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Introduction

One of the ironies of virtually all religious traditions is that the power which draws and holds members together in religious community seems to be matched by an equal and opposite compulsion to exclude non-members. In the case of Christianity it is obvious that the checkered history of the universal Church has led many to understand that to be Christian is to be a people set apart, a people with a separate exclusive communal identity. In this the understanding of baptism has been crucial. Considered absolutely necessary for salvation, the Church has on the basis of baptism neatly divided human beings into categories of 'pagans` and 'believers`, 'saved` and 'damned`. This thought pattern, which has been dominant in the Church for centuries, was clearly expressed by the Council of Trent when it declared "If anyone says that baptism is optional, that is, not necessary for salvation, anathema sit." The well known principle extra Ecclesiam nulla salus, or the most notorious position of Boniface VIII, "Furthermore we declare, state, define, and pronounce that it is altogether necessary to salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff," are but further indications of this exclusive attitude - dominant but by no means universal - of the Church which separates Christians from all others.

From quite a different tradition is an early Baptist confession formulated at Amsterdam in 1611 C.E. It reads:

Several assumptions clearly underlie these statements from two very different traditions within the Church.

Arguably some of the most ugly consequences of such an exclusive stance in the Church's missionary enterprise, and the consequent urgency to baptize, have been forced or induced 'conversions`, signed and sealed by baptism. Further compounding these consequences in India and elsewhere, has been the fact that conversion and baptism, though fundamentally consequences of the exercise of personal conscience have assumed marked social and political overtones and repercussions which have enhanced 'communalistic` tendencies both within and outside the Church. Moreover, the common perception of the "westernization" of Indian Christians has been a major factor in making baptism a divisive factor in Indian society, especially from the late 15th and early 16th centuries onwards. The observation of a Roman Catholic writer is indicative.

From another perspective the Indian Christian convert has been described "as deracinated, and as an outcaste, no longer recognizable as a functioning member of his or her former community....in terms of the loss of caste and the pronouncement of civil death by Hindu law."

It is for these reasons that numerous Indians consider Christian conversion and baptism to be effective denationalization. For many conversion to Christianity is offensive, a betrayal of India's national heritage, an alienation harmful to the life of the nation, a disturbance having undesirable political and economic implications. British colonial records "reveal with astonishing clarity how not only Hindus and Muslims but also the British regarded conversion as a disruptive act." Certainly such feelings, whether justifiable or not, produce consequences which cannot be ignored by the Church in India.

Confronted with this kind of reality, our present concern calls for a perspective on baptism which differs from the more usual biblical or theological approaches. One could, of course, usefully engage in an examination of baptism in its biblical context, attempting particularly to formulate a theological discernment of the dividing and uniting aspects of baptism - the 'sword` that the Christ brings, and the 'peace` that the Christ offers. However, we propose, in the Indian context, to look at baptism from a more explicitly socio-political perspective. This will involve a consideration of the prevalent caste ideology and the growing impact of Hindu revaunchist groups which consider the Christian enterprise as a threat to Indian national unity and integrity. We shall examine proposals made by some `Hindu-Christians' - Hindus who follow the Christ without renouncing their hindutva or "Hinduness" - where baptism does not separate but enables one to work with others for the Kingdom of God. Various implications of this kind of approach will be considered. We shall conclude with a suggestion that we learn to look at Christian identity not primarily in terms of rites and rituals, but in terms of commitment to the Kingdom of God, with all those who are committed to it in terms of opposition to sin in its personal and structural manifestations. This will involve a life of love, renewing humanity and creation, which will become obvious if we pay attention to the meaning of baptism.

THE MEANING OF BAPTISM IN ITS BIBLICAL CONTEXT

The Old Testament does not, as far as I am aware, know baptism, or a similar rite. However, phenomenologically baptism belongs both to the category of ablution rites, in which water is used as a symbol of religious purification, as well as to the rites of initiation, involving a symbolic dying to the old self and rising to a new state of existence. Such rites can be observed in many religious traditions and they are also present in the Old Testament, the Qumran community, Jewish baptismal sects and Judaism in general. These phenomena partly form the background of the New Testament understanding of baptism.

Ablution as an act of purification was an important element in the Old Testament. Perhaps it is significant that the Septuagint translates the Hebrew verb tabal -a technical term connected with the ablutions and baths for the removal of ritual impurities - with the Greek bapto ["to dip"]. The rite of the Day of Atonement involves the priest taking a ritual bath. Ablution was also required in a number of life situations, e.g. after the consumption of ritually unclean food, after emission of semen, after sexual intercourse, and after contact with ritually unclean persons or things. It is obvious that these ablutions are not solitary acts performed once for all. They are to be repeated whenever there is need for them. According to the dominant world view of the times, it was through these acts of purification the possibility of communion with God and with the members of the community is restored. However, it needs to be recognised that such purity rules contain the seeds of exclusion. They are drawn up by a social group to define the boundaries which separate times, places, persons and things which are `sacred' [set apart for God] from those that are `profane'[set apart from God]. In the Jewish religious tradition these purity rules formed a closely interlocking network which clearly marked off the sacred precincts of the Temple, the holy land of Israel, and the covenant people of God (or groups of the `separated' within the people), from the `profane' world peopled by the `demon-ruled nations' outside. Obviously such a system of purities would foster exclusive ideals and practices, particularly in groups like the sectarian Qumran community or the Pharisees who carried its separatism to extremes.

In a more `secular' vein, the prophets use the symbolism of baptism to express not so much the traditional values of ritual purity as the idea of moral purification. In other Old Testament texts the purification which is carried out by God brings into being a nation of the future and final salvation. This kind of purification is not the purification of individuals, but of Israel as a whole, an eschatological act.

It was, however, early Christian reflection which endowed baptism with a wealth of meaning and a variety of interpretations. Some of these have affinities with Jewish proselyte baptism, others with the practice of circumcision, and still others with certain aspects of the 'mystery religions`. But the immediate connection of Christian baptism is with the baptism of John.

Early Palestinian Christian tradition understood baptism as an eschatological reality binding believers to the eschatological person of the Messiah, conveying them into the end-time reality of the Kingdom, bestowing on them the eschatological gift of the Holy Spirit and the forgiveness of sin, and incorporating them into the company of those redeemed by the Christ. Baptism was experienced as an eschatological act, "eschatology put into practice", as it were. It manifests the coming of God, through the Christ, into human life. Jesus accepted and altered John's eschatology of judgement into an eschatology of forgiveness and mercy.

Hellenistic Christianity saw baptism as a sacrament of dying and rising, thus sharing in the experience and destiny of the crucified and risen Lord. From this Hellenistic theology there developed the understanding of baptism as new birth and new creation - ideas familiar to the mystery religions, but corrected by linking the interpretation with eschatology and by introducing moral obligations. Significantly, in the New Testament, `washing' and `purification' is not so much ritual cleansing as it is moral transformation. For all Christians - Palestinian and Hellenistic - baptism meant admission to the people of the Covenant and to all its blessings. The close association of proselyte baptism with circumcision, and in particular with the prophetic idea of circumcision of the heart led naturally to the view that baptism took the place of circumcision, or that it was the Christian circumcision incorporating women and men into the new people of God, made up alike of Jews and Gentiles. In this Jesus, with his radical redrawing of the purity regulations of the Jewish religious tradition had certainly led the way. With his pronouncement that "there is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him," but that it is "the things which come out of a man that defile him," Jesus delivers a devastating denunciation of Jewish exclusivism. This can only mean that distinctions between what is holy [set apart for God] and what is profane [set apart from God] were set at naught.

Baptism, therefore, means remission of sins, reception of the Spirit, belonging to the Messiah, entry into the new people of God, the true circumcision, sharing in the blessings of the Kingdom, dying and rising with the Christ, rebirth to become a new creation and leading a resurrection existence morally blameless. Related to these are ideas like adoption as sons and daughters of God through the gift of the Son's Spirit, restoration of the lost likeness of God, call and commitment to mission and witness, and equipment for endurance. For the early Church, then, baptism was not a thing in itself, nor merely one of many aspects of Christian existence. Baptism was for the early Christians a foundational experience, a reality which derived its meaning from the Gospel of which it was the enactment and effective representation. It was "the symbol of the kerygma, the locus where in faith and freedom people took hold of the Gospel and let the Gospel take hold of them. However, from among the various meanings of baptism, we shall explore four which seem particularly relevant to our present concern. They are i) conversion - death to sin; ii) participation in the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus; iii) commitment to the Kingdom, and iv) entrance into Christian community.

Acceptance of the Good News and repentance cannot but imply a new pattern of life. The Good News of God's unconditional love is at the root of the movement of freedom from self and from bondage, to fellowship, justice, the Kingdom of God. Conversion is not just an individualistic change of heart but a new mode of life resulting in a new pattern of relationship in society. The by now thoroughly studied and discussed Lima Document talks of this new pattern of life in terms of "new ethical orientations". Conversion implies a rejection of the value system that exists in the 'world`, namely, of the value system based on `having': one is what one has, be it possessions, positions, success, good name, achievements. It is, therefore, the rejection of cupidity and differentiating wealth; of lust for power, pleasure and domination; it is a repudiation of racism, casteism, sexism and all values opposed to the Gospel. Conversion is that move

This is the picture we get in the short description of the first Christian community in Acts 2:42ff., 4:32ff. and what is suggested in Jn.4:24. The early Christians saw conversion as a rejection of sin. Though slowly the complexities of the idea of original sin and freedom from original sin entered the scene, the clear meaning in Acts and elsewhere was the rejection of actual sins, personal and social. A sinner refuses to live by God's love, refuses to be in a relationship of obedient love to God and self-sacrificing love to others. God takes the initiative in coming to the sinner and welcomes him/her through the love and acceptance of the community. When the sinner allows him/herself to be touched by that love, to let that love be operative in her/his self, s/he there is new being [2 Cor.5:17 Jerusalem Bible]. His/her pattern of relationship is changed: relation to things - instead of appropriating for self, sharing; relation to others - instead of dominating and manipulating, self-giving service; and relation to God - instead of fearful self-serving, joyful obedience. The rejection of sin is not merely an opposition to personal sins, but also to its structural forms, namely, the unjust power structures that keep millions enslaved, hungry, and impoverished, that oppress, alienate and dehumanise God's children on earth.

In conversion the God-ward, Christ-ward movement is central and it is necessarily expressed in a renewed pattern of relationship in society. But it is not primarily a change of religious traditions, cultures, societies. "Christians... are not interested in horizontal conversions - a mere change from one's religious tradition to Christianity, leaving the person on the same level of character and way of life." The reason this issue has been dealt with at such length is precisely because of the misunderstanding that is so prevalent in India about conversions.

Conversion, rejection of sin is, therefore, the beginning of a new way of life, a new way of relating to God, people and things. This is also expressed in terms of participating in the mystery of Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Significantly enough, the Lima Document, when it talks about participation in the mystery of Jesus's life, death and resurrection, refers to Jesus' own baptism which meant solidarity with 'sinners`, immersion in the culture of the despised masses as against the culture of the priests, scribes, the rich and the pharisees. It was his stand in favour of justice and its fulfilment, which is good news to the poor, but bad news for him, as it led him to his death. Jesus spoke of his death as a baptism, because his baptism was the beginning of a life of commitment to the cause of the exploited masses, which led him, in turn to his death. Jesus' death, which sums up his entire life, is the "one baptism" we profess in the Creed. The Apostles did not receive a ritual baptism, but were totally immersed in the Christ event. The link between his baptism, ministry, passion and death on behalf of the oppressed, crippled, despised, and the like, appears clearly in Mark's Gospel.

Our baptism, then, as an immersion into the Christ event, into the life of the one who lived and died for the wholeness of people, becomes our commitment, even unto death, to human solidarity in a given historical situation. That is why becoming a follower of Jesus is not a rush for privileges and priorities, but readiness to be baptised in the same 'bath of pain` in which he was baptised. Our baptism is our "joining Jesus in the eager service of giving our life in ransom for the oppressed multitude (Mk.1:45)." It is our option to follow his path, a dedication of life in solidarity with our fellow human beings, especially those who are fettered, voiceless and kept down. This is also spoken of as putting on Christ, putting off the old man and the acceptance of the new value system. Undue mystification of the 'participation in the death and resurrection of Jesus` has caused us to lose sight of its historical, social effects and challenges.

The entrance into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is a commitment to that to which Jesus was committed, and for which he died, the bringing about of the Kingdom of God. In other words it is doing what the Christ came to the world for: effectively to proclaim and prophetically to act out the reality of the Kingdom - foot washing, table fellowship, association with outcastes, women, 'sinners`, healings, exorcisms, etc. Paul speaks of having the mind and heart of Jesus in us, which means looking at reality through his eyes, loving as he loved, and thus being committed to work for a more just society, a society of freedom, fellowship and human solidarity. The values of Jesus, when accepted in truth, will have social consequences. They will call for a totally new pattern of relationships, as the first Christians so clearly understood. The Kingdom values of freedom, justice, harmony, spirit of sharing, respect, etc. will have to find social expressions in alternative structures.

At this point I merely refer to the matter of entrance into the faith community as it will be dealt with at greater length later. This is, in fact, a very ancient idea. "Through baptism, man becomes a part of the new humanity which is the body of Christ, and thus comes to share in the resurrection of the heat of the body, Christ the Lord," is the way a study on Iranaeus has been summed up. Following this classical tradition, virtually all branches of the Church stress the idea that baptism implies membership in the body of the Christ, the Church, an entrance into a brother/sisterhood, a communion, fellowship of all in the spirit of the Christ. People are "incorporated into the Church by baptism," baptism ,therefore, constitutes the sacramental bond of unity existing among all who through it are 'reborn`. While this is certainly an ancient tradition it does raise questions in our times, as we shall see presently.

Before we proceed to the next section of our discussion, it may be well to sum up what we have seen so far. We have seen that baptism, whether we look at it as a conversion, rejection of sin, as entrance into the paschal mystery, means 'putting on` the Christ, an acceptance of his value system, with and like him being committed to the cause of God's Kingdom. Just as Jesus brought the 'sword` that divides, separates son from father, daughter from mother (Lk.12: 51-53), the stand one takes for the Kingdom will be in opposition to the prevailing value system in the world and hence an opposition to those who dominate, exploit and 'kill`, and in that sense will be a great dividing event. But conversion is not primarily a change of religious tradition, culture, social custom, except in so far as they are opposed to the Gospel. Indeed,

BAPTISM AND COMMUNITY

Does the acceptance of baptism mean necessarily a membership in a new sociological group? Does one give up one's native community and become a member of another community? Does being a 'new creature` affect one's social belonging? In the context of the history of the Church in India, and many other parts of the world, this point is crucially central. Beginning primarily with the missionary activities of the Portuguese in India in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Christian converts became for all practical purposes outcastes, cut off from caste and community. There are instances where converts were forced to eat meat, drink wine and take on other "western" ways, perhaps to prevent lapses into their former religious tradition. For the dalits this change was, in a way, a release from caste oppression; for many, being like "westerners" meant having an enhanced status. Whatever the reason, Christians are considered not to belong any more to the castes to which they originally belonged. Hence, in part, the fear that becoming a Christian means ceasing to be an Indian.

It is well known that eminent Indians like Mahatma Gandhi, Keshub Chunder Sen and many others who, while admiring the teachings and person of the Christ, were opposed to baptism, as it implied a change of culture and community. For many, even today, the attitudes and practices of Christian missionaries have much to do with their opposition to conversion. Orthoprax Hindus see conversion not so much as a spiritual event, but as a social, civil, 'political` event whereby a person ceases to be a member of the Hindu community and becomes a member of the Christian community. They understand baptism as the renunciation of one's own social community and the joining of another, in this case, a "foreign anti-national group".

This supposed change of social group has also legal consequences. For example, "the Hindu law does not apply to converts to Christianity". The issue needs further examination.

Such being the case, Saldanha asks, "could Hindus professing the Christian faith have remained Hindus?" He studies carefully the term 'hindu` to see who are considered Hindu according to Indian law, and shows that the term is applied to many different groups with very different faith commitments and belief systems. So he concludes:

Saldanha refers to the fact that the Kerala Christians had followed the Hindu laws of succession for centuries. Even after the promulgation of the Indian Succession Act in 1865 in the rest of the land, in the states of Travancore and Cochin this law was not made effective. In this regard it is important to recall that it was these Christians who had resisted the efforts of the Diamper Synod to impose on them Portuguese customs of succession. Such precedents, which are admittedly few, suggest the possibility of pressing demands for a change in the law, to include Christians within the purview of Hindu personal law.

Indeed, one would think that, given the avowed profession of and firm constitutional foundations for secularism in India, the prospects for a uniform civil code - code of personal law for all Indians irrespective of religious affiliation - would be bright. The reality, in fact, is otherwise.

While there can be no denying that in the past acceptance of the Christian faith implied a change in community and culture, it is certainly not a necessary corollary of such an action. The teaching of the Church is clear on this point, and while one could quote ancient and traditional sources, we restrict ourselves to more contemporary guides in the persons of a number of present day missiologists. With minor variations, they hold views similar to those of Brahmabandhab Upadhyay, namely that the Hindu tradition is a samaj dharma or societal tradition which is open to a variety of sadhana dharma(s) or spiritual traditions. Indeed, it is well known that in the Hindu tradition there is no fixed belief system or cult that is obligatory for all Hindus. Membership is primarily a matter of birth.

On the other hand, being a Christian, it is argued, is a matter of sadhana

dharma which does not demand a distinct samaj dharma. While the approach of all these authors is basically the same, a few words seem in order regarding Brahmabandhab, since he was the first to advocate such a theory, as do also some observations concerning the relation between Christianity/Christians and Hindu society in Tamilnadu. Regrettably, in both cases present time and space permit no more than a mere reference note.

Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861-1907) has been described by his admirers as "the greatest Hindu that ever found his way to Christ." Concerning Brahmabandhab's conversion Julius Lipner observes:

Here we are primarily interested in Brahmabandhab's attempt to give content to his self-description as a 'Hindu-Catholic`. This he developed by pointing out that just as Christianity is different from European culture and European thought, so Hindu culture is different from Hindu religion. Hinduism, he held, is both samaj dharma and sadhana dharma. The former denotes social custom and a way of life, while the latter is about individual moksa or salvation, and is basically unrelated to cultural idiom. Because of this distinction Brahmabandhab asserted that an Indian can be a Christian by faith and a Hindu in social custom and belonging. As Brahmabandhab wrote in his newspaper Sophia:

This conviction grew with the advancing years, and to all appearances he lived like a Hindu. When he returned from Europe he underwent the prayascitta (lit. "penance," or "atonement") ceremony, prescribed by the Hindu tradition for all Hindus returning from abroad. Considering the goddess Sarasvati as a symbol of art and learning, he permitted his pupils to perform Sarasvati puja [a rite of divine veneration] at the time of Sarasvat Ayatam, the annual festival honoring the goddess . His insistence on remaining a Brahman till death did not weaken nor diminish his attachment to the Christ and to his Church. However, since the name 'Christian` had come to indicate one who eats meat, drinks wine, wears trousers and has become thoroughly westernized, Brahmabandhab did not like to be known as a 'Christian`. In spite of all this Animananda and other friends assure us that he remained a Catholic to his death, though he was, in accordance to his own wishes, cremated according to Hindu rites.

The type of Hindu-Christian interaction which Brahmabandhab articulated and lived out was primarily personal and individual. However, it is also important to acknowledge the larger societal dimensions of our concern, for which we refer to the very different kind of work done by an anthropologist, C.D.F. Mosse in a study of a mixed Hindu-Christian village in Ramnad District of Tamilnadu. The issue, as addressed by Mosse, involves on the one hand "the existence of structural continuities between Hindu and Christian social and supernatural worlds, and on the other the relationship of the distinctive Christian institutions and the universal ideals and values of Christianity to this cultural matrix in which the religion is embedded."

All too briefly stated, Mosse gets at this problem in several ways; first by establishing that Christians are party to the same service relations, and employ the same ritual servants for 'impurity removal` - barbers, funeral servants, etc. - as Hindus. Furthermore, while 'excluded` from the services of certain Hindu priests (brahman, pantaram), they nonetheless have Christian specialists (the kovilpillai and the Pallar pantaram) who occupy the same structural position as the Hindu priests (purohits). Interestingly enough, the Christian priest's services fall outside this structural order, which finds its logic in the opposition of purity and impurity. Simultaneously, there is also ample evidence that in the formal structure of Christian life-crisis rituals themselves (puberty, marriage, death), there is again continuity with those of the Hindus. In particular there is the same association of transition with heat and impurity, and the return to normality with coolness and purification.

However, in other contexts these associations, together with notions of purity and impurity, are abandoned, as for example when the bier is taken into the church building for the funeral service/mass. Further continuity is apparent in the structuring of the Hindu and Christian supernatural worlds; a continuity which could well and does co-exist with radical theological differences, just as caste among Christians exists with a religious ideology which denies it. Mosse suggests that "the characteristics of the Catholic saints, like the Hindu deities of the village, are in part defined in their relation with other superior and inferior forms of the divinity around the notion of the bivalent sacrifice." Here the inferior or negative aspects of divinity (represented by the blood-thirsty Hindu deities) are included as complementary to the superior and life-giving aspects of divinity. These complementarities within the divinity (between, e.g., saints and deities of the village) take the form of hierarchical relationships of service and subordination which mirror those of village society.

In sum then, many 19th and early 20th century Christian missionaries, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, seem, in fact, to have functioned from the model which Brahmabandhab articulated in terms of samaj dharma or religio-social identity and sadhana dharma of private subjective religious experience. They presented Christianity in a very spiritual or otherworldly form. Its concerns lay beyond the social world of caste. Salvation - appropriated by means of baptism - was a matter of totally rejecting 'pagan` religion and, through the Church (i.e. the clergy) and its sacraments, receiving the forgiveness and grace of God. At the same time a more immediate power was available for the confrontation of evil and misfortune, often conceived in indigenous terms as possession by pay-picacu (spirits), through the saints, exorcists and to some extent the clerics themselves. Mosse observes that the missionaries' accommodation of caste, and their weak political position, provided Christians with a distinctive religious tradition, but not a new social identity. Indeed, the missionaries' rejection of things Hindu, and encouragement of Christian spirituality probably further enabled the development of a complex hierarchy of Christian divine beings - in the form of the ubiquitous cult of the saints - parallel to, and to some extent structured by the same principles as, the Hindu divine hierarchy. What was important to these missionaries was not so much the form of worship but rather that the object of worship was Christian rather than Hindu. What was distinctive about Christianity was not the socio-cultural form, samaj dharma, but its religious or spiritual content, sadhana dharma.

Mosse concludes that today in Ramnad Christianity is taking a form which increasingly challenges the complementarities of its traditional relationship to Hindu society. The Church imposes an egalitarian social order in the organisation of its rituals and is increasingly involved in secular affairs, thus collapsing the complementarity of religious equality and caste hierarchy, and more generally of the sacred and the secular. At the same time the divine power both for salvation and for relief from suffering and misfortune is directly available to villagers less and less mediated by the Church hierarchy and the hierarchical order of saints, but more and more mirroring that of the Hindu pantheon.

In completing this section a few observations may be made. Even though some Hindus accept a distinction between culture and religion, the distinction between samaj dharma or religio-social identity and sadhana dharma or private subjective religious experience would not be acceptable to most Hindus, as there is no such distinction for them. In the Hindu tradition all is social and all is religious. However, in the context of the past where converts had been forcefully drawn from their community and made outcastes, this approach has much to its credit. Even though the samaj-sadhana distinction may not be accurate, what is intended by it is that the disciples of Jesus, the Isupanthis do not become a separate 'civic group`, a political identity. Here, the Christian community is a "community of faith, not a community of sociological identity." The Jesus community remains one in faith but diverse in social customs, culture and the like. Without becoming a new civic group, culturally too they retain their original jati, except for the faith dimension and the discarding of the varna ideology. One may not forget, however, that though the jati system is independent of the varna ideology, in fact, they have become identified and so may continue to function, even without the explicit support of the ideology. The main thrust of this missiological approach is valid since, from the perspective of the Christian faith, there is no reason why conversion and baptism should involve changing one's civic community. In the Indian context the retention of one's civic identity is important especially because of the accusations of 'extra territorial loyalty` of the Christians and their being 'governed` from the outside. This is even more important today given the rightist propaganda ploy that conversion and baptism are political moves to destabilize the country.

CHRISTIAN IDENTITY

Needless to say, terms like "religious identity" or "subjective experience" are no less open to critical scrutiny for their suggestions of a fixed referential meaning than the split between public and private realms of experience that they come to signify. However, in basic respects it is true to observe that in the conflicting messages that Christian converts receive about their religious identity - how are they to reconcile themselves to being socially Hindu when they have adopted Christianity? - ordinary Indian Christians have little recourse to anything like a language of subjectivity that offers them the means to express their relation either to doctrine or community. However, in the context of powerful forces seemingly establishing the terms of Christian self-definition to the point that it could be argued that the identify of Christian converts is externally determined rather than self-determined, the very concept of a determinative "language of religious experience" is necessarily reduced to an abstraction. We return to the ground realities of the Indian situation.

Given the pervasive nature of caste and the implications of the caste system in India it is not at all surprising that historically Christians did, in fact become a sociological group, virtually a 'Christian caste`. This is evident from the fact that, however unconstitutional, many official government forms include a space to indicate caste designation, where it is not uncommon to find 'Christian` entered. The question of whether or not there is a Christian caste is, in fact, complex and problematic as may be seen from Mosse's study. It is, moreover, important to recognize that the hierarchic ordering of religious identifications with community and caste is achieved in at least two closely related ways: first, the positing of the unstable and indefinable category of "private religious experience" as a separable, essentialized reality falling outside historical affiliations of caste or community; and, second, the isolation of belief as extraneous to determining an individual's membership in the community.

However, there can be no question that consciously or unconsciously there is an ubiquitous existential anxiety concerning the matter of preserving a Christian identity. This is commonly expressed by the use of special 'Christian` names, which are frequently viewed positively as a public confession of one's faith. Other conventional signs of Christian identity are to be found in personal dress and life styles, church architecture, forms of worship, including music, as well as a concern with numerical increase. This urge, too, is historically conditioned. We have already noted that in the past the Church has understood itself as a unique institution of salvation, which has been entrusted with the sole means of salvation -the sacraments and grace. Hence the commitment, even urgency, to ensure that as many as possible are baptized, and thus receive salvation. Indeed, given this exclusive claim to be the sole possessor and dispenser of salvation, the Church could not but be preoccupied with baptism. It could also not allow Christians to have contact with other religious traditions, which were seen as 'false` religions. In the context of this kind of self-understanding it is hardly surprising that the Church became extremely self-centered, concerned primarily with its numerical expansion, as this was the prime indicator of the success of its mission. Here Christian identity would be necessarily a sociological reality, a separate and identifiable community. However, moving away from this historical background, it seems well to turn our attention to what Jesus considered the identification of his followers.

Jesus clearly set forth characteristics by which his followers could be identified. "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" [Jn.13:35 NRSV]. But how do we understand this love in today's world? Here one can only point the direction in which a possibly useful approach to answering this question may be found.

Agape, effective love has both a spiritual and material dimension. The spiritual dimension is described in biblical passages like 1 Cor.13, Mt.18, Rom.14, and so forth. The material dimension, effective love, 'doing love`, has regularly been practiced in the Church as almsgiving, charity. But looking at the meaning of Jesus' parables, his 'good news to the poor`, his opposition to the institutional authorities of his time, the Indian biblical scholar Soares-Prabhu contends that effective love has to go beyond almsgiving to working for a just society, working for the Kingdom of God. This interpretation of love as working for a just society, and not mere 'relief` works is, of course, based on an understanding of women and men as embodied beings in society, where society as a structure of relationships takes precedence over individuals. A change of individual hearts is not to be played down or minimized, but this alone is insufficient if we are to follow the path of Jesus. Therefore, among the central identifying characteristics of the followers of Jesus would be involvement in the struggle effectively to bring about the Kingdom of God, "on earth as it is in heaven," where freedom, fellowship, justice, responsible love reign and where people live as brothers/ sisters, equitably sharing the resources of God's creation and being accountable for their own human future and that of the created world. This immense task is possible, however, only if we join hands with all others who, whether they call on the name of Jesus or not, are committed to the struggle for a more just society, and who want to make this world a better place for all living beings. In this way Christian identity would be a non-communal identity and in itself not be a dividing factor.

Surely in being centered around the concern for the Kingdom we merely follow the practice of Jesus. Ever since the time of the prophets the Jews had been looking forward to the coming of a new age of abundance, peace and harmony, the reign of God. Jesus himself was "gripped by the vision of the human-divine community of the end time" which was "already germinating in the present". In Jesus' view this new humanity will have no center other than God, and it will be God's gift, yet not a 'cheap grace`, but gift as human task. Jesus thus enhanced the importance of human response to God's creative love. And this new way of seeing God's rule in and through human effort has called for a re-interpretation of the prevailing culture. Conversely, a radical critique of the prevailing culture involves a re-interpretation of the ultimate goal. Further, when this ultimate goal begins to appear in a concrete manner, however small it may be, it will create a "prophetic counter culture". In the light of our discussion, then, as an example, we may suggest that in a caste ridden society, when some groups begin to live as brothers/sisters, rejecting the varna ideology, which is divisive and discriminatory, a prophetic counter culture would come into being.

The interpretation of early Christianity as primarily, though not exclusively, a movement rather than a community is important for our present purpose. Increasingly students of the New Testament and the history of early Christianity are convinced that what Jesus inaugurated was more of the nature of a movement than a specific religious community.

The record of the Acts indicates that the early Christians went to the temple as all Jews did. As far as their religious life was concerned the disciples of Jesus were Jews. As Rayan perceptively points out, what seems to have distinguished them during that early period "was their meeting in the homes around four shared realities: shared faith, shared prayer, shared or broken bread....and finally shared material resources". Surely, the dynamic character of the life of these early Christians was in large part the result of the interrelationship of these four shared elements. Their shared faith involved them in shared bread, and all material resources and this made them a family of God, in which faith life and social relationships flowed into each other. Early Christianity was a movement of freedom, a movement of sister/brotherhood, of peace makers who announced the good news to the poor.

However, the prophetic subversive thrust of Jesus was not maintained by and in the community for long, and the whole message of Jesus about the Kingdom was spiritualized and the 'project of hope` was transferred to heaven. The lesson for us is clear, says Kappen.

Hence, the challenge today to the followers of Jesus, to the Church as the Servant of the Kingdom, is not to form an exclusive sociological entity but to be a movement, which empowers the powerless and which is open to all with a similar vision. Exclusiveness is not its characteristic.

In the context of this openness a threefold dialogue is called for: the dialogue with cultures, religious traditions and the dispossessed of society. The followers of Jesus are invited to be involved with the on-going life of the people and make every effort to transform it in view of the Kingdom in the power of the Spirit. It is in doing this that the Church can escape 'archeologising` and alienating tendencies of looking into the culture of the past and of the elite.

The fact of Christians being a minority in India need not adversely affect involvement with people and political decisions. In secular states like India a religious minority community need not be a political minority. As suggested earlier, the minority faith community or movement does not necessarily become a separate civic group, political group, but remains with its own original group. It joins hands with others in working to defend human and spiritual values. While religious faith can and must find expression in political choices and activities, religion as an organization or institution must not have, strictly speaking, a political role. The growing number and influence of right-wing revaunchist communalist movements highlights the importance of this.

Certainly, working with others does not mean that the distinctive contribution of Christians is necessarily sacrificed. Whatever specific endowment there may be from a Christian point of view in any given situation, may be enhanced in the context of dialogue with others. Certainly, the community that carries the active "memory" of Jesus brings to the common struggle for the Kingdom a special light and power. Experience seems to indicate that we will be able to clarify our specificity to ourselves and to others most effectively in living dialogue with those who share a common vision and hope, however differently they may believe.

The Church in India is in a privileged position, because of its situation in the midst of other religious traditions, to work out new ecclesial structures which translate the vision of the Kingdom. In the context of the life and work of other religious traditions it is incumbent on the Church in India to evolve more open ecclesial structures that do justice to its experience of an interrelatedness and mutual inclusiveness with other religious traditions and their adherents. The Church in India today is being challenged to eschew the feudal class relations and power models that continue in the Church. This will mean greater autonomy and independence from the control of western money and power. It will also speak to accusations of 'denationalization` and 'extra-territorial` loyalties.

CONCLUSION

The emphasis on the Kingdom and on joining hands with all who are committed to the values of the Kingdom has rightly raised questions about the need to baptize at all. Perhaps it is sufficient to encourage discipleship and struggle for a more just society. The point needs some clarification and focus before we attempt to answer the question.

We have noted that in the present Indian context it is important to recognize that conversion and baptism are all too commonly seen as part of a movement of 'denationalization' and hence tend to strengthen the communalistic interpretation of Christianity. When the 'depressed classes` awaken to their rights and begin the struggle for social and economic equality, and when the members of the 'aboriginal` tribes, who have been peacefully secluded for centuries from the main stream of Indian nationalism, join with others in demanding their rights, fundamentalist groups and the monied classes oppose such moves. A forceful means of instigating opposition is to raise the cry of 'denationalization`. This is particularly effective when such movements for human rights are inspired by Christians, who are accused of 'extra-territorial` loyalties, and whose religion is considered 'foreign`. It is manifestly in the interests of the powerful majority to keep the marginalized on the peripheries of national life - social, economic and political. So, though the real fear is the awakening and uprising of the people, opposition is expressed in terms of religious conversion.

The author of this statement, a Hindu, is quite familiar with the thrust of `liberation theology'. This bogey of 'mass evangelisation` seems an obvious cover for the real motive of wanting to keep the marginalized 'in their place`. Under the title "The Church Goes Political in India," an RSS author expresses the real fears of the Hindu nationalists. In this context it is significant to listen to Nirmal Minz, himself a tribal Christian, convincingly argue that the primary objection to Christian conversion in the tribal areas is the fact that people begin to make demands for basic human rights when they are converted.

There is yet another consideration. In the model of the 'Church as an Institution of Salvation`, baptism is an absolute necessity for salvation, indeed that extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. However, when we begin to understand the Church as a servant of the Kingdom, and salvation as effective growth as God's children in freedom and love, into the likeness of the Christ, then there is a relativization of all rites, including baptism. Within this perspective, it is significant to remember that all religious traditions, peoples, rites and movements are called to a self-transcendence, to a new future. Once we are freed from the obsession to baptize, to 'save`, and our concern becomes the much wider concern of God to bring about God's Kingdom, the obvious relativization of baptism opens the way to understand the Church not as an Institution of Salvation, but as a movement of Jesus followers at the service of all God's people and God's creation. This transformed image will enable the Church more effectively and creatively to be in communion with others for the cause of the Kingdom.

Following on this kind of understanding it has been suggested that there be a "non-communal-koinonia," of all those who love Jesus and want to follow his ways without being baptized. Such a koinonia has precedents in, e.g. Kagawa's Fellowship of Friends of Jesus, whose purpose was "to promote a sense of unity and other Gospel values, yet without belonging to a community." These "confessors of Christ" would be allowed to eucharistic fellowship, if they so desired. (Christians who do not allow even other Christians to eucharistic fellowship will undoubtedly find this unacceptable.) Other suggestions include a "Christ-centered secular fellowship outside the Church."

These suggestions would be meaningful in a context where baptism necessarily implies a change of community, culture, jati, etc. But in the light of what we are suggesting, namely that baptism is not a change of culture and jati, there is no need to question or eschew baptism. One may, therefore, conclude that baptism as the acceptance of the Christ and his ways, as the celebration of one's conversion, of one's attitudinal change to form a more inclusive community with the goal of a fuller humanity is meaningful. Baptism as a new vision of reality, a changed, new pattern of relationship to God, people and creation is desirable and is not in itself a separating event. In the light of the interpretation suggested earlier in our discussion, when we welcome people to baptism in the context of the struggles for the Kingdom, it is a call to a prophetic counter culture, not a so-called "Christian" culture, which will turn traditional values up-side down, will bring down the mighty, and empower the weak, the lowly, the 'impure`, the helpless, and transform their self-image world view. It is in view of this mission that conversion and baptism become meaningful, not in view of the salvation of a few individuals. In order for the Church in India to regain its lost authority, it must abdicate its alliances with power. It must be humble enough to be baptized in the Jordan of Indian religiosity and bold enough to be baptized on the cross of Indian poverty. As Aloysius Pieris perceptively observes

Baptism, understood in this sense, is not a matter of sociological community change and hence does not divide or separate. This is, of course, not to deny that at all times and in all places, the 'sword` brought by Jesus is a dividing factor in a world of sin. When Christians, like their Master, are committed to working for a new just socio-economic order, for the integrity of all creation they will necessarily cause divisions and so will be persecuted. While we Christians positively eschew divisions based on caste, class, race, gender, and so on, we welcome the division that comes from radical commitment to following the Christ.

BOOK REVIEWS:

Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. By David Martin. Blackwell, 352 pp., $29.95.

Is Latin America Turning Protestant? The Politics of Evangelical Growth. By David Stoll. University of California Press, 399 pp., $24.95.

Crisis in Latin America: An Evangelical Perspective. By Emilio A. Núñez C. and William D. Taylor. Moody Press, 439 pp., $19.95.

These three books share a common interest in Latin American Protestantism. The first two analyze its recent explosive growth, though from quite different perspectives. David Martin, the British author of A General Theory of Secularization, sets out to demonstrate grand patterns in religious movements, with a functionalist’s passion for social equilibrium. David Stoll, a graduate student in anthropology and the author of a critical study of the Wycliffe Bible Translators, focuses more specifically on grass-roots religious phenomena and presents a structuralist’s critique. Martin devotes less space to Central America—a principal focus of Stoll’s study—than to the larger nations in the region. While Martin centers more specifically on Pentecostalism, Stoll’s concern is the entire evangelical movement. Martin’s main sources are the enormous pool of available research on Latin American religious phenomena, while Stoll’s study relies to a great extent on his own field research and on unpublished documents. Martin’s approach is deductive, Stoll’s more inductive. Yet despite their different approaches, their conclusions come close at one key point (a point further explored by Emilio Núñez and William Taylor): the latent capacity for critical social awareness that resides in Latin American Protestantism.

For Martin, the growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America is a logical extension of the centuries-old clash of two imperial visions, the result of which are the Hispanic and English civilizations. Today’s heirs of the Roman hierarchical tradition are confronted again—successfully, Martin believes—by Anglo-style voluntarism with its legacy of popular dissent. Meanwhile, an authoritarian Catholic Church finds it increasingly difficult to compete with egalitarian social ideals and with the wide variety of choices Protestantism offers. It has attempted three defensive strategies with ambiguous results: 1) church-state alignment and religious intolerance, 2) political alignments and indoctrination (Catholic Action and Christian Democracy), and 3) liberation theology and the base communities.

In his introductory chapters Martin traces through Northern Europe and North and South America the three over lapping waves of Protestant cultural revolution—Puritanism, Methodism (the Evangelical Revival) and Pentecostalism. These movements have arisen more or less at the periphery of the establishment. Surveying Latin America in four brief chapters, Martin argues for the role of early Methodism as a paradigm for understanding the social function of Pentecostalism as it takes root in Latin countries. He then discusses the social and religious implications of Pentecostal "reformations": spiritual communications (tongues and healings—vehicles of liberation within an oral tradition), conversions (personal and familial), and evolving attitudes toward economic and political involvement.

In Europe voluntarism stagnated and died, but it flowered in North America. The growth of Protestantism in Latin America is in part a function of the powerful and religiously motivated presence of the United States, Britain’s imperial successor. The author calls this the "Americanization of Latin American religion"—a fact which, he rightly points out, is resented by many Latin Americans. The other side of the coin is the creative "Latinamericanization of American religion." The role and potential of Pentecostalism is a function of both its past and present roots. Its origins lie in a differentiated society, where religion operated primarily at the level of culture. As it became rooted in a nondifferentiated world where voluntarism threatens the entire social order, Pentecostalism has had to adapt. While it allows for a variety of options ad intra, it guards itself from a hostile environment by a non-Methodist passivity and acceptance of the status quo.

Yet, says Martin, the transformational potential of the Pentecostal "social strike from society" (vs. the Marxist "strike against society") should not be underestimated. As they increase in numbers and maturity Pentecostals will become more secure and perhaps more aware of their social responsibilities. The author points out (as does Stoll) that while "sophisticated" Protestants may be more concerned about the poor, grass-roots Pentecostals are more successful with the poor. He reminds us that many of the ideals—women’s rights, world peace, rejection of capital punishment—that "radical" groups espouse today were incubated within the closed confines of religious sects" like the Bohemian Brethren, Mennonites, Quakers, and Swedenborgians. These observations merit serious consideration.

Nonetheless there is a serious flaw in Martin’s methodology. Broadly generalized models of history, à la Spengler or Toynbee, inevitably run into contradictions. Such is the case here. To paint the English and Iberian worldviews in such black-and-white colors smacks of the same sort of cultural imperialism the author decries. And as Martin himself admits, "voluntarism" has also been coercive, as has been the case with U.S. dealings with oppressed peoples in Latin America and even within its own borders. Further, his model is too pat. Voluntarism is not an Anglo monopoly. The underside of Roman Catholic history is peppered with seditious sects that appeared long before the Protestant Reformation. The most recent instance of Hispanic voluntarism is the Catholic base communities—which the author mentions only once, and in a patronizing way. To dismiss them, as he does, as "incipiently Protestant . . . instruments" of the Catholic Church which also "threaten its structure" is to miss the point entirely. The base communities also present a serious challenge to Protestant authoritarianism and are a threat to U.S. hegemony. At times Martin gives the impression of trying to shoehorn diverse religious experiences—and the complexity of Latin America, the English Caribbean, South Korea and South Africa—into one neat package.

Martin’s approach to social conflict is typical of a functionalist analysis: systemic ills are seen more as dysfunctions to be decried and restored to proper balance than as fundamental ills to be redressed. This may explain why a pivotal event such as the 1932 peasant insurgency in El Salvador is mentioned only as it affected the Pentecostal churches’ "prosperity." He takes a similar approach to the "electronic church." In like manner, in discussing Protestant growth in Guatemala, he makes only passing reference to Protestant political polarization and to the endemic violence there. Again, in describing socioeconomic changes affecting Ecuadoran Quechuas as a result of Protestant missions, Martin barely alludes to Catholic Bishop Leonidas Proaño’s hardwon agrarian reform which made the changes possible. Neither does he mention the ambiguous role of North American missions and relief agencies such as World Vision, which Stoll discusses in some detail.

Martin’s overreliance on the research of others and on interviews with North American personnel has left him open to glaring factual errors and unfortunate omissions. The Latin American Mission, to which he attributes certain actions in Guatemala, does not even operate in that country. His information on dissident religious movements is incomplete and on occasion incorrect and simplistic. For example, he falsely ties the Confraternidad Evangélica of Guatemala to the guerrillas. To claim such a relationship is irresponsible, because it imperils lives. And at least at one point his logic fails him: the reversal from the highly mediated hierarchical church to a nonmediated Pentecostal "cell" requires, he says, the "unequivocal leadership" of a pastor, of "folds and safe enclosures." Are pastors and folds not mediations? Throughout Latin America, certain Protestant ministries are becoming, to quote a Spanish saying, "more popish that the pope." All of this notwithstanding, I suspect that Martin’s basic conclusion regarding the transformational potential in Pentecostalism may turn out to be entirely valid.

David Stoll challenges the fundamentalist stereotypes of both the left and the right. Though an avowed nonbeliever, he has a keen understanding of the Protestant evangelical ethos. A longtime supporter of justice causes, he can be as critical of liberation theology and of liberal stereotypes as of the shibboleths of the religious right. And lest conservatives take too much comfort in his predictions about Protestant ascendancy in Latin America, he suggests that the evangelicalism that is on the horizon may become more socially involved than its present image would indicate. He handles his topic with a good ear for the apt statement and with tongue-in-cheek irony, though at times he lapses into glibness.

Stoll has two objectives. First, he says, "for readers alarmed by evangelical growth, I want to provide a sense of its open-ended nature." Evangelicalism, he insists, "is a generator of social change whose direction is not predestined." To blame this growth on right-wing religious groups and U.S. imperialism—as many do—implies, he says, a profound distrust of the poor and of their ability to "turn an imported religion to their own purposes."

When he began his research, Stoll suspected that the conspiracy theory as the explanation of Protestant growth was exaggerated. The Iran-contra scandal disabused him. His second objective speaks to this issue. "For evangelicals, I wish to dramatize the danger of allowing their missions to be harnessed to United States militarism by the religious right." Accordingly, the initial chapters of Stoll’s work deal with the invasion of the sects and with the Catholic Church’s approaches to the various threats to its ancient hegemony—the Protestant onslaught in particular.

Stoll devotes almost half the book to a carefully nuanced discussion of the ideology, activities and historical context of the Protestant movements that have settled in Latin America, right up to the coming of the religious right. His typologies are helpful in untangling a complex maze of interrelationships. In three of his chapters he presents case studies of Protestantism in Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua) and Ecuador (the role of World Vision). His conclusion—a reinterpretation of "the invasion of the sects as an Evangelical Awakening"—is bound to raise hackles on both sides of the issue. It is here that Stoll states the questions that have dogged him throughout his research: "Why should a religion which appears to work against the interests of the people help them in their struggle for survival?" Why is conservative Protestantism more successful at attracting the masses than a theology that is so explicitly concerned for the liberation of the masses?

Stoll argues that the impressive Protestant growth, with allowances made for the "revolving door effect," cannot be ascribed entirely to the right-wing sects. The reasons are more complex. He hints strongly that the growing conservatism of Rome may be partly to blame, as Catholics find less and less room in their church for freedom of the spirit. Stoll further insists that "evangelicals provided an ideology, not just of political resignation, as so often noted, but of personal improvement." Indeed, evangelical conversion may have become for the masses a more peaceful outlet for revolutionary fervor than the political message of liberation. While liberation theology has raised people’s consciousness, it has also raised expectations beyond its proponents’ capacity to deliver. Meanwhile, Pentecostal churches and Protestant relief agencies are delivering more immediate material results without setting off unmanageable class and ethnic confrontations. Tactical errors by the insurgents in Guatemala during José Efraín Ríos Montt’s rule drove into the arms of right-wing churches entire Mayan villages that had first sought guerrilla protection from the army.

Stoll’s analysis is given more weight by a study recently issued by CEDI, a Brazilian ecumenical documentation and information center, which found that Catholic base community members in that country are joining Pentecostal churches in large numbers. Pentecostalism, the refuge of the masses? Perhaps, but Stoll hints that these new converts may not have entirely forsaken their radical awareness—and as Protestant growth collides with increasing impoverishment, more opportunities for radicalization arise. The gospel, defined "in terms of social justice as well as personal salvation, has the potential to appeal to the millions of evangelicals whose economic position is deteriorating." Indeed, grassroots Protestant congregations, says Stoll, may be going through the same process of awareness-raising as did the Catholic base communities in the ‘50s.

There are things to quarrel with in Stoll’s book. In dealing with Nicaragua, for example, he gives the same weight to all his sources, apparently without exercising "ideological suspicion." He strives to achieve objectivity by balancing off the consistent brutality of the right with the occasional excesses of the left. Moreover, his faith in the power of "enlightened self-interest" to transform individualistic autocrats into democrats has little substance. To his credit, Stoll acknowledges that he has spent less time studying radical Christian movements than he has conservative Christianity. His case for the existence of a more "open-ended" evangelicalism would have been stronger had he studied the scores of struggling grass-roots agencies that model themselves on the Radical Reformation. While he devotes more space to the Catholic base communities than does Martin, he is seemingly unaware of their influence on grass-roots Protestantism; nor does he understand their symbiotic relationship to liberation theology. As a telling instance of his misinformation, he calls the Catholic base communities "ecclesiastical"—i.e., institutional—rather than ecclesial—i.e., churchly in nature despite contrary ecclesiastical strictures.

Stoll’s comment that "liberation theology may be better at filling faculties, bookshelves, and graves than churches" no doubt will be celebrated by the enemies of that movement. But it is both callow and unfair, implying that this theology is primarily academic and elitist (though he may be partly right if he is referring primarily to a handful of dilettantish Protestants). If liberation theology were merely a classroom exercise, it would be no threat to the powers of church and state. Graves have been filled wherever downtrodden people have cried "Enough!" Liberation theology is more a product of this outcry than its cause. And because "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," there is also an underground evangelical church that is growing quantitatively. Neither Stoll nor Martin seems to be aware of this fact. To be sure, the numerical growth of Latin American Protestantism also builds upon the sacrifice of some early martyrs at the hands of Roman Catholics—an ugly chapter in Latin American history which could repeat itself in some fanatical enclaves.

Not all growth, however, should be celebrated. Nor is numerical success, as both Martin and Stoll seem to imply, the only criterion for assessing the impact of Protestantism on Latin American society. Ecclesiastical "poaching," the "revolving door effect," raises questions about the extent of that growth. There are also theological grounds for questioning numerical increase which is built upon a distorted understanding of the kingdom of God. The alarming growth of heretical "sects" (a term I use cautiously) also concerns responsible evangelicals. Indeed, rapid, superficial growth may backfire. In Costa Rica there is reliable evidence of recent retrenchment following a period of growth, with defections even to Catholicism.

My objections notwithstanding, I find a number of Stoll’s conclusions to be substantially correct. Let me mention a few. Liberal institutions, stuck in their ivory towers, largely overlook the fact that the churches they lionize in Latin America—Protestant congregations that express their solidarity with the poor—are mainly evangelical in theology. It is not without significance that Stoll has found most of his cases of evangelical participation in social transformation in regions such as Central America, the Andean republics, Brazil and Chile, where conservative churches are strong, and not in those countries where liberal denominations are active.

Stoll makes reference to "the immense social power in those praying masses of believers." As early as 1980, Brazilian Marxist sociologist Carlos Rodrigues-Brandao, after in-depth field research,

pointed out (in Os Deuses do Povoß, or "The Gods of the People") the latent revolutionary potential in "small sect" Pentecostalism. This movement of "the poor of the earth," he suggested, was perhaps better prepared than the Catholic base communities to confront the evils of society because Pentecostals see themselves as engaged in a holy war, and are buoyed by a hope of "a final struggle that will recreate a social order." When Pentecostals become more politically aware, they can become a potent force for change. "Their active belief in supernatural forces is not escapism, but a source of hope in their struggle to change their environment." Brandao argues cogently that popular religion, of whatever kind, is not an apolitical phenomenon. "In its own way, it is a grassroots struggle to regain a degree of freedom from the domination of more structured religious forms."

On the basis of both firsthand observation and reputable sociological studies, Stoll, along with Martin, has found little evidence of upward social mobility among the rank and file of grass-roots evangelicalism. Whatever upward pull there may have been in the past is being canceled out by Protestant inroads among the impoverished masses. Quoting Lalive d’Epinay’s groundbreaking study of Chilean Pentecostalism, Stoll notes that the locus of Protestant growth and social involvement is the family, whereas Marxism focuses on the workplace. To the extent that the base communities fit into the latter model, this insight may explain a fact that has long troubled me: the short "shelf-life" of the base communities, compared to the continuity and numerical growth of Protestant congregations. When they seem to achieve the goals of their struggle, or when the issues become fuzzy during periods of political "distention" and "democratization," the base communities often experience a crisis of identity. On the other hand, the family orientation of evangelical churches makes for long-term stability and provides linkages for growth throughout extended family networks. I have written elsewhere on the Catholic base communities as the hope of the church. What I could not foresee is that the major beneficiaries of their vision of social transformation may turn out to be grass-roots Protestant churches and a new breed of ecumenical base communities. Their apologists have always insisted that the base communities were expendable: they should die and be resurrected as a new church of the poor. Is it conceivable that Pentecostal congregations will become a part of this new church, working toward the transformation of Latin America? Stoll asks, "Could the surprising evangelical groundswell affect the course of events in Latin America?" It is too early to make a definitive judgment.

Both Stoll and Martin are fairly bullish on evangelicalism/Pentecostalism. But the movement’s potential for social transformation will be achieved to the degree in which it allows itself to be leavened by base-church values. There are faint signs of hope throughout evangelicalism. A recent consultation convened by an institution hostile to liberation theology produced a document that expressed appreciation for the challenge of this movement to the evangelical faith.

The third book of our list is further evidence that evangelicals cannot be neatly labeled. Emilio Núñez, a Salvadoran theologian and the author of a book on liberation theology, and William Taylor, the son of missionaries, moved in conservative evangelical circles. Read with these facts in mind, their work may come as a surprise. It has already merited them criticism from the ultraconservative wing of their own constituency because of their irenic approach to liberation theology and their concern for justice issues. The book is, in fact, two treatises with an introduction and a conclusion. The authors evidence a degree of difference in their perspectives, perhaps because of their different national origins.

Part one is a mildly analytical description by Taylor of the social religious dimensions of the crisis in Latin America. Núñez devotes part two to a discussion of crucial issues that Latin American evangelicals must face. After a brief look at the "Hispano-American" religious ethos, he deals critically and sympathetically with postconciliar Catholicism’s search for renewal—liberation theology and the charismatic movement—and its resistance to change. He further addresses, theologically and historically, the growing evangelical search for gospel contextualization and the movement’s gradual awakening to social responsibility.

In a concluding essay, Taylor pleads for "a complete and integrated gospel that deals with the fundamental alienation of man from God, an alienation that splinters all the relationships man sustains: those to God, to himself and to others." Within the Latin American Theological Fraternity, to which Núñez, Taylor and I belong, most members would probably agree with the substance of this book. Others could wish that the authors had been more daring in their analysis. But that is just the point. Evangelicalism spans a wide spectrum. We are united primarily by our unswerving belief in the authority and transforming power of Scripture. Despite our differences, it is this fact that makes evangelicalism a social and religious force to be reckoned with in Latin America.

A two-week tour makes a northerner an expert on Africa. Sometimes these northerners know more about Africa and our needs than we ourselves. That's how Africans chide European and American visitors. Despite this warning, I will risk outlining the major issues confronting churches in Africa, on the basis of my stay at the Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation in Kitwe, Zambia.

Mindolo (named for the Mindolo River, which flows near the campus) is a major pan-African ecumenical center of theological education. It offers study programs that last as long as two years, as well as one-week conferences. I spoke with Christians from 20 nations, from Ghana to the Republic of South Africa, representing the relatively new national union churches (such as the United Church of Zambia), the Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Roman Catholics, Pentecostal Assemblies of God and the Salvation Army. From their remarks I discerned seven concerns that face their churches.

One is the Africanization of theology. For the past 25 years, African theologians and church leaders have argued persuasively that the missionaries brought to Africa a very European and North American' Christianity. They insisted that African converts abandon their traditional religious heritage and many cultural practices.

As a result, even today some Africa congregations sing European hymns in English (though increasingly in the local languages). Sunday worship may follow an order of service from Calvin's Geneva and feature a sermon that could be preached almost word for word in Amsterdam, London or St. Louis.

Many African Christians have found it difficult to break so completely from their heritage. A few historians of Christianity in Africa claim that some Africans from the colonial era to the present, professed Christianity in order to gain access to the benefits (such as education and health care) that accompanied the colonists and their religion. And even the many who have wholeheartedly converted have been reluctant to relinquish all their traditional beliefs and practices. Folk wisdom has it that such converts come to the priest on Sunday and to the traditional African religious leader on Monday.

At best, their hesitation to scrap their African identity may be an intuitive attempt to join Christian faith and traditional African religious life. At worst, people may be using Christianity for personal gain. Either way leaves Christians in a quandary: Must they renounce their own heritage in order to be Christian? Must they live a double life, essentially taking up the claims of the church on Sunday and then denying them on Monday?

Independent African churches were among the first to challenge this Europeanized Christianity. These churches sought to find similarities between Christianity and traditional African religious and social values. More recently, theologians and church leaders from denominations that have historic ties with churches in the north have encouraged African Christian expressions that are free of northern acculturation, are faithful to the gospel and draw upon traditional African

culture. These thinkers propose that Christian and African thought can often be mutually interpreting. For instance, J. N. K. Mugambi in African Heritage and Contemporary Christianity (Longman Kenya, 1989) says that Christian understanding and traditional African thought can be harmonized in such matters as views of God, spirits and angels, ancestors and saints, rites of passage and eternal life.

This raises a question that confronts the church in every society. Where is the boundary between the gospel and the culture? How much can the church adapt itself to the prevailing world view and still remain recognizably Christian?

The African experience poses a distinct challenge to the American theological community. Reacting against the past easy identification of the gospel and U.S. cultural values, today's church leaders are quick to differentiate between them. But Americans have been so concerned to maintain the purity of the gospel that few contemporary U.S. theologians are attempting to find points of positive intersection between Christianity and our cultural mythos. We might well take a cue from the African church.

A second concern of African theologians is Christianity's relationships with other religions. Like North America, Africa is a place of religious pluralism. Many different religions open shops alongside one another. These groups are often rivals.

The tension between Christianity and Islam is a case study of such rivalry. Both Christians and Muslims claim to have the exclusive interpretation of divine revelation. Islam is reportedly even more aggressively evangelistic than Christianity and recruits Christians even as Christians try to recruit Muslims. When mixed with the drive for economic, political and social power, the competition between the two groups has contributed to open conflict, as in Nigeria and Sudan.

At Mindolo–and by report at other places as well--dialogue is replacing confrontation. Christians are exploring how much they can witness to their faith without being imperialistic. They seek to maintain the integrity and vitality of their faith while acknowledging the inherent worth of the adherents of other religions. Is it possible, they ask, for Christianity to stand on common ground with other religions and even to be instructed by them? Can such a vision be translated into social reality on a continent where sectarian passion and conflict are as old as humankind?

African Christians are also examining the relationship between church and state. When I arrived in Africa, my image of the relationship between church and state was fired by headlines about Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak. I had read about the church's central role in helping end a totalitarian government in Benin and in promoting a new humanitarian approach to government. Here, I thought, is a continent where the church exercises the prophetic role of monitoring justice and courageously calling for change.

Of course, it is impossible to speak about the relationship between church and state in Africa. The relationship differs from nation to nation and from church to church. While the church is a powerful witness in the political arena in many places, Mindolo participants insisted that my view of the prophetic African church was too rosy.

In some regions, authoritarian and repressive regimes keep the church under their thumbs.

While an occasional Desmond Tutu speaks out, most clergy walk the line of trying to keep out of jail without losing their integrity. In such settings, the church often criticizes the state in indirect language that only sensitive ears can hear. Some churches, of course, simply assimilate into the prevailing milieu without attempting to be prophetic. Even in countries that protect freedom of speech, clergy worry about government informers who visit their congregations and then report to the national intelligence officers.

To my surprise, some African churches (particularly those connected with reform movements) face a danger common to U.S. churches: they can so identify with their cause that they lose critical distance. It is difficult--though not impossible--for a church that helped create a government later to criticize it. With the same lack of perspective with which Jerry Falwell can sing "America the Beautiful," a revolutionary group can effectively sing "God bless our bullets and gun sights." It is one thing to be driven penitently to violence as the only possible means to end injustice. It is quite another to glorify killing. Can the church participate appropriately in the state without being co-opted by it?

Pastoral leadership poses another problem for many African denominations that suffer a shortage of ordained, formally educated clergy. Several ministers serve more than one congregation. In the United Church of Zambia, a pastor may serve as many as eight or ten congregations. (One pastor who is responsible for seven congregations reports that the lowest average Sunday worship attendance for any one of these congregations is 300.) Because of poor roads, unreliable transportation and the distances between congregations, a pastor can usually visit only one or two congregations on a given Sunday.

Not surprisingly, many clergy are overworked and weary. Some report that they are spread so thin and so flooded by responsibilities that they lose their sense of vision. And most are underpaid: a first year pastor in Zambia makes 600 kwacha a month. A month's supply of the national staple food (called mealie meal) costs 500 kwacha. Love for God does not put school uniforms (which are required) on children.

The shortfall of pastors does have an advantage. Lay leaders do most of the preaching, teaching, pastoral counseling and general oversight of congregational life. Ordained clergy preside at the sacraments and teach the lay leaders in order to equip the laity for their ministries. In this respect, the pastor's role is clearly defined in a way that many U.S. clergy would welcome. Further, many national churches offer comprehensive and sophisticated programs of theological education by extension for lay leaders.

Many denominations seek to attract more people to the ministry. Can the churches enlarge the ranks of the clergy while maintaining the present high level of lay leadership? Or will African churches in the next generations become as clergy-dependent as their cousins in the U.S.?

African Christians are also pondering their relationship with partner churches. Christianity came to bud in Africa when European nations colonized the continent. The Euro-American churches assumed a dominant, colonial attitude toward the African churches.

In the generation after World War II, one African nation after another became independent. In like manner (though more slowly), African churches achieved legal independence from their northern sponsors. Churches in the north and the south began to regard one another as partners. The church from the developed country may provide money as its share of the partnership; the church from the developing country may offer personnel and a locale for witness. Their mission boards work together to assign money, personnel and equipment for mutual projects.

However, the partnership ideal is not always fulfilled. African governments sometimes claim that they shed colonialism only to find, 30 years later, that they were enslaved by economic neocolonialism. Something similar can happen to the churches. The wealthier church can tie so many strings to its share of the partnership that the African church operates like a puppet.

African churches must sometimes choose between buckling under pressure from the Euro-American church and standing on their rights as partners and pushing against the hands that tie the strings. On the other hand, African churches sometimes exercise their part of the partnership in ways disappointing to their partners. Will the churches regard one another with suspicion? Or will they acknowledge the uncertainties and ambiguities of this period and trust that, fumbling and faltering, they can walk together into a new era of genuinely cooperative witness?

Theological education poses another concern. The faculties of many African theological colleges comprise mainly Europeans and North Americans. Many of these colleges want to bring more Africans to their faculties. Though many European and North American theological educators support this goal, it is frustrated by two factors.

For one, most theological colleges require their teachers to have completed at least a master's degree. Very few Africans hold this degree. The education of ministers in Africa is slightly different from that in the U.S. After completing the equivalent of high school, the ministerial student next attends theological college without attaining a university level bachelor's degree. After three years of a theological program, which basically corresponds to the seminary curriculum in the U.S., the student receives the equivalent of the A.B. Few schools in Africa offer a master's in theology. Financial limitations prevent many African students from studying in North America or Europe. Thus there is a shortage of qualified candidates for faculty positions.

Another problem is that faculty service is not especially attractive even to those who possess the necessary qualifications. Salaries are as low as those for clergy. The average faculty is very small and the teaching and administrative load is very heavy. Support services and research opportunities are minimal.

A bright, thoughtful, articulate, theologically alert person who is an ideal candidate for a, teaching position will often prefer to work in the upper judicatory levels of the church or for a council of churches. These positions pay higher salaries and present opportunities for world travel. Travel means not only exposure to new and different places but also the opportunity to purchase things that are not available in Africa. Furthermore, the position of church leader is more prestigious than that of seminary professor.

Europeans and North Americans labor heroically in the classroom to make African theological education as African as possible. But as one of them said to me, "No matter how precise I am, when I explain African traditional religion to an African, something is lost." Africa is

ready to begin training its own theology teachers. In the meantime, the churches need to make it financially possible for more African students to pursue advanced theological degrees outside of Africa.

Like the American churches, African churches struggle with developing positions on contemporary concerns. The issues that seem to draw the strongest interest are neocolonialism, racism, economic justice, human rights and polygamy. Indeed, these are matters of daily survival. Not surprisingly, Africans of all denominational and theological stripes agree on the importance of ending neocolonialism and racism, establishing economic justice and guaranteeing human rights to all.

On polygamy, Africans are divided. Some think that the church must take an unequivocal stand against it. Others think that the church should teach monogamy as the preferred form of marriage relationship but should accept those who practice polygamy. Still others think that the church should bless monogamy and polygamy equally.

Many African denominations ordain women, oppose sexism and generally support equal opportunities for women in all arenas. If the Mindolo community is a representative group, African church leaders' views on women's issues are much like those in the U.S. 20 years ago. A large body of women (and a small group of men) is committed to equality. A good number of men are sympathetic to this concern, but still make jokes about women moving into areas formerly populated almost exclusively by males. A handful of men and women oppose women's leaving their traditional home roles.

Until recently, the inclusive language movement in the U.S. has focused largely on expressions related to gender. Some Africans of both genders are concerned about exclusive, hierarchical language, but most seem content to continue with these patterns. The temperature of a discussion rises rapidly on the language of color, however. One student said in a class session, "What is so great about 'white' that it is always good, clean and pure? Why are angels always white? And what is so bad about 'black' that it is bad, dirty and wrong? Every time people talk about a 'black devil' they're associating you and me with that devil." The room reverberated with thunderous applause.

On the issue of population control, many African clerics find themselves in a dilemma. On the one hand, many African societies deeply value large families. Large families provide social security and are a part of the African soul. On the other hand, in some areas burgeoning population already threatens the quality of life. More and more Christian leaders are calling for structures of social security that don't require eight, ten or 12 children. Still others argue that the church must help its members appreciate smaller families.

Environmental consciousness, so high on the agenda of American middle-class religious communities, is at a nascent stage in Africa. Africans seemed knowledgeable and concerned about the rapid disappearance of their continent's animals, but less aware of the dangers of environmental abuse. In Kitwe, a city of 500,000, it is customary to peel a banana and to drop the peel on the sidewalk. This is a small but typical gesture. A columnist in a newspaper outside of Zambia even proposed that, as a matter of justice, developing nations deserve to engage in a few generations' worth of wanton polluting.

Few in the world are more aware of the need for peace than the residents of this continent where violence is woven into the fabric of daily life in several countries. But few Africans share the same concerns of the peace movement in the Euro-American community. I talked with one participant from a rural area who knew nothing about nuclear weaponry. Few of our African acquaintances see a connection between military spending in the developed nations and oppressive social conditions in the developing world.

I was surprised by an anomaly with regard to sanctions against South Africa. The participants from South Africa emphatically told us that sanctions from the U.S. were a major reason for progress in the talks between the government of South Africa and the African National Congress. Having supported sanctions for many years, I was startled to see Mindolo participants in local stores buying goods from South Africa. What about sanctions? Several people pointed out that in this region, South Africa is simply the only supplier of some necessities. If you want them, you buy South African. Ethical purity is a lot easier in a church convention hall in Indianapolis than in a store whose shelves are only one-third stocked.

As the church in Africa faces these and other significant issues, it does so as a robust community. Indeed, the recent record of church growth in Africa is a direct contrast to that of the old-line churches in the U.S., whose membership rolls are ailing and whose real dollars for mission are diminishing. Mindolo participants claim that by and large the church is growing in most parts of Africa. African independent churches and Pentecostal congregations are said to be increasing the fastest. The denominations with historic ties to European and North American churches are reported to be growing, though more slowly. Even the communions most closely identified with colonial powers--such as the Anglican--have full sanctuaries.

Growth is sometimes phenomenal. We worshiped in a congregation in a Kitwe township that was established in 1985 with a handful of people. With characteristic African Christian optimism, they built a simple, open, airy, light house of worship that seats 1,000. The Sunday we worshiped there the attendance was about 3,000. Many people could not get into the sanctuary and stood under the sun outside the open windows for the two-and-a-half-hour service. The previous week, at the congregation's monthly baptism service, 173 were baptized. That congregation has a half-time pastor. Worship is led almost completely by lay people; the pastor preaches only once a month. We were told that this is not unusual in Zambia or in other parts of the continent.

Unless the church slips beneath the surface of history, it will contend with perplexities. Much of African Christianity struggles with problems that are, at the same time, signs of life. Given the importance of the issues confronting the church in Africa, it is a blessing that it faces them in vitality and strength.

When at the age of 18 I approached a Methodist church in the Gambia with a request for baptism, thus signaling my conversion to Christianity from Islam, the resident senior minister, an English missionary, responded by inviting me to reconsider my decision. And, while I was at it, he said, I should also consider joining the Catholic Church. My conversion obviously caused him acute embarrassment, and I was mortified on account of it.

However, his imaginative solution of my linking up with the Catholic Church did not work out; after a year of vain attempts I returned to the English missionary. After assuring me that the baptism of the Methodists was recognized by the Catholics, he agreed in principle to receive me into the church.

At that stage of my life I would have joined the church on almost any condition, for I had this absurd idea that the gospel had marked me out for something, whether for reward, rebuke or ridicule I did not know; whatever it was, I felt inexorably driven toward it. On the night of my baptism I was overcome with emotion, finding it hard to believe that my wish was being fulfilled. Not even the thousand tongues of Methodist hymnody could have given utterance to the avalanche of thoughts and feelings that erupted in me

I make this extended autobiographical introduction to indicate how in the liberal Methodist tradition I first encountered the guilt complex about missions which I have since come to know so well after living more than two decades in the West. I have found Western Christians to be very embarrassed about meeting converts from Asia or Africa, but when I have repeated for them my personal obstacles in joining the church, making it clear that I was in no way pressured into doing so, they have seemed gratefully unburdened of a sense of guilt. Furthermore, when I have pointed out that missionaries actually made comparatively few converts, my Western friends have reacted with obvious relief, though with another part of their minds, they insist that missionaries have regularly used their superior cultural advantage to instill a sense of inferiority in natives.

It seems that for my Western Christian friends, if missionaries did not justify by their field labors the guilt the West carries about the mischief of the white race in the rest of the world, then other missionaries would have to be invented to justify that guilt.

It should provide food for thought that the church has succeeded in importing this guilt complex into Africa. I found the church there to be self-conscious about matters religious—especially matters involving God, death, judgment, the virgin birth and miracles—which presumably the Enlightenment banished from rational debate. Consequently, the church was wary of embracing members tainted with the brush of conversion, for such new members would not have acquired the reservation deemed appropriate to religious subjects.

The church took further precautions against religious enthusiasm: for my catechism I was introduced to New Testament form criticism and to Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, John Macmurray. John A. T. Robinson, Vincent Taylor, Oliver Chase Quick and other "sensible" writers. On my own initiative I discovered the works of C. S. Lewis, whose brand of commonsense Christianity encouraged me no end. Nevertheless. the liberal strand was the dominant theme in my formation, hallowed with the refined ministration of writers like Bertrand Russell and Harold Nicolson.

The church’s hesitant attitude about religious conversion in turn surprised, frustrated, dismayed, saddened and confused me. Also, given the prominent place religion occupies in Africa, I was baffled by the apparent determination of my church superiors to keep religious subjects from all "decent" and "cultured" conversation. I realize now that this attitude is deep-rooted in Western liberal culture. However, before I left Africa for Europe I had no way of understanding it, for it had no analogue in my society, and, more important for me, it appeared to skirt the declared aims of a missionary church.

My business in this piece is not to linger on Memory Lane but to confront directly the guilt complex about missions that so often prevails in liberal counsels. I believe that the liberal claim to, openmindedness about missions would be strengthened by a closer examination of what actually happened—and may still be happening—in the encounter between Western missionaries and non-Christian peoples.

Much of the standard Western scholarship on Christian missions proceeds by looking at the motives of individual missionaries and concludes by faulting the entire missionary enterprise as being part of the machinery of Western cultural imperialism. But missions in the modern era has been far more, and far less, than the argument about motives customarily portrays.

Missionaries of course went out with all sorts of motives, and some of them were clearly unwholesome. Yet if we were to try to separate good from bad motives, I daresay we would not, after a mountain of labor, advance the subject much beyond the molehill of stalemate. We might, for example, take a little out of the cultural imperialism bag and put it into the social-service category, and ascribe both phenomena to Western cultural conditioning. But that exercise would do little to further our understanding of the nature and consequences of cross-cultural missions.

Instead of examining motives, I propose that we focus on the field setting of missions, where local feed-back exerted an influence all its own. And what stands out in particular about the field setting is the emphasis missionaries gave to translating Scripture into vernacular languages. Most Protestant missionary agencies embarked on the immense enterprise of vernacular translation with the enthusiasm, urgency and commitment of first-timers, and they expended uncommon resources to make the vernacular dream come true. Today more than 1,800 languages have been involved in the worldwide translation movement. In Africa alone, the Bible has been translated into 522 vernacular languages, with texts in over 200 additional languages now under development. Catholic missions has been similarly committed to the transposition of the catechism into vernacular terms, with language study a crucial part of the enterprise. The importance of vernacular translation was that it brought the missionary into contact with the most intimate and intricate aspects of culture, yielding wide-ranging consequences for both missionary and native alike.

The translation enterprise had two major steps. One was the creation of a vernacular alphabet for societies that lacked a literary tradition. The other step was to shake the existing literary tradition free of its esoteric, elitist predilection by recasting it as a popular medium. Both steps stimulated an indigenous response and encouraged the discovery of local resources for the appropriation of Christianity. Local believers acquired a new interest not only in the vernacular but also in recording their history and collecting accounts of indigenous wisdom. One missionary whose work sparked such response was J. G. Christaller, who came from Basel to the Gold Coast (now Ghana). Between 1871 and 1881 he produced a Bible translation, a dictionary and a grammar of the Twi language, crowning his labors with a compilation of 3,600 Twi proverbs and axioms. He also helped found the Christian Messenger in 1883, a paper devoted to the promotion of Akan life and culture. His Twi Dictionary has been acclaimed as an "encyclopaedia of Akan civilization" by the modern generation of Ghanaian scholars.

Often the outcome of vernacular translation was that the missionary lost the position of being the expert. But the significance of translation went beyond that. Armed with a written vernacular Scripture, converts to Christianity invariably called into question the legitimacy of all schemes of foreign domination—cultural, political and religious. Here was an acute paradox: the vernacular Scriptures and the wider cultural and linguistic enterprise on which translation rested provided the means and occasion for arousing a sense of national pride, yet it was the missionaries—foreign agents—who were the creators of that entire process. I am convinced that this paradox decisively undercuts the alleged connection often drawn between missions and colonialism. Colonial rule was irreparably damaged by the consequences of vernacular translation—and often by other activities of missionaries.

Because of its concern for translations that employ the speech of the common workaday world, Christian proclamation has had a populist element. In many traditional societies, religious language has tended to be confined to a small elite of professionals. In extreme cases, this language is shrouded under the forbidding sanctions of secret societies and shrines, access to which is through induced trances or a magical formula. The Christian approach to translatability strikes at the heart of such gnostic tendencies, first by contending that the greatest and most profound religious truths are compatible with everyday language, and second, by targeting ordinary men and women as worthy bearers of the religious message. This approach introduced a true democratic spirit into hitherto closed and elitist societies, with women in particular discovering an expanded role.

For example. after George Pilkington, the English lay missionary, translated the Bible in Uganda, some 2,000 men and 400 women acted as colporteurs operating as far as the forests of the Congo. Pilkington’s translated Bible sold 1,100 copies in the first year of publication, with an additional 4,000 New Testaments, 13,500 single Gospels and 40,000 readers. Theodore Roosevelt, who visited Uganda in 1910, witnessed the scene and said it was nothing short of astounding.

The project of translation contains implications about the nature of culture itself. Translation destigmatizes culture—it denies that culture is "profane"—and asserts that the sacred message may legitimately be entrusted to the forms of everyday life. Translation also relativizes culture by denying that there is only one normative expression of the gospel; it results in a pluralism in which God is the relativizing center. The Christian insight into this phenomenon carries with it a profound ethical notion, for it opens culture up to the demand and need for change. A divinized, absolutized culture precludes the possibility of change.

The impact of the translation process is, indeed, incalculable. Suddenly hitherto illiterate populations were equipped with a written Scripture for the first time, and from the wonder and pride of possessing something new that is also strangely familiar, they burst upon the scene with confidence in the whos and whys of their existence. For example, the Luo tribesman Matthew Ajuoga was helping missionaries translate the Bible into his native language. He discovered that the missionaries translated the Greek word philadelphia, "brotherly love," into Luo as hera, and this experience caused him to protest, saying that "love" as the Bible explained it was absent from the missionaries’ treatment of Africans. He subsequently founded an independent church, the Church of Christ in Africa, in 1957, which gained a considerable following across tribal divisions. Another example is the Zulu Bible, which enabled Zulu converts to respond to missionary criticism of the Zulu way of dressing. The Zulus said that they found in Genesis 27:16 sanction for their custom of dressing in skins, a practice the missionaries had attacked. In the eyes of the Zulus, it was the missionaries who were flouting the dress code. Thus it was that, confronted with the bewildering fact of Western intrusion, local populations used the vernacular to avert ultimate disenchantment, in this way utilizing the gains of mission to offset the losses to colonialism.

The evidence of the importance of translation in Christian missions is remarkably consistent. From the 16^th century when Francis Xavier decided to cast his lot with the East against his own Western culture, to the 19^th century when Christaller singlehandedly promoted Akan culture, to the 20^th when Frank Laubach inveighed against the encroachments of American power in the Philippines, missionaries in the field have helped to promote indigenous self-awareness as a counterforce to Western cultural importation. Obviously missionaries wanted to proclaim the gospel because they believed it to be superior to any message others might offer. But it is really not consistent to blame missionaries for believing in what they preach. And we must note this salient, consistent feature of their work—namely, that they confidently adopted the language and culture of others as the irreplaceable vehicle for the transmission of the message. Whatever judgment missionaries brought with them, it certainly was not about the fitness of the vernacular to be the hallowed channel for communicating with God.

Besides the paradox of foreign missionaries establishing the indigenous process by which foreign domination was questioned, there is a theological paradox to this story: missionaries entered the missionary field to convert others, yet in the translation process it was they who first made the move to "convert" to a new language, with all its presuppositions and ramifications. Thus we have the example of Robert de Nobili (1577-1656), an Italian nobleman who went to India as a Jesuit missionary, arriving there in 1605. He passed for a guru, an Indian saintly figure, and even for a sannyasi, a wild, holy man, adopting a Hindu customs and religious terminology to define his own personal piety. Two other examples were Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), who adopted the opposite path to de Nobili by assimilating into upper-class Chinese society during the Ming dynasty, coming to China in 1580, eventually undergoing a profound cultural transformation as a Confucian scholar; and Charles de Foucauld, who served in the French army in the Algerian war where he witnessed moving scenes of Muslim personal piety, leading him to regain his own Christian faith, and becoming in everything a Tuareg Bedouin nomad. Whether missionaries converted anybody else, there is no doubt that they were their own first converts.

It is also apparent that at least in Africa, Christian missions expanded and deepened pluralism—in language, social encounter and ethnic participation in the Christian movement. Missions helped to preserve languages that were threatened by a rising linguafranca, extended the influence of the vernacular through careful methodical and systematic investigations in the field, and helped to establish connections within the wider family of languages. In their grammars, dictionaries, primers, readers and systematic compilations of proverbs, axioms, customs and other ethnographic materials, missionaries furnished the scientific documentation by means of which the. modern study of cultures could begin. Whether missionaries translated well or badly—and there are masterpieces as well as outrageous parodies—they made field criteria rather than the values of empire-building their operative standard.

Indeed, if there is any aspect of missionaries’ motives I would want to pursue, it would be their desire to excel in whatever they undertook. They scrutinized their work in the hard and somber light of giving an account before God. Thus we find in their meticulous record-keeping, in the minutiae of account ledgers, in faithful official and family correspondence and in the assembling of petitions, an extraordinary concern for accuracy.

In examining missionary archives I am struck constantly by the missionaries’ painstaking attention to detail. Inventiveness was a rather rare vice in that stern, austere world of missionary self-accounting. Thus, unwittingly, was laid the firm foundation of modern historiography in Africa and elsewhere. Even the nationalist point of view that came to dominate much historical writing about the new Africa was to a large extent molded by the missionary exploration of indigenous societies.

When they succeeded in translation, missionaries inadvertently vindicated indigenous claims, and when they failed they called forth the criticism of local people. Furthermore, their success in translation merely hastened the day of their departure, while failure called into question their continuing presence. Words have impact, especially in the abundant surplus of their unintended consequences. Translation is no respecter of motives—which is why it should be detached from the question of motives and examined in its own right.

Missionary statesmen in the 19^th century saw quite clearly where the vernacular principle was leading, and they welcomed it as the supreme reward of Christian discipleship. For example, Henry Venn of the Anglican Church Missionary Society said that "the marked national characteristics" that the vernacular principle fosters in the expression of the gospel, "in the overruling grace of God, will tend to its perfection and glory." He spoke vividly of "a euthanasia of mission" once the vernacular principle exerted its full force. He said the business of mission was "not to supply an European pastorate, but to prepare native pastors ... and to fix the spiritual standard in such churches by securing for them a supply of Vernacular Scriptures" (To Apply the Gospel: Selections from the Writings of Henry Venn [Eerdmans, 1971)]. Such an aim, he counseled, differed sharply from the goals of colonialism in perpetuating overseas dependencies.

The modern religious map of Africa reveals in a striking way the close connection between the growth of Christianity and the widespread employment of the vernacular. The converse also seems to hold: Christian growth has been slightest in areas where vernacular languages are weak—that is, where a lingua franca such as English, French, Portuguese, Arabic or Swahili has succeeded in suppressing mother tongues.

To make the contrast even starker, we can point out that the reverse phenomenon appears in Islam, also a missionary religion, but one that does not translate its Scriptures for its canonical rites. Islam is strongest in societies where a lingua franca exists and weakest in places of vernacular preponderance. For example, Islamic gains in north Nigeria occurred at the hands of the Fulani reformers in the 19^th century. In the process, the Fulani assimilated to an Islamized Hausa culture and lost their own Fulfulde language.

Islamic reform has nowhere to my knowledge made the perpetuation of the vernacular a concomitant of orthodox rectitude, and I know of no Muslim language institutes dedicated to the systematic study of the vernacular. Islam has succeeded brilliantly in its missionary enterprise, promoting at the same time a universal devotion to the sacred Arabic. In Africa, we see evidence of its considerable gains in spite of what we might regard as insuperable odds against a nontranslatable Scripture. For this reason the implications of Muslim success for pluralism are quite serious.

I will conclude, as I began, with a personal story, this one about the unexpected dynamics of translation. After completing my Islamic studies in the Middle East in 1969 1 went to Yorubaland in Nigeria as a lay worker with the Methodist Church. I was immediately taken to the local market to purchase some bare essentials for my flat. My companion was a senior English missionary who had spent many years in Ibadan and knew his way around. He translated for me as we did the round of market stalls, with the stallkeepers’ curiosity naturally aroused by the missionary, in their eyes a stranger from beyond the stars.

Before we had picked our way through the market, a small crowd had gathered to marvel at the sight of a white man translating for an African in an African language. It was as if we had got our arrangement wrong and put the Western cart before the African horse. The image of "total stranger" the stallkeepers had of the Western missionary was completely belied by this exposure.

Of the several lessons one can draw from this incident, one is particularly relevant to the Western guilt complex about missions. There is a widespread tendency in the West to see missions as destroyers of indigenous cultures or else as alien cultural agents from the West. Yet in the incident at the local market, my missionary companion came to be acknowledged by the stallkeepers as an accomplished "native," one of themselves, on the basis of the vernacular rule that they normally used to determine the boundary between insiders and outsiders. In the act of translating, my missionary friend demonstrated that he had as much claim to being in Africa as he had to identifying with the West. His own Western cultural differences were no longer a barrier, nor even a useful evaluative standard, but an opportunity for cross-cultural interchange. This example suggests that Christian missions are better seen as a translation movement, with consequences for vernacular revitalization, religious change and social transformation. than as a vehicle for Western cultural domination. Such an assurance should help alleviate some of the Western guilt complex about missions.

While by no means the last word on the subject, Lesslie Newbigin has made a bold and major step forward in the debate on Christianity, pluralism and Western self-understanding. This work should be welcomed as a precise formulation of problems that continue to perplex and trouble the West.

The book is divided into two parts. In the first, Newbigin examines the intellectual roots of Western society, paying special attention to epistemology and phenomenology. Here the focus is on the dichotomy between "knowledge" of so-called objective facts and "belief’ in so-called subjective values—a dichotomy, Newbigin maintains, that is rationally indefensible. Having been founded on the distinction between knowledge and belief, fact and value, object and subject; public and private, Western culture is unable to take Christianity seriously.

The second part deals with the constructive project of defending religious belief, Christianity in particular, as a cogent "plausibility structure" in its own right. Religious claims, in this regard, are a series of propositions which are coherent in their own terms and which generate a historical tradition in which believers struggle to reconcile their understanding of truth-claims with the pressures of life and experience.

This constructive side of the book commands Newbigin’s major interest and is, consequently, not split off from the first stage in any formal way but pervades the entire book.

Newbigin borrows the idea of "plausibility structures" from sociologist Peter Berger, and links it to the idea of knowledge as personal commitment A la Michael Polanyi. Berger and Polanyi thus are the two sides of the sandwich between which Newbigin attempts to insert the stuff of Christianity. This approach has both merit and drawbacks, although, for his purposes, Newbigin can insist that any project in communication has to begin with a particular standpoint rather than in some abstraction. In fact, it may turn out to be one of the great merits of the book that it calls us to a rigorous understanding of the nature of epistemological particularity, especially where it carries with it "universal intent"—that is, the intention to commend faith and knowledge to the reasonable consideration and acceptance of others.

Newbigin is concerned to establish the particularity of modern Western epistemology, a procedure that would confirm that the notion of objective factualness in scientific inquiry is itself rooted in a particular plausibility structure. The danger that particularity might lead to unmitigated subjectivism is met by Newbigin’s view that scientific knowledge as a particular worldview is legitimized by "universal intent," namely, the enterprise of making public a claim and demonstrating its right to command credence. Thus when we have stripped scientific knowledge to its essentials we are left with both its particularity and its universal intent, a step that would require us to modify any rigid distinction between the objective and subjective poles, or between knowledge and belief.

This step is critical to Newbigin’s argument; the rest of the book follows from it. Newbigin’s contention, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is that "a standpoint outside the real human situation of knowing subjects" is not available to us, and consequently Christianity is always received and transmitted within existing particular structures of life and thought, as is also the case with the tradition of scientific rationality. Yet, in both religion and science, we find that claims initially refracted through a particular culture also have universal intent. On the basis of this similarity, Newbigin treats science and religion as identical in form, so much so that we may, he argues, speak of the purpose in machines and the purpose in eschatological faith as ultimately the same.

Such a bold idea, however, needs qualifying, which Newbigin does by reminding us of a God who acts in history to reveal and effect the higher purpose, although such acting conforms to the structure of rational norms. The qualification thus qualified identifies the source of my unease with Newbigin’s approach. I wonder whether the rational analogy has not assumed too large a role in Newbigin’s apologetics, so large as to become the rule by which faith acquits itself. If Christianity proceeds by the path laid for it by reason, turning into a look-alike or surrogate rationality, then it is more or less a coincidence that it had its origins in the higher elevations of Sinai and Calvary—a point with which Newbigin would not seriously disagree.

Newbigin does not proceed by way of an inflexible rationalism, however. He begins, for example, by trying to extract from reason a concession to religious faith and commitment. He argues that scientific knowledge is not objective or factual enough to dispense with personal commitment. In the very act of testing a hypothesis or gathering evidence, it is not possible to doubt or distrust the enterprise itself. This leads to the view that there is no knowing without believing, and that believing is the way of knowing. The converse of this is equally true: one can doubt only because there are things one takes as true without doubting. It is, he maintains, impossible to doubt all one’s beliefs. "It is impossible at the same time to doubt both the statement, and the beliefs on the basis of which the statement is doubted."

If this is true—and on one level I am sure it is—then Newbigin has nevertheless left us with an acute dilemma about the way he sets out his case for Christianity. Citing the story of the empty tomb, for example, Newbigin says that the reigning plausibility structures of the West turn around the account by explaining it as visions created in the minds of the disciples because of their predisposition to believe, whereas the Christian tradition would prefer to see it as "a boundary event" that brought the disciples to a new way of seeing and thinking. Yet Newbigin’s own premise would force the conclusion that the disciples could not have known the empty tomb existed without a disposition to belief, since there is, according to him, no knowing without believing, and believing itself is a way of knowing. There is a hint here that the sandwich may substitute for the meat, with presumably troubling implications for Newbigin’s apologetic task.

Newbigin is absolutely right that Christianity, or at any rate Christian mission and apologetics, is always involved in a pluralist tension—the tension between confidence in God and uncertainty about living out that truth in the world, between faith as God’s gift and understanding as a form of growing discovery, between knowing who God is and seeking to bring that knowledge into situations of despair or resistance, not to say anything about the diversity and conflict of views among self-avowed Christians. Beyond this formulation is the highly significant though still flickering frontier of world Christianity now emerging like a new universe bathed in dawn. There we find plausibility structures so inconceivable from our Western stand-point that we would be inclined to regard them as extraterrestrial creations were it not for the fact that Jesus Christ is also their theme and burden.

Can Western Christianity, in its Protestant, Orthodox and Catholic forms, as it emerges from its deep assimilation of the heritage of the Enlightenment, join hands with a world Christianity framed by radically different plausibility structures? Newbigin’s own searching critique of Descartes and Kant suggests severe limitations in exporting that legacy to the rest of the world. Consequently, other peoples and cultures are likely to come to their knowledge and understanding of Christianity outside the mediating scheme of the Western Enlightenment, though it would be rash to exclude the possibility of contact altogether.

The way forward lies through a radical shaking down of the reigning plausibility structures in the West, combined with growing awareness of new regions of Christianity. That shaking down has to affect certain basic cultural attitudes about science, philosophy and society, and about faith in national identity as a substitute for religion. The second of these is perhaps the most obdurate force we have to contend with, though the first is also a pervasive issue.

It could, in fact, be argued that one of the most significant paradigm shifts of the past several centuries has been the move from a religious metaphysic to a political metaphysic and the messianic state it fosters. All of us in the past two centuries or so have been conditioned to believe that historical and social events will bring about the ultimacy of the national state which can then afford to allow religion to wither on the vine. Certainly in the West the transition has been accompanied by an emphatic ethical transformation: to die for one’s religion is considered a fanatical act, whereas to die for one’s country is considered an act of heroism. Thus the pledge before the flag becomes more potent than any religious mantra, though the henotheist faith it relies on competes in the same arena as religious faith. We continue to uphold the sanctity of life, but it is a notion now derived from the idea of the sacredness of citizenship rather than of religion.

A similar imaginative leap is necessary to rethink notions of cause and effect to which the West has committed itself. When we are presented with evidence that challenges that plausibility structure we respond that "accidents" or "unknown causes" do occur, and leave the matter at that. It would be difficult to practice our kind of science and medicine without the stable boundaries given us by cause and effect. The larger question, as to whether our kind of science and medicine deals adequately enough with the intricate fabric of phenomena and persons, can be raised only when we confront a society and culture radically different from ours. From the standpoint of another culture, Descartes’s confident assertion that "I think, therefore I am" (Cogito ergo sum) might sound like utter folly. From such a standpoint a more secure foundation for knowledge might instead be, "I am related, therefore I am" (Cognatus ergo sum). After all, why should Descartes make his declaration unless there are others of whom he is conscious and whom he wishes to persuade? From the relational perspective, then, even the most abstract theory presumes a social reality, and great science is grounded in relational truth.

"Plausibility structures" as a concept may not, however, address the deeper aspects of religious claims, including this relational dimension. Something may sound entirely plausible without its demanding a searching openness, and I could go on conceding a structure or many structures as having a plausibility while never quite trusting them in certain critical situations where instinct, practice or simple trust takes over. We all can recall occasions when an "accidental" wrong turn in the road, a delayed or early arrival at the airport, or a gut-level reaction in an emergency saved the day. And then, in retrospect, the pieces fall into place and we "see" a purpose, and a bigger picture, in it all.

The cumulative effect of instances of such "seeing" might add up to faith and trust in a power wiser, greater and nobler than any we know, or, at any rate, it might commence that son of awakening, causing us to ask for a transcendent selfdisclosure that is unlike anything remotely resembling self-aggrandizement. Its outcome would be the recognition of a new relationship. Mere might be a plausibility factor in that self-disclosure and the relationship it creates, but if so it would be like a trickle beside the mighty Zambezi.

At this stage it would be appropriate to invoke the idea of "universal intent" Newbigin talks about, for religious encounters of the kind I have just described will require commitment to truth and to the task of witness. As the river exists for nothing if it does not flow toward the sea, faith points beyond itself.

Thus reasoning of the analytic kind has a subordinate role in religion. On the one hand, reason is not alien to the nature of the universe, which responds in more or less precise and predictable ways to reason’s probes. On the other hand, reason is not a product of nature but is rather a superior principle that orders and understands nature. The snow-capped Kilimanjaro is an awesome if anomalous sight in the tropical setting of East Africa, but it does not produce a logical scale of its own elevation. It is left to humans to subdue the mountain’s pride and offer it as an homage to Ngai, the god of the mountain.

The task of unmasking the assumptions and presuppositions in such projects of heart and mind is beyond most of us, for it is difficult to disengage from the idiom of our own operative procedures. Yet it is clear that if we are going to question the idioms of the omnicompetent state and the chain of causation we have to take serious stock of movements and ideas breaking out beyond our own borders.

Christian mission has long engaged in such rethinking, although given the stern perspective of the critics, we have failed to understand the movement in its non-Western setting. It has not been easy to appreciate how missionaries had their reigning plausibility structures dismantled at the hinges as they appropriated indigenous idioms for their work. But that it happened, and on an astonishing scale, is indubitable.

Hence the irony today that mainstream churches have taken the sideline on mission, and instead turned to development projects as an expiatory offering for past sins. In that sense, mission as the spread of the gospel has given way to mission as an instrument of national policy, with diplomatic missions overseeing the implementation of foreign policy. Both official and voluntary organizations are prominent in promoting national and cultural values, with people encouraged to indicate their approval of affirmations rooted in the national purpose. There is probably more pietistic fervor in civil ceremonies than at a typical Protestant Sunday morning service, and people are more likely to feel solidarity with fellow nationals of a different religion than with co-religionists of a different nationality. The willingness of the churches, then, to offer development projects as a substitute for witness reinforces the shift from religion to national identity and obligation as forms of ultimate loyalty. Since development projects also rightly respond to searing need abroad, they may unwittingly conceal from us cultural and national values that unavoidably accompany them. Thus the churches become the religious equivalent of good citizenship.

The West is perplexed and troubled most about the cross-cultural ramifications of religious witness. How do we know others are not satisfied with their own religions? From a mixture of powerful motives, including genuine conviction or remorse, guilt, uncertainty, agnosticism, cultural exclusiveness, fear of criticism and disenchantment, mission has acquired a bad reputation in church and society. The paradox, of course, is that through mission the West came upon some of the most searching and sustained critiques of its reigning plausibility structures. Says Newbigin: "It is only when we are exposed to a totally different culture and a different language, shaped by a widely different history, that we can turn back and see that what we always took for granted is only one way of seeing things."

By undertaking to learn the languages of others and to communicate in their idioms, missionaries became their own first converts, providing an example of what might be involved when prospective believers saw their idioms had also become the idioms of outsiders. It is a remarkable fact that mission as the historical searching out of God’s universal purpose became distinguished by its scrupulous development of vernacular particularity. That is to say, in their vernacular work, missions appropriated numerous plausibility structures with which to express the gospel. This action pluralized while simultaneously relativizing the notion of plausibility structures vis-à-vis the single theme of God’s redemptive purpose in history.

Newbigin speaks of "the scandal of particularity," as when out of all the nations of the world the Jews are chosen to represent God’s purposes in history, whenceforth God came among us in Jesus Christ. Traditional Western theology treats particularity as a problem in divine providence, or even as an issue in divine election: why should God’s knowledge and mission be restricted to particular segments of human history? There is, needless to say, much in that approach to instruct and restrain, but I wonder whether another approach might help shed further light on the subject. We could say that when missionaries adopted the specificity of vernacular languages and cultures as vehicles for the gospel, they were extending the principle of Jewish particularity, the paradigm by which God has chosen to instruct the world in righteousness.

It goes without saying that missions have produced many changes, both intended and unintended, though I remain unsure of the usefulness of judging missions by whether or not they extended the influence of the West in the societies affected. That way of looking at the history of missions adopts a Eurocentric view of Christianity, accounting for everything in terms of how it squares with the Western worldview. Perhaps it is this Eurocentric view that leads Newbigin to claim that Christian missions have created a revolution of expectations in the relevant societies, giving the people for the first time a sense of history. In view of that, "mission is a historymaking force."

It is true that missions were a historical force of great importance, but we have to reckon within that fact that the changes included a radical critique of Western political and cultural imperialism. Indeed, the force of those historical changes derived from the strength of the nationalist sentiment which the vernacular translations of missions did far more to excite and guide than any other single factor. It is to that source rather than in acquiescence to Western norms that we have to trace the roots of historical consciousness, for history does not rise from acquiescence. By not pursuing that historical theme to the field setting of missions, Newbigin unwittingly plays into the hands of his critics who see in missions proof of Western cultural insensitivity.

Contemporary theology is marked by a lively debate about the call to abandon any claim to Christian uniqueness, a claim viewed as offensive and outmoded in a religiously pluralist world. Newbigin notes that the debate is inclined to be vitiated by what he calls cultural collapse in the West, a collapse eloquently described by Robert Bellah et al. The arguments in this debate tend to be rather repetitive, but they come down to one issue: the contention that the claims of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others require a dissolution of the historic claims of Christianity. It is a one-sidedness in which the particularity of others is mobilized to block that of Christianity. This situation comes pretty close to Tolstoy’s description of historians of his generation: they were like deaf men answering questions which no one had put to them. It by no means follows that unilaterally abandoning historic Christian claims would lead others to do like-wise, and even if they did, it would be no less damaging to the prospects of pluralism.

It may turn out to be the Achilles’ heel of Western liberalism that its proposal to strip Christianity of its particular claims would alienate it from religions that reject the advice of the West. Among the internal logical difficulties of relativism is the fact that if religions, and our thoughts about them, are culturally conditioned phenomena, then our formulations of relativism are themselves culturally conditioned. In any case, the problem with historic Christian claims turns out to be itself culturally induced, and therefore as valid or invalid as anything else. Extreme relativism leads to complete nonsense.

In the final analysis, both pluralism and the integrity of religious faith are damaged by the adoption of a soap-and-water Christianity that liberal defensiveness seems to prescribe for us. Newbigin’s answer, in trying to clarify the grounds for a reasonable Christianity, should help recover the initiative, thus advancing through Christian particularity the frontiers of authentic pluralism.

Church History has generally been defined by a Western perspective. What European Christians have thought and done has been considered superior to what Christians elsewhere have thought and done. Chronology has generally been subservient to biography, and biography has been subservient to dogma and theory, especially when the dogma and theory confirm the idea of Western ascendancy. Attention has been paid, of course, to such issues as demography, economics, social status and political forces. But in the main, the human spirit has been stripped of local color, tone and sound in order to become a fit subject for reflection. The emphasis has been either, on the development of doctrine or on religion as an aspect of general human nature.

The tendency to feel awkward about the historical character of the faith has left us in a poor position to appreciate Christianity as a global reality. It's striking how few of my esteemed colleagues at Yale Divinity School make regular professional use of the resources in the Day Missions Library, which contains a treasure of information about the worldwide expansion of Christianity. This indifference contrasts sharply with the flowering of interest in the Western missionary movement shown by departments of history, political science and anthropology. It's ironic that a divinity school can carry out its mission largely uninterested in Christianity's unprecedented expansion around the world. How do we understand this irony? Perhaps it's a measure of how much we have turned our back on the historical dimension of Christianity and on non-Western societies. Perhaps it also indicates how absorbed we are in our immediate context, which causes us to think in terms of decline and uncertainty rather than growth.

In any case, I wonder what the study of church history would look like if it had a global perspective -- if it viewed world Christianity not with a sense of decline and uncertainty but with a sense of expansion and promise. Indeed, might not the entire structure of theological education change if it began to respond to the realities of world Christianity?

Edinburgh scholar Andrew Walls has argued that the shift of the numerical bulk of Christians from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, Latin America and other areas outside the Northern Hemisphere has had more than demographic significance. Says Walls:

Before 1945, Christianity was conceived essentially in terms of the threefold division of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant. After 1945 such a view became increasingly untenable. "In practice, seminal Christian thinkers [today] exercise an influence no longer bounded by their own confessions. The central affirmations and emphases of each tradition now often find echoes in the others.

Missionaries had a lot to do with the emerging ecumenical consciousness. On the mission field, Protestantism's antisacramental stance was softened because of the need to provide new converts with local forms and idioms with which to express their new faith. Roman Catholicism, long before Vatican II, began to stress catechism, preaching and the translation of scripture into the vernacular. My own first encounter with the Gospels in an African language occurred when I saw copies of Bishop Maloney's Catholic translation of Matthew into Fula -- a translation made, I believe, in the 1940s or 1950s. And eventually the Orthodox too discovered mission frontiers beyond the boundaries of the Byzantine heritage.

The mission field demanded that Christians respond to local feedback about the meaning and potential of the gospel. Missionaries had to pay attention to the faith as it was transmitted to and appropriated by new believers rather than rely on scruples that stemmed from the doctrinal disputes of Europe. And how different those disputes appeared when seen through the eyes of new converts.

New converts were able to scrutinize Western imperialism in the light of what they learned in the gospel about God's unalloyed love and favor toward the oppressed, the lowly and the outcast. For the subject races who counted for little in the scales of Western colonialism, Christianity was a mass transit movement toward a new consciousness. The faith was conveyed to people in the ample yet hallowed idiom of their mother tongues. And so in hinterland gatherings, celebrations took place in churches, mission-founded and independent, long before political independence arrived or was imagined.

Local Christian preachers, prophets and healers were convulsed, and their societies with them, by the force of the new dispensation. In confession, testimony, prayer and invocation the new prophets emerged as the epitome of their age, infecting virtually all the major Christian denominations with their ebullient, celebratory mood, a joyful seasoning that drew the sting of race, culture, language, creed, status and personal biography.

The new forms of Christian life and practice that were emerging would provide the ecumenical movement with a concrete credibility well before ecclesiastical formulations would attempt to rise to the occasion. It may be instructive for us to ponder how the cause of the mainline ecumenical movement was closely tied to mission, and how its reported decline today appears to coincide with the decline of mainline mission. With the loss of the missionary impulse, the ecumenical movement has suffered to the same extent.

In surveying the history of Christian mission, Walls sees a distinctive pattern:

One could dwell on the demise of the original geographical and cultural center of Christianity and how that left the religion open to adoption and assimilation in as many cultures as it encountered. More than one historian has commented on how in this respect the Christian movement was responsible for producing for the first time a truly global, ecumenical version of world history, with the meaning and significance of history to be found where the spirit moves and blows, typically among those considered outcasts, the lowly, the oppressed or socially insignificant. Correspondingly, the typical pattern of Christian history is as a movement of the periphery, of the relentless and radical circumvention of the establishment in obedience to a God whose central design leaves earthly arrangements provisional and dispensable.

Walls has sketched for us the shape of what confronts us in contemporary Christianity. He observes that "on any reading of history the missionary movement must have at least something to do with the most striking change in the religious map of the world for several centuries."

There must be some connection," Walls suggests, "between these events and the missionary movement; and the modern missionary movement, though affected in important ways by earlier influences, took shape as recently as the 19th century. Yet how is the contemporary student of Christianity to understand this important motor of modern Christianity?" ("Structural Problems in Mission Studies,." International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 15, no. 4, October 1991).

In looking to theology for help with this question, Walls has uncovered a surprising lack of interest. Surprising, because in the 19th century theology responded with energy and deepening insight to the changes afoot in several branches of learning -- in archaeology, in the discovery of papyri and the text criticism it fostered, in the historical sciences and in the natural sciences, and in changes in society.

. In calling attention to the failure of Western theology to respond meaningfully and in a timely fashion to non-Western Christianity, I do not mean, nor does Walls mean, to imply that Western theology must incorporate Asian and African Christianity into its ascendant framework, but that standard theological sources and methods have failed to show any awareness of the Copernican shift that has taken place in the religious map of the world. And the meager evidence there might be of the glimmerings of an awareness that the entire landscape has shifted is shot through with fear and a sense of threat, or with a corrosive sense of guilt. Yet the "global transformation of Christianity requires nothing less than the complete rethinking of the church history syllabus."

New discoveries take time to sink in. The discovery of the New World was not immediately reflected in European cartography, let alone allowed to replace the old maps and the intellectual assumptions they enshrined. "In fact, the new discoveries were intellectually threatening, requiring the abandonment of too many certainties, the acquisition of too many new ideas and skills, the modification of too many maxims, the sudden irrelevance of too many accepted authorities. It was easier to ignore them and carry on with the old intellectual maps (and often the old geographical maps too), even while accepting the fact of the discovery and profiting from the economic effects." This explains why the innovative intellectual leadership required for revamping church history and reconceiving the teaching of history across the entire academic syllabus, both secular and theological, has been painfully slow in emerging.

Walls has called our attention to the potentially subversive character of mission studies on what happens elsewhere in the curriculum. "Old texts may often be illuminated from the experience of Christian en counter today. The responses to Christianity amid the old religions of Europe that we meet in Patrick or Bede or Gregory of Tours are worth taking side by side with the Christian interaction with the primal religions of Africa. Biblical studies could receive an infusion of new research tasks; and only through mission studies are Western biblical scholars and theologians likely to learn the work done in their own fields by their African, Asian, and Latin American colleagues." It is in fact in mission studies that the West is likely to encounter a compelling and eloquent case for reeducating itself in a way that is the most radical since Columbus. If it does not seem that radical today, that is be- cause old assurances have deceptively long shadows in the twilight, and because change of such magnitude and significance comes to us in hidden and open ways, in the accumulation of scarcely discernible shifts of habit and attention as well as in dramatic breaks.

Christianity has become a genuinely multicultural world religion, thriving profusely in the idioms of other languages and cultures, marked by a lively cross-cultural and interreligious sensibility, unburdened by the heavy artillery of doctors and councils, and otherwise undaunted by the scandalous paucity of money, trained leadership, infrastructure and resources. Nothing better demonstrates the newness of world Christianity than the fact that it has ceased, or is ceasing, to be weighed down by its missionary past. In the churches and congregations we find fresh energy and intelligence being devoted to the production of new hymns, music, artistic and liturgical materials, to the creation of fresh categories for doing theology, to the retrieval of threatened cultural resources, to the application of faith to public issues, and to the promotion of ecumenical sharing and partnership.

We sense in all of this the dawn of a new dispensation, a fresh, if sometimes uneven, point of departure for the apostolic heritage, a galvanizing hope, born of proven confidence that we can move beyond Day One of the missionary landing to enter new fields and spheres with our hearts and minds fixed on the right things. In the meantime, many research centers (concentrated at present in the West, but happily more and more available through new information and communication systems) are laying the groundwork for tangible, sustainable growth and development. Once that infrastructure is in place, there is little doubt that the subject of world Christianity as the unique legacy of the modern missionary movement will make its long-overdue impact and channel back some of its revitalized energy into the necessary transformation of our preCopernican historical universe.

Not too long after the beginning of the modem Western missionary movement, while John Tyler was president of the United States and Sir Robert Peel (best known for founding the Metropolitan Police when he was home secretary) was for the second time British prime minister, James Legge stood in 1843 on the frontiers of the Middle Kingdom, as China regarded itself. As he drew in his breath, Legge felt a palpable sense of excitement at the intellectual greatness of China, a greatness that contrasted sadly with Western ignorance of it. So he set about the immense task of rendering the Chinese classics into English for a Western readership then in the deep embrace of an all-absorbing heroic Romanticism. His aim was to revitalize the world of learning and to expand the abstract intellectual horizons of his European contemporaries.

It took him 30 years and five volumes to accomplish his task, and still he was not done. In 1873, when Japan suppressed feudalism and was turning Westward and the Remington typewriter was invented, Legge returned from China to become professor of Chinese at Oxford. He was a different man from what he was when he left. He had been "subverted" by things Chinese, and this had determined his lifelong calling.

The example of Legge can be repeated for countless others, men and women, then and now, who as missionary pioneers stumbled on priceless pearls which subsequently they gathered and consecrated, recirculating them as humanity's common heritage. It has resulted in a qualitative change in the Western academic syllabus, and thus of the West's self-understanding.

In spite of all that, Western theology still would not be "subverted," preferring instead to look the other way and to exclude from its canon those great jewels of the human spirit, once exotic and alien but now no longer remote. Theology has thus exulted in its domestication, refusing to be transformed globally. The situation cannot go on like that without serious long-term repercussions -- without Western theology, in its splendid isolation, risking those vital connections through which old forms are renewed and fresh vitality released.