Culture Quote of the Day - What is Christianity?

In talking about the relationship between faith and culture, or about what some call "contextualization," i.e., how does a person of faith live out that faith in a particular context, we inevitably get into defining the faith we are talking about.


I am within the Christian tradition. It has a long history, and a wide range of phenomena which come somehow under that broad ("Christian") heading. In talking about a particular person or group of people, one might ask, "what does it mean for me (us) to call ourselves 'Christian'?" And another question which inevitably arises is, "what is 'Christianity'?" (I'm somewhat surprised by the degree to which Christian authors refer to "Christianity," but they do, and thus the question arises.)


Here is one author's attempt to address that latter question:


"What is Christianity? For our purposes, I'll define Christianity as the body of believers who assent to these [the Apostle's, Nicene, Chalcedonian, and Athanasian] great ecumenical creeds. They believe that the triune God created the world, that humanity has fallen into sin and evil, that God has returned to rescue us in Jesus Christ, that in his death and resurrection Jesus accomplished our salvation for us so we can be received by grace, that he established the church, his people, as the vehicle through which he continues his mission of rescue, reconciliation, and salvation, and that at the end of time Jesus will return to renew the heavens and the earth, removing all evil, injustice, sin, and death from the world.


"All Christians believe all this - but no Christians believe just this. As soon as you ask, 'How does the church act as vehicle for Jesus' work in the world?' and 'How does Jesus's death accomplish our salvation?' and 'How are we received by grace?' Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians will give you different answers. Despite the claims of many to be such, there are no truly 'generic' nondenominational Christians. Everyone has to answer these 'how' questions in order to live a Christian life, and those answers immediately put you into one tradition and denomination or another."

Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

A couple of reflections on this quote:
1. I find the use of the term "Christianity" awkward. I still find myself thinking that I don't believe in such a thing as "Christianity." Perhaps - and this would fit with the second paragraph above - it would be more appropriate to speak of "Christianities," i.e., the various working out by different people calling themselves "Christian," through the ages. I myself do not see "Christianity" as something which descended from heaven, i.e., which exists in the mind of God, a religious system that has been given to mankind to follow, etc.


2. Keller himself immediately switches from "Christianity" to "Christians," and talks about what Christians agree on and where they differ. I think, both from an anthropological perspective and from a faith perspective, that this is more productive.


3. I would be more happy talking about "Christian [or Christ-centered] faith" (by which I would mean the faith of people who follow the Bible and specifically the teachings of Jesus), than "Christianity" (which, again, smacks of religion or a religious system); or, of Biblical faith, which takes us back to a specific reference point, the Bible, and what we find in it.


All of that aside,
4. This is an interesting attempt to show what you might see as the "essence" or heart or core of Christian faith (the faith of those calling themselves Christian), and how that essence might be worked out in different human (sociocultural, historical) contexts.


5. Note that in choosing the Creeds, he is defining Christianity by belief. One might argue for other definitions, e.g., defining Christians by relationship with Jesus (Jesus himself said, "if you love me, you will obey my commands," and talked about "following" him and other relational and behavioral terms, in addition to talking about believing in him). Is this, then, a comprehensive and adequate definition?


6. I also wonder, would all Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians agree with this definition? Some of the language sounds distinctly Protestant, perhaps even evangelical. And I'm not sure it expresses the essence of Jesus' teaching and mission completely. For example, take the phrase, "Jesus accomplished our salvation for us so we can be received by grace." What is meant by "salvation"? I know of Christians who might say something more like, "Jesus came to usher in the Kingdom of God, offering 'life' to those spiritually 'dead' to God - a life that begins now, as we experience the transforming work of God's spirit, and that continues on after death..." Is this just another way of saying "accomplished our salvation for us," or is it something more? It's difficult, it seems, to concisely define the essence of Christian faith / Jesus's teaching; and it is certainly impossible to escape our cultural vantage point and perspective, in attempting to do so.


But perhaps that's what makes it so interesting to think and talk about...

Is it ethnocentric to claim that claiming that one religion is right, is ethnocentric?

"Many say that it is ethnocentric to claim that our religion is superior to others. Yet isn't that very statement ethnocentric? Most non-Western cultures have no problem saying that their culture and religion is best. The idea that it is wrong to do so is deeply rooted in Western traditions of self-criticism and individualism. To charge others with the 'sin' of ethnocentrism is really a way of saying, 'Our culture's approach to other cultures is superior to yours.' We are then doing the very thing we forbid others to do."

"It is no more narrow to claim that one religion is right than to claim that one way to think about all religions (name that all are equal) is right."

Timothy Keller, The Reason for God

 I have various thoughts about this quote of Keller’s. On the one hand, I respect his reasoning, and I think his book is excellent.

On the other hand, I do not totally agree with this statement about ethnocentrism.

Yes, it is true – and good to think about – that it is impossible to escape our human situation. That is an irony of us trying to “step outside of” our situatedness, to develop a model like Bennett’s DMIS, discussing what it is to be rooted in one way of experiencing and seeing the world (what we call “ethnocentrism”), and what it is like to “grow” or “develop” to a point of knowing our own culture in the context of other cultures and worldviews, etc. (what Bennett calls “ethnorelativism”). Any model, as Keller indicates, is still rooted in a human tradition, a human vantage point, and is subject to critique.

But is Keller rightly using the term “ethnocentric,” and is he accurate in his critique?

Or put another way, might we distinguish between an ethnocentric and a non-ethnocentric way of believing that a religion (or a religious truth, or any truth) is right or true? (And is it the same to claim that your culture is best, as to claim that your religion is right?)

To be “ethnocentric,” at root, is to be bound by the perspective of your ethne, or people, in the “ethnic” / sociocultural sense of people; i.e., the people that one grows up among, lives in the context of, is socialized into. To be ethnocentric is to not realize that there are different cultures and worldviews, or to react against other cultures and worldviews, as we discover them, or to act as if they are basically some kind of subset of our own culture and worldview. It is obviously possible for someone who assumes and proclaims that their religion is true or absolute or best, to be doing so in an ethnocentric way – either ignoring others (Bennett’s Denial), denigrating them (Bennett’s Defense), or somehow seeing other peoples’ religion as subsumed under one’s own (Bennett’s Minimization). It is possible for Christians or Muslims or anyone to be “ethnocentric” (in one of Bennett’s phases) as a Muslim or a Christian in general (toward other religions), or, even toward those in their own broader religious community – e.g., to assume that a particular locally rooted expression of being Christian or Muslim is the only right or true version.

For example, 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 9^th 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. This kind of ethnocentric thinking occurs within every group of people and every religious tradition. But is it inescapable? I would say no.

Setting aside the question of whether the truth claim of a given religion may in fact be right, responding to others from a standpoint of ethnocentrism has at least two problems for us as religious people / people of faith (I will proceed on an assumption that what I am saying may apply to any religious people). First, as I have argued previously, relating to people ethnocentrically is not loving, and thus falls short of what Jesus calls the second greatest commandment (after the command to love God; and I have read Jewish and Muslim authors that say that Judaism and Islam share these two great commandments with Christianity). In addition, living in and from ethnocentrism in our view of and relationship with others, is a crippled sort of living, in many senses – we do not truly know ourselves, we do not truly know others, and we do not have the deepest and most positive relationship with those who differ from us.

But perhaps the bigger question (if you will allow the above reasoning to stand) is whether it is possible for someone to believe in ultimate truth, e.g., the truth of a religious faith, and relate to others in a non-ethnocentric way?

One distinction that would apply at least to Christian faith and Islam, it seems, is that they are not tribal or ethnic religions, rooted in / bound to a particular people or place. Where is ethnocentrism, one might ask, if a mixed group of people from around the world, and who are fully aware of the existence and reality of various cultures and worldviews, and who might even have lived in different cultural settings and experienced the adaptation or integration that Bennett talks about as the final ethnorelative stages of experiencing cultural difference, make a universal truth claim about their religious faith (if by “their” faith we mean, not a locally rooted expression of Christianity or Islam, but what all or most Christians or Muslims might agree upon as the historical essence or heart of the faith)?

Does it make a difference, in regard to ethnocentrism, whether religious people are focused on external forms or on content / substance / essence? Again, it is easy enough to see the ethnocentrism in a particular group of Christians in a specific locale, who have little contact even with other Christians, arguing that a certain way of organizing their worship or doing church government, is the Biblical or Christian way (with the implication that all other Christians around the world and through history are wrong). But what if we “stripped down” the truth claims to content rather than form or structure? What if, looking across the breadth of ways of working out being Christian, through history and across the world, we emphasized what all might agree on, e.g., that it is about receiving life through Jesus and following him; that God is to be worshiped; that there are sacraments to be practiced (with the recognition that we might disagree on the number and on how they should be embodied in practice); etc. What if we practiced our best understanding of Christian faith, without judging other Christians as being wrong or less Christian than we are? Is it possible to imagine being committed Christians without being ethnocentric toward other Christians?

I would suggest that it is.

But what about between religions, then?

Bennett argues, in his model, that ethnorelativism entails adapting to another culture, learning to see the world from a different perspective, and to adapt behavior appropriate to that setting. It involves coming to see another cultural setting as viable, another way of being human. It does not involve assimilation, i.e., giving up one’s own culture for the other. And it does not involve losing one’s own sense of values, giving up value judgments. 

So is it not possible for a Muslim, living in a Christian cultural setting, to remain a fully convinced Muslim, convinced that s/he is on the right path, that the Qur’an is the final revelation from God and that Muhammad is the final Prophet, etc., while at the same time experiencing what it is to accept and adapt to/within the Christian cultural setting? Is it not possible for a Christian, living in a Muslim or some other (Jewish, Hindu, etc.) religious setting, to remain fully convinced that Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord and Savior, the giver of life, the one who reconciles people to God, etc., while at the same time experiencing what it is to accept and adapt to the culture of the other?

It would be ethnocentric for me as a Christian to look at Islam through a Christian framework (which is, I would suggest, where all Christians start out, in looking at Muslims or others). But what if I grow in ethnorelativism, in acceptance and adaptation and integration, entering into the world of Muslims, learning to understand their faith and practice (and broader culture) from within, to see the world from their vantage point, to see how it makes sense, how they interpret and generate behavior, etc.? But what if I still remain convinced that Jesus is the source of life, that he is the incarnate Word of God, that He gave his life to reconcile people to God, that He rose from the dead and will return again, etc.? What if I believe He is relevant to all people, offers life to all? What if I bear witness to that, to Him, to Muslims (without forcing anything on anyone, or condemning or judging anyone)?

Is it necessarily ethnocentric for someone of religious faith to live their faith, even to share it with others (in terms of “this is what I have found – perhaps you will find it relevant”), if done in a way that does not put down or judge the other, if there is respect for the other’s humanity and freedom and choice, if done with the realization that judgment belongs to God alone, and that we people always “see through a glass darkly,” may get one thing or another wrong, etc.?

I would suggest that if Bennett or any non-believing anthropologist claims that to have any sense of anything being ultimately true, is to be ethnocentric, in that case I would agree with Keller that that anthropologist (or whoever) is indeed being ethnocentric, imposing his/her secular social scientific worldview on the rest of us. And I would say, thank you, Dr. Bennett (or whoever), for the model and the concepts, but we are not limited by how you define ethnocentrism (or reality).

This reflection, though long, is just a beginning, just scratching the surface of a complex and I would guess controversial subject. If you have thoughts or questions or insights, feel free to post them. More will come from my side, as well.

And at the end of this long reflection, I’ll leave it to the reader to judge, am I agreeing or disagreeing with Keller’s statement about ethnocentrism?

Can Christianity be Reconciled with Feminism: Further Thoughts

I have been thinking quite a bit about this question of reconciling feminism with Christianity, and decided to write up some further thoughts.

First, about “feminism.” Of course, this term may cover a wide range of phenomena, so to discuss the question in depth would necessitate specifying what exactly one means by feminism. 

My conviction as a follower of Jesus is that his teaching to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, plus Paul’s teaching that “there is in Christ no male or female,” plus the statement at the beginning of Genesis that male and female are created in the image of God, would clearly indicate that men and women have equal value in the sight of God, and should be treated accordingly. My conviction is that Jesus’ teachings should lead us to actively work for human and civil rights for all people, and certainly for women. And that we should decry all mistreatment of women, in history and today, and do our best to put an end to it.

Or as my daughter recently put it, feminism might be defined as meaning that women are human. Full stop.

More can be built on this core, of course, but as I understand both feminism and the teachings of Jesus and the Bible, they are compatible; in fact, feminism defined in this way is an essential element of Christian faith. This is to say that it is not relative, i.e., that it is not okay (though it has happened throughout history), to conceive of a “Christianity” in which women are considered to be of less value than men, can be treated as possessions or sex objects, etc.

I also want to say more about “Christianity.” The heart of things, as I read the Bible, is relationship with God through Jesus – i.e., faith in God, through Jesus, and a life that consists of living out that faith, living according to his teachings. That faith, however, must be lived out in a specific human context – a sociocultural, religious, political, historical context. (This is what some of us refer to as “contextualization” – living out faith in a particular context.)

Those who follow Jesus, and who are generally known as “Christians” (note that there is a range of variation as to what those who self-identify as Christians, mean by that identification, and also a range as to what others take the name to mean), live out their faith in various ways, and differ in their beliefs, convictions, practices, etc. In many respects, those beliefs and practices reflect the sociocultural context in which they find themselves. And of course there are different churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and many variations within those), with different interpretations, beliefs, practices, rituals, and other outworkings of their faith.

One might call all of that, “Christianity”; and one might argue about what is “true” Christianity and what is not, and talk about extrabiblical practices, folk religion, etc. And one cannot always or easily draw boundaries between what is “religious” and what is not (when trying to pin down what exactly is meant by “Christianity”).

It is also worth noting, from an anthropological perspective, that feminism has many more complex variations than simply the view that women are human; that feminism itself, in those more complex outworkings, is a cultural phenomena (and not an absolute, outside of culture set of values or truths); and that having a high view of women does not necessitate being “feminist” (depending on how it is defined in detail). In other words, it is possible to be a true and faithful follower of Jesus, but not be a “feminist” as some people define the term. Being a “feminist” is a possible but not necessary component of being a “Christian” (depending on how that feminism is defined – and again, I am not talking about mistreatment of women, but of culturally different ways of defining the relationship between men and women, their roles, etc.)

I would maintain, for example (as an anthropologist and as a Christian), that it is not against the view that women are human, to believe that there are different roles for men and women in the church. And it is not an essential outworking of the view that women are human (conversely), to say that women should be able to be pastors. Either view and practice could be an outworking of a commitment to treating women as human; i.e., there can be different cultural expressions of being Christian (based on different interpretation of relevant biblical passages) that are compatible with feminism defined as “women are human.” (And there could be outworkings of being Christian, or outworkings of feminism, that are not compatible with each other, with the possibility that incompatibility lies either with the understanding of being Christian being off center to the Gospel, or with the definition of feminism being off center to the Gospel).

At the end of the day, then, I suppose the answer to the question must be, it depends on what you mean by “Christianity,” and it depends on what you mean by “feminism.” And people who claim to be Christian, and people who claim to be feminist, and those who claim to be both, disagree on the essence of those categories. And so the discussion goes on… And this process of definition and expression (both of Christian faith and of feminism) is at the heart of the relationship between faith and culture.

***

P.S. If you are "Christian" or "feminist" or both, I would appreciate your thoughts on this. 

To be or not to be "Christian"

There is an interesting article by Brian McLaren (author of “A Generous Orthodoxy” and “A New Kind of Christian” and several other books which I find to be fascinating studies in the relationship of faith and culture, or the living out of the life of faith “in context”), on novelist Anne Rice’s decision to “quit Christianity” (see http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/02/my-take-why-i-support-anne-rice-but-am-still-a-christian/?iref=allsearch).

I would like to add another perspective both on Rice’s decision and on McLaren’s comments on that decision. (I would recommend the article for the full details of McLaren’s discussion.)

From an anthropological perspective, what Rice is reacting against is a parochial, ethnocentric, naturally human phenomenon of creating and protecting one’s group and boundaries – in this case, “Christian” and “Christianity” (however broadly or narrowly defined) – against those perceived to be outside of the group or the boundaries. She came to conclude that to be “Christian” means to be “anti-gay … anti-feminist … anti-artificial birth control … anti-Democrat … anti-secular humanism … anti-science … anti-life.”

I would comment that (a) that definition of “Christian” is one particular group’s definition, not by any means shared by all those around the world who go by the name “Christian”, and that (b) were we to explore the roots of those various beliefs, we would find a mix of Biblical texts / values / principles and cultural interpretations (which would also differ from the interpretations of other groups of “Christians” at different times and places). In other words, there would not be agreement, through time or around the world, that to be “Christian” is to be all of these things. And I would argue, as a person within the broad category of “Christian,” that on several of these points, those arguing that to be true to Jesus is to be these things which Rice feels that she cannot be, are simply wrong – wrong, that is, in arguing that these beliefs are indisputably “biblical,” divine, of God, universal. The human and the divine, in this case (as in many others), have gotten mixed up, in ways that are not relevant to all people in all contexts.

And what Rice is doing, in trying to emphasize attachment to Jesus rather than his followers or what they consider to be “Christianity,” is trying to separate the human and relative and changing from the divine and absolute and universal.

Her reasoning, and McLaren’s in response to her decision, is reasoning that I share. As someone who wants to know and be true to God, through following and living by the teachings of Jesus, I am concerned not to bind up that which is human, connected specifically to a particular group of people or time and place, with my faith. Someone may be a follower of Jesus and (happen to) be anti-Democrat or anti-secular humanism, but those beliefs are not necessarily dictated by Jesus, and other followers of Jesus may have different perspectives on those (and other) matters.

(On the side from this conversation, one of the reasons that I value multicultural “Christian” community and settings another topic, is that we gain insight, through comparing similarities and differences, into what is shared and perhaps absolute, and what is human and culture-bound.)

I would add, further, that “Christianity” is a human religious construction. It has some (perhaps much, in some cases) of Jesus and his teachings wrapped up in it, but also much that is human and cultural. I do not see “Christianity” in the Bible or in the teachings of Jesus, and do not think it helps us to talk about people “converting to Christianity” or “believing in Christianity.” We convert to and believe in and live in relationship with Jesus, not the broad complex of religious ordinances and principles and regulations and rituals and practices, etc., which have come to be known as “Christianity.”

I agree with McLaren that “there’s no escaping the human condition,” with our fallenness and failings. I also agree with him that all religion – which I understand as the complex of rituals and practices, etc., that people have constructed, as they attempt to seek and honor God – is failed (at least, in the sense that all religions have failed to truly change or reform people through an emphasis on external practices and controls, and in the sense that all religious groups have failed to love their neighbor as themselves, to live according to God’s highest ideals for human relationships). And I appreciate his “redefining Christianity” so that it doesn’t mean that he feels superior to anyone by being a “Christian.” (I think he’s onto something in talking about the “Kingdom of God” – a concept which Jesus talked about nonstop – rather than “Christianity.”) His thoughts remind me of what the Korean-American pastor Jin Kim of the Church of All Nations (www.cando.org) calls being “penitently Presbyterian” (or “Christian”) – i.e., accepting one’s background and rootedness, but not being triumphalist, acting as if that way of being “Christian” (or human) is better than that of other groups.

If more of us who go by the name “Christian” were “penitently” Christian (and beyond that, focused more on being true to Jesus, and less on establishing and defending our brand of “Christianity”), perhaps fewer people would feel the need to distance themselves from us. And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter so much whether people are distancing themselves from “Christianity,” as whether they are drawing closer to Jesus. The greatest tragedy, I think, is when “Christians” have the effect of pushing people away from Jesus.