Reject Cultural Extremisms

Light of Truth

If we examine the different ways in which Church conversed with the local cultures in the past we may come across two extreme approaches which are to be avoided while imparting gospel today. A good number of Western missionaries in the past had the impression that they were the custodians of a higher culture. They judged whatever was not in consonance with it as undeveloped and superstitious. They believed to have the mandate from God to civilize the non-Christians with their own culture. This exposed the paternalistic, triumphalist and racist attitudes.

In reaction to this ethnocentric approach there emerged a relativistic orientation with the advent of anthropological science. The anthropologists found each culture as an integrated whole with its own symbolic capital. In their opinion every culture satisfies the needs and expectations of the people concerned. The merit of a culture is to be assessed according to the outlooks of life furnished by the people holding that particular culture. An outsider cannot judge it in terms of his/her own value system. To do so is a cultural aggression. The concept of what is good and evil does not exist independently as an objective reality outside the given culture. Rather it is embedded within the cultural experience of the local people.

The reaction of the cultural relativists helped a certain extent to curb the aggressive dominance of Western culture. At the same time a further reflection on the claim of the relativists would unveil the fact that they too suffer from the ambition of absolutism. While they cling to the aboriginality they presume their cultures are self-sufficient. This cannot be true because every culture is contingent and so they will have definitely drawbacks. Man is frail and affected by sin and hence his/her cultural expressions do contain deficient elements. These sorts of lacksin cultures incite the need of introspection and opens a space for mutual correction and enrichment. At this juncture, Christianity can be, like many other religions, a creative partner as it has two thousand years of experience in interacting with manifold cultures.

The risk of the above said extreme approaches can be avoided if we ensure the double movements in inculturation. Every human culture encompasses a bunch of authentically human values. The task of Christians is to assume those positive values and make use of them in the transmission of gospel. The spiritual attitudes, mental schemes, symbolic resources, ascetic rituals and pious practices of the given cultures have to be inducted without jeopardizing Christian faith. This demands not merely adapting some superficial elements of the local cultures but reinterpreting Christian dogmas and practices in those given settings. The fundamental Christian experience has to be re-actualized incorporating the seeds of the Word and fruits of the Holy Spirit hidden in the pluralistic cultures, a providential destiny given by God.

Similarly if Christianity is faithful to the gospel message, its encounter with the particular cultures would bring in a critical analysis of the existing social situations. The Christian message will naturally question what is threating to the process of genuine humanization of mankind. The perspectives, attitudes and ideas inconsistent with the Kingdom values will be renewed. Whatever is idolatrous, immoral and inhuman are to be purified. This will naturally lead to the destruction of the prevailing evil structures and to the reconstruction of a just humane society.

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