In light of Keller's statement about religion and ethnocentrism, I have been thinking more about the nature of both ethnocentrism and whatever is beyond it (Bennett calls it ethnorelativism), especially from the perspective of religious faith.
I would like to reflect a bit more on Bennett's first ethnorelative stage, Acceptance, from my personal journey. As I wrote yesterday,
"I grew up ethnocentrically Christian. The variety of 'Christian' that I was raised in, a Swedish-background Baptist Minnesotan church setting, was all I knew. To me, to be 'Christian' was to be Minnesotan Swedish Baptist (though I didn’t think this explicitly). Then in school I became vaguely aware of the existence of 'Lutherans' around me. I didn’t know anything about them (i.e., I was in Bennett’s Denial stage of ethnocentrism), except that they were different (e.g., the kids had a 'confirmation' class, which I didn’t). Then in 9th grade 'Catholics' flooded into the public school. Again, I knew they were 'Christian,' but I didn’t know how they were different, and assumed that they were somehow not exactly 'right' as Christians (because we were). Then I went to an evangelical Swedish-Baptist background university, but which had some other Protestant evangelical churches and denominations represented. I remember being shocked by some of the ideas, beliefs, convictions, interpretations (of the Bible, of being Christian, etc.), practices, that I ran into. I remember thinking, 'those people aren’t good Christians,' and 'those people don’t know what they’re talking about,' and 'they don’t read the Bible correctly,' and thoughts like that. Ethnocentric thoughts. I was assuming that 'Christian' was universally what it was for me, and that anyone who was different, was wrong..."
My ethnocentrism – again, speaking here in relation to other Christians – was further challenged when I moved overseas, and began meeting Christians who were further beyond the range of my known boundaries of being Christian. These included Pentecostals and Anglicans, at first, and later Catholics and Orthodox (among others). Step by step, my boundaries, my ideas of the range of belief and understanding and interpretation and practice that could be “truly Christian,” were challenged.
Acceptance, for me, has meant respecting these other Christians as equally Christian. It has meant accepting that there are different ways of being Christian, including different interpretations and practices related specifically to Christian faith and church life (e.g., different ways of understanding and practicing baptism or the Lord’s Supper or church government or worship services or the working of the Holy Spirit), and different historical traditions, different ways of using language to talk about faith, etc. It has meant being curious to learn about the views and experiences and convictions, the uniqueness, of other Christians, rather than trying to defend my own way of being Christian.
The difference that growing into Acceptance has meant for me can be illustrated in my response to Brian McLaren’s book, A Generous Orthodoxy. At an earlier point in my journey, I am sure I would have reacted against this book, considering it to be “fuzzy,” blurring boundaries, soft on “truth.” I read it, however, after having worked through the issue of whether Lutherans and Pentecostals and Anglicans, and even Catholics and Orthodox, could be “truly Christian,” and when I read A Generous Orthodoxy, it was with an eagerness to expand my horizons further, to gain insight into some of the unique contributions of different “streams” (as Richard Foster calls them, in his book Streams of Living Water) of Christian faith in the world. A Generous Orthodoxy, in fact, represents an ethnorelative perspective on the Christian faith, an openness to understanding and learning to see the world from the perspective of the “different other” (in this case, the “other” being located within one’s extended family of faith).
Coming next… Adaptation
No comments:
Post a Comment