This document summarizes the keynote speech given by Mogens S. Mogensen at a conference for pastors in Sønderborg Provsti, Denmark on October 8, 2014. The speech discusses the demographic shift in Christianity towards the global South and the emergence of new theological paradigms as a result. It outlines the historical eras of Christianity and how the religion has adapted across cultures throughout history. It then examines current trends, including the growth of Christianity in the global South and East and the rise of new theologians and perspectives from these regions. The speech argues this demographic change will lead to new theological processes dominated by issues important to Christians in the South.
1. MEDFØRER KIRKEVÆKST I SYD
NYE TEOLOGISKE PARADIGMER?
Foredrag på kursusdage for præster i Sønderborg Provsti
på Ærø Hotel i Marstal onsdag, den 8. oktober 2014
Mogens S. Mogensen
Intercultural.dk
2. DISPOSITION
1. Kristendommens historiske paradigmer og radikale
oversættelighed
1. Kristendommens demografiske udvikling
2. Kristendommens nye teologiske processer og paradigmer
3. Kristendommens nye ansigter
2
4. KRISTENDOMMENS KULTURLLE ÆRAER
• Den jødiske æra
• Den hellenistisk-romerske æra
• Den barbariske æra
• Den vesteuropæiske æra
• Den ekspanderende Europas æra
• ”Cross-cultural transmission” æra
4
5. 1. DEN JØDISKE ÆRA
• Kristne i den første generation var alle jøder, trods
indbyrdes forskelle
• De første kristne havde ingen opfattelse af, at de
havde ”skiftet religion” ved at anerkende Jesus
som Messias
• Jesus – Messias, Israels frelser
• Kristen identitet i den jødiske æra er knyttet til,
hvem personen er eller hvad personen gør
5
6. 2. DEN GRÆSK-ROMERSKE ÆRA
• Fra Messias til Kristus
• Kristus er Herre (kyrios)
• Kristendommen gennemtrænger det græsk-romerske
tankesystem og troen på én civilisation, en samfundsmodel, et
lovsystem, et idé-univers
• Ortodoksi – en kanon af ret tro, udformet i en række udsagn
baseret på logisk argumentation
• Kristen identitet i den græsk-romerske ære fokuserer på, hvad
den kristne tror
6
7. 3. DEN BARBARISKE ÆRA
• Det vestromerske rige erobres af barbarerne
(stammefolk), det østromerske rige erobres af
muslimerne
• En bybaseret kultur afløses af en bondebaseret kultur –
overtager ideer fra græsk-romersk æra og kombinerede
dem med deres oprindelige holdninger
• Universel lov afløses af kollektiv sædvane, der er
bindende for alle
• Den kristne folk/land
Ny hermeneutik: parallel mellem det kristne folk/land og
Israel
7
8. 4. DEN VESTEUROPÆISKE ÆRA
• Videreudvikling af kristendommen i den
barbariske æra
• Reformationsperioden indebærer reformulering af
kristendommen
• Fokus på menneskets møde med Guds ord på
modersmålet
• Individet i centrum: den kristne tro som et
spørgsmål om individuel beslutning og individuel
tilegnelse
8
9. 5. DET EKSPANDERENDE EUROPAS OG DEN
KRISTNE RECESSIONS ÆRE
• En videreførelse af vesteuropæisk æra – den kristne civilisations
spredning fra vesten til resten (”period of noncontextualization”)
og kristen tilbagegang i Vesteuropa
• Kristendommens møde med oplysningstiden: fornuft
- adskillelse af religion og fornuft
- privatisering af religion
- videnskabeliggørelse af teologi
• Kristendommens møde med oplysningstiden: fremskridtstro
- tro på kristendommens sejrsgang
- og på reformeringen af verden (social retfærdighed osv).
9
10. 6. ”CROSS-CULTURAL TRANSMISSION”
ÆRA
• Ikke længere nogen ”kristen kultur” eller ”kristen
civilisation”, men mange centre for kristendommen
• The process of cross-cultural transmission –
kristendommens radikale oversættelighed
10
12. MISSION BY DIFFUSION
”The missionary culture [is] the inseparable carrier of the message.
… Religion expands from its initial base and is implanted in other
societies primarily as a matter of cultural identity”.
”Arabic – a revealed language .. the medium in which the Qur’an …
was revealed….The author of the Qur’an who is God thus came to
be associated with its speech so that the very sounds of the
languate are believed to originate in heaven. … Consequently,
Muslims have instituted the sacred Arabic for the canonical
devotions … bringing the sacred Arabic to the level of the ordinary
believer”
12
13. MISSION BY TRANSLATION
”The recipient culture [is] the true and final locus of the
proclamation, so that religion arrives without the
presumptionof cultural rejection”
”Translatability became the characteristic mode of Christian
expansion through history. Christianity has no single
revealed language, and historical experience traces this fact
to the Pentecost event when the believers testified of God
in their native tongues."
13
14. STRID OM KRISTENDOMMENS RADIKALE
OVERSÆTTELIGHED
• Mission blandt slaver og de tre
”hellige sprog”: Bibel og liturgi
kun på hebræisk, græsk og
latin
• Reformationen:
bibeloversættelse til
modersmål
• Mission og kulturimperialisme:
kristendom og vestlig
civilisation
14
23. MISSION
23
The era of Christian Mission, as we have known it, is
over! What I mean is mission from ‘West to the Rest’ is a
thing of the past. We are living through a new era in
missions – everywhere to everywhere. … Korean
missionaries are everywhere from Argentina to Zimbabwe;
in fact, South Korea alone sends out as many new
missionaries each year as all Western nations combined.
Chinese missionariesfrom the underground churches are
going overseas in large numbers. Indians have one of the
largest cross-cultural missionary forces in the world, now
increasingly turning abroad. ” (Sam George).
24. MISSION
24
The fastest growing church network in the United States
is Hispanic. Some of the largest churches in Europe are
led by Africans. A Nigeria-based church has 5000
parishes in 80 countries. … Filipino women have gone
to Muslim countries. … The scattered people become
conduits through which missionary passion flow into old
heartlands of Christianity and they create new frontiers
of cross-cultural diffusion of their faith. … One of the
remarkable features of scattered people is that they
establish worshipping groups in host nations, even in
closed countries as well as ‘Christian’ West” (Sam
George).
28. Andrew Walls, ”World Christianity,
Theological Education and Scholarship”
(2011)
”In the past half-century, the
theological map of the world has
been transformed … in a
foreseeable future two-thirds of the
world’s Christian population could
belong to the southern and eastern
continents. The Christian Church is
now multi-centric”
28
29. THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT
• From ”The Great European Migration”
(1500 – 1950) to ”The Great Reverse
Migration” (1950 – )
• The world is no longer directed by
Europeans/Westerners – new powers are
rising
29
30. THE GEOPOLITICAL CONTEXT
• The West becomes increasingly multicultural and multireligious
- this alters the whole dynamic of interfaith dialogue and
mission
- a huge African and Asian Christian diaspora in the west
30
31. • ”Two processes occurred simultaneously: the largest accesion to
the Christian faith [in Africa and Asia];
and the fastes recession from the faith [in Europe]
in Christian history.”
• ”Christianity is in process of becoming again what it was in its
origins – a non-Western religion.”
31
THE RELIGIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CONTEXT
32. •”It is inevitable that the religio-cultural transformation of th 20th
century will place Africans and Asians more and more in positions
of leadership in World Christianity”
•”For the sake of the Christian Church worldwide, Africa all Asia
and Latin America, home to so many Christians, must pull their
true theological weight”
32
THE RELIGIO-DEMOGRAPHIC CONTEXT
33. THE THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT
”… the Western theological academy is not yet equipped to
give theolgogical leaership to the Church of the 21st
century.
For one thing, it is profoundly ingnorant about the Church of
the 21st century, and the processes by which it has come
into being. It has been largely isolated from those processes
by concern with its own traditions.”
33
34. WONSUK MA, ”THEOLOGICAL AND
MISSIONAL FORMATION IN THE CONTEXT
OF ’NEW CHRISTIANITY’” (2014)
34
”The radical shift in world
Christianity … opens up
unprecedented possibilities for
new theological paradigms and
theological processes.”
35. 35
”First the top-down theologization willhave to be
seriously reviewed. … This ’grassroots theology’ will be
borne of the real conrtext of everyday life where constant
mission engagement takes place”
THEOLOGIZATION HAS TO BE
’DEMOCRATIZED’
36. 36
”Second … theology should draw from lively mission exercises of
practitioners, as much as ”specialized theologians” draw from the
careful exegesis of the scriptures and the deposit of long historical
development of various traditons”
- Problematic categorizatin of proper theology and practical
theology. ”This theory-practice divide is a superficial outcome of
the modernist Enlightenment thinking”
EXPERIENCE SHOULD BE A CRITICAL BASIS
FOR FORMULATION OF THEOLOGY
37. 37
”Third, theologians we will see from the global South will be
more ”part-time” theologians, wearin several ministerial hats
…This engagement will make their theology lively and relevant
enriching theological reflection constantly”.
THEOLOGIANS WILL ALSO BE
PRACTITIONERS
38. ”THE PROCESS AND MAIN PLAYERS OF
THEOLOGICAL FORMULATION HAVE TO
CHANGE”
38
”Even this short list of future theologization presents numerous
implications to theological and missional formation. One is the
role of the West and the new ”Rest”.
If leadership of gloabl theological process is laid primarily on the
leaders of the global South, the role of Western churches with
its theological deposit is critical”
40. HOLDNING TIL BIBELEN
• Bibelen taler til den nye
kristenhed i syd og øst på
en mere direkte måde
• Er mere teologisk
konservativ i sin tolkning
af Bibelen
41. SAMEKSISTENS MED ANDRE
RELIGIONER
• Udvikling af religionsteologi,
der understøtter sameksistens
og samarbejde
• Pres fra andre religioner i
moralske spørgsmål
• Flere og flere kristne lever som
minoriteter
• Erfaringer med forfølgelse
41
42. FOKUS PÅ FATTIGDOM
”The Southward movement of Christianity implies not just a
change in the ethnic composition of the world’s believers,
but also a fundamental shift in their social and economic
background. The average Christian in the world today is a
poor person ... This historic social change cannnot fail to
affet attitudes toward the Bible”
Kefa Sempangi, Uganda: ”If the gospel you are preaching
does not speak to human needs, it is useless. It cannot
compete with the witch doctor and the gods”.
42
43. HOLISME
• Er mere holistisk mht. ånd
og materie, religion og
politik, mission og
udvikling
44. PENTEKOSTAL OG KARISMATISK
KRISTENDOM
• Lægger større vægt på
bibelens ord om den
åndelige verden: engle,
onde ånder mv.
• Fokuserer mere på
helbredelser og Guds kraft
• Er mere karismatisk
46. TEOLOGI OG TEOLOGIER
46
”Of course, Christian doctrine has never been
decided by majority vote, and neither has the
prevailing interpretation of the Bible.
Numbers are not everything, but at the same time,
overwhelming numerical majorities surely carry
some weight. ….”
47. TEOLOGI OG TEOLOGIER
47
”In such a world, then, surely, Southern traditions
of Bible reading must be seen as the Christian norm.
We will no longer treat the culture-specific
interpretations of North Americans and Europeans
as ”theology”- that is, as the real thing –
while the rest of the world produces its curious
provincial variants of ”African theology”, ”Asian
theology”, and so on …”
48. TEOLOGI OG TEOLOGIER
48
”Christian theology eventually reflects
the most compelling issues from the
front lines of mission,
so we can expect that Christian
theology will be dominated by these
issues rising from the global South”
49. TAK!
Mogens S. Mogensen
Konsulentfirmaet Intercultural.dk
Adr.: N. J. Holms Park 55,
6070 Christiansfeld
Tlf.: 2617 5712
E-mail: mogensen@intercultural.dk
Website: www.intercultural.dk
49
Hinweis der Redaktion
Each phase represents its imbodiement in a major cultural area which has meant that in that phase it has taken an impress from that culture. In each phase the expression of the Christian faith has developed features which could only have originated in that culture whose impress it has taken within that phase.
Emmausvandrerne: ”Og vi havde håbet, det var ham, der skulle forløse Israel” (Luk 24,21)
Efter opstandelsen: ”Herre, er det nu, du vil genroprette Riget for Israel?” (ApG 1,6)
I denne periode var der naturligvis også kristendom i andre kulturer, men den græsk-romerske var den dominerende,og den græsk-romerske udgave af kristendommen blev i mange århundreder det dominerende udtryk for kristendom.
"While Europe's share of the world's Christians has fallen dramatically from 66 percent in 1910 [the time of the first ecumenical conference on missionaries' activities in Edinburgh, Scotland] to just over 25 percent in 2010, Africa's share has rocketed from a mere two percent to 21.6 percent during that period of time," he said.
"Since 1981, Southern Christians are once again in the majority. The Christian faith is on the march in the Global South," said Ross.
The Global North represents the economically developed societies of Europe, North America, Australia, Israel, South Africa, and others. The Global South represents the economically backward countries of Africa, India, China, Brazil, Mexico, and others.