Contextualization: Can a Muslim or a Hindu be a Christian?
Contextualization was the word of the week during our time in Chandigarh. We spent 3 days with a good Hindu-background brother who is doing contextualized church planting, which got us thinking and talking a lot. The idea behind contextualization is that people’s response to the gospel and the life of the Body will never look exactly the same in different cultures. The less the Church contextualizes, the more it will look exactly the same in any culture in the world. The more it contextualizes, the more it can take many different forms.
The challenge for us Westerners in understanding contextualization is that we tend to divorce religion from culture. In our minds, Hinduism and Islam are religions people must leave in order to follow Christ, and we often presume they can do so without leaving their culture. The problem is that, for many people in the non-Western world, religion and culture cannot be separated. When people say they are Hindus or Muslims (or Catholics in Mexico, perhaps), they are not just stating their adherence to a particular religion, they are telling who they are. For non-Westerners, the physical and spiritual worlds are not separate; everything in life has a spiritual aspect to it. Westerners separate the two, and can therefore make a distinction between culture and religion, but for most non-Westerners, the two are inseparable.
If we understand this, is the only option for a person in India to cease being a Hindu or a Muslim (Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, etc.) and become a Christian? Or can a person be a Hindu or a Muslim who follows Christ and serves the one true God alone? Before jumping to any conclusions, let’s consider the matter.
Our host in Chandigarh, who oversees several house fellowships, is contextualizing his work in the local Hindu and Sikh cultures. In other words, elements of Hinduism or Sikhism find expression in the lives of these churches. In saying this, I do NOT mean the people worship false gods–the elements of culture present among them are part of their commitment to Christ, rather than compromising it. This leader is sometimes criticized by ministers from more traditional churches, who would like to see him completely break away from anything having an appearance of Hinduism or Sikhism.
An example of this contextualization is the name by which the believers call their fellowship. They call their community a satsang, which is a Hindu word for a gathering seeking truth. Some say it is wrong to use this Hindu term, arguing that it is a pagan concept. The brothers and sisters we met, though, believe the use of the word helps those of a Hindu background draw near to God. Another example is the use of a coconut for the Lord’s Supper. Coconuts are often incorporated into Hindu worship; therefore, Hindu-background believers break them open and take the flesh and the milk to represent the body and blood of Christ. Something really neat we learned is that, for Hindus, a coconut means fullness of life. So Christ’s body was broken, and through him comes fullness of life.
It can be easy to criticize such contextualization of the gospel in other cultures, and those practicing contextualization have faced their share of attacks. I’m not sure it’s right to criticize, though, until we have had the opportunity to live for an extended period of time in the culture in question, gaining a good understand of the practices and worldview of the people. How else can we understand whether a cultural expression is pagan or not? In our short time with our brothers and sisters in Chandigarh, as far as we could tell we found them to be full of the love of God and committed to Christ and the work of the kingdom.
Ministry in a Muslim context provides some significant contextualization questions that other cross-cultural church planters have had to deal with. Here are a few of these questions:
- By what name do you call God? Do you tell people that Allah is not God and then try and introduce them to the one true God, giving him some other name? Or do you say that Allah is the one true God and then try and help lead people to a clearer understanding of his true nature?
- Can a believer worship God in a mosque? Or should s/he never go to a mosque again after beginning to follow Christ?
- Muslims customarily kneel and pray five times a day. Is this an okay practice for a follower of Christ to continue, or should a Muslim-background believer be encouraged to avoid it?
For the conscientious cross-cultural church planter, questions of contextualization are difficult. If one decides to contextualize, then the question arises of which cultural elements should be practiced as part of obedience to Christ. A good guiding question here can be, “Does this practice help people access God, or does it restrict access to God?” Many traditional churches here in India are quite contextualized in a way. People meet in big “temples” where they come to hear the teachings of a spiritual “guru” who everyone recognizes as being on a higher spiritual level than the common people. But you can make the argument that this model promotes a temple-and-priest Christianity that is closer to the Old Testament than the New, and it restricts access to God. Flowers, candles, incense, and coconuts, though, may all be elements of Hindu culture that can help people draw near to the one true God and worship him. They can especially be powerful when Hindus realize these elements can be part of accessing God personally, rather than having spiritual gurus as mediators between the gods and man.
So what thoughts do you have about contextualization? Can you think of ways the gospel has been contextualized in our Western culture?
April 24th, 2008 at 8:25 am
I can definitely see where this would be good for making people feel comfortable, but it seems like you could easily be walking a very fine line. It seems that most religions have some very good things in them so it would be easy to incorporate them into Christianity. BUT we must make sure we are not just putting a new title on the other religion. I understand that Christianity is not going to look the same in India as it does in America. Cultures are different, freedoms are different and worship styles are different. Someone that has grown up in a Hindu family might not feel too comfortable in an American rock-style worship service.
How is Christianity contextualized in our Western Culture? Well, many churches have messages based on movies. I’d definitely say that this style of message is bringing in common culture into the church and using it to relate to people on a level they can understand. Our contemporary style of worship could be thought of as contextualization. We have moved away from the hymns and are styling our songs after the rock style of modern music that we hear on the radio. What about when we celebrate Christmas? The date that was chosen has nothing to do with the actual date we think Jesus was born, but more to do with some other king’s birthday. And what about the way we celebrate Christmas? Christians are just as guilty about buying everything in the store as non-Christians. We make it more about our gifts than celebrating Jesus’ birthday. Or what about Easter? So many churches have Easter Egg Hunts. What does an Easter Egg have to do with Jesus’ death and resurrection? Nothing! There are so many things that we as a church do that have to do with culture more than what the Bible says to do. So before we get all upset about a church in India that chooses to call it’s gatherings a satsang (which has a very deep meaning in that culture) then we should re-evaluate how we ourselves are doing church.
Ok, that was quite the rant. Sorry. I have other stuff to say, but that would be a very long reply. I’ll save it for another date.
Suzie
April 28th, 2008 at 4:19 am
Thanks for your comments, Suzie!
I hear you about the Hindu thing. Here is what is starting to make a difference for me, based on what I’m learning on this trip: I had always understood Hinduism to be a religion, but based on the people we’re talking to here, it should be understood as a culture that incorporates people of various religious beliefs. More than one person has explained to us that there are monotheistic Hindus, polytheistic Hindus, and atheistic Hindus. If Hinduism is a (false) religion, then we see all elements of it as demonic and people must completely break all ties to it. But if Hinduism is a culture with various religious beliefs, it becomes possible for a person to follow Christ in the context of that culture.
Those are good thoughts on contextualization in the West. I’ll add a couple of my own:
–The style and length of our sermons (the West is very into lectures as an academic exercise)
–The fact that most of our services involve a large room with people sitting in rows of chairs or pews and a speaker up front at a podium
Thanks for joining the conversation. Does anyone else want to throw their two cents in?
April 28th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Divorcing religion and culture…I think this is a very confusing issue in Western society and around the globe. I was recently talking to someone about religion and nationality and several words were being used interchangeably. For example, someone asked if a Muslim could be an American. In my mind, of course. But the problem I was facing when discussing it with this person, was how Muslim is a follower of a religion (Faith based) as American is a nationality based word. They wanted to use Muslim as a nationality based word, instead of a religious word.
So, to use religion and culture I think we have to understand or try to define the usage of these two words. Culture being, “The accumulated habits, attitudes, and beliefs of a group of people that define for them their general behavior and way of life; the total set of learned activities of a people.” And Religion, “A religion is a set of beliefs and practices generally held by a human community, involving adherence to codified beliefs and rituals and study of ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience.”
Looking at these two words, you can see that Religion is more part of a culture, as culture being part of a religion. Granted you can argue that there is a religious culture, yes. But, not is the fact that religion is the same as culture.
I am not saying that the two words would be completely divorced, just that one (culture) holds the other (Religion). This being that you can have several cultures that hold the same religion. Not the best example, but, I asked a friend who recently returned from Iraq if people in Iraq say they are an Iraqi or a Muslim. He said they would refer to themselves as an Iraqi. Iraqi being a nationality or citizenship that holds religion.
I do agree with the other response…there is definitely a thin line. In Oaxaca, you can share the gospel of Christ at the same time preserve their culture. Part of their culture is as simple as not shaking hands very hard when you greet them.
However, I am not sure if one should refer to themselves as a Hindu if they are Christian. In that, Hindu is a religious follower of Hinduism, as Christian is a Religious follower of Christianity. Now to be a Christian Indian that still holds onto their Indian culture, then yes. ( I think). It is just that Religion and Culture have so many grey areas and run so close together, and have fed off each other throughout history it is hard to start separating the two.
Bottom line is my disclaimer: I have no clue. I must be rambling. Thoughts?
April 28th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Maybe this…a bit shorter too
Can a muslim or a Hindu be a Christian? (As stated in title)
No, but an Indian can be a christian who holds on to many things in their culture that have developed because of the influence of the Islamic or Hindu religions. An example may be…a disciplined and rigorous prayer time as a Christian, because disciplined prayer is something of your culture because of the influence of Islam.
I could be sooooo wrong in this…I have no clue
April 29th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Hey Jason, my internet time has been limited the last few days, so it’ll probably take me a couple of days until I get back into the U.S. to respond to your comment.
But for now, thanks for chiming in, and anyone else is welcome to as well.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
No problem. This post you did was very interesting. I am still not exactly sure where I stand. I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:44 am
Hey Chris. I wish I would’ve seen this post earlier so that we could’ve talked about this in person. Some questions that I would’ve asked the Hindu Background Believer is how he became a Christian. Does he call himself a Christian or a Hindu follower of Jesus? Is his identity w/ Christ? Did some western missionary say to him that the cost of following Jesus is not very high, you can just do the same thing you did as a Hindu, but just substitute Jesus instead of whatever deity. Or did he, as an Indian, actually come up w/ this contextualized way of ministry?
If religion and culture cannot be separated, and we know that the religion part is wrong, why are we trying to preserve the culture or elements of it? The Israelites dabbled in this for years and it caused a lot of problems (see OT). I see western culture being able to separate religion and culture as a kind of syncretism. Christians in the states should be living so counter-culturally that it rubs society the wrong way, but in general we don’t. The road to the cross is not parallel to the road to the American dream. They are so drastically different, but you couldn’t tell the difference for the majority of Christians. Eastern cultures seem to already know that becoming a Christian is a big deal and means drastic changes. Who is going in and telling them it’s not that hard, see you don’t have to change so many things? We are a new creation and that’s not simply an inward expression. What about all those Transformations videos? Those societies are not doing the same forms with different meanings, they started doing things differently.
Daniel and his peeps didn’t simply keep the form of bowing down to statues and give new meanings to it w/ prayers to God. Jesus was controversial. He was counter-cultural (see Mark 7). All through the book of Acts, the apostles were bold and did not conform to the culture. They stuck out like a sore thumb. Look at all the martyrs throughout history. What can we learn about how they lived in their respective society? Why are we trying to blend in now? Why are we conforming to this world?
I’m definitely rambling now. Sorry for being all over the place. My main points are culture not being neutral and our identity in Christ.
May 12th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Hey guys,
Thanks a lot for your comments, and sorry it’s taken me a while to reply to them.
I’m going to try and stick to discussing Hindus for the rest of this, because I’ve at least learned a little about them. I know what some of the difficult questions are for Muslims, but beyond knowing the questions, I can’t speak with any authority whatsoever.
I re-read my post, and the second paragraph where I mention divorcing religion and culture is kind of confusing. Jason fairly well summarized what I would like to communicate, though–Culture can hold various religious beliefs.
And Jason, I agree with you a lot right up to the last paragraph of your first comment, then I differ a little bit. At that point I agree with Rob’s comment on another post. I think you and Andrew are both getting hung up a bit on what people call themselves and that that is missing the point. I don’t see anywhere in the Bible that we’re commanded to call ourselves Christians. The Bible only comments (Acts 11:26) that the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. The point is that we identify ourselves with Christ (as you said, Andrew) and follow Him.
The more contextualized believers in India do not call themselves Christians. They call themselves “Yeshu backta”, which means something right along the lines of “devotee of Jesus”. So they identify with Christ, they just don’t use the name “Christian”, for much the same reason that we don’t use it much in Oaxaca.
In Oaxaca, we call ourselves Christians infrequently, and we never tell people we’re evangelicals. The reason is that if I say I’m an evangelical Christian, many people don’t hear, “I’m a Christ-follower who loves and obeys Jesus.” Here’s what they hear:
“I don’t love you, or anyone, for that matter. I’m against your culture, I’m against your traditions, and I’m against you. I’m better than you, and I look down on you. I care nothing for your practical needs; I’m just here to force my ways on you. I have zero regard for the fact that, as a Oaxacan Catholic, you may already have some desire to know God and follow Him. It’s all evil, and I’m here to change your religion and make you leave it all behind.”
If that’s what people are hearing in Oaxaca by us calling ourselves Christians or evangelicals, is it wrong to leave those terms aside and just explain to people that we love Jesus and do our best to follow Him? Translate than all into Hindu terms, and that seems to be more or less what it’s like for a person in India to call themselves a Christian. In India, Christianity is a Western religion, while being a Yeshu backta is an Indian religion. If a New Testament had been dropped into India and the people started using it to follow Christ with zero Western influence, there’s no way that their expression of following Him would have come out the way it looks today in many of India’s more traditional churches. If Hinduism is a culture that incorporates multiple religious beliefs, I see absolutely no reason a Hindu can’t be a follower of Jesus.
The Yeshu backtas are not compromising in order to keep a foot in the world and avoid persecution, although Westerners might try and tell them they are. They are sold out for Jesus. They identify with Him. One of they key issues in all this, I learned, is the extraction of people from their communities. Westerners convinced people that, to follow Christ, they had to reject their families and every Hindu custom and element of culture, and that brings a lot of persecution. BUT, we learned that if a non-Christian couple from a village leaves and marries against their families’ wishes and then returns, they will often be beaten or maybe even killed. When you hear that, you have to ask if people who reject their communities and are extracted from them to follow Christ are really suffering for the name of the Lord or just for doing something that was very ill-advised and brings the same wrath on non-Christians who do it.
Yeshu backtas don’t avoid persecution. They are taking their licks for their devotion to Christ instead of other Hindu gods. They just aren’t taking licks for turning a back on their communities. Because they remain in their communities, they are in a much better place to reach them with the gospel.
Andrew, I wholeheartedly agree with what you’re getting at about not being conformed to the world. If many Hindus are devoted to Shiva, that in no way should be embraced by a follower of Christ. If Hindus often burn a widow alive when they cremate her husband, the practice should be denounced as wrong and done away with (as it was by Christians and has now almost completely been eliminated in India). I just think sometimes we focus on the wrong things when we try and be non-conformist.
Here’s a North American example: Does tee-totaling help us be more faithful followers of Christ, or does it create an unnecessary separation between us and our culture? The Bible says that drunkenness is wrong, but it never said it’s wrong to drink a glass of wine. If a person doesn’t want to drink, fine. But when churches say that no one can drink, how is that helping the kingdom? I believe it’s misguided, because having a drink is not a sin. The dominant values of the American Dream, however, should be wholeheartedly rejected, because Jesus made it very clear that we are not to store up treasures on earth. (If anyone is unsure about this, check out Luke 12:15-21).
Okay, this is very long, so I’d better hold it there and see if you guys have any more thoughts to chime in with. I appreciate the discussion! Please know that I’m learning, thinking, and discussing, not getting extremely set in beliefs and trying to apply them to every situation in the world.
May 12th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Soo…that was a lot to process and a great response, although I am going to have to think it over before I reply
However, I do have one question. In approx. your 7th paragraph at the end you mentioned that Hinduism is a culture. So in your mind is Hinduism a culture or a religion, or both?
For me, it is a religion that has influenced the Indian population, helping to develop many of the practices in their culture.
What did you observe in India on this?
May 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Yeah, sorry for the long post
Okay, this was the big thing that changed the ballgame for me in India. I had always understood Hinduism to be a religion, therefore false, therefore people need to turn away from it. Several of the people we met in India, though, were quite emphatic that Hinduism is a culture that incorporates a variety of religious beliefs, not a religion in and of itself. To repeat what they said, there are monotheistic Hindus, polytheistic Hindus, and atheistic Hindus. So it’s perfectly acceptable to Hindus for there to be a Hindu who is devoted exclusively to Jesus Christ. I mean, they might not like that the person doesn’t worship other Hindu gods like Shiva and Ram, but being devoted only to Jesus certainly fits within Hinduism.
So Hinduism is a culture, a civilization. Here’s what makes contextualization possible in that case:
Most of us would recognize Mormonism as a false religion that one needs to turn away from, not a culture. There are certainly not polytheistic or atheistic Mormons; there’s more or less one standard set of beliefs. (I would agree.)
But take Native Americans, or Jews. We view those as cultures. We believe people in those cultures have certain religious beliefs they must turn away from in order to follow Christ, but they can still belong to their culture and incorporate elements of it in following Christ. I’ve never heard anyone balk about a Jewish follower of Christ calling himself a Messianic Jew, rather than a Christian, and continuing to celebrate Passover.
I always put Hinduism in the Mormon category, but it should actually be in the Jew and Native American category. I was interested to learn that you can only ever be born a Hindu, you can never become one; you can’t convert to Hinduism. In their minds, one cannot cease to be Hindu any more than you or I can cease to be an American, or a Jew can cease to be a Jew. A Hindu can change his/her religious beliefs, though, as can a Jew, as can a Native American, as can an American.
Remember the big issues the early Church ran into when the Jews wanted to make Gentile believers be circumcised and follow the law in order to be disciples of Christ? It was incredibly freeing to the Gentiles when they learned they didn’t have to become Jews–in essence, change their culture–in order to follow Jesus.
Same thing with Hindus. When Western missionaries first came in to India, many unwittingly tried to make Hindus leave their culture to become Christ-followers. It has been very freeing for many Hindus to learn that they didn’t have to reject their civilization to be believers. We heard some powerful testimonies of people who had gone the more traditional Christian route later coming back and asking forgiveness of their families and communities for rejecting them. God has used this to bring about powerful reconciliation.
Taking it back to an example in our own culture, which of the following would go over better with you if you were a non-Christian parent in the U.S.?
–Your kid comes home, says he’s accepted Christ, he continues to live in your community as an American, and you see a radical change in his life, OR
–Your kid comes home, says he’s accepted Christ, he’s therefore no longer of this world, so he renounces his U.S. citizenship, refuses to salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance, burns his passport, will never watch a baseball game again because it’s the American passtime, and abstains from apple pie because that’s also too American.
In a nutshell, I now understand Hinduism as a culture, not a religion. That makes a big difference. I understand Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses to be religions, so I see a lot less room for applying these contextual theories in their cases. Though I have some initial opinions, I don’t know enough about Buddhists or Muslims to say.