From his book ‘The Reason for God,’ Timothy Keller, a Presbyterian minister from New York City, wrote:
Christianity Isn’t Culturally Rigid
Christianity is also reputed to be a cultural straitjacket. It allegedly forces people from diverse cultures into a single iron mold. It is seen as an enemy of pluralism and multiculturalism. In reality, Christianity has been more adaptive (and maybe less destructive) of diverse cultures than secularism and many other worldviews.
The pattern of Christian expansion differs from that of every other world religion. The center and majority of Islam’s population is still in the place of its origin—the Middle East. The original lands that have been the demographic centers of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism have remained so. By contrast Christianity was first dominated by Jews and centered in Jerusalem. Later it was dominated by Hellenists and centered in the Mediterranean. Later the faith was received by barbarians of Northern Europe and Christianity came to be dominated by western Europeans and then North Americans. Today most Christians in the world live in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Christianity soon will be centered in the southern and eastern hemispheres.
Two case studies are instructive. In 1900, Christians comprised 9 percent of the African population and were outnumbered by Muslims four to one. Today Christians comprise 44 percent of the population[xv], and in the 1960s passed Muslims in number.[xvi] The explosive growth is now beginning in China.[xvii] Christianity is growing not only among the peasantry, but also among the social and cultural establishment, including the Communist party. At the current rate of growth, within thirty years Christians will constitute 30 percent of the Chinese population or 1.5 billion.[xviii]
Why has Christianity grown so explosively in these places? African scholar Lamin Sanneh gives a most intriguing answer. Africans , he said, had a long tradition of belief in a supernatural world of good and evil spirits. When Africans began to read the Bible in their own languages many began to see in Christ the final solution to their own historic longings and aspirations as Africans.[ixx] Sanneh writes:
Christianity answered this historical challenge by a reorientation of the world view. . . . People sensed in their hearts that Jesus did not mock their respect for the sacred nor their clamor for an invincible Savior, and so they beat their sacred drums for him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies. After that dance the stars weren’t little anymore. Christianity helped Africans become renewed Africans, no remade Europeans.[xx]
Sanneh argues that secularism with its anti-supernaturalism and individualism is much more destructive of local cultures and “African-ness” than Christianity is. In the Bible, Africans read of Jesus’s power over supernatural and spiritual evil and of his triumph over it on the cross. When Africans become Christians, their African-ness is converted, completed, and resolved, not replaced with European-ness or something else.[xxi] Through Christianity, Africans get distance enough to critique their traditions yet still inhabit them.
An interesting example or cultural adaptation is my own congregation, Redeemer Presbyterian Church of Manhattan. Its growth in this environment has surprised, even shocked observers. I am repeatedly asked, “How are you teaching thousands of young adults in such a secular place?” The answer is that Christianity has done in New York City what it has done in all the other places that it has grown. It has adapted significantly positively to the surrounding culture without compromising its main tenets.~Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2008, 2018), 41-3.
xv Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? (Eerdmans, 2003), p.15
xvi Philip Jenkins, Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford 2002, 2002), pl 56. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (Oxford University Press,2002), p.56
xvii Ibid,, p.70
xviii David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power (Regnery, 2003),p.285.
[ixx] Sanneh attributes this to Christianity’s “translatability” over world religions. see original text p. 268 reference 19.
[xx] Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion is Christianity? (Eerdmans, 2003), p.43
[xxi] Ibid., 43-44,69-60
Additional note from Kent. . . I found parallels/observations between Timothy Keller’s writings above and the progress of the faith I converted / embraced 50 + years . . . to be astounding. kdm
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