The Third World was the Modern Christian's ally, especially during the 20th century. Whether or not he wanted to admit it, the Christian had more in common with the Third World native who offered animal sacrifice and genuflexed to his ancestors than he did with the average Modern who owned a television or subscribed to the New York Times. Both were brothers in that they both subscribed to deity.
I do not believe one can properly understand the marginalization of the Third World unless one understands the marginalization of Western Christianity, because the marginalization of the Third World hinged upon the marginalization of Christianity. The scientific West dubbed Christianity inferior because of the grapple-hold “superstition” had upon it. You could not be taken too seriously outside the religious demographic if you did not subscribe to a materialistic (beginning with matter), logical construct.
What the Christian did not realize was that the Modern considered the Christian to be equally superstitious to the Third World "savage." In other words, the Arabic tribal chief, the Haitian witch doctor, the Gypsy fortune-teller, the Hindu psychic, and the Christian fundamentalist pastor were all related because they all subscribed to the existence of an amaterial entity who was the Final Reality.
Had the average Christian realized this, the fervor with which he pursued missions overseas would have been 1) greatly diminished overseas and increased within the West or 2) rapidly streamlined overseas to convert and to strategically develop the entire Third World nations in order to create a formidable ally against the materialistic West. As it went, religious faith was increasingly rendered a subculture in the Western Hemisphere during the 19th and 20th centuries. Again, had the Modern Christian understood his chief enemy to be against deity of any sort, then he would have seen the Third World nations as a strategic ally to some level.
Much of the 20th century missionary movement was transfixed upon China, Africa & the Far East.Why? For all the focus the Western Church put upon these regions, Modernism provided the framework for most, if not all, Western interaction with these nations. Samuel Ling, author of The Chinese Way of Doing Things, says that despite American missionary efforts in the 20th century, the Chinese Church had to start over after 1900, 1927, 1937, 1949, and 1960 because the cultural institutions were not strategically targeted and substantially changed.
"Dwight Moody’s revival called thousands of American and British university student’s to go overseas to 'evangelize this world in our generation,' but the Gospel brought to China, India, and Africa was often an anti-intellectual and anti-theological gospel. The result was that the Chinese church and Chinese theological education suffered; we have inherited a second-rate model of ministerial training and an anti-culture stance." (SAMUEL LING)
That "partial" view of Christianity that says God is not Lord over everything was in many cases the foundational impetus for overseas evangelism. The Christian consensus (at least in America) thought the world to be divided into regions of sacred and secular, so it attempted to "make" Jesus Lord in those parts of the world absent "Christianized" culture and devoid of the Christian message, respectively. "The uttermost parts of the earth" functionally meant those cultures that were "backward" in relation to Western.
Samuel Ling's complaint is not that missionarying was happening or that the Chinese were necessarily being patronized. His problem was that the paradigm in which the missionary effort was being executed followed the dictates of the sacred-secular distinction which was uniquely Modern. It was interested in individual salvation experiences and not in measurable, cultural advancement. The missionary movement exported a [Modern] culture Ling calls “second-rate.”
"What about the twenty-first century? Are we ready to move on beyond the 'starting over again' phase, to build something more mature and more permanent, something which bears a meaningful relationship to our social context (global culture) and to history?" (SAMUEL LING)
By “meaningful relationship” Ling means that which does not see life in artificial portions of sacred and secular. You cannot develop a "sacred" idea unless it has a "secular" expression. How do you measure the success of Christian conversions? You don't and you can't anymore than you can measure love or hate. You can demonstrate its integrity by the influence it has in measurable areas, namely, in the area of ethics, but you cannot have "hundreds accepting Christ" and think that something was truly done. You have no proof other than "evidences" in the physical world.
I do not believe one can properly understand the marginalization of the Third World unless one understands the marginalization of Western Christianity, because the marginalization of the Third World hinged upon the marginalization of Christianity. The scientific West dubbed Christianity inferior because of the grapple-hold “superstition” had upon it. You could not be taken too seriously outside the religious demographic if you did not subscribe to a materialistic (beginning with matter), logical construct.
What the Christian did not realize was that the Modern considered the Christian to be equally superstitious to the Third World "savage." In other words, the Arabic tribal chief, the Haitian witch doctor, the Gypsy fortune-teller, the Hindu psychic, and the Christian fundamentalist pastor were all related because they all subscribed to the existence of an amaterial entity who was the Final Reality.
Had the average Christian realized this, the fervor with which he pursued missions overseas would have been 1) greatly diminished overseas and increased within the West or 2) rapidly streamlined overseas to convert and to strategically develop the entire Third World nations in order to create a formidable ally against the materialistic West. As it went, religious faith was increasingly rendered a subculture in the Western Hemisphere during the 19th and 20th centuries. Again, had the Modern Christian understood his chief enemy to be against deity of any sort, then he would have seen the Third World nations as a strategic ally to some level.
Much of the 20th century missionary movement was transfixed upon China, Africa & the Far East.Why? For all the focus the Western Church put upon these regions, Modernism provided the framework for most, if not all, Western interaction with these nations. Samuel Ling, author of The Chinese Way of Doing Things, says that despite American missionary efforts in the 20th century, the Chinese Church had to start over after 1900, 1927, 1937, 1949, and 1960 because the cultural institutions were not strategically targeted and substantially changed.
"Dwight Moody’s revival called thousands of American and British university student’s to go overseas to 'evangelize this world in our generation,' but the Gospel brought to China, India, and Africa was often an anti-intellectual and anti-theological gospel. The result was that the Chinese church and Chinese theological education suffered; we have inherited a second-rate model of ministerial training and an anti-culture stance." (SAMUEL LING)
That "partial" view of Christianity that says God is not Lord over everything was in many cases the foundational impetus for overseas evangelism. The Christian consensus (at least in America) thought the world to be divided into regions of sacred and secular, so it attempted to "make" Jesus Lord in those parts of the world absent "Christianized" culture and devoid of the Christian message, respectively. "The uttermost parts of the earth" functionally meant those cultures that were "backward" in relation to Western.
Samuel Ling's complaint is not that missionarying was happening or that the Chinese were necessarily being patronized. His problem was that the paradigm in which the missionary effort was being executed followed the dictates of the sacred-secular distinction which was uniquely Modern. It was interested in individual salvation experiences and not in measurable, cultural advancement. The missionary movement exported a [Modern] culture Ling calls “second-rate.”
"What about the twenty-first century? Are we ready to move on beyond the 'starting over again' phase, to build something more mature and more permanent, something which bears a meaningful relationship to our social context (global culture) and to history?" (SAMUEL LING)
By “meaningful relationship” Ling means that which does not see life in artificial portions of sacred and secular. You cannot develop a "sacred" idea unless it has a "secular" expression. How do you measure the success of Christian conversions? You don't and you can't anymore than you can measure love or hate. You can demonstrate its integrity by the influence it has in measurable areas, namely, in the area of ethics, but you cannot have "hundreds accepting Christ" and think that something was truly done. You have no proof other than "evidences" in the physical world.
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