African Pentecostalism and World Christianity. Группа авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ missionaries, those commissioned with a particular task, sent ones, and missionaries were apostles. Apostolicity then comes down to the question of who has the Spirit that was in Jesus Christ? Who truly manifests the “power from on high” that Jesus promised? (Luke 24:48)

The Indian liberation theologian Samuel Rayan SJ wrote about “mission in the Spirit.”99 Mission is not primarily about the task to be accomplished, the goals and the strategy to get there, it is about the call to be filled with the Spirit. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” said Jesus as he announced his mission (Luke 4:18). Mission is not primarily an action but a spirituality, a way of being in Christ. Furthermore, the Spirit in whose power we do mission, and in which Jesus carried out his mission, is sent from the Father and at work in the whole creation. The Spirit in which Jesus was conceived, grew up, was baptized and performed wondrous deeds was already known to the people as the Spirit of God manifest in the prophets, even the Spirit of life itself (Nicene Creed). Since the work of the Spirit is much wider than our particular community, mission can be thought of as “finding out where the Holy Spirit is at work and joining in.”100 This is the gist of the current statement of the World Council of Churches on mission and evangelism, Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. It concludes: “We understand that our task is not to bring God along but to witness to the God who is already there (Acts 17:23–28). Joining in with the Spirit, we are enabled to cross cultural and religious barriers to work together towards life.”101

      World Christianity: A New Approach to Catholicity

      World Christianity

The concept “world Christianity” owes its origins largely to the work of Andrew Walls, whose long career has taken him to Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Princeton and Liverpool Hope universities, and to his disciples and colleagues, most notably the late Lamin Sanneh. However, it has been appropriated by others as well and serves several purposes. It is debated whether it is purely descriptive or somehow normative; whether it is an observation or a new paradigm.102

From Walls’s work, world Christianity is partly a neat way of explaining the statistical fact that, somewhere around the year 1970, the number of Christians in the global South began to exceed that in the global North. With this statistic in mind, many have treated world Christianity as a product of European colonialism as if Christianity was a European religion that went global only in the last few centuries. The study of world Christianity tends to be dominated by a historical approach that locates it in the post-colonial and globalization eras. However, Walls, together with Todd Johnson, points out that Christianity is Asian in origin, that its early spread was in multiple directions and that up until the year 923 AD, there were more Christians living south of the latitude of Jerusalem than above it.103

Statistics should not be allowed to determine understanding of Christian faith—there is much more to it than that. Moreover, the sources of such statistics could be questioned as well as the underlying assumptions about what defines a Christian. But the use of numbers is not forbidden in theology—Luke himself concludes the Pentecost story with a head-count (Acts 2:41, 47). They are certainly significant, among other measures of Christian-ness—such as social impact and cultural change—in the study of Christianity.104

      Sometimes it is assumed that “world Christianity” represents a sociological alternative to ecumenical theology or church history, and for some theologians this is a reason for dismissing it. It is true that “world Christianity” is a sociological term and that the subject provides a way in which sociologists have been drawn into the study the church or churches. It is also true that the study of world Christianity involves treating Christianity as a social movement and that critical tools from social studies are applied. However, world Christianity is best thought of as a multi-disciplinary topic. Most of the leading figures—such as Walls, Sanneh, Dana L. Robert, Brian Stanley, or Klaus Koschorke—are historians who also take theology very seriously. So seriously in fact that a historian or sociologist might sometimes worry that theology is driving their historical interpretations. World Christianity is, and should be, primarily an empirical study. But empirical findings can and should challenge theological claims—explicit or implicit—that do not reflect ground realities; for example, any claim that a certain theology developed in in a particular time and place (Aquinas, Luther, Barth, etc.) is somehow normative for all Christians everywhere.

      “World Christianity” is sometimes used to imply an approach to Christianity that focuses on developments outside the West, like the terms “world music,” “world film,” or “world religions.” Much of the study of world Christianity does indeed do this in that it redresses a balance and moves beyond colonial approaches. However, as a movement that continues to have significant centers of power in the West, world Christianity must also attend to these—especially Christianity in Europe and the USA—if it is do justice to the whole.

In many respects, world Christianity studies what is so often treated as a European religion in the same way as the other religions which are often referred to under the broad heading “world religion,” such as Islam, Buddhism, and so on. They are studied both in their countries of origin and also in their global spread and manifestations in different continents. Although, the term “world religion” is a contested and ideologically loaded one, it is not necessary to assert the parity of certain religions in order to apply religious studies methods. In any case, Christianity has a strong claim to be a truly world religion on empirical grounds because it is “locally rooted,” “globally widespread” and “interconnected.”105 The contemporary discipline of religious studies treats religions as the lived practices of people rather than as systems to live by. World Christianity tends to study Christianity this way as well, although theology is more recognized than in the discipline in general.

In the UK and North America, professorial chairs in “world Christianity” have rapidly replaced chairs in mission studies and ecumenics. In the case of mission studies or missiology, this is primarily because the colonial associations of mission have been difficult to overcome; second, because the paradigm shift to God’s mission (missio Dei) suggested to many that mission from one community to another should cease; and third, because in secular university settings mission appears as a narrowly church pursuit. Personally, I think this is short-sighted; first, because churches and their mission agendas are far from marginal to society, even in places of high secularization; and second, because now that most churches think of themselves as missional and globally missionary movements are on the increase, especially in and from the global South, it is all the more important to be doing mission studies. Similarly, with ecumenics, the growth in Christian diversity makes issues of unity all the more urgent and greatly increases the dialogue to include churches beyond Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox. World Christianity challenges a view of church history that assumes that in the beginning there was one united church which was subsequently rent asunder by schisms. This view of the origins of Christian diversity, which has dominated the ecumenical movement, sees diversity negatively and suggests that a unity that heals these divisions should be the main priority in inter-church relations. Although it was considered necessary at various times and places to unify, regularize or codify Christian belief and practice in one place, region or within one jurisdiction, such uniformity was secondary and diversity was more normal.106 Moreover, there always existed churches beyond these jurisdictions. Through the ecumenical councils, limits to diversity were set but these still allowed for regional variations. Such variations have come down to the present day in the Orthodox and Catholic churches; many have probably been lost. Furthermore, the churches have continued to be founded in different regions and cultures.

      A New Approach to Catholicity

      All the above definitions of world Christianity are true to an extent but at the heart of the shift to world Christianity in mission theology lies a rediscovery of the nature of the church’s catholicity. World Christianity shifts interest away from understanding Christian diversity primarily in terms of doctrine and polity and toward spatial or geographical diversity, which was the primary sense in which the first councils of the church understood catholicity. No longer is the unity envisaged mainly a denominational СКАЧАТЬ