“The Limits of Liberal Views of World Missions” is the title of the ninth chapter of my book The Limits of Liberalism: A Historical, Theological, and Personal Appraisal of Christian Liberalism (2010), which I am updating and slightly revising for re-publication at year’s end.
This post is related to the subject of that next-to-last chapter of the book, but it is mainly the confessions of a missionary, who happens to be me.
Confessing
Shame over Missionary Mistakes
In Chapter Nine, I sadly indicate some of the mistakes made
by many missionaries of
the past, mistakes that are widely, and for good reason, criticized especially
in liberal Christian circles.
From the last of the 15th
century, Christianity was largely spread by means of the imperialistic
activities of European nations.
“God, guns, and gold” were linked: the activities of missionaries were often forerunners of, or concomitant with, the military forces that secured foreign wealth for the powerful countries of Europe. Spanish missionary Junípero Serra, whom I wrote about on Oct. 5, was just one example of many.
Early Protestant
missionaries such as William Carey, “the father of modern (Protestant) missions,” and early missionaries such as Ann and Adoniram Judson were not linked with
imperialistic power, but unfortunately, many of their successors in the 19th
century were.
I confess that I am ashamed of much that has been done by missionaries
in the past, although the same sort of activities are, thankfully, rarely seen in
the present.
Confessing
Lack of Missionary Success
On a more personal
level, I confess that I was not particularly successful as a missionary to
Japan from 1966 to 2004—and sadly, most of the missionaries to Japan over the last
60 years would have to make a similar confession.
Traditionally, overseas
missionaries have been popularly pictured as living in poor countries and having
to cope with challenging living conditions. That certainly wasn’t true for
those of us who served in Japan after, say, 1965.
The challenge we
regularly faced was how to deal with the sense of failure in what we were sent
there to do. In contrast to the first 20 years after WWII, those of us
missionaries who went to Japan after 1965 have to confess that, to a large
part, we saw scant success from our efforts.
(I would be happy to respond to questions concerning
this matter.)
“Confessing”
Joy from a Missionary Career
“Liberal”
Christians have long held a dim view of missionary activity, and I have
personally seen a shift in attitudes toward missionaries. During my family’s
second missionary “furlough,” as it was called then, we lived in a house generously
provided by Second Baptist Church here in Liberty.
That
year of 1976-77 was a good year for our family and we were well treated and
supported by the church. Then, in 2005 after retiring from our missionary work
in Japan, we bought a house in Liberty and that fall became members again of
Second Baptist Church.
It
was a bit of a shock when I began to sense negative feelings toward
missionaries by some—and only by a very few—members of the church. They seemed
to think that missionary work was wrongheaded, and the implication was that
June and I had wasted our lives being missionaries.
Nevertheless,
the last part of the ninth chapter of my book is titled “Reaffirmation of the
Christian Mission,” and in it I contend that “world missions” is legitimate and
that the rejection of such is a major weakness of Christian liberalism.
And
even though I don’t say so directly in the book, I have to “confess” that in
spite of the criticism of missionary activity by some, I count it a great joy
to have been able to serve as a missionary for 38 years—and I appreciate the
support of Southern Baptists during those years.
If
I had it all to do over again, I would unhesitatingly choose to do the same
thing—although I would, I hope, do it a little better the second time around.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
For
more about my thought on this topic, see “#13 Missionary Activity Is Still Legitimate And
Important” in my book Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (2018)
and my May 20, 2018 blog
article
based on that chapter.
First of all, I don't believe you were a failure as a missionary. I'm suspicious regarding the criterion you're using to make that judgment. As you know, I spent three years recently teaching in a Catholic College/Seminary run by The Society of the Divine Word, a society of missionaries committed to serving the poor. In those three years, I didn't run into a single priest, brother, or sister who viewed their calling to be to convert people of other faiths to Christianity or to carry some culture to a foreign land. In the 1980s, I spent three years teaching in a Catholic college run by the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ, a society devoted to education. Of course, I had and have many differences on a number of issues with the Catholic Church and with many of the individuals I worked with (after all, I'm a liberal Protestant), but I admired the work these missionaries and educators did. The UCC still has foreign missions, but we no longer interpret that to mean carrying our culture to others or converting people of other faiths. Certainly those I worked with in the two colleges and UCC missionaries are not shy about sharing their faith, it is typically not from a sense of superiority or proselytizing. I have a sermon in my files that for the text of the scriptures commonly identified as the Great Commission. Here are a couple of excerpts:
ReplyDeleteThe Christian church’s attempt to fulfill that mission of universal outreach has been very much a story of the church’s glory and its shame. On the one hand, the church has carried the message of God’s grace throughout the world; it has brought civilization to the uncivilized; rational medicine, education, and government to traditional and tribal cultures; it has broken down barriers of superstition and prejudice; in many ways the Christian church preserved Western civilization during the darkest hours of Western history after the fall of Rome; and it has often been a prophetic voice in a world of injustice and cruelty.
On the other hand, the church has been heavy handed, even forcing conversions at times at the point of a sword or a gun; it has gone hand in hand with the imperialist powers of the Western World against indigenous peoples of the Americas, Asia, the South Pacific, and Africa; it has blessed exploitation, oppression, war, and even slavery; it has run roughshod over the sensibilities and the cultures of peoples, leaving them often with only shadows of their past and a sense of inferiority. In fulfilling the Great Commission the church has been magnanimous and self-sacrificial; it has been arrogant and brutal.
...
We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to our Christian foreparents and we owe it to God to share our faith with others, however poorly we understand that faith or clumsily we may share it.
It can be helpful to remember there is something fundamentally loving going on when people share and listen to one another’s stories. On our first date, my wife and I sat up all night in an all-night diner, simply sharing our stories. Thirty years later, we’re still sharing our stories.
Love, I would suggest, compels us to share our story with the Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and others of the world. And love compels us as well to listen to theirs.
Anton, I much appreciate your response to my blog post early yesterday morning.
DeleteConcerning failure, it is true that many of us missionaries in Japan often struggled with a "sense of failure" as I mentioned. Compared to what I heard contemporary missionary friends in African countries, and especially compared to what we saw happening in nearby Korea with the great growth of the number of Christian believers and churches there, it was hard for missionaries in Japan not to feel like failures. But I didn't confess to being a failure; rather, I wrote about how I and most of my missionary colleagues were "not particularly successful." In spite of how we felt at times, I think, in fact, I (we) were not failures, but neither did we experience what could be called success.
The criterion issue is an important one. As I contended in #27 in my book "Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now" is "The New Testament Word for Success Is Faithfulness." And I stand by what I wrote there, and I think I was successful in that way. But we were sent and supported financially for the purpose of making disciples of Jesus Christ and leading them to be active in communities of faith (churches). You referred to the Great Commission, and Jesus tells his followers to "make disciples." With that as a criterion, most of us missionaries in Japan have to confess a lack of success.
You wrote about the missionary calling as not being "to convert people of other faiths to Christianity or to carry some culture to a foreign land." I can state unequivocally that during my 38 years in Japan I had no intention of trying to spread American culture, or Western civilization, there. And as I sought to make clear in Chapter Nine of my book, in Japan I had little desire and spent almost no energy on seeking to convert people of other faiths to Christianity. Almost all of my university students--and most of my missionary activity was teaching and talking with students--claimed to have no religious faith. Through the years I was trying to convert them only from the "religions" of secularism, materialism, and hedonism. But, sadly, I experienced only limited success.
The negative things you wrote about in the first excerpt from your sermon is what I confessed in the first part of this blog post.
I agree with your concluding sentence of your last paragraph, but I won't take the time to write here about how I tried to do that. In that paragraph, though, I sensed a bit of dissatisfaction with your use of "our" in "our faith" and "our story." Yes, I think personal testimony is good and important. But I was not trying to share MY faith; I was trying to share the Gospel, the message about Jesus Christ--the message that had previously been shared with some success by Japanese Christians such as Kagawa Toyohiko and Uchimura Kanzo.
Well, there is much more that I could write about this, but again I thank you for your comments which gave me the opportunity to write this response and to clarify some of what I could not say adequately in a short blog post. (This response is only about 100 words shorter than the post itself.)
As your daughter along with you for this adventure until college, I reflect on your success a bit differently than you did here. God gave you a unique place to serve and live out the Great Commission. You did that faithfully all those years. You poured your heart and soul into your mission work there. You studied so hard to learn the language and were very successful teaching in Japanese and leading the university as Chancellor. You took the time to build relationships with student groups. You made connections in the Japanese church and then helped start another church. Your connections there were deep and long-lasting. While you may not have seen hundreds coming to faith all at once, you were able to see many turn their hearts to God through the years. You were also a good example to your children of how to respect and love the Japanese people — even this has an important long-lasting impact. I don’t think we get to see the full impact of our service in our lifetimes. God accomplishes his purposes through us, and I believe that the ripple effect from your years in Japan will surprise you someday.
ReplyDeleteWell said. I'm glad you responded in this manner.
DeleteDear Leroy- I agree with your daughter Kathy and feel you were successful; especially in GOD`s eyes and that is the most important!
DeleteYour Brother,
John(TIM)Carr
Kathy, I deeply appreciate your affirming words, and just like yesterday morning, reading them again now brought tears to my eyes.
DeleteAs I wrote in my response to Anton above, I think I was, indeed, successful in the way I wrote about success in #27 of my book "Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now." And I think, or hope, that what you said at the end of your comments are true. But I thought there would be much more evidence of the growth of Christianity in Japan by this time, so I am still feeling a lack of success not just personally but for all of us who served as missionaries in Japan from 1965 to the present.
Thanks also for your affirmation, John Tim.
DeleteI would say "Amen" to both Anton and Kathy's comments. I learned a long time ago that my efforts for the Lord was my responsibility and the results were in His hands and I am comfortable with that to this day. I doubt that any of God's people really know all the results of our efforts. That has always troubled me about Southern Baptist, along with other things, that numbers were so important. I can remember, when I was a boy preacher, of closing a revival where there had been no visible professions of faith, and I cried, believe I had failed God as well as the church. Now about missions. I could never harmonize in my mind the mission strategy of the New Testament with that of our IMB. Paul didn't stay in one city for a long time. He trained indigenous leadership and then moved on to another city. It seems common today for missionaries to spend most of their careers in one or two spots. I know there are exceptions to this method but that has concerned me. I would be interested in your take on that. You know my brother, Dwight, was an IMB missionary for over 30 years in Israel and India. His first assignment was in Nazareth where he was a pastor. After three years, he had trained a local pastor to take his place and he moved on to Tel Aviv where he was an educational missionary. He and his family spent the last seven years in India as an educator. I don't think he would see his career as a model for reasons I won't go into.
ReplyDeleteTruett Baker
Thanks for posting your pertinent comments, Truett. I hope you will read the response I posted above after Anton's (and Kathy's) comments.
DeleteAs to missionaries staying in one place or moving from place to place, let me just point out that there are different kinds of missionaries. For those who are basically "church planters," of course the best strategy is for them to get a church started and then to leave it in the responsibility of local leadership as soon as feasible.
But for those who are medical or educational missionaries, the situation is quite different. There is nothing to be gained from a doctor moving from hospital to hospital or a teacher moving from one school to another. I taught and worked as an administrator at Seinan Gakuin for 36 years, and my most important work was what I did after being there for 28 years. I have no doubt that my missionary calling was best fulfilled by staying put in one place.
Leroy,
ReplyDeleteAs others have mentioned, having had the privilege of serving alongside of you here at Seinan Gakuin, I don’t feel you, or any other missionary, have not been successful. I refuse to buy in to the western definition of success that is gauged only by measurable results. Personally, my first criteria is whether one, missionary or not, has been faithful to the task to which one has been led. Second, I believe that you have impacted lives of hundreds, if not thousands, through your teaching of university students and through your work in the seminary.
I’ll have to read your book to see what you think, but I think mission work is still essential. However, in our 36 years in Japan, I’ve become convinced that true mission work is always incarnational—working alongside others, making contributions to society, sharing joys and sorrows, being a part of a community, whether that community becomes “Christian” or not.
Apologies for the random thoughts while quarantining in Narita for two weeks after returning from Carolyn’s Mom’s funeral.
Thanks, Gary, for your comments and for your words of affirmation.
DeleteWe were sorry to hear about Carolyn's mother's passing. I'm glad you were able to go back for the funeral, but what a hassle to have to quarantine at Narita for two weeks!
As to the matter of success, I encourage you to read my long response to Anton at the top of this comments section, and perhaps you would also like to read my briefer remarks to Truett.
[For those of you who don't know, the comments above are from Dr. Gary Barkley, currently the president of Seinan Gakuin University (SGU). He and his wife were Southern Baptist missionaries to Japan, and he was a professor at SGU, for many years before he was employed directly by Seinan Gakuin in the early 2000s.]
Thank you for this essay and for your chapter on the topic. I don't agree with all the points in your chapter but it is well-written and well-informed.
ReplyDeleteRegarding religious pluralism, I have across my life formed several close friendships with people in other religious traditions. With a number of these people I feel a much deeper spiritual kinship than with most Christians.
They share a number of common characteristics:
- They carry a deep yearning to experience Divine Light in their lives, variously understood and named of course, and to see that Light shine in the world.
- They are deeply rooted in a particular religious tradition, or had been for major portions of their life, and on a daily basis seek to live by spiritual guidance.
- The above notwithstanding, they carry deep disappointment and/or sadness about ways in which they feel important people or influences in their own tradition have betrayed the essence of their tradition, and thus the people touched by it.
- They are kind, relationally-oriented people, with a deep commitment to serving others; their personal presence is the opposite of arrogance; they listen well to others and find great joy in serving them.
- They hold deep convictions about rejection of violence and coercion; and these convictions constantly infuse their thought and work.
I am not sure how this would stand up to theological critique, but in my heart I feel quite certain that these people embody that Spirit that lived in Jesus, whom we call Christ. I have no desire to convert them for I see and feel so clearly that they already possess what it takes to come to quite a lot more of the Light than most Christians. I would happily evangelize the world in order to call others to what these dear friends embody.
Actually, having written that last sentence, I will alter it: I live my life every day trying to invite and encourage others towards that Light, that way of being reflected in these people. They are pretty rare in every religious tradition, including Christianity! Though I know you only at a distance, I am quite certain that you fit all those attributes, Leroy, yourself. I am not so concerned about which religious tradition people are; but I am deeply concerned to see more people become like them.
I have come to trust this deeply felt sense of kinship, this awareness of the Light that I experience in certain others, more deeply than any intellectual concept of how Christianity should relate to people of other religions.
Ron, I much appreciate you reading both my blog article and the chapter and then posting the above thought-provoking comments. I wish we could sit down over a cup of coffee and have an in-depth discussion of the matters you wrote about.
DeleteI think you are fortunate to have had a number of people in other religious traditions with the "common characteristics" you detailed. I am afraid that in spite of having some friends in Japan who were Buddhist priests and long being a regular member of an interfaith dialogue group, I did not sense the characteristics you mentioned to a high degree. As you said, people with those characteristics are "pretty rare in every religious tradition."
I did have some university colleagues who claimed no religious faith who seemed to have the last two characteristics of the five you mentioned. Some of these, I think, did embody the Spirit of the universal Christ but for cultural and family reasons could not publicly identify as a Christian.
Well, there is much more I would like to say but won't at this point, except to thank you again for your significant comments.
Leroy, I can only imagine the hundreds or thousands of stories of lives changed and enriched in Japan because of your work — but since those days I’ve seen your continued outreach to spiritually needy people in local Kansas City discussion groups, and I’ve experienced the blessing you are to your thinking friends on this blog, as well as the encouragement and excellent teaching you’ve been providing at Rainbow Mennonite Church. I’d say all that adds up to the best kind of success!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Fred, for your kinds words of affirmation and encouragement. I am greatly blessed to have you as a supportive friend.
DeleteAmen, and Amen,
ReplyDeleteWhile working as a missionary to the Western parts of the United States and specifically relating to the Navajo Nation and the undocumented along the Southern border. I found the work of a missionary fulfilling and rewarding. The struggle, how to evaluate my success and the Mission Board’s success.
Over the years the Board came to desire a success matrix based on numbers. The result led to the defunding of mission work on Native American lands in 2000. The work in the West has always been slow and huge mistakes have been made. Church buildings designed to accommodate white worship styles were built. Pulpits and Pianos were placed as if they were for white pioneers. None of the buildings have ever been filled. The Navajo and others have no understanding of how to use the buildings and pianos are not part of their culture.
As the Board withdrew funding an eighty plus year old came to me and said, “if not for missionaries I would still be living in darkness”. Yes, mistakes are made when attempting to cross into another culture to share Jesus. Numbers may few and growth as counted by structures may never be significant. However, there has never been a greater blessing than an old woman turning her back on darkness to embrace the light.
Leroy, like you to do it all over would be a Joy.
Frank
Thank you so much, Frank, for sharing this. Although you and I worked in vastly different "mission fields," it seems clear that there is considerable similarity in our experiences--and joy because of our missionary calling.
DeleteI am late in posting these Sunday morning comments from local Thinking Friend Debra Sapp-Yarwood:
ReplyDelete"I was intrigued that in the TTT blog post you link to that it's almost 50-50 in terms of missionaries originating from the global north and global south. Hmmm. Are the missionaries from the south traveling to other southern countries or are they coming up here, to open our minds to how the Basiliea of God might look different from our preconceived notions and how we might be better global citizens informed by our faith?
"I have never met a missionary from the global south, but I did have a seminary colleague from Haiti who had a very different (and delightful) way of approaching life and spreading God's love, and she made me think about the assumptions and Christian ruts I travel in.
"I wish instead of 'Christian missionaries' there was another phrase. 'Christian Liaisons,' 'Christian Partners,' or some such. The root word 'mission,' no matter how we try to redefine it, implies a one-way goal. It assumes some sense of superiority, cultural or religious."
Debra, Korean missionaries have been sent mostly to countries in what is called the 10/40 window, but they have served (and perhaps are still serving) in over 160 countries.
DeleteI have read some about missionaries from other countries, from Korea as well as from countries in Africa, coming to the U.S., but most of them go to countries where the percentage of Christian believers is quite low.
And, yes, there are various terms being used in place of "missionary," which, unfortunately, is now widely seen in a negative light.
I have trouble with your use of the word "superiority," which is often used rather pejoratively. I agree with the criticism of seeking to spread a superior culture--although that never seems to be a problem when that is making available "modern medicine," which is clearly superior in helping to cure a multitude of diseases. To respect the value of all cultures, should we, say, affirm their continued use of herbal remedies etc. for various illnesses rather than introducing them to penicillin, a "superior" treatment?
As for Christian missions, I have long liked the definition of evangelism used by a Sri Lankan Christian theologian/missiologist (when Sri Lanka was still Ceylon). D. T. Niles (1908~1970) is noted for saying, "Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread." It is the same, I believe, for the evangelistic work done by missionaries.
(BTW, Niles's granddaughter, Damayanthi Niles, is a professor at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, and I recently wrote a review of her new book titled "Doing Theology with Humility, Generosity, and Wonder: A Christian Theology of Pluralism.")
In my engagement with the communities in which I have lived, I have met missionaries from many countries working here - Canadians, Mexicans, Indians (2), Burmese (Chin and Karen tribes), Australian, South African (2), Tanzanian (2)(Mnyakyusa and Mhutu), Kenyan (Luo), Nigerian (2), Japanese... (I'm sure that I have missed some). One of my heros of the faith was Gikuyu (Kenya) who was a medical missionary to the Wanyakyusa and Wasafwa (Tanzania). He was also a very strong preacher - Steven Wanji.
DeleteHere are comments from local Thinking Friend David Nelson:
ReplyDelete"It is not clear to me what you are confessing. What is your shame about? I though you were educators sharing in Japan’s educational process. Where you evaluated on how many Baptisms you did or how many souls you won?
"I appreciate what I have understood in supporting the local community identify their religious beliefs and values and assisting in helping them grow more faithful. I know you and June and will continue to be appreciate of your ministry."
David, in the first part I was expressing my sense of shame at how so much of the history of Christian missionary work has been tied in with imperialism, colonization, and economic exploits of European, and to a much lesser degree, American countries. I am certainly not ashamed of the type of missionary work that I, and my closest missionary colleagues, was involved in.
DeleteIn our later years in Japan, there was more and more emphasis on head counting, and we grew increasingly negative toward the International Mission Board (IMB)of the SBC partially because of that. And not long before we were forced to retire, the IMB had decided to cease supporting educational missionaries in Japan because they were not cost effective. That, I think, was a major mistake--and a major misunderstanding.
As I have said above, most of the people I worked with (university students) had no identifiable "religious beliefs and values," so there was no possibility of "assisting in helping them grow more faithful."
This morning I received the following email from local Thinking Friend Bill Ryan:
ReplyDelete"Recently re-reading E. Stanley Jones's 'The Christ of the Indian Road' (1925), which was passed on to me by someone who had received it as a Christmas gift in 1927, I'm wondering if you had read this book before going to Japan or if you had read it after being there as a missionary. After living in India, he seems to have taken a different approach than others in the Methodist Church were doing at the time.
"I recall that in the 1960s, the Presbyterian Church (United Presbyterian Church in the USA, at the time) changed the designation from 'missionaries' to 'fraternal workers,' acknowledging that those working in other countries were there to work along side those who already were Christians and assist them in what the people in those countries needed, much like the Peace Corps was doing at the time. I think the Presbyterian Church (USA) now has gone back to using the term missionaries, but I am not involved with the denomination now to know what the philosophy is.
"As an aside, I've frequently thought that today the USA needs missionaries to come here from other parts of the world."
Thanks for your comments, Bill.
DeleteI can't remember if I ever read "The Christ of the Indian Road," but I certainly heard about Jones before I went to Japan and through the years since. I had a missionary colleague who was a big "fan" of Jones, and I have had nothing but good impressions of him.
As to your second and third paragraph, see the comments above that I made in response to Debra's comments.
On Monday I received the following comments from Thinking Friend Eric Dollard in Chicago.
ReplyDelete"Thanks, Leroy, for your "confession" about missionary work.
"I have found that it is very difficult to persuade people to change their core religious or political beliefs and I suspect that this is especially true in Japan, where there is substantial social cohesion in a conservative and Stoic society."
[Corrected]
DeleteEric, as I have said in responses to comments above, most of my work was with people who were not adherents of any religion. But certainly the "social cohesion" and the sense of loyalty to one's family of origin was a major factor in many people not openly becoming Christians. I remember at least two grown, married men who told me they could never become a Christian as long as their father was alive. Both were quite "Christian" in their thinking and lifestyle.
It is often said, for good reason I think, that the influence of Christianity in Japan far exceeds the number of people who are baptized Christians.
Years ago, a Native American friend taught me that European colonialism in the Americas could be summarized with the 4 B's. Bullets, Booze, and the Bible all came over on the Boats. My comment is not meant with hostility, only to share another perspective.
ReplyDeleteEllen Nichols
Ellen, I'm afraid that your friend's comments are, sadly, all too true. That is part of the shame I was confessing in the first part of my post.
DeleteThank you for this blog post. Most likely you had a positive influence on many people in Japan. Faith, as you well know, does not involve sight, if it did it wouldn't be faith.
ReplyDeleteThank you, too, for sending me chapter nine of your book. I have been rather uneasy over the years with supersessionism/replacement theology. After reading your section on it, I continue to be not as positive about it as you seem to be. I'm wondering about the cause-effect factor in relation to it. In some cases at least, I think that it may very well have caused Christians to be antisemitic in thought, word and deed. As you most likely know, there has been a bit of skepticism regarding Hebrews in the biblical canon. One reason, of course, because of the uncertainty regarding authorship. However, I also wonder if another reason, among a few anyways, was its anti-semitism/anti-Judaism?
Garth, I much appreciate you not only reading my blog post but the manuscript for Chapter Nine as well.
DeleteYou are certainly not alone in being uneasy with supersessionism/replacement theology. And, unfortunately, that theology has, no doubt, been (mis)used in developing and/or expressing anti-Semitic sentiments. But just because that theology has been misunderstood and/or misused doesn't make it invalid.
You mentioned Hebrews, but also there are those who have negative feelings toward the Gospel of John because of its "anti-Semitism." And recently in our church's Wed. eve. ongoing study of Acts, negative questions were raised about what was seen to be incipient anti-Semitism there.
I am completely opposed to any and all anti-Semitism. But I think as long as we Christians claim to have and to follow a New Testament, some form of supersessionism/replacement theology is necessary. Of course, perhaps the better term would be "fulfillment theology."
As you know, in instituting the Lord's Supper (what is the term you Lutherans most regularly use?), Jesus said "this is my blood of the[a] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins' (Matthew 26:28, NRSV). Footnote [a] says, "Other ancient authorities add 'new'." That is what I grew up hearing from the KJV, and I still think it was probably the position of the early church.
This is "supersession" in the sense, as I suggested, that it is fulfilment of the Old Testament (even understood as the Hebrew Bible) statements made in Jeremiah 31.
Thinking Friend Tom Nowlin in Arkansas posted the following comments on Facebook after I linked to this blog post there:
ReplyDelete"I read your piece and identified with much of it, though my experience was only a mere 12 years compared to your 38 years. In short, I have reconciled myself to having made a difference in many people's lives, extending beyond 'conversion,' of which the ministries in which I participated saw 5. I saw it as a collective/community effort, more consistent with the societal structure of Japan.
"I also saw my efforts as an 'evangelist' as 'bumper car evangelism.' In Japan, lacking a monotheistic God construct, one always started at a minus (-) number in terms of cognition alone. At most, I often felt I could only move the development of cognition incrementally via dialogue. This became obvious one day when a person said to me, 'Sure, I'd be happy to add Jesus to my god-shelf.' Not much of a surprise really when you think of it.
"Today, I am far more the inclusivist (of others and their religions), seeing a wideness in God's love, to use the Christian discursive tradition. I have come to see the many inconsistencies in the Christian narrative more starkly over time, most recently the politicization of Christianity in the past 4 decades. I see all religions as discursive traditions attempting to understand and approach the Divine. I see much of religion saying more about people, not the Divine, who/which cannot be anthropomorphized, much less genderized."
Tom, I much appreciate your writing in response to my asking for comments from those who had served as missionaries in Japan. I wish we could sit down over cups of coffee and have a good discussion about what you wrote.
DeleteI had never heard the term "bumper car evangelism" to my knowledge, although I talked about that same sort of thing from time to time and was certainly aware of being engaged in that sort of evangelism. Nor did I ever hear people explicitly mentioning adding Jesus to their god-shelf, although I have had conversations with Japanese people who would have liked to do that, and maybe did figuratively.
I would especially like to dialogue with you about inclusivism, for there are different varieties of that and I am leery of how that often entails relativism. But at the very least, I certainly have a broader view of this matter than when I first went to Japan, and I am quite positive about related ideas in Richard Rohr's book "the Universal Christ" (2019).
For 43 years, I was either in Japan or preparing to go back. Now in retirement and reflecting on those years, I am grateful for mentors when I was 21 who showed me the best of who "missionaries" are, faithful to their sense of call and respectful students of culture. I am so very thankful for the last 15 years when I no longer need to assume the title of missionary, as one sent, since I was employed directly by the historic Baptist school system. And indeed, I will not embrace a "missionary" designation anymore. I'm tired of defending and redefining. It's not me anymore.
ReplyDeleteI arrived back into Japan after seminary and after ordination to the ministry with the job title of Church Planter. I said at the time to Japanese pastors that I wanted to "learn how to be a Christian and a pastor in Japan." I also must add that during the first week back in limited Japanese--more limited on the nuance than the actual words, unfortunately--when I was asked point blank by a young Japanese pastor, "Why are you here?" I replied, "To help." Wrong answer!, I learned quickly enough right then and there. (In Japanese, Help is always top-down.) Since Christianity in Japan dates back to the 16th Century (longer than the 13 colonies, I would add), and even Protestantism has been in Japan more than 150 years, we as missionaries were never starting with a blank slate as far as the churches were concerned. I saw myself as helping the Japanese church do what it thought was needed. That position is not always easy to maintain, and not always wise, since discouragement and fear as a tiny minority in society were always factors. While missionaries often needed to curb an inclination toward "Christian privilege" and assumptions from their own society of origin, there were perspectives to be learned on both sides. continued
(cont.) I'm sure that when I arrived into Japan at age 21 + 1 week, I was out to save the world, which was "lost." I came to see myself as a Christian presence in both church and community. When the opportunity came to talk about the Bible and Christian faith, I saw myself as giving options. As you mentioned, Leroy, most people did not claim a particular faith, so in talking about the Christian perspective, I was giving the option not only to embrace Christian faith but also the option to incorporate faith into life, at all. I learned to ask questions. For example, not all who might claim the designation of "Buddhist" have the same idea about "God," and I am not talking about the differences in sects, but rather individual faith. When an employee at the school told me he had "gotten faith" by which he meant that he had embraced Buddhist faith and become a leader in his local community, I congratulated him.
ReplyDeleteLeroy, you talked about the sense of "failure." I often said that the reason I could stay in Japan was that I learned to rejoice in the little things. Early on, I came across Engel's scale of evangelism, which runs from -10 to +10, with zero being baptism/faith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engel_scale Most traditional evangelism aims to move people into a profession of faith and so assumes information and sentiment at around -1 or -2. This will never have any affect on a person at -8, or even -5. In addition, movement from -1 to zero and baptism is a huge celebration, but I learned to see movement from -4 to -3 as the same kind of one-step progress also worthy of celebration--and a sense of success.
As I reflect on mistakes, of which there are so many, I think most were in the churches I was trying to start. Although I doubted the impact that Stateside pastoral experience would have had in Japan, I can see now that that experience and dealing with people in the church could have made me wiser and bolder--not that I could have gotten that experience as a pastor as a woman in the US that long ago.
I too would choose all over again to spend my life serving the Lord, making a life, raising my children, making lifelong friendships, falling on my face regularly and growing as a person and in faith, in Japan.
Thanks so much for posting your lengthy, helpful comments, Lydia. Yours was an important contribution to this discussion about missionaries.
DeleteThanks, too, for the explanation of "Engel's scale of evangelism." This is what Tom (above) was referring to as "bumper car evangelism." As I wrote above, I don't remember ever hearing it called that, but many years ago I did hear of Engel's scale and found it to be a helpful way to view the situation.
I was also happy to hear that your conclusion was in full agreement with the conclusion of my post.