GloboChrist: Chapters 3 and 4

Below is Amos Yong's engagement with chapters 3 & 4 of Carl Raschke's GloboChrist: The Great Commission Takes a Postmodern Turn.  Chapter 3 is entitled "Utter Holiness or Wholly Otherness: Finding Fidelity among the Infidels" and chapter 4 is entitled "A Closer Look through the 10/40 Window."  For those of us who are unfamiliar with the term "10/40 window," Raschke helpfully defines this term thus:

The expression 10/40 Window has been often used by evangelical Christians, and even more frequently by evangelical missionaries, to refer to the sprawling region running east to west across the African and Asian continents that lies between the tenth and fortieth parallels.  The area contains the largest population of non-Christians in the world.  It reaches from ten degrees to forty degrees north of the equator and spans the globe all the way from North Africa across to China.  But from the faith perspective, it is best known as an entrenched "window of resistance" to Christian missions and evangelism.  In contrast to what Jenkins and others term the "Christian South," it is barren ground for church planters.  It is a trackless desert of counter-Christianity (p. 94).

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Chapters 3 and 4 of GloboChrist almost read like two different proposals for engaging “the infidels.” The former presents Raschke’s suggestions for the Christian mission in a pluralistic world. The key moves he makes here are summarized by the notion of incarnational mission wherein Christian faithfulness takes on as many vernacular forms as need be in order to “indigenize the gospel” (the first section title of ch. 3). Thus in a pluralistic society, Christian faith and Christian mission take the “postmodern turn” (in the subtitle of GloboChrist) precisely through their (potentially infinite) malleability and translatability into the many local “icons, values, and cultural practices” of our times, just as the first century followers of the GloboChrist themselves also absorbed the mystery religions of their world into the Christian framework.

In chapter 4, however, such an incarnational strategy seems to retreat to the background when confronted by “globo-Islam” inside the 10/40 Window. In this context, Raschke repeatedly emphasizes instead – all against the liberal penchant for dialogue in quest for a common denominator – the “clash of revelations, “collision of eschatologies,” and “irreconcilability of differences” separates Islam from Christianity. There appears to be only opposition instead of the call to incarnational mission vis-à-vis Muslims. What has happened? Why emphasize the “monumental differences” (p. 143) between these two global faiths but approach Buddhism dialogically (pp. 83-84)?

Peeking ahead to the last three chapters does not quite resolve this apparent discrepancy. Perhaps we can interpret Raschke as saying that only a relational and rhizomic form of Christian faith will be suitable for engaging Islam. So, if the goal of the “increasingly radicalized Muslim umma” is the “emancipation for the Muslim world [that] is equivalent to Islamization” (p. 113), then might a relational-rhizomic approach in the 10/40 Window be more successful in our postmodern times? More concretely, however, if political (and I use the word broadly here) Islamization is the goal for Muslims, what does incarnational mission look like in a Muslim context? If the indigenization of Christianity involves taking on the values and cultural practices of the “other,” how is this possible with regard to a politically constituted and expressed Islamic faith? Does not Christian incarnationalism and indigenization, relationalism and rhizomism, in this case involve – even require – some form of alternative “politics” which absorbs the thrust of Islamic political philosophy, economy, and theology?

I suspect that Raschke would be very nervous about any such “politicizing” of Christian faith. After all Christian relationalism and radicality includes a transcendental dimension that is neither “right” nor “left” as measured by contemporary “Christian” options. Instead, the church is a communion of radical disciples or saints, loving one another, and living out the dynamic power of the risen Christ to one another. Raschke’s radicalism is thus a fundamental retrieval of the early forms of Christian community that, paradoxically, both absorbed the world while standing out apart from it, imbibing and transforming some of the world’s icons, values, and practices, while sharing with one another so that none had any need. In the end, then, maybe different “infidels” require different responses so that our evangelism of Buddhists is or should be different from our mission in the 10/40 Window; maybe this is simply Raschke’s way of responding to our postmodern situation: to propose that the pomo-appeal of the GloboChrist in the power of the Spirit will be manifest pluralistically and received differently depending on the context.

On the other hand, maybe Raschke has given up too quickly on his incarnational principle. Might it not be possible that a thoroughly relational-rhizomic Christian approach to Islam will produce a form of “Muslim Christianity” (or even “Christian Islam”) even as a messianic form of Judaism has arisen over the centuries? If this is the case, then the blurring of the lines between Christian and non-Christian that Raschke observes in a missional context (p. 65) may also happen vis-à-vis Islam such that the incommensurability – theological, eschatological, or otherwise – that now appears insurmountable will be overcome. If so, then perhaps the clash of revelations is diffused not via louder and more convinced proclamation, but, as GloboChrist suggests, performatively, through a thoroughgoing vernacularization of Christian faith in Muslim garb. Along these lines may lie the reconciliation of the proposals sketched in chapters 3 and 4 toward a more coherent understanding of GloboChrist and the Great Commission after the postmodern turn.

Amos Yong
Professor of Systematic Theology
Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia Beach, Virginia

Comments

[Jason Hesiak]

i have the image going through my head of Jesus showing up in Jerusalum to celebrate the passover, unrecognized in hooded garb, after telling his disciples that he wasn't going to go...and suddenly standing up among them to teach.

[Craig Mathison]

Interestingly, "thoroughly relational-rhizomic Christian approach(es) to Islam" are springing up in 10/40 just as African Independent Churches have sprung up their context. For reasons of security, many cannot be publicized. Perhaps, Raimon Llull has already shown the way when he advised the Pope in the early 14th century that Islam would only be conquered thru prayer.

Nevertheless, Raschke helps all those being opposed by a religious establishment as they endeavor to incarnate the Christian faith in diverse contexts.

Thanks, Amos, for helping to tease out some of tension in what Raschke is writing.

[adrian walker]

Dear Amos,

Thanks for taking the time to lay out your thought-provoking question about the possibilities of Christian indigenization in an Islamic context.

Much can be said in favor of the thesis that Christianity can be Islamically-indigenized---up to a point, at least. Nevertheless, there seem to be to be three essential limits to the indigenization project, limits that can't be crossed without turning either Christianity or Islam or both into something different:

(1) The one limit is the Christian commitment to the sole Lordship and full divinity of Jesus Christ. I take this commitment to be non-negotiable for Christians.

(2) The second limit is the fact that Islam claims to be the definitive, universally valid revelation---a claim that, as such, relativizes the Christian commitment to the sole Lordship and full divinity of Jesus Christ.

(3) The third limit is that Islam conceives of itself, not just as a "belief," or even just as a "belief-incarnated-in-practises," but as the God-ordained polity. Dhimmitude for the "other" seems to be the best Christians could hope for within such a polity. In any case, it's the best they've gotten historically in the Middle East and North Africa.

Let me add that my point is not to "bash" Islam, from which much can be learned and in which there is much to respect. Even the idea of a God-ordained polity governed by Shar'ia is worth taking seriously---rather than automatically dismissing it because it is incompatible with democracy.

My point, then, is simply that we should learn from, and respect, not only what Islam has in common with us, but also what makes Islam different from us. This willingness to learn from and respect isn't at all compromised if it turns out (as I believ it does) that the different-ness of Islam and Christianity makes them mutually unassmiliable---without conversion from Islam to Christianity or from Christianity to Islam. (Which conversion wouldn't rule out indigenization, but would certainly limit its scope.)

Cordially,
Adrian

[Amos Yong]

Adrian, thanks for your response. I agree that there are real challenges to Christian indigenization in an Islamic context. So my response will be twofold based on the motivations behind my original question.

If Raschke highlights the incommensurabilities between Islam and Christianity, why not also highlight the same between Buddhism & Christianity, or between any other religious tradition and Christianity? Any thick description of another religious tradition will unearth incommensurabilities not only in belief but also in practices. My initial response to Raschke was why propose indigenization with Buddhism but not with Islam

But second, I also raised the possibility that Raschke was proposing two different types of missional responses - one focused on Buddhism via indigenization & the other directed toward Islam. In light of your comments, Adrian, I think Raschke is right to think that multiple missional strategies are required. I only wish to complicate his proposals: that multiple strategies are required not just in terms of one type for Buddhism & another type for the 10/40 window, but multiple strategies are required for Buddhism & for within the 10/40 window. Sometimes, indigenization is the answer, other times, emphasis should be on incommensurabilities - discernment is required about the places, times, & contexts to identify what may be best.

[adrian walker]

Dear Amos,

Thanks for clarifying your overall point. I agree about multiple strategies being necessary for every case (for Islam and its varieties as well as for Buddhism and its varieties). It's just as easy to idealize an other as it is to demonize an other.

Perhaps we could say this: every concrete missional strategy in every concrete case should combine emphasis on incommensurables and openness to indigenization---a combination that itself should be commanded by a unity of commitment to the essentials of the Gospel and openness to the "logoi spermatikoi" (though we can probably expect to find different logoi scattered in different places, nor are they always received with equal purity in every culture).

It's important to add that this double unity isn't a matter of juggling or balancing disparate commitments, but of being radically faithful to both commitments in each pair. It seems to me that the "all things to all men" aspect of Christian fath is included within, and flows from, the "One died for all" aspect of it.

Conversion to Christ need not be a repudiation of any partial truth (including partial truths that Christendom hasn't sufficiently emphasized)---only a liberation of said truth from our tendency to make an undue absolute of it. Only Christ is absolute, and even he is relativity to the Father!

Which, of course, doesn't mean that there is some one-size-fits-all formula for mission that would make case-by-case discernment unnecessary.

Sorry for all the dashes.

Cordially,
Adrian

[Jason Hesiak]

ADRIAN....good to hear from you! i was just thinking of you the other day :) really, i was! wow...neato :)

[adrian walker]

Thanks, Jason. I think of you from time to time as well. Hope Virginia is treating you well.

A.

[rodney neill]

Hello Adrian

Rodney Neill here - I too was thinking of you recently.

Welcome back to site

Rodney

[adrian walker]

Dear Rodney---

Nice to hear from you! Hope you have been doing well. If I ever make it to Belfast (which I hope to do) while I'm living in Europe, we should meet for a beer.

Cordially,
Adrian

[rodney]

Adrian

That would be great - email is rodneyneill@hotmail.com if you want to contact me. (Sorry for getting off topic in GloboChrist conversation)

best regards,

Rodney