their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” (New International Version, 2011, Rom. 11:15). The reconciliation of Jewish and Gentile believers in Christ would be a realization of Jesus’ prayer: “that all of them may be one (…) so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (New International Version, 2011, Jn. 17:21). Thus, the hope of TJCII was that Jewish-Christian reconciliation would not only release a great move of evangelism but also of “restoration of justice among the divided peoples of the world” (TJCII, 2010).

Diffusion research identifies different attributes of innovation, one of which is relative advantage, which can be measured in terms of economics, social prestige, convenience, and satisfaction (Rogers, 2003). According to diffusion theory, the most pertinent attribute to convince a constituency should be determined. TJCII is an ecumenical initiative, and it is challenging to convince people that there is an advantage in participating in inter-confessional dialogue, worship, and service.

Most Christians find it challenging enough to be faithfully practicing members of their own churches.

Observability is another attribute of innovation: the level to which the target constituency can observe its positive characteristics (Rogers, 2003). In our post-covid urban existence, the observability of innovation in human lives is invaluable due to our isolation. The fruits of reconciliation work must be observable. In a secular society that relegates religious experience to the private sphere, the compelling fruits of religious practice are scarce and therefore even more valuable.

The research of diffusion networks is particularly relevant for promoting inter-confessional Christian engagement (Rogers, 2003). It is crucial to discern the factors that result in links within ecumenical networks. What factors cause church leadership and laity to cross denominational boundaries to build relationships with Christians of other traditions? The vision of TJCII is highly innovative and ambitious, and it originated in a US-American culture with a high pro-innovation bias (Rogers, 2003). A vision that pretends to bring reconciliation to peoples across the globe must be wary of the tendency of innovators to think other cultures will perceive innovation the same way they do. Essential to overcoming the pro-innovation bias is “Taking into account the people’s perceptions of an innovation, rather than the technologists’” (Rogers, 2003). An innovation that represents itself as driving towards increased productivity and expansion may clash with the value of preserving tradition and lifestyle.

When the gospel was first introduced into the world of Greek learning and culture, Christians “adopted the terms of their opponents and detractors” (Sanneh, 2009). “Old ways of thought and life” were brought into the church by influential converts such as Justin Martyr and Augustine of Hippo (Sanneh, 2009). The triumph of Christianity in the West is evidence of the church’s ability to appropriate “the requisite cultural materials to express the gospel” (Sanneh, 2009). However, the West would ultimately claim exclusive possession of the gospel and identify itself as the exclusive ekklesia. To correct this, TJCII’s vision aligns with the Pauline pluralism described by Sanneh (2009) in which God has no favorites. In line with Sanneh’s (2009) vision as well, TJCII declares that all cultures possess the “breath of God’s favor”, and therefore none should feel inferior or illegitimate.

Who Were the Opinion Leaders?

One of the first Gentile leaders to embrace TJCII was my father John Dawson, who founded the International Reconciliation Coalition (IRC) in 1990. Dawson wrote two books on reconciliation (Dawson, 1989; Dawson, 1994), identifying fourteen foundational categories of human conflict, among them generation, gender, class, ethnicity, and nationality. But it soon became evident to TJCII participants that the divisions in the church must be addressed before any other areas of human conflict (TJCII, 2010). In 1995, Dawson was approached by Messianic Jewish leader Dr. Dan Juster who challenged him to “form a network of Gentile Christian leaders who would respond to the emergence of the Messianic congregations” (TJCII, 2010). Juster (2010) explained that after many years a historic reconciliation had taken place among the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC) and the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA). This meant that a credible representative Messianic Jewish leadership could now engage with global prayer leaders involved in reconciliation. One key insight shared by Juster and Dawson was the connection between the Jewish-Gentile reconciliation initiatives and many parallel initiatives dealing with wounds of indigenous peoples from Christian colonial civilizations and institutions (TJCII, 2010).

Dawson and Juster began promoting this vision of TJCII and were generally well received. Soon they understood the need to involve not only free church movements but the historic churches, seeing that healing the Jew-Gentile wound through Christ was fundamental to all parts of His body. And this was possible for the first time since the first century A.D. because a community like that of the Nazarenes was now recognizable. Soon after when Juster met Marty Waldman and presented the vision, the movement found its catalyst. Waldman’s personal story, present position, and prophetic vision gave authenticity to this emergent reconciliation initiative (TJCII, 2010).

Another key opinion leader who joined TJCII was Catholic theologian Peter Hocken, who contacted Juster a few months after his encounter with Dawson (TJCII, 2010). Hocken presented Juster with his book The Glory and the Shame (2021), that expressed that the divisions that plagued church history could only be healed when the foundational issue of the rejection of the Messianic Jewish communities in the first centuries A.D. Initially Waldman and those who first embraced the vision believed it would simply be about recruiting participants from the Evangelical-Pentecostal world to meet with Messianic Jews in Jerusalem (Hocken, 2007). It was Hocken (2007) who, early on, pointed out that TJCII could not convene a council but could call for governing church representatives to do so. He believed delegates from the historical churches would not join an initiative that thought it could call a Council itself. It was Hocken who suggested using the word Toward Jerusalem Council II, indicating the primary importance of the ancient historic churches directly connected to the councils that had repudiated the Jewish believers of the ekklesia (Hocken 2008). Soon Anglican Canon Brian Cox joined TJCII and the vision became more ambitious – to seek leaders of all denominations and churches. This meant TJCII would have to maintain its convictions while working for unity amidst Evangelical-Catholic and Evangelical-Ecumenical controversies. This inevitably meant that TJCII was a project for a lifetime not a single event to happen anytime soon. It was clearly necessary to have a representative from the Orthodox church, which it found in Father Vasile Mihoc from Sibiu, Romania in 2003 (Hocken, 2008). Father Hocken passed away in 2018, but he testified that in the decades he served TJCII the presence of the Jewish believers had always changed the nature of meetings between Christians of different traditions (Hocken 2008).

According to Hocken (2008), the greatest challenge for the Catholic and Orthodox churches was confessing the sins of the past. This attitude has correlations in the concept of relative advantage in innovation research – the degree to which the new idea is perceived as superior to the idea that preceded it (Rogers, 2008). One way some systems – including religious ones – deals with change is to adopt preventative innovations (Rogers, 2008). For example, a Catholic or Mainline Protestant TJCII advocate could promote the vision as something to be adopted to avoid the probability of an unwanted future event (Rogers 2008). For ancient the ancient churches this unwanted event could the loss of membership among younger generations, or losing its voice in society. Reconciliation initiatives can help mitigate against the damaging accusations levelled against churches related to the era of colonialism. All Christian churches have dark areas of the past, some of which have never been acknowledged and repented of. Ideally the impetus for such repentance would not be an outsider coming with a message of accusation, but an insider who identifies with past sins in sincere humility.

In promoting reconciliation between the divided parts of the church, research on the innovation-decisionprocess is helpful (Rogers, 2003). This process begins with the knowledge stage, when an individual or system is exposed to an innovation. Ecumenism is not a high priority for most Christian churches, much less reconciliation with the Jewish people. Some Liberal Protestants do not see Messianic Jews as “real” Jews, and since Vatican II, the Catholic church does not promote missionary efforts towards converting Jews (Ioniţă, 2017). A look at popular Christian book titles shows that the church does not prioritize the importance of the Messianic Jewish movement. The need for church unity is real, but the awareness of such a need must first be generated. Being strategic in terms of communication is key because people generally expose themselves to ideas that agree with the interests, needs, and attitudes they already have (Rogers, 2003). Mass media channels are relatively more useful at the knowledge stage, and therefore effective in creating initial awareness. But interpersonal channels must be introduced immediately as potential participants enter the persuasion stage (Rogers, 2003).

According to Hocken, the first significant barrier for Evangelical and Pentecostal TJCII participants was recognizing their judgmental attitudes towards the older churches. The second impediment was a reluctance to encourage the Messianic Jewish movement to grow and flourish in genuinely Jewish ways, but that may be very distinct from Evangelicalism (Hocken, 2008). For Pentecostal-Charismatic TJCII participants, the main barrier was learning to relate to parts of the Body of Christ that do not share their approach to spiritual gifts, church leadership, and prophecy. But much progress has been achieved, with Charismatics learning to appreciate how other parts of the church are open to the Spirit in different ways to their own, and to not be arrogant towards them (Hocken, 2008).

What Were the Factors that Led to Change?

Two key factors for change positively related to TJCII already mentioned were the innovation of identificational repentance and the unification of Messianic Jewish leadership. Hocken (2007) also believed that the emergence of the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement in the 20^th century – including Charismatic Catholics – had paved the way for a unity in the Spirit hitherto unseen in church history. Another aspect of TJCII that made its innovation possible was its narrow focus:

TJCII is a sharply focused initiative. It is wholly directed toward the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in the one body.” It is “a single-focus initiative”. Just as the TJCII leadership has to focus on this one goal, so it is essential that the TJCII intercessors are focused on this one goal in their intercession. Because TJCII intercessors are drawn from people to whom the Lord has given a real love for the Jewish people, it is natural that participants in TJCII should also support other Israel related causes. The TJCII leadership does not discourage other Israel-related activities in principle, but they must not be confused with TJCII (Hocken 2010).

Hocken believed that the emergence of the Messianic Jewish movement that presented the Christian churches once again with a Jewish dialogue partner (Hocken, 2007). The Messianic Jewish movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a time when young people had more freedom to resist cultural taboos. This included Jews who saw conversion to Christianity as a dramatic option, who developed a sense of “historical mission”, that they were “crossing historical boundaries” (Ariel, 2013). Messianic Jews saw themselves as working towards reconciliation by bringing the truth and beauty of Christianity and Judaism together (Ariel, 2013). Ariel describes the Messianic Jewish movement as an “offspring of the Evangelical community” coming to be accepted by most Evangelicals as a “legitimate part of Evangelical Christianity” (Ariel, 2013). In short, the emergence of the Messianic Jewish movement and its initial acceptance by Evangelicals was a key change factor intimately related to the innovation TJCCII would propose.

Another factor that created favorable conditions for TJCII was the emergence of anti-suppersessionist theology since the holocaust. Kendall Soulen (2018), who has contributed significantly to TJCII theologically, points out three phases of theological development since the end of World War II: “a period of repentance and awakening (1945-1968), a period of lamentation and experimentation (1968-2000), and a period of maturation and integration (2000 -)”. In the 1950s and 1960s historians working on the roots of antisemitism drew a direct line between Christian teaching and the persecution of Jews for generations (Soulen, 2018). It was at this time that the term superssessionis was coined – that the biblical promises to Israel were now null, abrogated by God because of Israel’s sins, or made irrelevant with Christ’s coming (Soulen, 2018). The current emergence of post-superssessionism since the 2000s is a grouping of similar theologies that affirm both “the irrevocability of God’s covenant with the Jewish people and the universal saving significance of God’s action in Jesus Christ” (Soulen, 2018). These theologies encourage Christians to integrate God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people in their comprehension of all biblical doctrines (2018). According to Catholic theologian Douglas Farrow (2018), the trend towards anti-supersessionism was also connected to the “postmodern elevation of identity politics”.

Another factor that led to change related to Christian-Jewish relations was the Catholic fulfillment modelwhich states that collectively Jews can be considered invincibly ignorant (D’Costa, 2018). The concept is that under Christian supersessionism Jews would have had to accept Jewish extinction as a requirement for Christian practice (D’Costa, 2018). The fulfillment model is another post-holocaust attempt by Gentile Christians to correct antisemitism in the church. This theology states that “the Jewish people who rejected Christ are not rejected by God, who is faithful to his covenantal promises to his people, even when his people are disobedient” (D’Costa, 2018). The fulfillment view makes a distinction between Jews who willfully reject Christ and those who are invincibly ignorant, who may be seen as still under the dispensation of God’s grace via the first covenant (D’Costa, 2018). This softening of Catholic theology towards Judaism represents a development that perhaps paved the way for TJCII to approach Catholics and have a positive hearing.

Who Were the “Early Adopters” and “Laggards”?

Innovation research has indicated five adopter categories based on the degree to which some members of a system adopt new ideas sooner than others (Rogers, 2003). These categories are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards (Rogers, 2003). In most systems, the early adopter category has the highest degree of opinion influence (Rogers, 2003). Early adopters are not so far ahead of the average individual in innovativeness; therefore, they can serve as an example for the greatest number (Rogers, 2003). Innovators are seen as outliers and rash risk takers, and they walk more outside the system in cosmopolite circles. In contrast, early adaptors are more conservative and covey their evaluation of innovations to peers they have close contact with and through interpersonal networks (Rogers, 2003).

The first key group of TJCII early adopters were members of international Evangelical prayer movements. When the first structure for TJCII was being organized in 1996, a team was formed responsible for prayer journeys. The first journeys happened in 1998 and 1999. This team had two primary responsibilities: “(1) to encourage more prayer journeys as appropriate for the expression of repentance for sins against the Jewish expression of the Church and (2) to organize intercessory prayer support for every aspect of the work of TJCII” (Hocken, 2010). The leadership of TJCII stated that the deepest opposition faced is that of the Enemy who feeds the stronghold of God’s rejection of the Jewish people (Hocken 2010). It was in 1999-2000 when TJCII almost collapsed that the depth of spiritual opposition was recognized and a new emphasis on intercession arose (Hocken, 2010). Since that time intercessory groups have been established in 29 countries and teams are present on site during all executive meetings and promotional consultations (Hocken, 2010).

The key group of TJCII early adopters were members of independent Charismatic churches. Hocken (2007) goes as far as to say that “All those who committed themselves to the TJCII vision had significant Charismatic experience”. According to Hocken (2007), it was the initial TJCII adherents’ “openness to the Holy Spirit and freedom in the Spirit” that made partnership in such a diverse group possible.

Today TJCII is led by fourteen leaders, seven Jewish and seven Gentile who broadly represent the global churches and movements that profess faith in the gospel of Jesus-Yeshua. TJCII has regional movements in Africa, Asia, Europe, Israel, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East. Since its inception in 1995, the growth of the number of participants has followed Rogers’ (2003) s-shaped curve of adoption and normality. Diffusion experts have discovered that innovation generally follows a curve rising slowly at first, accelerating to a maximum until half of the members of a system adopt, and then growing moderately at a slower rate (Rogers, 2003). It bears reason that increase is gradually slower as less individuals in a system are left to adopt the innovation. Diffusion researchers shows that adoption of a new idea happens through interpersonal networks, spreading like and epidemic (Rogers, 2003). The reliance on interpersonal networks, however, does affect which members in a system have access to innovation due to barriers of status, geography, and other variables (Rogers, 2003). The curve launches when individual testimony activates personal networks in a system, the most crucial phase being the curve from 20 to 30 percent of adoption after which it is often beyond stopping (Rogers, 2003).

In relation to TJCII, perhaps the historic churches bear some of the characteristics of Rogers’ laggards. As mentioned earlier, the historic churches first response was that they could not participate in an enterprise that referred to itself as a Council or pretended to convene a universal Church council (Hocken, 2007). This reticence was dealt with successfully by adding toward to the movement’s name.

Perhaps another category of laggards in relation to TJCII are progressive Protestants, Evangelicals and Charismatics who initially see the vision as too Zionistic. This is not documented in TJCII literature, and is merely a conjecture on my part. My thinking is that many potential TJCII participants from mainline Protestantism could be initially wary of joining a Jewish-Christian reconciliation movement because of controversies related to biblical prophecy and the land of Israel. However, during the past 3 decades since its inception many progressive Protestants, Evangelicals and Charismatics have joined TJCII. I am not privy to details related to this, but I imagine that in large part this positive result is due to a learning process of diplomacy and deference over divisive issues such as eschatology and Middle eastern politics.

What are the Implications for Future Cultural Changes?

TJCII has come to a point of recognizing the need to pass the vision on to a new generation, launching the TJCII Now Generation in the early 2000s. The death of Peter Hocken in 2017 and the retirement of several other founding members in recent years spurred the invitation of several younger leaders in their 30s and 40s to a process of courtship for participation in the International Leadership Council (ILC). This represents an effort to close any gap of continued leadership and work towards the vision of TJCII. It has become evident that the fulfillment of this vision may take decades more according to the rate of progress after the initial phase of intense growth.

Moving forward, TJCII has the potential to debunk unfair generalizations regarding Christian evangelization and mission. According to missiologist Lamin Sanneh (2009), the common perception of many adherents of non-Christian religions is that an “intrinsic bond” exists between Christianity and “colonial hegemony”. It is understandable that for the Jews in particular the experience of Christian antisemitism has generated deep aversion to any kind of evangelization or mission. However, with its emphasis on humility and the divine calling of people groups TJCII can continue the legacy of many positive streams of Christian mission. In this sense TJCII is not an innovator but takes culturally affirming missions forward.

In Latin America, early missionaries went to great ends to contextualize and interpret the gospel considering indigenous culture (Sanneh, 2009). Against popular perceptions, these missionaries renounced the idea that embracing Western culture was required for conversion (Sanneh 2009). In Japan, the first Catholic missionaries attempted to impose European culture (Sanneh 2009), but the second phase embraced cultural contextualization as the primary means of reaching the culture (Sanneh, 2009). Missionaries in India preached the gospel using classical Indian sources (Sanneh, 2009). And in Africa, mission can be argued to have given birth to cultural nationalism because of the storm caused by linguistic research (2009). The promotion of the vernacular by missionaries in Africa encouraged feelings of ethnic nationalism, evidence of Christianity’s “built-in grass roots bias” (Sanneh, 2009). In short, the translatability in word, dress, and other cultural artifacts was essential in the rooting and fruitfulness of the church through Christian missions. Perhaps through new open dialogue with Orthodox Jews and the celebration of Messianic Judaism TJCII can counter the caricature of missions as cultural colonization. Perhaps the restoration of the Jewish elder brother can represent the gospel as a vision of cultural reconciliation and embraced diversity.

Diffusion research has shown that organizational leaders at the highest level are not always responsible for innovation (Rogers, 2003). TJCII has been effective in recruiting mid-level and high-level church leaders. However, according to diffusion research, it is also vital to identify innovators who are outliers within their communities and develop dialogue and partnership with them.

Another important concept regarding the future of TJCII is the homophily-heterophily dichotomy. Homophily is the level of similarity between individuals in communication, heterophily being the degree of difference (Rogers, 2003). Surprisingly, homophily is often a barrier to innovation flow because people who are alike associate in “socially horizontal patterns”, preventing innovations from spreading to members of a system of lower economic status, education, and technical expertise (Rogers, 2003). Therefore, TJCII advocates should be encouraged to persevere in the difficult work of reconciliation diplomacy because although uncomfortable and unfamiliar, the work of crossing barriers is highly effective for diffusion.

Diffusion research also indicates that in heterophilous interpersonal diffusion networks such as TJCII followers tend to look for opinion leaders “of higher socioeconomic status, with more formal education, greater mass media exposure, more cosmopoliteness, greater contact with change agents, and more innovativeness” (Rogers, 2003). Therefore, in a movement such as TJCII, it is crucial that opinion leaders take conscious steps so that new ideas trickle down to those with less access.

Research also indicates that the future of TJCII will be determined in part on how it uses social media networks. It will be important to nurture interpersonal networks that are interlocking, in which every member interacts with each other. But the movement will also need to foster networks that are radial, in which “a set of individuals is linked to a focal individual but do not interact with each other” (Rogers, 2003). Radial networks are more open, allowing the focal individual to share information with a broader constituency (Rogers, 2003). One of the keys to TJCIIs influence has been its decentralization of leadership and focus of task. As mentioned earlier, TJCII is sharply focused initiative wholly directed toward the reconciliation of Jew and Gentile in the one body (Hocken, 2010). TJCII is not a church, and all its participants’ primary ministry engagement is within their particular Christian traditions. Therefore, the challenge for TJCII will be to continue to pass the vision on to individuals who can spread it. This will require the freedom of focal individuals to share information as they are able – a strength of the radial network. At the same time, TJCII will need to maintain the focus of the vision and the unity of its proponents – a strength of the interlocking network.

Diffusion research shows the surprising strength of weak ties, interactions between people who are not close friends, and not significantly connected, and with whom contact has only been sporadic (Rogers, 2003). These weak ties can be bridge links into the distant cliques of another individual. One of the stated purposes of TJCII moving forward is to raise up a new generation of young ambassadors doing diplomatic diffusion of the one new humanity vision. The strength-of-weak-ties theory (Rogers 2003) is a vital point of encouragement for the hard, slow work of inter-confessional Christian diplomacy required for the type of reconciliation TJCII envisions.

Lastly, regarding the use of social media, research indicates that physical

proximity will continue to be important for network links (Rogers, 2003). Social learning theory, observational modeling, and non-verbal communication are all paradigms often lacking in social media and therefore have a negative impact on the fate of adoption and change if they are depended on exclusively (Rogers, 2003).

As TJCII seeks reconciliation in the Body of Messiah, attention should be paid to breakthroughs in the understanding of how cultural change occurs. Research indicates that the predominant Western view is that culture is rooted in individuals’ hearts and minds in the form of values (Hunter, 2010). Together with this is the idea that change comes from courageous individuals with the right values and worldview. As more people adopt certain paradigms, culture is changed (Hunter, 2010). A different perspective is that culture changes not through the veracity of ideas but by the level to which they are embedded in influential institutions, networks, and symbols (Hunter, 2010). This view holds that individual hearts and minds don’t dictate culture as much as culture influences the lives of individuals (Hunter, 2010). Cultural change occurs through patrons sponsoring intellectuals who propagate alternatives (Hunter, 2010). Such elites tend to be followed by creative types, poets, artists, and communicators that form narratives and symbols. This phenomenon is what popularizes new cultural visions (Hunter, 2010).

I find the alternative approach compelling, and therefore believe that identifying networks of influence is key for reconciliation initiatives. The traditional Christian approach to changing culture has been coercive, having different expressions such as the Christian Right, Christian Left, and Neo-Anabaptists (Hunter, 2010). It is arguably because of these coercive approaches that the church lacks influence and is absent from key areas of society (Hunter, 2010). Reconciliation initiatives that seek to unite representatives of different Christian traditions must guard against envisioning the flourishing of Christ’s kingdom as “framed by the particularities” of the distinct worldviews of these traditions (Hunter 2010). Those on the Christian Left see history as a continuous struggle to realize a myth of equality and community, optimistic about their church’s move towards progressive values. For their part, the Anabaptists communicate a message of “anger, disparagement, and negation” (Hunter, 2010). Anabaptists believe that the church should be a community of contrast that challenges the ways of the world. They do not seek to change the world by engaging the spheres of society, but by being a worshipping community, observing the sacraments, and forming disciples (Hunter, 2010). Lastly, members of the Christian Right frame discussions of power in political terms, thus removing the discussion from everyday life (Hunter, 2010). In this way the Christian Right avoids the challenges of daily life by focusing attention upon inaccessible elites and institutions (Hunter, 2010). In diffusing the vision of reconciliation initiatives, much care must be taken to navigate these polarizing views to cultural transformation as applied to the culture of the church.

Reconciliation initiatives must take care not to be drawn into different extremes in Christian views of cultural transformation. The Christian church has often oscillated between the following paradigms of cultural engagement: defensive against, relevant to, or pure from (Hunter, 2010). I would suggest the more helpful paradigm of relating to the world through a “dialectic of affirmation and antithesis” (Hunter, 2010). By this approach, we can simultaneously partner with God’s common grace in making culture while recognizing that this work is not salvific (Hunter, 2010). Christians need to embrace the call to leadership in the paradoxical model of Christ through faithful presence (Hunter, 2010). By faithful presence, I refer to a covenantal commitment to the flourishing of the world around us (Hunter, 2010). This means reconciliation initiatives should foster flourishing for all, in contrast to a truncated gospel that merely persuades non-Christians to convert to go to heaven (Hunter, 2010). Reconciliation initiatives should recognize that establishing justice and righteousness are secondary to the primary good of God Himself – his worship and honor. At the same time, reconciliation initiatives must remember that God has broken the sovereignty of the world’s institutions. Thus, such unity movements should seek the betterment of this world and its institutions (Hunter, 2010).

Conclusion

As a participant in TJCII, I hope to be able to share some of the lessons of this research with my co-laborers. As someone in their late 40s, I see the need to raise up a new generation of reconcilers who embrace the one new humanity vision of Ephesians 2:14-18. I have personally experienced the amazing unity and healing the Holy Spirit can do through repentance and dialogue. I also see the one new humanity vision as a reconciliation motif that can reshape understanding of the gospel in a post-Christian West. And I’m hopeful that this vision can heal the wounds of Christian imperialism that created a pattern of cultural stratification whose consequences are still felt in the Global South.

References

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September 14, 2023February 4, 2026 by daviddawson462742281

How Evangelicals can Bless Catholic Nations

How Non-Catholic Christians in Majority Catholic Nations can Partner with the Historic Body of Christ Where the Church is Seen as a Particular Possession of That Culture

David J. Dawson

July 18, 2023

Challenges for Evangelicals Seeking to Engage Culture Together with their Catholic Brothers and Sisters

Theology of culture deals with the meaning and application of John 17:13-10 – “being in the world but not of it”. It has been necessary to address this question ever since the transition from the covenant-nation of Israel to the international covenant people of the church. How should the people of God relate to outsiders? What are the implications of ultimate allegiance to Christ? Every generation faces these questions in unique ways, from persecution, to privilege to exile (Carson 2008).

This year I celebrated 30 years in full-time missionary service, which has been mostly in majority Roman Catholic contexts. During the sixteen years I spent in Brazil I learned a lot about Catholicism, but as an Evangelical I never felt like a member of a marginalized group in society. The two and-a-half years in Portugal, however, have been the first extensive period in a majority Catholic context where my own faith tradition has little representation or influence. According to a 2011 census, 81% of the Portuguese population is Catholic, with 3.3% consisting of other Christian denominations such as Eastern Orthodox and Protestant (“Population of Portugal 2023 | Religion in Portugal,” 2021)

Intercultural researchers group countries together based on levels of similarity and difference. According to the GLOBE cultural framework, Portugal is part of the country cluster Latin Europe, e.g., Israel, Italy, Spain, Portugal (House et al. 2004). Therefore, my research on Portugal is relatively representative of Latin Europe in general. In many parts of Europe, Christianity has been significant historically but not today, an example being the diminished influence of Mainline Protestantism in Northern Europe. In comparison, Portugal is not only prevalently Catholic in its history, but Catholicism remains one of the most foundational aspects of its culture (Medina 2021).

One of the oldest nations in the world, the territory of Portugal has been maintained secure over 8 centuries (“About Portugal,” n.d.). Having one of the greatest maritime traditions in history, one of the foundational motivations during the Era of Exploration was the spread of the Catholic faith (The Legacy of Henry the Navigator, n.d.). In Latin Europe today, the majority population identifies the Roman Catholic church as an integral part of their cultural heritage. The Portuguese people have witnessed the transition of political power through the centuries while the church remains as perhaps the only constant institutional reference of their culture. Doubtless this is why Christianity is still regarded as a locus of great cultural treasure even in a region of secular modern Europe.

It was during the Roman Empire that Catholicism came to be the official religion of the region that would be Portugal. For many centuries the governing rulers of Portugal and the Catholic Church promoted a symbiotic relationship (Portugalist 2018). The first King of Portugal, Afonso Enriques (1139-85), partnered with the church to expel the Moors from the South of Portugal (D. Afonso 2023). A foundational part of Portugal’s history is the tumultuous partnership developed between antipathetical partners – a secular state and a church with a militant emphasis on the conversion of human souls and its call to universal societal engagement (Franco 2011). This integrated coexistence gave rise to a democratic society that some authors refer to as catolaica (Franco 2011). The paradoxical term comes from the accepted notion that although Portugal has a pluralistic democracy and therefore must integrate all groups, including naturally the majority Roman Catholic tradition (Franco 2011).

Portugal is a collectivist culture, characterized by an emphasis on “community, collaboration, shared interest, harmony, tradition, the public good, and maintaining face” (Anderson et al. 2003). In comparison, individualistic cultures place a higher value on “personal rights and responsibilities, privacy, voicing one’s opinion, freedom, innovation, and self-expression” (Anderson et al. 2003). Portugal also scores high on the uncertainty avoidance parameter related to a group’s inclination to feel endangered by ambiguous situations and to avoid uncertainty (Jackson 2020). Strong uncertainty avoidance indicates an aversion to taking risks, a tendency to favor stability, rules, and consensus (Jackson 2020). Whereas in individualist cultures relationships are voluntary associations, in collectivist societies people are born into relationships they are responsible to preserve all their lives (Moreau et al. 2014). The characteristics of collectivist culture described here represent barriers to religious influence from non-Catholic Christian traditions.

As I reflect on Latin European culture, I believe that an image of Christ and His kingdom has been formed that is overly associated with this context. This paper focuses on how non-Catholic Christians in majority Catholic nations can partner with the historic body of Christ where the church is seen as a particular possession of that culture. According to Richard Niebuhr’s influential taxonomy of Christ and culture positions, the Catholic church adheres to a model he describes as Christ-above-culture, or synthesis. Per Niebuhr’s classification, most non-Catholic Christians do not hold the synthesis view, an increasing number of whom are immigrating to Latin Europe.

A 2022 census shows that for the 7^th consecutive year foreign immigration to Portugal has increased, 11.9% more than in 2021 (Lusa, 2023). Brazilians represent 30.7% of the total population of immigrants in Portugal (Lusa, 2023). According to the Aliança Evangélica de Portugal, in 2023 Brazilians represent 81,6% of Evangelicals in Portugal (Brasileiros representam 81% dos evangélicos nas igrejas de Portugal, 2023). Of the next 9 nations from which most immigrants came, the next highest percentage was from the United Kingdom – predominantly secular but historically Protestant (Lusa, 2023). Three African nations are also among the list of 9 that have large Evangelical populations (Lusa, 2023). Only one country on the list was majority Catholic (Italy). It is evident that Portuguese Catholics are increasingly in contact Christians of other traditions, most of whom are Evangelicals (“Population of Portugal 2023 | Religion in Portugal,” 2021).

In this paper I propose that Christians can engage in a healthy and meaningful way in majority Catholic contexts by exploring both traditions’ complementary wisdom on the relationship of Christ and culture. I will address the challenge Evangelicals face in Catholic communities that see Christianity as their particular cultural possession. In the second section, I will explore the historic foundations of the Catholic position on Christ and culture. Third, I will elaborate some Evangelical theologies of culture that foster positive relationship and partnership with Catholics in their heartland. Fourth, I will suggest some specific areas of cultural engagement for Catholic-Evangelical dialogue. And lastly, I conclude with a recommended aim for such dialogue – restoring a culturally pluralistic vision of Christianity.

The Catholic Solution: Christ Both Separate from Culture and Sovereign Over Culture

As stated earlier, most Evangelicals do not hold to Niebuhr’s Christ-above-culture position (1951). Understanding this position is necessary to determine if Evangelicals can engage with culture fruitfully together with their Catholic brothers and sisters. If not, Evangelicals’ only option will be to try and convert Catholics about culture or give up on fruitful partnership. Niebuhr believes that the church above culture worldview has been predominant in church history, manifesting in different forms (Niebuhr 1951). Synthesis is one such form, the greatest example being the Catholic church (Niebuhr 1951). The synthesis seeks a “both-and” solution, maintaining the separation between Christ and culture but insisting that Christ is “as sovereign over the culture as over the church” (Carson 2008). By this conception, there is no authority beyond what has been established by God, and therefore what is Caesar’s and God’s are rendered accordingly (Carson 2008). Central to this position is the conviction that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Almighty Father of all Creation. Culture is understood from the perspective that nature is good and rightly ordered by God, even post-Fall. Therefore, Christ and the world cannot be opposed to each other, nor can culture be the realm of godlessness alone. For as part of the world, culture is “upheld by the Creator and Governor of nature” (Niebuhr 1951).

The synthesist affirms both Christ and culture, confessing a Lord who is “both of this world and of the other” (Niebuhr 1951). This worldview maintains the distinction and paradoxical conviction that Jesus is “both God and man, one person with two ‘natures’ that are neither to be confused nor separated” (Niebuhr 1951). It follows that culture is “both divine and human in its origin, both holy and sinful, a realm of both necessity and freedom, and one to which both reason and revelation apply (Niebuhr 1951). This way of seeing Christ contrasts with a liberal theology that primarily values finding common ground with human culture and seeking fruitful partnership with it. But the synthesist’s appreciation of culture also contrasts with a conservative theology that denounces human culture as utterly depraved and seeks to either combat it or isolate from it (Niebuhr 1951).

Niebuhr finds in Thomas Aquinas “the greatest of all synthesists in Christian history”, representing a Christianity that had “achieved or accepted full social responsibility for all the great institutions” (Niebuhr 1951). The Christ above culture position recognizes the antithesis between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness – between the regenerated believer and the unredeemed sinner. However, a synthesis is attempted between “philosophy and theology, state and church, civic and Christian virtues, natural and divine laws, Christ and culture” (Carson 2008). Aquinas’ approach became that of the Catholic church as well as many other denominations, according to Niebuhr, because of “the intellectual and practical adequacy of his system” (Niebuhr 1951). Although Aquinas’ synthesis was undermined by the Reformation and the Renaissance, it is perhaps the greatest of all comprehensive attempts to combine without confusing the ethics of culture with that of the gospel (Carson 2008).

In his own life and person, Aquinas embodied the “both-and” response to the question about Christ and culture. As a monk avowed to poverty, celibacy and obedience, Aquinas identified with the radical Christians who turned their backs on the secular world. But Aquinas was a monk in the church who became a champion of learning, a preserver of culture, a political philosopher, an advocate for Christian family values, and a governor of church’s relationship to the state (Niebuhr 1951). However, such a synthesis was never easily attained or maintained in Aquinas’ day. The Christ-above-culture approach sought to synthesize church and civilization, this world and the other, Christ and Aristotle…reformation and conservation. It depended on a certain coexistence and uneasy partnership between conservatives and liberals – the protest movements against culture weakening the gospel, and Christians who were highly culturally engaged (Niebuhr 1951). Such a partnership would require an influential radical Christianity protesting Christian institutions that weakened the gospel. And as its counterpart, a culturally engaged church would be needed that was strong enough to walk in unity with its loyal opposition (Niebuhr 1951).

Vatican II in the mid 20^th century represented a major move towards engaging modernism and some adjustments to Catholic understanding of the Church and the world. The background was the Catholic Intellectual Renaissance of the 20^th which begun in France with theologians reengaging with Aquinas’ thought. This renaissance resulted in large part due to a reengagement with the Thomistic concept of the bonum comune (the common good), part of his both-and theology of culture (Pakaluk 2021). Vatican II maintains Aquinas’ theology of culture as foundational, but recontextualizes it for modernity (Lewis 2021).

A Protestant Theology of Culture That Makes Way for Partnership with Catholics (in their Heartland)

The ability of both Catholic and Evangelical Christians to engage in Western culture is inhibited by the view that their faith can be “tolerated, provided it is entirely private” (Carson 2012). But cohabitating with diverse religious claims today forces Christians of both churches to answer questions of Christ and culture in the public sphere. If culture consists, as Carson states, of “ideas, beliefs, customs, and all the rest” then it includes our faith traditions as well and is something that must be explored afresh by every generation (Carson 2012). The subject of the privatization of religion in secular society is a starting point for Evangelicals to engage in dialogue with Catholics. Evangelicals can learn from Catholics’ value of the collective witness of tradition. And Catholics can learn from Protestants’ realism on the fallibility of human institutions.

Besides the synthesist position we have explored so far, Niebuhr describes two others that belong to the Christ-above-culture pattern – dualists and conversionists (Carson 2012). The dualist holds a Christ and culture in paradox position, that life’s foundational question is making the distinction not between “Christians and the pagan or secular world, but between God and all humankind” (Carson 2012). Christ came to bring reconciliation and forgiveness, and human culture is corrupt. This means all human work, achievement, philosophy, and theology – not only outside the church but inside it as well (Carson 2012). Foundational to the dualist position, is that the Christian does not pass judgement on others, but on all including themselves (Carson 2012). But although the dualist pronounces all human culture to be “godless and sick unto death”, he knows that he “belongs to that culture and cannot get out of it, that God indeed sustains him in it and by it” (Niebuhr 1951). Indeed, if God stops sustaining the world in its sin it would immediately cease to exist (Niebuhr 1951). The tension of this paradox is that of a thinker applying a dialectical to reality, “Living between time and eternity, between wrath and mercy, between culture and Christ” (Niebuhr 1951). The dualist “finds life both tragic and joyful” there is “no solution of the dilemma this side of death” (Niebuhr 1951).

I believe the dualist position holds potential for Evangelicals and Catholics to discuss cultural engagement because it allows both to engage the world with humility. In a time when both Evangelical and Catholic churches face criticism from non-believers we can share the approach of recognizing our faults and repenting. Indeed, the dualists’ position that all Christians are sustained by God in a fallen world can help Catholics and Evangelicals find motivation to serve their communities while realizing the work will never be done this side of heaven. When Evangelicals are the minority faith tradition, the dualist position can help them have a prophetic voice while acknowledging an equal amount of correction is needed in their home cultures.

But I find the conversionist position to hold the most potential for Evangelical minorities to engage fruitfully with Catholic majorities. This is the Christ the transformer of culture position. Niebuhr is not thinking here primarily of individual conversion but the conversion of the culture itself (Carson 2012). The conversionist maintains the radical difference between the work of God in Christ and the work of man in culture (Niebuhr 1951). They neither isolate from civilization nor reject its institutions, accepting their role in society while acknowledging Christ’s judgement of it (Carson 2012). The distinction between dualists and conversionists is their optimism about human culture (Carson 2012). Although redemption is superior to creation, creation is the sphere where God’s works redemption (Carson 2012). The dualist treats the physical world and human nature as inherently evil, resulting in the view that human institutions are a mostly negative force in a fallen world (Niebuhr 1951). However, conversionists affirm that although the fall had physical consequences they are “moral and personal, not physical and metaphysical” (Niebuhr 1951). Human history is the stage of God’s redemptive deeds and human beings’ responses to them. Thus, the conversionist has a more realized eschatology, living more in a divine ‘now’ (Niebuhr 1951). A radical conversionist position would lead to universalism, but Niebuhr’s typology refers to a position that contends on two fronts. The conversionist stands “against the anticulturalism of exclusive Christianity, and against the accomodationism of culture-Christians” (Niebuhr 1951).

I believe the conversionist position has the most potential to help Evangelicals in majority Catholic contexts. While it is a sensitive issue, Evangelicals can help Catholics deal with the marginalization of faith in secular Western society by providing a vision of salt that preserves human cultures, their institutions, philosophy, and art. The minority Evangelical church has a position of blessing from the margins, fulfilling the biblical exhortation to “Let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth; an outsider, and not your own lips” (New International Version, 2011, Pv. 27:2). I see parallels in the conversionist and synthesis models in that both seek to engage culture and actively influence it. However, I see the synthesis model’s optimism regarding the degree to which the church and state can be in partnership as lacking historical basis. Often, when the Church had the opportunity of political privilege it succumbed to the temptations towards corruption. I prefer the concept of the church redeeming culture, and the idea that the secular age presents a specific opportunity to do so.

Suggested Points of Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue on Engaging Culture

The effects of the Catholic church’s assuming full responsibility for all the great institutions of society during the era of Christendom are many. During this period, the foundation was laid for the development of arguably the greatest institution in human history. Even after the Enlightenment deposed the Catholic church from its throne at the center of Western society, it possessed an episcopal structure with a few powerful voices that could have dealings with government authorities (Carson 2008). In comparison, Evangelical churches are not attached to such authority structures, and are therefore more likely to respond by unsystematic partial measures over time (Carson 2008). So, regarding the ability to communicate with a clear voice in society, Evangelicals should look at Catholics with admiration. An effectively integrated structure of power depends on its ability to clearly declare its positions. For Evangelical traditions not based on the synthesists approach it seems impossible to have such a clear voice in society. Divided among thousands of denominations, Evangelicals cannot form and communicate unified representative messages. This is a point of dialogue where Evangelicals can communicate their admiration for the Catholic church. To some extent, we may also convey our gratitude for the Catholic church’s representation of Christianity on ethical and moral issues. The presence of a strong Catholic witness in the public sphere -generally conservative related to the nature of Christ and humanity – benefits non-Catholic Christians as well.

The Catholic synthesis successfully imbued Christian values into European society during the era of Christendom. But in the Modern Era many of these values were secularized and the Catholic faith was detached from the historical context in which it took root (Rowland 2003). In Modern Europe, concepts such as human rights and the sanctity of life were taken for grated without reference to the Bible. Some Catholics attempted to rearticulate the church’s message as one of universally held human values, not as God’s one plan of redemption rooted in biblical history. Karl Rahner, arguably the most famous Catholic theologian of the 20^th century, largely aimed at “adding new lenses to the Christian telescope so that it could detect the active presence of God both deep within the being of every human and throughout the expanse of history” (Knitter 2002). I am sympathetic to Rahner’s view as a missiological posture. But rather than making the Catholic church’s message more universally communicable, detaching Catholic teachings from the biblical matrix has contributed to a general loss of faith within Europe (Rowland 2003).

The conception of Catholicism as an aspect of Latin European culture has made it resistant to political reform movements arising from the church in other parts of the globe. Liberation Theology arising in Latin America articulated a theology of culture with particular emphasis on the comprehension of diversity. The method of this theology of culture is to insert itself into everyday life and promote holistic development of human beings, socio-political dialogue, and the practice of social justice (Mariano, 2016). These are the characteristics of a religion that liberates people and shows them “the blessed face of history” through the unity between “the political condition of Christianity” and “the pastoral action of the church” (Mariano, 2016). The honor with which Latin Europeans hold the institutions of Catholicism has been a barrier to learning from Latin American Liberation theologians. These exhort the Catholic church worldwide to “prefer to be poor and humble with Christ, (…) than rich and powerful” (Mariano, 2016). The latter position amounts to “agreement with the structures of cultural domination that maintain cultural contradictions of the model of globalization that substitutes human dignity for gain” (Mariano, 2016). Due to a lack of interest in the priestly vocation in Latin Europe, today an increasing number of clerics there hail from Latin America and other regions of the Global South (CNA, n.d.). For the past 70 years this has brought the message of Liberation theology to the doors of Latin European Catholic churches.

As Evangelicals following the example of Christ, we should enter the dialogue related to Christ and social justice with humility. According to the Weberian hypothesis, Evangelical Calvinism is largely responsible for the modern industrial complex, for which many of us take pride. But a more effective posture to the end of Evangelical-Catholic dialogue and partnership would be our humble repentance for preferring to be rich and powerful rather than humble with Christ. And we Evangelicals should reflect on the motivation behind the famous Protestant Work Ethic. Having lost the priestly intermediation of forgiveness of sins and access to heaven, Protestants wondered how they could know they were among the elect. They were instructed to devote themselves to restless professional work as a means for calming their religious doubts” (Kurz, 2021).

Closer to liberation theology in some respects is the conversionist position held by many Evangelicals. Although not one of the hosts of Christian leaders explored by Niebuhr, I consider Abraham Kuyper to exemplify many characteristics of the conversionist position. However, while Kuyper exhorted Christians to influence the spheres of culture, he cautioned them against entangling the church in these endeavors inappropriately (Carson 2008). Unfortunately, many Evangelicals have gone one step too far in this direction, interpreting separation of church and state as a separation between Christians and the state. The result has been that in many Evangelical majority countries both the church and individual Christians have disengaged from influencing society (Carson 2008).

But Evangelicals in majority Catholic contexts do have wisdom to share with their Christian brothers and sisters regarding cultural engagement. Kuyper believed that Calvinism had replaced human priestly mediation with that of Christ, allowing the Christian to look beyond the church to the greater vision of the kingdom (Kuyper 1898, lecture II). The former Prime Minister of the Netherlands believed that in Christ is the redemption of the human race, not just the church, which will be fully manifest at His return (Kuyper 1898, lecture II). The synthesist position limits religion to the sphere of catechism and church calendar events… baptism, burial, and marriage. Thus, the daily life of the Catholic laity was marginalized from the effects of religion. Calvinism taught that the ordinance of God is determinative in all creation – the foundation of all beauty, virtue, ethics, biology, and cosmology (Kuyper 1898, lecture II). This Evangelical motivation for cultural engagement is not a correction to the Catholic synthesis, but it can serve as a point of encouragement as we work together for this end.

My conviction is that both the individual Christian as well as the church should engage in every sphere of society where the gospel can be manifest. An Evangelical dualist position that disengages from societal needs is an inadequate witness to Christ’s kingdom and His love for the world. At the same time, an overly zealous and optimistic conversionist position can turn the ministry of influencing spheres of society into a burden of works. We do well to remember that “all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (New International Version 2011, Rom. 8:14). The mission to transform culture must be taken up with Christ’s declaration that the members of His Body live under the burden dictated by his gentle love (Mat. 11:28), following the Spirit’s lead in simple, daily obedience.

Taking Advantage of Christian Parallels with Pluralistic Ideologies as a Means of Evangelism

I would like to conclude this paper with a specific goal for Evangelical-Catholic dialogue: debunking the caricature of Christianity as foundationally an aspect of Western civilization. Indeed, ever since Paul received the Macedonian call west, we have seen the development of the church in Europe. But the idea that the gospel is an aspect of Western empire is a barrier to today’s young Europeans and their pluralistic ideologies.

In Latin Europe, the synthesist approach fostered a culture heavily influenced by the church over centuries. The legacy of this influence is ambiguous due to the nature of all human institutions, even that one called to represent God’s redemptive plan. And even after a process of secularization Latin Europeans continue to identify the institution of the Church and its teachings and worldview as an integral part of their cultural heritage. Most young Latin Europeans to not adhere to church’s teaching on subjects such as sexuality, the nature of family, and the role of faith in the public square (Francisco Fala Para Dentro Ou Para Fora Da Igreja?, n.d.). But they still want the church to occupy a place in society as a point of moral reference (Francisco Fala Para Dentro Ou Para Fora Da Igreja?, n.d.). It is easy to see this Latin European cultural value as rootedness in the idea of catholicity itself, the singular glory of the church being its unified nature. But a better understanding would be that Latin European Christianity is a particular cultural expression of a greater universality. In the context of historical shifts such as the Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, and post-colonial American-led capitalism, in Roman Catholicism Latin Europeans find a source of transcendental unity, purpose, and identity.

But this perspective obscures a foundational mystery of the Christian faith – the incarnation – where God glorifies contextualization as a primordial aspect of His love. John describes the incarnation as glorious, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (New International Version, 2011, Jo. 1:14). John also describes the incarnation as an expression of love, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (New International Version, 2011, Jo. 3:16). Paul emphasizes the humility of the incarnation, “And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (New International Version, 2011, Phil. 2:8). The author of Hebrews describes Christ’s coming to earth in human form as the ultimate form of divine communication, “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe” (New International Version, 2011, Heb. 1:1-2).

I propose that Evangelicals living in majority Catholic contexts partner with Christ where His Spirit has been at work there for centuries. In his book The Road to Missional, Michael Frost recommends that Christians desiring to impact a nation or community ask, “Where is Jesus already there” (2011). Frost describes this approach:

It is our job as the followers of Jesus to invite people into the new history that God is writing, to show them that the reign of God is unfurling across the world and throughout history, and to invite others to make that story their story. If we don’t even know what has been and is currently happening (…), how can we retell the story with a view to the future God has in store? (2011)

I am most inspired by missionaries to Latin Europe who have rejected a colonizing approach where Evangelicals seek to convert Catholics to Evangelicalism. I find much more compelling the models of Evangelical missions in my context that seek to find where the Holy Spirit is already at work and to partner with Him there.

The Catholic synthesis position undermines unity with the Global church, the majority of which exists outside the Roman Catholic tradition (although global Catholicism is huge). As stated in the introduction, the large number of non-Catholic Christian immigrants to Latin Europe makes this view particularly harmful to Christ’s work there. A lack of understanding of contextualization and resulting cultural diversity as foundational to the gospel undermines the health and influence of the Latin European church.

It is interesting to note that one may assume that the synthesis approach would make it difficult for Roman Catholics to evangelize cross-culturally, however the history of Catholic missions shows this not to be the case. Roman catholic missionaries such as the Jesuits were amazingly successful at making the Christian message relevant and compelling to many diverse cross-cultural contexts from “low” cultures such as in South America to “high” cultures of the far East. Part of the impetus of the Counter Reformation – a term coined by Protestants – was a desire to establish a unified Catholic state after the fragmentation brought by Luther and his successors. In the 15th and 16th centuries an apocalyptic Catholic optimism arose during the unification of the Spanish throne under Ferdinand and Isabel. Any land not inhabited by Christians was declared to be open to “discovery” by pope Alexander (Gordon 2022). Referred to as the Catholic Reformation, some historians consider this period to be the beginning of Global Christianity (Gordon 2022a).

The Jesuits were pioneers of missionary cultural accommodation involving language, dress, and even religion. In more developed societies such as Japan and China, the Jesuits employed a strategy of converting the influential elite (Gordon 2022a). They were among the greatest journalists and historians of their generation, with luminaries such as Mateo Ricci. Ricci sought evangelistic inroads by translating knowledge of math and engineering from the West which the Chinese valued. The Jesuits made a huge contribution to the progress of historical, philosophical, and cultural knowledge. These gifts are often neglected by Protestants as we acclaim our own legacy. Ricci adopted the Confucian concept of the mind palace as a practical tool for memorization. As an evangelistic strategy, he sought to be taken seriously by the Chinese intellectual elites in the areas of medicine, engineering, and math (Gordon 2022a).

Conclusion

Christians can Evangelicals in majority Catholic contexts can learn from and partner with their brothers and sisters in Christ by exploring both traditions’ theology of culture. The Latin European Catholic church’s appropriation of the gospel as a particular possession of this culture is a challenge for Evangelicals who desire to serve the Body of Christ there. But Evangelicals can learn much from the Catholic Christ-above-culture synthesis, as well as Catholics learning from Evangelical positions such as Christ-and-culture in Paradox, and Christ-as-Transformer of Culture. Catholicism’s positive attitude towards creation provides a needed counterbalance to Protestant’s overemphasis of the Christ-and-culture antithesis. And Protestants need not look far and wide for a more positive attitude towards creation themselves. The idea present in Calvinism that God is sovereign of every sphere of society is fodder for conversation with Catholics if we are humble enough to learn from each other. And ultimately, it is my recommendation that Evangelicals in Catholic contexts respect the life and fruit in the Body of Christ there as it is. We Evangelicals can and should be able to add to the work of Christ in any location. But with Paul we should recognize the challenges involved ed in building on the foundation of another’s labor.

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