Introduction

From the beginning of the Christian faith, as presented in the New Testament, the Church has had to engage diverse cultures when seeking to spread the message of the Christian faith. This is by providence, to be sure, as it has been the plan of the Father for the worship of Jesus Christ to be a global undertaking. The path of spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the many diverse culture on the planet is fraught with many challenges. These challenges are related to how each culture is structured as well as how each culture is possessed of certain closed feedback loops of communication. Therefore, it can be a difficult thing to faithfully communicate the faith without some steep communicative mountains to climb. Communication is only one challenge among a family of challenges. Practice, meaning the activity in which each culture engages, can make the praxis of Christian faith diverse, and sometimes troublesome. This truth is played out quite interestingly in the words of the book of Acts as well as in the various writings of the Apostles in the New Testament. As the faith continued to grow in the first few centuries after the coming of Christ we can see that this was a continual challenge which the Church had to meet, all in the midst of persecution from hostile authorities in Rome.1 Of the many dangers associated with spreading the Gospel to diverse cultures, none is more harrowing than the danger of syncretism. This will be discussed at length, with a provocative case study showing the horrible consequences of syncretism in the modern age. Syncretism can be prevented, as can be seen by the many diverse cultures in which the Christian faith flourishes. This leads to an interesting post modern phenomenon, a paradigm reversal that occurs when Christianity becomes institutionally enculturated in a society in which the evangelized become evangelists of the Christian faith, not only to cultures surrounding them, but in some cases, to the culture that evangelized them. There are several examples of this, which will be presented as well. What will be shown is that, although there is no perfect model of communicating the Gospel to other
1

Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity., Rev. and updated [ed.], 2nd ed. (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 126.

cultures, and the absorption of Christian faith in the culture can become a deep departure from true faith, the rewards of the missionary effort are evident in the fully mature and active churches, which flourish in many different nations.

A Brief History of Missions

It is necessary to start at the beginning when examining any movement or action. For the activity of missions and evangelism, the beginning would be contained within the Scriptures themselves, namely the book of the Acts of the Apostles and the writings of Paul. It becomes clear very early on, to any honest reader of the New Testament, that every challenge that faced the early church of the New Testament was entirely cultural in nature. These challenges included the necessity of a Jewish identity for the believers who came to faith in Christ. It is clear from Acts that the very first converts to Christianity were Jews.2 The remainder of the book deals with the reality that non-Jews were also beginning to come to faith in Christ, and how the Jewish leaders of the new faith were to respond to this. Since many new believers were Romans or Greeks, the central question became the depth of the intrinsic Jewish nature of the Christian faith. This question caused contention in the leadership and led to what is generally held to be the first general council of the Church, held in Jerusalem and recounted in the book of Acts.3 The answer to the question would set the course of the Christian Church from that day forward. It is clear that this council led to a decision that began the slow process of moving the Christian church away from its roots in Judaism. The council, of course, ruled that gentile converts would not be required to become Jews before becoming Christians. This effectively made Christianity a gentile religion. The repercussions of the decision are astounding, as it is clear that had the leaders decided otherwise, the Christian faith would have become another sect within Judaism, much like the Essenes, which were contemporaries of the early Christians.4 This
2 3

ESV New Classic Reference Bible (Crossway Bibles, 2011), Acts 2:1-3. ESV New Classic Reference Bible , Acts 15. 4 Stuart Wilson and Joanna Prentis, The Essenes: Children of the Light (Huntsville, AR: Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc.,

decision was no mere lip service to the gentiles, to be sure. Paul would brand the Jewish believers who continued to require a conversion to Judaism as heretics, and history would show that these Judaizers would become the first heretical movement within Christianity, and would continue for centuries outside the shelter of Orthodox Christianity as the Ebionite movement.5 This first great controversy of the Church, leading to the very first schism, was based on cultural questions and highlights the great difficulty that culture presents when spreading the Gospel of Christ. Once the question of the gentiles was settled, another cultural battle would arise as a result of the prolific missionary efforts of the Apostle Paul. The writings of Paul represent the very earliest authentic written communication of the new Christian faith.6 As such, it is a treasure of information on the challenges faced by the new religion. The new challenge, once the Jewish question was settles, became the problem of paganism. Of the many great historical revelations of Paul, perhaps the most interesting is the challenges expressed in his writings regarding his attempts to continue his young churches, many of them situated in great pagan centers of the ancient world, in the truth of the Christian faith, offering encouragement, reproof and even stern discipline to the point of excommunication in order to keep the young Christians on task. A veritable case study in the difficulties of Christianity in pagan culture comes in Pauls letters to the church in Corinth. As we read through the letters of Paul to the Corinthian, it becomes evident that the moral and ethical sensibilities of Paul's Christianity is at considerable odds with the values of the culture in Corinth. A true Greek metropolis, situated at what is arguably the apex of Greco-Roman trade. If Rome was the New York City of he Ancient world, then Corinth might have been its Miami Beach. What Corinth was renowned for was it's licentious morality along with its disparate class structures. What is known from various sources about Corinth is echoed in Paul's writings to the church he founded there. It is in Corinth that Paul dishes out his strongest disciplines, even resorting to
2005), 15. 5 C. FitzSimons Allison, The Cruelty of Heresy: an Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy (Harrisburg, PA.: Morehouse Publishing, 1994), 23. 6 Gonzales, 47.

excommunication7 All of these biblical accounts provide an invaluable resource for the study of the cultural forces at work in the earliest era of Christianity. The Church of Jesus Christ would not, however, be limited to its middle eastern region of origin. The expansion of Christianity into the many different regions of the Roman Empire brought about many new cultural challenges. By the beginning of the fourth century, Christianity had so permeated the fabric of life in the empire that the Emperor himself converted and eventually, Christianity became the official religion of the previously pagan empire. In cultural terms, this radically changed the face of Christianity from that point forward. Rather than being the movement which adjusts to culture, it became the movement which defined culture in the Roman Empire.8 This development was huge for the Christian movement, as it became a major world religion at that point in history. Rome was not an eternal kingdom, however, and with the decline of the empire came yet another adaptation for the Christian church. As barbarian tribes encroached into Roman territory, a renewed missionary effort took hold of the Christian mind. This is due in part to the simple reality that the culture was no longer saturated with faithful subjects in the new political and religious landscape of post Roman life. There were fresh souls to save. Along with this effort to convert the barbarian tribes came an engagement with vastly different cultures. This created a need for missionaries to relate more differently to various cultures. The missionary effort in this era of the Christian Church is as vital and interesting as that in the first century. The reason for this is simple. The missionaries began to relate to the cultures in a way that they could understand and respond to. An example of this is the famous words of St. Columba, the Irish missionary to the Druid Celts of Scotland. In a poem contributed to him, Columba makes the bold statement, I do not hold to the voice of birds, or any luck on the earthly world, or chance or a son or a woman. Christ the Son of God is my druid; Christ the Son of Mary, the

7 8

ESV New Classic Reference Bible , I Cor 5:1. Paul Stephenson, Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor (New York: Overlook Hardcover, 2010), 155.

great Abbot; the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit.9 The reference to Christ as a druid, a word which is generally foreign to Christian ears, is a choice Columba makes to communicate the truth of who Jesus Christ is to him. It worked as many Druids converted to Christ as a result of Columba's missionary efforts and the efforts of His contemporary in Ireland, St. Patrick. From Britain to the Germanic tribes of mid-continental Europe, the church succeeded in converting the barbarian tribes almost in whole. Many times, these conversions were done by converting their kings, and the faith would trickle down to the rank and file. This was a strategy of memory, seeing the impact of Constantine's conversion and its impact on the faith. Within a generation of the collapse of Rome, the Christian church had yet again effectively converted the known world.10 Evangelism, as a movement, waned once again until the Protestant Reformation. In this era of evangelistic renewal, two major forces contributed to the new missionary zeal. The first was British Colonialism and the second was the expansion of Europe to the New World.11 The discovery of cultures theretofore untouched by the Gospel highlighted a need to resurrect the method of sharing the truth of Christianity with disparate cultures. As Britain settled colonies in every corner of the globe, Anglican faith would accompany the political expansion. This can be seen from South Africa to Australia to India and the Far East. It is also a by product of the colonization of America. It is not overstating the truth to say that the English missionary societies were responsible for the defining the modern day mission fields, of Africa, South America and the Far East. In the modern era, all branches of Christianity, from the Orthodox of the east, the Roman Catholics and the various Protestant movements all have a stake in today's missionary effort, although it is the Protestant missionary effort that is by far the most robust. The reason for this is the progressive methods of cultural contextualization that has developed the Protestant missionary effort. The Protestant movement is particularly sensitive to the diversities of cultural and making the Gospel message relevant to the
9

Timothy J. Joyce, Celtic Christianity: a Sacred Tradition, a Vision of Hope (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998), 89. Gonzalez, 142. 11 Hilary M. Carey, God's Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, C.1801-1908 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 12.
10

culture being evangelized. In a sense, the Protestants are taking their cue from the old saints Patrick and Columba in their method to speak the language of their target group in order to bring about the truth in a palatable way. It is this being sharpened today into a practical and scientific method for communicating the Gospel.

Dangerous Liaisons: A Case Study in Syncretism

There are dangers associated with the communication of the Gospel into diverse cultures. These dangers are more pronounced in relation to the interaction of the new faith with the indigenous religion of the culture being evangelized. Without great care being taken to facilitate the migration from paganism to Christian faith, converts can weave their old religion into their expression of Christianity. This is the phenomena known as Syncretism and is one of the great dangers of foreign missions. To highlight the subversive danger of syncretism, it has been hypothesized that Western Christianity suffered from syncretism at the hands of St. Augustine, who, some though, imported his views on the body and sexuality from his former Manichean faith.12 Whether that is true or not, it is clear that the integration of paganism with Christianity has happened in history and it is a sobering idea. In the modern era, there is perhaps no more stark an example of syncretism than the Santeria cult of the Caribbean island nations. It is a useful undertaking to study this movement, which blends the polytheistic paganism of the indigenous culture with the Roman Catholic faith brought to it by the Spanish explorers of the 15th century.13 One can study how this movement came to be, the forces which allowed it to form and how to keep such a sycretistic movement to develop again. Santeria is a religion that blends the West African pagan religious polytheism with the beliefs of Roman Catholic devotion, particularly connected to the Roman concept of the Communion of the
12 13

Garry Wills, Saint Augustine: A Life ( Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005), 57. Miguel A. De La Torre, Santera: the Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 36.

Saints. Roman Catholic veneration of saints is a tradition rooted in historic Christianity, which is linked to the idea that all believers, living and dead, are a part of the mystical Body of Christ. Therefore, departed saints are alive in a way the living cannot yet experience and are still an active part of the Christian community. This communion of saints leads to not only prayers for the dead (incidentally, another historically rooted Christian practice), but also the invocation of various saints and requests for intercession, much like requesting prayer from living friends and relatives. When such a practice is encountered by a culture that is intrinsically polytheistic and animalistic, the elevation of saints to deities and veneration to worship is an inevitability if not combated by sound teaching. In Santeria, this is exactly what happened. The worship of saints in Santeria leads to the invocation of them in the practice of magic linked to the tradition of voodoo found in the indigenous African religions forming the base of the religious expression of Santeria. So deep is the devotion to the saints in this religion that the term Santeria literally means the way of the saints.14 How did this incredibly deep syncretism develop here when it didn't in other regions, even in Africa, where the religion that blended to form Santeria originated? The answer may very well be the isolation of the islands in which the religion developed, which left the converts exposed to the intricate details of Catholic theology without proper leadership to guide them through the migration from their former religion to the new faith. As missionary efforts continued in the mainland of the New World, the islanders were left to their own devices until the blending of the religious traditions was so entrenched that there was no coming back. A new syncretisctic religion had been fully formed into a dark aberration of pagan devotion to real men and women of God who would burn themselves at the stake before being worshipped as a deity. What lessons can be learned from the development of Santeria that can be used to prevent the development of other syncretistic religions in the future? The first lesson is that in order for a culture steeped in paganism to fully embrace the truth of Christianity, it must be walked into by missionaries
14

Torre, 15.

who immerse themselves into the daily lives of the culture, and walk with the people they are evangelizing. Like Paul in the new Testament, the missionary must live in the community and be a part of the people and the culture, guiding with wisdom and the power of the Holy Spirit to bring the people into deep faith, under the leadership of a mature believer brought up from within the culture, ready and able to follow the biblical standard Paul sets down for the office of a bishop. Once a community has grown into maturity, staying connected to the global Christian community is of the utmost importance in order to avoid the creeping menace of heresy that so greedily stands at the periphery of authentic Christian faith. The two fold strategy of culturally immersed missionaries to an identity as a part of a global Christian faith is that which will guarantee that a community will stay deeply rooted in the historic orthodox Christian faith once delivered to the saints.

Anatomy of a Paradigm Shift

What happens when a culture that has been evangelized by Western Christians reaches a point of maturity where they function as an integral part of the global Christian community for several generations? The answer is that that culture begins to develop its own sense of evangelistic zeal. Interestingly, this is the case with what is being termed the Global South. Churches and jurisdictions in Africa and South America are moving to evangelize the United States with a heart towards counteracting the liberal trends taking place in many American churches. So active are these evangelistic efforts that it resulted in the formation of a new Anglican province in the United States and Canada. This movement began in 2000 as a result of the ordination of an openly gay man as a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the United States. Many congregations in that denomination left as a result, yet were not ready to walk away from their Anglican identity or place in the worldwide Anglican Communion. In a bold move, Anglican primates from Bolivia, Rwanda and Singapore individually and corporately formed a missionary effort to provide a jurisdictional and episcopal covering to the breakaway Anglican movement. The methodology was simple and innovative. Rather than sending

African missionaries to plant churches in the United States, these missionaries consecrated American bishops and commissioned them to plant churches under the authority of the parent jurisdiction. This would ensure that the historical elements of episcopal oversight, canonical authority and apostolic succession would be maintained. There are two extant organizations as a result of this missionary effort, The first one is the result of the efforts of Nigerian and Bolivian Anglican missionaries and became the autonomous Anglican Church of North America, which functions as am orthodox counterpart to the Episcopal Church. The second organization is a result of Rwandan and Singaporian efforts and was formed into what is now known as the Anglican Mission. The mission of these organizations and he foreign missionary efforts that under gird them, is to transform the definition of missions and change the paradigm of what missionary effort looks like in a post Christian society. Rather than looking for pagan hordes to convert, these organizations seek to reach another kind of unchurched person. This new type of target is a person who knows Christianity and exists in a generally Christian culture, but rejects Christianity or is brought up in a home that has rejected Christianity. This presents a different kind of challenge from those that evangelize people who have never heard the gospel. The new Goal of American Anglicanism is to plant mission churches in every community in the United States and Canada. The purpose is to provide an opportunity to experience an ancient faith that is relevant for a post modern individual. It remains to be seen if this new generation of missionaries is effective to the degree that the old paradigm was. The numbers support the idea behind this effort. The new Anglican province in America now boasts over 100,000 members and the Anglican Mission has planted over 1000 churches in the United States and Canada.

Conclusion
The role of culture in communicating the Gospel is ever shifting in response to the changing face of the world and the emergent post modern global identity. Throughout history, Christianity grew

into the world religion it is by effectively communicating the truth of God's redemption and integrating into various cultures in various ways. Would Christianity have developed along other lines, it might not have survived the first century. It might have survived only as a Jewish movement, or only within a defined geographic area. That Christianity is history's largest religion shows that its resilience cannot be defined and that it's ability to transcend cultural boundaries cannot be overstated. Many who believe that Christianity is in an unrecoverable decline do not understand history or the strength of the faith of the Christian Tradition, which is destined to continue to survive in even the most hostile cultural environments

Bibliography
Allison, C. FitzSimons. The Cruelty of Heresy: an Affirmation of Christian Orthodoxy. Harrisburg, PA.: Morehouse Publishing, 1994. Carey, Hilary M. God's Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British World, C.1801- 1908. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. De La Torre, Miguel A., Santera: the Beliefs and Rituals of a Growing Religion in America,

Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004. ESV New Classic Reference Bible (TruTone, Brown/Tan, Tree Design). Crossway Bibles, 2011.

Joyce, Timothy J. Celtic Christianity: a Sacred Tradition, a Vision of Hope. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1998. Stephenson, Paul. Constantine: Roman Emperor, Christian Victor. New York: Overlook Hardcover, 2010. Wills, Garry. Saint Augustine: A Life (Penguin Lives Biographies). Classics, 2005. Wilson, Stuart and Prentis, Joanna, The Essenes: Children of the Light. Huntsville, AR: Ozark Mountain Publishing, Inc., 2005. Penguin (Non-