A Taxonomy of Church & Ethnic Engagement

As there is a fair pit of dialogue on twitter at the moment on multiculturalism in churches I thought I would post some material on the issue.

Some years ago in teaching on urban contextualization I came up with a taxonomy of how churches engage with the existential issue of living in a multi-cultural or multi-ethnic society (I use the terms synonymously). This is not to make a judgment on one approach or another but simply as an analytical tool. The taxonomy is based on two axes: the horizontal (x) axis on multiculturality and the vertical (y) axis on philosophy of engagement. This is what it looks like:

The table below shows how churches of the four types differ from each other.

	Pragmatic Monocultural	Pragmatic Multicultural	Idealistic  Multicultural	Idealistic  Monocultural
Affirmation of communal identity	û	ü	ü	ü
Communities meet separately in one local church	û	ü	ü	û
Communities gather in one congregation	û	û	ü	û
Translation in services	û	û	ü	û

Advantages of each type:

Pragmatic Monocultural	Pragmatic Multicultural	Idealistic  Multicultural	Idealistic  Monocultural
clear expectations of what is expected of everyone easy for majority community to accept outsiders from minority communities	all groups are encouraged to express themselves according to their cultural norms single local church expresses multicultural reality of universal church in relationships between congregations of one church	all groups are encouraged to express themselves according to their cultural norms single local church expresses multicultural reality of universal church in vivid public form	all groups are encouraged to express themselves according to their cultural norms relations between local churches expresses multicultural reality of universal church outsiders readily feel at home

Disadvantages of each type:

Pragmatic Monocultural	Pragmatic Multicultural	Idealistic  Multicultural	Idealistic  Monocultural
not easy for minority communities to adjust to culture of majority church for those from minority communities, bridges to unbelieving relatives and friends are broken, passively by neglect or actively by insistence on leaving former lifestyle	sense of unity of local church is threatened communication between congregations is complicated outsiders may still feel the congregation is not for them because the ownership of the wider group is multicultural, especially if the senior leaders are from the majority community	no community feels entirely at home in the congregation communication is complicated outsiders may still feel the meeting is not for them because the identity of the minority group is subsumed under that of the majority	image of unity of universal church is threatened postponement of ethical awareness communication between churches is complicated

More Thoughts on 40 'Unreached' Places

Missions researcher Justin Long recently produced a list of the 40 global districts that are the most 'unreached'. I posted some thoughts on this list already. Here are some more.

4. Social Organization

Dense populations give rise to complex social organizations. This is so of necessity as so many people living in close proximity need to structure their relations tightly to make life liveable and enable society to function. The people in these 40 provinces, then, highly value the group as opposed to the individual. They are collectivist places, where few make a decision without looking sideways to see what their significant others think. Individuals are often not even in a position to make decisions for themselves anyway. A parent (even for an adult), a brother or a husband may be the decision-maker. There is no question of making up one's own mind for such people. Issues of ultimate allegiance can be perceived very strongly as constituting a threat to the very existence of the group, or even society as a whole, making the consideration of such a change a very serious thing indeed. Paul Hiebert and his daughter Eloise Hiebert Meneses consider social organization to be of such importance that they structured an entire book on church planting around social categories.

Serious study of social organization is absolutely essential to understanding the host communities among whom one is working. And it is important on a strategic level too. I have written an article ("Recasting Evangelization Ethnicity, Kinship, Religion and Territory: Identifying Communities in South Asia") which challenges the way the Joshua Project (and other such lists) handles the phenomenon of caste. The caste system (which is the social structure of South Asia and thereby of many of these provinces) is exceedingly complex and the sociological interpretation of caste highly contentious. Suffice it to say that in my article I argue that single castes groups such as Potters do not constitute a community and therefore should not be considered the strategically significant entity.

5. Cities

One might be forgiven for thinking that the great cities found in many of the 40 provinces, such as Delhi, Kolkata, Karachi, Dhaka and Beijing, are the product of recent modernization. But this would be far from the truth, although modernization and globalization have massively increased their size. These cities are the product of centuries of development that would not be possible were it not for the four phenomena I have outlined above. Cities are the cultural product of societies that have an excess of food to requirement, which can be traded and taxed and used to support large numbers of people who are not directly involved in food production. These are therefore free to innovate, organize others, create art, explore science, and develop systems of ideas, myths and rituals to make sense of it all.

Furthermore, the biggest migration in human history is going on right now in the massive move to the cities as the world's emerging economies like India and China increasingly become major players in the global market place. The cities in these provinces, then, have become places of enormous human suffering as well as amazing openness to the gospel. Sadly, however, missions have often been slow to adjust to this momentous shift. Today's gospel messengers must focus on the cities, and be serious to address the multiple needs of the urban poor who have flocked to form their great bastis and shanty towns. The quiet rural life, for most of this century's gospel messengers, is not an option.

6. Religion and Culture

These provinces are most significant, then, as the cradles of the great global systems we call the 'world religions'. Though Islam was birthed in the desert a very high percentage of the world's Muslims are found in these 40 places. Likewise for Hindus and Buddhists. These places, then, are the great bastions of the three great religious systems that have traditionally been perceived by Christian missions as massive obstacles for their message. Moreover, efforts to differentiate between culture and religion in these places, in the hope that one might accept the one while rejecting the other, prove exceedingly complex and ultimately unsatisfying as so often the one turns out to be the flip side of the other.

As in the need to learn the host community's history the importance of in-depth understanding of their religion and culture cannot be overstated. It is only as the religious and cultural context is understood that careful contextualization of the gospel can be possible. This will inevitably lead to conflict as many Christians are not interested in such knowledge, preferring what they call the 'simple gospel'. Although I rejoice that such people are serious about sharing the Good News of Christ, I cannot but be deeply concerned for the long term health of any movement to Christ that emerges from such ministry.

Ortiz on Mission to the City

In past blog posts I have reviewed Conn and Ortiz's major work on ministry to the city, Urban Mission. The first half of the book was largely, it would seem, the work of Harvie Conn before he died. The second half of the book, parts 4-6, seem, however, to have been written by Manuel Ortiz. His writing style is quite different and though he brings to the study a different and welcome perspective these chapters don't rise to the heights of the previous ones. Nevertheless there are plenty of useful insights that I would like to share with you.

In part 4 'Developing Urban Church Growth Eyes' Ortiz tackles the Social Sciences, ethnographic and demographic studies and their usefulness for mission in the city. Social science is the application of scientific methods to human behaviour. It is the opinion of the author, and I would agree, that social sciences can make mission more effective. It is good stewardship to learn about a community before engaging it with the gospel. But sometimes missiologists have used social sciences simplistically and uncritically. Ortiz gives an example of this in Vergil Gerber’s God’s Way to Keep a Church Going and Growing: A Manual for Evangelism/Church Growth (Glendale, Calif.: Regal, 1973), which he nevertheless describes as otherwise helpful (260). 

In part 5, 'Promoting Kingdom Signs in the City', Ortiz tackles 'reachable people groups', shalom & transformation, and spiritual warfare, all from the urban perspective.

The authors discuss the difficulties with defining people groups especially in the present urban context. Two common uses of the term 'people group' are explored: 

1. McGavran's technical definition: “a tribe, a caste, or any homogeneous unit where marriage and intimate life take place only with the society” (1970:296). 
2. Schreck and Barrett's ‘particularistic’ definition: “a significantly large sociological grouping of individuals who perceive themselves to have common affinity for one another. From the viewpoint of evangelization this is the largest possible group within which the gospel can spread without encountering barriers of understanding or acceptance’ (1987:7)” (314).

I would argue that the first approach, though helpful as far as it can go, suffers from a fundamental problem. It relies far too heavily on a scientific positivist approach. Clearly according to the first approach everyone has to be part of one or another group exclusively. But this does not reflect the situation as it is on the ground. Ethnic and linguistic groups, social groups and societal groups do not often have cut and dried boundaries. They are fuzzy and may even be arranged on a spectrum. The particularistic approach seeks to overcome this problem by introducing the crucial subjective element, resulting in a single individual often being a member of multiple groups. This approach has been criticised for making it difficult to enumerate people groups because of the problem of overlapping. Ortiz’s response is that this is only one way of viewing peoples and that the two approaches should be seen as complementary (316). I think more needs to be done by way of critique of people group sociology and its application to mission. 

Chapter 19, 'Spiritual Warfare in the City', leaves much to be desired. Ortiz cites numerous authors from across the evangelical spectrum but fails to engage with them critically. There is so much nonsense written on this subject that critical engagement is vital if we are to understand spiritual warfare. Instead, after quoting Linthicum, Wagner, and Peretti he suggests that “it is for the reader to search out any difficulties in matters of exegesis and interpretation” (370-71)! Indeed but it is vital that authors like Ortiz get their hands dirty too.

The final part of the book is on Leadership and Discipleship for the Urban Church in which Ortiz writes helpfully, on mentoring and theological education.

Changes in the City

More on Harvie Conn's Urban Ministry: The Kingdom, the City and the People of God  (Leicester, Inter-Varsity, 2001).

Chapter 12, Urban Constancy and Change 

Cities change.

City and civilization are not synonymous, but the city has a unique power to reflect and preserve the culture of which it is a part. Cities are not bounded sets but subsystems, local displays of that supralocal context we call culture or society. They are link, mirroring dynamically a worldview, a lifestyle larger than themselves. They are symbolic centers that concentrate, intensify and orchestrate culture’s re-creating forces (222).

Redfield and Singer (1980 [1954]) sought to explain the role cities play in the development of civilizations. “The authors proposed,” says Conn, “a typology of two cities, a distinction between orthogenetic, largely preindustrial cities of moral order out of which came the Great Tradition and heterogenetic, postindustrial cities of technical order and differing little traditions. The orthogenetic city, the authors argued, safeguarded, sophisticated and elaborated social traditions and cultural stability. The heterogenetic city sought to change them” (222)

My study of the city of Lalitpur in Nepal was of what Redfield and Singer would have called an orthogenetic city. In fact the city developed as various disparate groups of migrants arrived, bringing their cultural artifacts and religious traditions with them. The genius of the city was to incorporate them into the whole without demanding religious conformity. But the festivals unite the city in a powerful and tangible way even today as modernity adds another layer of complexity.