| The use of cultural anthropology in missiology has expanded considerably in the past quarter century. The author looks here at what the nature of that relation has been, suggesting three phases in the development of that relationship. He goes on to look at two theological problems-cultural relativism and cultural universals-and how anthropology might help theology and missiology with them. He closes with four suggestions about how the two disciplines might work more closely together. The appearance of the new edition of Louis Luzbetak's classic work in missiological anthropology, The Church and Cultures, prompts again a reflection on the relationship of cultural anthropology to missiology (Luzbetak 1988). The earlier edition of Luzbetak's work, as well as the writings of other anthropologically trained missiologists, such as Alan Tippett, Eugene Nida, Paul Hiebert, Charles Taber, and Charles Kraft, have done much in the last 25 years to establish cultural anthropology as an important, indeed essential, factor in the missiological enterprise. It has become a significant helpmate to mission theology, and no one would be considered adequately trained in missiology without at least some exposure to it. If one compares the first and second editions of Luzbetak's book, one is struck with what shifts of emphasis have come about in the last quarter century. Perhaps the most salient feature is the larger amount of space devoted to theological questions in the second edition. That this should appear in what began as a manual in practical anthropology says something about what has happened in the intervening time. There are at least two factors that make attention to this shift particularly apropos today. First of all, there is the oft-announced shift toward a genuinely global Christianity or world-church. The statistics that point toward the shifting of the balance of Christian population toward the southern hemisphere, and away from the North Atlantic epicenter, are by now all well known. David Barrett's annual updating of the statistics in The International Bulletin of Missionary Research from his 1982 World Christian Encyclopedia keeps that continuing demographic shift before us all the time. That move away from familiar territory brings with it a sense of the immense variety of Christian groups in the world today; Barrett catalogues some 20,000 variant groupings alone. We need a way to be able to come to terms not only with the different forms of social organization that help give expression to Christian belief in these groupings, but also, for the sake of dialogue and ascertaining the adequacy of belief, the forms of cognitive organization that receive the gospel and interpret it in categories that may be quite different from those used in the past. Cultural anthropology, especially cognitive anthropology, provides an important tool for getting inside those other worlds (Holland and Quinn 1987; Stigler, Shweder, and Herdt 1990). The second factor that makes us attend more closely to the interface between cultural anthropology and missiology is connected with the discussion of globalization in theological education. The Association of Theological Schools (ATS) in the United States and Canada has proclaimed the 1990s as the decade of globalization of theological education. A great deal of effort and resources are being put into overcoming the provincialism and ethnocentrism of much of North American theological education. Perhaps no one is more prepared to help or even take leadership in this regard than the missiologist with a background in anthropology and the social sciences. Indeed missiologists are prominent in the ATS discussions (cf. Lesher and Schreiter 1990). This kairos for missiology, the invitation to move from the margins of the theological curriculum into its very center, necessarily provokes some reflection on just what missiology has become and what future directions it might take. That future seems inextricably bound up with cultural anthropology, since it is that part of missiology that seems to be attractive to theological educators, whatever their denominational or theological preference might be. It is these two concerns-dealing with a culturally and cognitively diverse Christianity that yet professes "one Lord, one faith, one baptism," and the shape of an anthropologically informed missiology in a globalized theological education-that I would like to reflect upon here. Put simply, this will be an exploration in the relationship of anthropology to faith, and what that might mean for missiology. This reflection is developed in two stages. In the first, there is a review of what I see to be three phases in the development of the relationship between anthropology and faith. Reflecting on these is important as a background to how we will think about anthropology's relation to faith now and in the future, since many of our reflexes are conditioned by that history. In the second stage, I will look at what seems to me to be the most fruitful point of interaction between anthropology and faith with both its strengths and its potential pitfalls today, and make some suggestions about what this is going to mean for missiology as a discipline, especially in the context of the globalization discussion. Three Phases in the Relationship Between Anthropology and Faith One can trace three distinctive, but somewhat overlapping, phases in the growth of the conversation between cultural anthropology and the faith expressed in Christian theology. While to speak of only three phases may be too simple, it does highlight important elements that recur in reflections on how anthropology and faith relate. These phases run somewhat historically, although earlier phases perdure long into the following phases. I would designate these as (1) the phase of hostility, (2) the phase of better management, and (3) the phase of transformative dialogue. 1. The Phase of Hostility Hostility seems to have been the predominant attitude in the first phase of the relationship between cultural anthropology and Christian theology. Cultural anthropology, at least in its non-German varieties, had its roots in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Throughout this movement, from Locke and Montesquieu down into the nineteenth century, there was a preoccupation with establishing an account of the nature of the human condition apart from Christian revelation and teaching. This concern was not always explicitly anti-Christian, but was frequently so. The search for the "natural" form of human life (i.e., pre- or non-Christian), and even for the "natural" form of religion itself implied that Christianity's hold on truth was less than absolute; indeed, the sheer variability of forms of human life demonstrated that the Christian viewpoint was but one among many, and therefore, quite relative. As cultural anthropology began to coalesce as a distinct discipline, the hostility to Christian faith became more evident. In no author from that period is it perhaps so clear as in Edward Burnett Tylor, whose Primitive Culture, published in 1871, an influential work in anthropology's formative years. Tylor saw religion as "a sort of hallucination brought about by the reflection of immature minds on such phenomena as death, dreams and trance" (cited in Taylor 1986:27). Tylor saw a presentation of the religious life of oral or so-called primitive cultures as exposing the ultimately illusory nature of all religion. He expressed this project in verse in correspondence with a friend, with lines ending: Theologians all to expose, 'Tis the mission of primitive man. (cited in Taylor 1986:17)
|
