Ross Woods, 2022 ed.
As a field of study, contextualization is the missiological study of the interaction between Christian truth and cultures where Christianity is foreign.
The first objective is practical, and is to express the gospel to people who have a particular culture or subculture in such a way that they can understand it accurately and feel that it can be accepted. If people in the target culture do not want to accept the gospel, then at least the cause is not miscommunication.
The second objective of contextualization studies is theoretical. Students of contextualization seek to identify the principles of intercultural interaction inherent in that process, and develop theoretical models through critique, case studies, and the identification of patterns of syncretism.
The idea of contextualization has tended to refer to deliberate strategies by intercultural missionaries to transfer something to a target culture. For any particular culture, the general idea is that the intercultural worker will identify ways in which the gospel can speak relevantly to key issues and concerns.
Lots of good work has been based on this approach, and it will be healthy if it continues. It has made intercultural workers more sensitive to finding core cultural issues and has contributed to some effective programs. The idea has generated a healthy body of dissertations and publications.
When we want to appraise a contextualized approach, one question we ask is whether it leads to genuine conversion. But discernment of conversion is not that simple.
One aspect is difference of viewpoint. Intercultural workers and indigenous people have different viewpoints, and so do better acculturated expatriate workers and less acculturated. That is, one's answers can vary depending on stage of cultural adaptation.
Another aspect is that indigenous Christians can disagree on whether individuals are converted. Some indigenous Christians will say that the new believers are Christians, while others will say that they are syncretists or not yet Christians. Part of the issue is that new believers are still working through effects and influences from their old lives, so may be hung up with lots of old ways, but have already trusted in Christ. Moreover, some indigenous Christians require new believers to wear some cultural trappings of Christianity before they are considered "real Christians".
Contextualization is clearly not just an issue for intercultural ministry but also for the indigenous church in its cultural environment.
It seems that for all the well-done case studies, there is not yet an adequate theory of contextualization. This paper gives a too-brief overview of the development of contextualization paradigms, and proposes that indigenous people, not the intercultural worker, take a dominant role in determining effective contextualized forms. This seems to me primarily a descriptive rather than a prescriptive approach.
The discussion so far has dealt with models, not theories. If a model is a necessarily simplified explanatory representation of a dynamic, and a theory is a complex pattern that explains as nearly as possible the entirety of a phenomenon, then we might be dealing with models more than theories.
The simple but inadequate approach to developing a theory is to get a contextualization approach, especially one of those generated by communication theory, and hang increasingly many tags on the diagram to account for a wider range of aspects. In the end, it becomes so complex that is neither a model nor a theory. A theory must be simple enough to make some sort of sense, while including or accounting for the best aspects of all models. One of the lessons of postmodernism is that individual theories are seldom able to do this.
The question arises, "Do we need to do better in contextualization?" In many cases, of course, people have been genuinely converted through imperfect communication, and we will always be able to improve. In a few cases, people are so open and needy that they readily accept the Gospel. This is primarily a prescriptive issue, but we can make a forceful enough case for improving our contextualization.
Some contextualization has been so imperfect that people have not clearly been converted, and the interesting term Christopaganism was coined to label it. The proclaimed message can also induce resistance if we are unaware that our message is carrying repulsive cultural baggage. In many more cases, however, people are clearly converted but the message takes more work for them to understand accurately.
And in some cases, our ability to find openness to the Gospel will depend on having much more effective contextualization. In one ethnic group that for over a century seemed overwhelmingly resistant to the Gospel, new contextualized approaches have uncovered huge openness. Evangelists can now be invited to places where once they would have been expelled or killed. A great many lifestyle issues were discussed in contextualization, not just conceptions of the Gospel.
Most students of contextualization find a biblical basis in the approach of Paul to the Gentiles, and suggest that it began there. Much of the New Testament deals with the theological-cultural transition from a Jewish Messiah to a universal light to the Gentiles.
In the modern era, Rolland Allen, writing soon after the beginning of the twentieth century based on his experiences in China, proposed that indigenous churches should be self-propagating, self-governing, and self-supporting. Of course, missionaries had been establishing indigenous churches since New Testament times (try Acts 15, where Paul plants churches, strengthens them, appoints elders, and then leaves them), and there have been three-self churches in different parts of the world for centuries. Some missionaries introduced the idea in the mid 19th century. But Allen wrote the influential and controversial book that contributed the idea to western missionary thinking. Missions at the time was was very colonially minded, and his ideas weren't much accepted for a long time. But Allen's work was a breakthrough in the era since Carey, when missions had been identified with colonial powers.
However, it was not until the 1950s that the stage was set. Interestingly, this coincided with the postcolonial era for much of the world. Many traditional missionary-receiving countries became independent, and colonial attitudes to missions started to change.
In the 1950s 60s and 70s, evangelicals gave more attention to cultural issues relevant to missiology. Eugene Nida, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and the Fuller School of World Mission think-tank generated lots of influential missionary anthropology. The earlier discussion on indigenization became the contextualization discussion in the early 1970s.
There have been several major views of contextualization, the oldest of which is the use of symbols.
Discussion focused on surface culture issues including clothing, personal appearance (beards, moustaches), housing, language (although some language structures are deep), etiquette, art, use of illustration and examples, and choice of medium of communication.
In this view, it suffices for the communicator to adjust on surface culture matters, because he considers his theology to be perfect and easily understood. Intercultural workers are aware of the need for surface level adaptation, but this view is simply naïve about deep culture and has proven inadequate.
Although these issues sometimes still come up, there is now considerable agreement that they are not part of the Christian message and for the most part one can freely use indigenous styles without fear of syncretism
Another view of contextualization was the "redemptive analogy" approach presented widely in the book and film "Peace Child" by Don Richardson. Before then, nobody ever conceived of Christ as a Melanesian peace-child offered to bring peace between two warring tribes.
Richardson suggested that there were analogies of the gospel in each culture, and that these analogies would make understanding easy and create great openness. The idea has proved unhelpful because a very apt illustration is not necessarily a magic key.
However it was to have significant consequences for it was shown that the gospel could be reconceptualized in various different culture-specific forms. The idea was a pleasant surprise in that it showed that there might be many better and more effective ways to communicate the message.
The functional equivalence view of contextualization is the notion that symbolic events can be replaced with a cultural equivalent.
The equivalent must be devoid of non-Christian connotations but it allows people to meet their social and cultural obligations. For example, an animistic feast might be replaced with a Christian thanksgiving meeting. Burning incense to ancestors might be replaced with a non-religious offering of flowers as a mark of respect.
This idea has been very helpful but it still deals mainly with surface culture. The extent to which it masks syncretism is seldom really known, but in some cases, it does, either in the mind of Christians or new Christians or non-Christian onlookers.
Functional equivalence has depended on a form-meaning dichotomy, which is difficult when local people instinctively identify a form with a particular meaning. It might mean that the form cannot easily be used for a new, Christian meaning. Alternatively, it might mean that the form needs considerable adaptation to be identified as culturally acceptable, but without the traditional meaning.
Dynamic equivalence, a term commandeered from linguistics, is somewhat similar, and means `expressing the intent of the original in the idiom of the target culture’. In communication studies, the theorist views the process as the speaker encoding an intent to become a message. The listener also interprets the message, which is the decoding process:
Speaker → Encode → Message → Decode → Listener
By re-expressing the intent of the original in a way that the hearers could easily understand, one generated a new conceptualisation of the Gospel.
The original was the criterion of authenticity, while the target culture was the criterion of comprehensibility. This conception has been quite significant, but it still has some major weaknesses, especially that the listener is relatively passive.
In this approach, cultural forms are separated from their meaning. For example, a mosque-shaped building is a form and it usually has the meaning of the religion established by Mohammad. If the form (that kind of building) can be separated from the meaning, then it can be a suitable style for a church building, which we interpret to be a place of worship according to biblical teachings. The building then becomes a context-friendly expression of Christian worship. People spontaneously accept this as natural and healthy in some cultures.
However, people in the target culture might just as easily identify the form with meaning; the distinction between form and meaning works better in theoretical cultural anthropology than in a genuine intercultural context. In this example, they might still identify the building with Mohammad's religion, and believers might feel that this is syncretistic.
If people identify particular clothes, vocabulary, styles of meeting, and greetings (forms) with a particular religion, Christians can tend to feel that keeping them is syncretistic, even though they are harmless forms and not related to real meanings.
Another problem with this conception of contextualization is that the listener is relatively passive.
National Christians, missionaries, and converts might all draw the line at different places between valid and invalid contextualization. The pressures may be: