Transformation in theology and mission

“I am making everything new!” 

So proclaims the One who sits on the throne as a new heaven and earth come into being (Revelation 21:5).  The Apostle Paul proclaims (2 Corinthians 5:17):

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 

The concept of transformation is central to the grand narrative of the Bible. God transforms bondage to freedom, hate to love, alienation to relationship, lost to found, poor to rich, darkness to light, infidelity to faithfulness, injustice to righteousness, and death to life. God has transformed, is transforming, and will transform individuals, families, communities, churches, and nations. The Kingdom of God is all about transformation.

Transformation is qualitative change. The new state is qualitatively different from the old state. It has a quality that the old state did not have.

For several decades my fellow "holy" scribbler, Charles Ringma, has taught a course on Transformational Theology at seminaries in Australia, Canada, and Asia. He recently reflected on this experience, noting dimensions that students struggled with, and raised several important questions about transformational theology. This has stimulated the following post, which mostly reflects on what the social sciences might contribute to this discussion. Here I bring my perspective as a condensed matter physicist with an enduring interest in complex systems and the concept of emergence. I start with several claims (presuppositions) to justify why this perspective is possible and may be useful.

There is a dialectic between our actions and the work of God in the world. We live in a material world that functions in certain ways. The book of Proverbs is all about discerning wisdom: how the world actually works (the physical and moral order) and living accordingly. Acting according to wisdom or folly will produce good or bad outcomes, respectively. This world is both created and fallen, good and bad, of great potential and fundamentally flawed. We are constrained to live and act in this world. We are creatures living in a creation. We have autonomy but are constrained. 

God is sovereign, the Holy Spirit is always working, and God does do miracles (events outside the normal pattern of regularity, such as raising Jesus from the dead, speaking to people's hearts and souls, causing nations to rise and fall). But, arguably most of the time God acts through normal processes associated with human action (speaking, loving, serving, listening, planning, ...). Even God's acts of judgment on Israel and other nations were performed through human agents such as Assyria and Babylon.

If we are concerned with mission as transformation, i.e., acting in ways that promote the transformation that God desires, then we need to observe and learn how the world actually does function. This reality both creates possibilities and imposes constraints. The material world behaves according to the laws of nature, that physics, chemistry, and biology, aim to encode. Are there "laws" of transformation? How does transformation occur in individuals, families, institutions, communities, and nations?

Charles noted that

Many students worked on the assumption that if we get our theology right (orthodoxy) then good strategies and practices will follow in impacting others and our world.

This reflects a common problem that people too often have implicit beliefs (i.e., unstated assumptions that are embedded in a particular worldview or life experience). In this case implicit beliefs about how transformation happens.

Today we know more about answers to the last question above than we ever have before. Scholars in history, sociology, political science, anthropology, and psychology have greatly increased our understanding. This does not mean that we have complete understanding or that all the scholarship in these fields is reliable or sympathetic to the values of the Kingdom of God. But, there is much we can learn from this scholarship to aid us in our journey to partner with God in transformational mission. 

A significant idea is emergence: the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Emergence is one of the most important scientific concepts developed in the second half of the twentieth century. It is relevant to physical, biological, human, and social sciences. The possible relevance of emergence to mission has recently been explored in detail by Darren Duerksen and William Dyrness in a recent book, Seeking Church: Emerging Witnesses to the Kingdom. They draw on work by the sociologist Christian Smith. In a recent talk I explored some of these ideas.

An emergent perspective considers a specific entity that we wish to see transformed, whether a human individual or an oppressed community, as a system that is composed of many interacting parts and that, is embedded in an environment of external components. For example, a human individual is not a disembodied spirit but a combination of mind, heart, body, and soul. Furthermore, a person is never an isolated entity but interact with a social network of family, friends, and community, which in turn is embedded in a nation-state and a global economy. If we wish to see an individual come to faith in Christ or to experience healing from trauma, we may need to consider the role of many of these interacting components.

Charles noted that

The greatest overall weakness in papers for the transformation theology course was the treatment of synchronicity. Religious, social, economic, and other factors usually have to combine to bring about significant change. Students tended to operate on the basis that only religious factors were needed.

The characteristics of emergence are as follows. Due to the interactions between the components of the system, new entities can emerge.  The whole system can have properties that are qualitatively different from (and not reducible to) the properties of the individual components. A brain is conscious but a single neuron is not. A dead body has no morality but a living person does. Water is wet but a single water molecule is not. New entities that emerge may be desirable (e.g., a just society or a flourishing church in a slum) or they may not be (e.g., a stock-market crash or a church that becomes a personal empire). Christian Smith, refers to these emergent entities as relational goods and relational evils, respectively.

Quantitative change can lead to qualitative change. Changing the temperature of the water in the pipes from plus one degree Celsius to minus one degree Celsius will lead to the water undergoing a transition from the liquid to the solid state, i.e., freezing and expanding, and bursting your water pipes. Last year in Chile, a 30-peso (four-cent) rise in the price of peak-hour metro tickets led to social upheaval and a plan to write a new constitution for the country.

Emergent phenomena are hard to predict, even for simple physical systems where scientists have an excellent knowledge of the components and their interactions. Hence, it should not be surprising that it is very hard to predict how society and the economy will behave. For example, economists cannot agree on an answer to the simple question, "Can government "stimulus" spending actually prevent an economic recession?"

Central to describing and understanding emergent phenomena are a range of scales in time, space, and numbers of components. For example, transformation of a society can be viewed at the scale of individuals, families, neighbourhoods, cities, and nations. Insight and discernment are required to decide which of these scales may be most significant, and thus key to our understanding and action.

I now give a specific example to illustrate how emergent phenomena are hard to predict and often surprising. 

The emergence of social segregation

Many churches are very homogeneous with regard to the demographics of members. Many Christians do not have many non-Christian friends? Why is that?Segregation is a common social phenomenon: groups of people clump together in spatial regions (or relational connectivity) with those similar to them. Like attracts like. Examples range from ethnic ghettos and teenage cliques to "echo chambers" on the internet.

In 1971 Thomas Schelling published a landmark paper in the social sciences. The motivation for his work was to understand how racially segregated neighbourhoods emerged in cities in the USA, but the ideas are applicable to a wide range of phenomena. Schelling's work surprised many because using a simple model he showed how small individual preferences for similarity can lead to large-scale segregation. 

A major conclusion is that motives at the individual level are not the same as the outcomes at the macro level.  This idea provided the title for an influential book Micromotives and Macrobehavior, that Schelling published in 1978.  People may be very tolerant of diversity (e.g. only have a preference that 30 per cent of their neighbours be like them) but collectively this results in them living in very segregated neighbourhoods.

Practical implications for transformative mission

An emergent perspective should lead to humility. It emphasises how much we do not understand rather than deluding ourselves that we do understand what we are doing and what the outcome will be.

The systems we are interested in, communities of people, are complex. They are hard to describe, understand, and predict. Yet, many of us, and the organisations that we are involved in, have a simple mechanical view of these systems and how transformation will happen. Study at this seminary and you will become a successful pastor. Give money to this family in the slum and it will lift them out of poverty. Preach the Gospel and people will become disciples of Jesus. Elect Christian politicians and society will become more Christian.

Humility means a willingness to learn from others: community members, non-Christian social scientists, team members, and those with a different perspective than our own.

Humility should lead to realistic expectations about the likely outcomes from our actions. On the one hand, we want to proceed by faith that God will do great things "far more than we can ask or imagine." On the other hand, we are constrained by our ignorance, limited resources, and the fallen nature of our world. Suppose, we proceed with the hubris that we actually know what we are doing and that our actions must produce the outcome that we naively believe will follow. Except by the mercy and generosity of God, our efforts will "fail" because they go against the way that the world actually works. This will lead to disappointment, disillusionment, and despair. Countless activists have been burnt out and quit and organisations collapsed because they had unrealistic expectations and did not see the outcomes that they assumed would happen. A humble emergent perspective can lead to a long-term view that makes initiatives sustainable, both at the individual and institutional level.

Most complex systems are adaptive. In response to perturbations, they adapt and re-organise. This is the basis of the law of unintended consequences. Organisations need to be adaptive. One approach is Action Research where action leads to reflection which leads to action.

An emergent perspective on transformation is against the common narrative that great leaders are heroic individuals who have the vision and know the strategy and tactics to get there. As they are immersed in their surrounding corporate culture most Christian organisations embrace this view of leadership. The origins of this narrative are not Biblical but rather the theory of management that arose from the military success of the USA in World War II and of the auto industry in the following two decades. Two experts on organisational development, Gervase Bushe and Robert Marshak, state that

The “visionary leader” narrative and performance mindset that predominate in theories and practices of “Change Leadership” are no longer effective in an environment of multi-dimensional diversity marked by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

Instead, they advocate an alternative leadership model that starts from the perspective that organisations are emergent and their behaviour is hard to control and predict. Leaders need to find ways to harness the self-organisational and adaptive tendency of organisations. This might be done by influencing the conversations that take place within the organisation, encouraging employees to come up with their own solutions to problems, and creating a culture and structures that are sensitive to the tension between efficiency and innovation.

Obviously, this emergent perspective on leadership and organisational development has important implications for how any organisation selects and promotes leaders, how those leaders act, and what policies and procedures are embraced.

Alternative models of contextual theology

Christian theology is a discussion that aims to apprehend and understand the triune God; the God that is claimed to be revealed by the Bible and the accounts therein of God's action in history.

But this discussion of God always occurs in a particular context: social, economic, political, cultural, linguistic, historical, and intellectual. Furthermore, the discussion is always conducted by groups of individuals who all have their own personalities and life experiences. Yet, the God of the Bible is so much greater than these contexts and individuals. 

Hence, I agree with the claim that "all theology is contextual". To me, this is almost stating the obvious. Contexts matter. However, to some, this claim is contentious and they may see it as a slippery slope towards relativism (all views are equally valid) and/or towards syncretism where the radical counter-cultural message of the Gospel is compromised and absorbed into a local culture. But, to me, this claim is more a position of humility and a desire to understand others and their context, and be willing to learn from them. It can help me explore how my own theology (both implicit and explicit) and the theology of those that I interact with, has been influenced, for better or worse, by our contexts.

Key questions I would like to explore include the following.

How does one define a context? 

What elements of a context are key to understanding how they influence the development of a particular theology?

How does one discern what should be normative in any contextual theology?

Behind the last question is a general philosophical problem that reflects the is-ought problem, the fact-value distinction, and the relationship between descriptive and prescriptive statements. Just because we observe something is, does not mean that is the way it should be. For example, someone observes that "teenagers are disrepectful," or "boys will be boys," or "there will always be poor people." That does not mean that the behaviour is morally correct, that one should not seek to change it, or that it is impossible to change.

There are many contextual theologies: liberation theology, Dalit theology, Catholic theology, Reformed theology, ... The fact that we observe them, describe them, and try to understand their relationship with the context from which they emerged does not mean that they are "true", appropriate, useful, or should not be changed.

A widely used text is by Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology. Laurie Green has a helpful dot-point summary of the book.  Bevans's more recent book, An Introduction to Theology in Global Perspective  has a nice summary including the figures below.

This frames how contextual theology can be viewed as critical dialogue between the experience of the past (embodied in Scripture and Tradition) and the experience of the present. There are several reading and interpretation exercises (hermeneutics) going on. The Bible must be read and interpreted. A specific context must be read and interpreted. There is a hermeneutical circle for the Bible and for the context. The parts must be interpreted in light of the whole and the whole must be interpreted in light of the parts. Contextual theology will also involve a hermeneutical circle. The context is interpreted in light of the Bible and the Bible is interpreted in light of the context.

Bevans proposes six distinct models of contextual theology. They put different relative emphasis on the past and the present, leading to their different locations on the diagram above. Those on the left emphasise the goodness of creation and have a higher value of general revelation than special revelation. Those on the right emphasise the fallen nature of the creation and the need to redeem it, and put a low value on general revelation.

The names of the six models are given below.

Anthropological model

Local cultures can reflect the goodness of God and theology needs to affirm them and be adapted to them.

Praxis model

Practice and theological reflection cannot be separated.

Synthetic model

There are strengths and weaknesses of all these models and so one tries to take the good things from all the models.

Translation model

There is a message that is independent of any context and the primary task of theology is to translate that message into that context.

Countercultural model

Without Christ, cultures are fallen and stand against Christ. They need to be changed.

Transcendental model

The focus in on the subject, the person. Revelation must be experienced. In ones context, one experiences God.

In another post, I will discuss these models in more detail. Before, doing so I would state again that "all models are wrong, but some are useful." Bevans makes several pertinent observations about models. 

Models are a kind of pattern or template that offers a way of performing a task... Models... are streamlined, artificially constructed ways of thinking... like symbols... they should be taken "seriously, but not literally."...

Models may be either exclusive or complementary.

Models of something [that people have done] might also be models for something [that people might do].

Later I will also explore how some of these ideas may be relevant (or not) to considering science-theology interactions in different contexts.

The integral mission of William Carey

There is a beautiful chapter, "Missionary Science", by John Stenhouse in the recently published volume 8 of the series, The Cambridge History of Science.

Here is one of many gems.

William Carey (1761–1834), an ex-cobbler who led the British Baptist mission to India from 1792, urged readers ... to imitate the “universal benevolence and genuine philanthropy” of “God himself ” by spreading useful knowledge with the gospel. An avid gardener and self-taught botanist, Carey hoped to help Indians periodically decimated by famine by introducing Western agriculture and horticulture, including crop rotation, land reclamation, experimental introductions of new plants, and the European plough and harrow. Establishing the largest private botanical garden in Asia (in which he prayed each morning), Carey founded an Agricultural and Horticultural Society, exchanged seeds, plants, and ideas with gardeners, botanists, and missionaries around the world, and wrote and lectured on the natural history of Bengal. The East India Company had long opposed missionary work as likely to anger Hindus and Muslims and disrupt trade; Carey oiled relations by befriending Company botanists and publishing their major botanical works (such as William Roxburgh’s Flora Indica) on the mission press. 

When an American evangelical wrote threatening to withhold money unless the Baptists focused on theological training, not science, Carey replied: “I have never heard of anything more illiberal. Pray can youth be trained up for the Christian ministry without science? Do you in America train youth for it without any knowledge of science?”

Beauty, art, and mission

 Last night my wife and I watched Many Beautiful Things, a documentary about the extraordinary life of Lillias Trotter. It captures the beauty of her life and art and how she followed Jesus. The striking cinemaphotography gave a glimpse of the amazing ways that Trotter could see beauty in nature and then capture it in watercolours. Daily she wrote diary entries about her life and spiritual journey including ornate pictures of scenes and people she engaged with. She was independently wealthy and of frail health. She had artistic talent that could have led to her being the greatest English painter of her time, according to the judgement of John Ruskin (the leading English art critic of the 19th century). Yet, her desire to follow Jesus led her to care for destitute women in London and eventually women and children in Algeria. This choice was a great disappointment to Ruskin.

You can watch it for free on Youtube (with endless ads) or on RedeemTV without ads. I thank Tanglaw Roman for bringing it to my attention.

The offence and challenge to Christian's of a simple life-style.

 Last Christmas, I read a biography, Basic Christian: The Inside Story of John Stott, by Roger Steer. I found it helpful, encouraging and challenging. Stott was someone who loved Jesus, loved the Bible, was a humble leader of integrity, and had a particular concern for the Majority World.

One small piece that stood out is the paragraph below concerning the 1974 Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation. The meeting issued a Covenant, which was largely written by John Stott. An excellent exposition of the Covenant is in a book by Stott, and subsequently updated by Chris Wright, Christian Mission in the Modern World.

The Covenant covers 15 topics with a paragraph on each. There is much that the 2,300 leaders from 150 countries could have disagreed about. However, the most contentious sentence was the following.

Those of us who live in affluent circumstances accept our duty to develop a simple life-style in order to contribute more generously to both relief and evangelism.

This led to a consultation in 1980 which produced a detailed paper, some of which is here.

Emergence in science, theology, and mission

Emergence is one of the most important concepts in the sciences, both natural and social. I have also found it to be fruitful in engaging with questions relating to theology and mission. 

Tonight I am giving a talk on the subject for a session of the Write conference of The Simeon Network. It was canceled earlier this year and is now being held online. 

Here is the current version of the slides.

A gentle introduction is in a short article I wrote for Test of Faith.

A longer academic article is Emergence, reductionism and the stratification of reality in science and theology.

Last year I wrote a blog post about Emergence of Sin by Matthew Croasmun. A helpful review is at Marginalia: LA Review of Books.

Update. A complete video of the talk is below. The introduction is by Professor Peter Gill.

The ambivalence of Christians towards the social sciences

Since I am a physicist and Christian, over the years I have thought, read, and written a lot about the relationship between the physical sciences and Christianity. I have come to the view that, contrary to the claims of some, there is a positive relationship between Christian theology and the physical sciences. This is seen in many ways: the historical origins of modern science, awe and wonder inspired by scientific discoveries, the order in the universe found to be encoded in laws of nature, fine-tuning, the beginning of the universe, ....
But, what about the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, ...)?
They are sometimes used to argue for atheism and against Christian belief. Many beginning undergraduates encounter this in university classrooms. Indeed, one study in the USA found that studying the social sciences led to a decline in "religiosity", whereas studying the physical sciences did not.

Examples of common claims are:
Religious belief is a neurosis reflecting personal insecurity (psychology).
Religious belief and morality result from social pressures to conform (sociology).
The unique claims of Christianity are not valid because there is a multitude of different religions in a multitude of different cultures (anthropology).

According to the Wikipedia entry on Psychology of Religion

When Freud spoke of religion as an illusion, he maintained that it "is a fantasy structure from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity."
Freud views the idea of God as being a version of the father image, and religious belief as at bottom infantile and neurotic. Authoritarian religion, Freud believed, is dysfunctional and alienates man from himself.

The Wikipedia entry on Sociology of Religion, describes the views of Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology

Religion, for Durkheim, is not "imaginary", although he does deprive it of what many believers find essential.^[8] Religion is very real; it is an expression of society itself, and indeed, there is no society that does not have religion. We perceive as individuals a force greater than ourselves, which is our social life, and give that perception a supernatural face. We then express ourselves religiously in groups, which for Durkheim makes the symbolic power greater. Religion is an expression of our collective consciousness, which is the fusion of all of our individual consciousnesses, which then creates a reality of its own. 

The Wikipedia entry on Anthropology of Religion states

Anthropology circa 1940 assumed that religion is in complete continuity with magical thinking,^{[a][3][dubious – discuss]} and that it is a cultural product.^[b][4] The complete continuity between magic and religion has been a postulate of modern anthropology at least since early 1930s.^[c][6] The perspective of modern anthropology towards religion is the projection idea, a methodological approach which assumes that every religion is created by the human community that worships it, that "creative activity ascribed to God is projected from man."^[7] In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach was the first to employ this concept as the basis for a systematic critique of religion.^[8]

Thus, it is understandable that Christians may be critical, skeptical, or scared of the social sciences.
However, for several reasons I want to argue for a balanced, critical, and constructive engagement. This follows the perspective of John Stott about "double listening": listening to the world and to the Word.

I give my reasons in no particular order.

First, I find the social science arguments against Christian belief unconvincing.
Sometimes these arguments fail to distinguish causality and correlation or involve the is-ought problem or naturalistic fallacy. For example, the observation that there are many different religions and that they have certain common features does not necessarily imply that they are all equally true (false), equally valid, or of equal social value.

A major claim of sociology was the secularisation thesis: with time as science progresses, societies become more modern and rational, and the influence of religion, particularly in politics and culture, decreases. By the 1960s almost all sociologists agreed that this was true, but now it is contested. While this is true in Western Europe, there are many parts of the world where actually the opposite is true. In a similar vein, the Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker claims that ``scientific data'' proves how the Enlightenment (as defined by him) has been good for society. However, Peter Harrison has given a robust critique of Pinker's arguments.

Second, in some social sciences, Christians have played an influential role. Examples include Peter Berger and Jacques Ellul in sociology, Malcolm Jeeves in psychology, Alan Tippett in Anthropology, and Kenneth Pike in linguistics.

Third, the social sciences are particularly relevant to Christian ministry and mission. One might consider this as in the vein of Augustine's idea of plundering truth from non-Christians as the Israelites plundered treasure from the Egyptians (Ex 3:22). (See Augustine, Confessions 7.9.15 and On Christian Teaching 2.40.60–2.42.63.)
Important insights can be gained from their concepts, discoveries, and techniques. Examples include mental health, cross-cultural communication, and social justice.
Mental illness is complex and has biochemical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions. Psychology can provide significant insights into the causes of mental illness, prevention, and strategies for healing.
Christian mission involves introducing the Gospel to new cultures. This is now far beyond the old stereotype of a white Westerner going to an obscure African tribe. Most urban societies and universities are now complex, pluralistic, and multi-cultural. Anthropology can provide important insights into how to understand different cultures and how to communicate with them. Furthermore, anthropology can help us discern what is cultural and what is Christian.
Another important dimension to Christian mission and God's Kingdom is that of social justice. Economics and sociology can provide insights into how entrenched systems oppress certain people and promote inequality. A concrete example is the work of Cameron Townsend among indigenous people in Mexico.

Two books I am looking forward to reading are Psychology through the eyes of faith and Sociology through the eyes of faith.

Where did universities come from?

This video nicely answers the question, showing how many universities, even in the non-Western world, had origins that were rooted in the church, mission, theological education, and service.



Today many of these universities have quite different goals and values. Some seem to want to deny their origins or are embarrassed by them.
Important questions that this raises include:
Are these origins irrelevant today?
Has something been lost?
Are the many problems universities do have today, particularly those associated with the focus on money, metrics, management, and marketing, due to the loss of a theological basis for their mission?

Environmental conservation and poverty alleviation are intertwined

 I found this video quite inspiring. I thank Ross van Vuuren for bringing it to my attention.



Wildlife conservation benefiting Kenya’s coastal poor from A Rocha International on Vimeo.

Low-income communities are dependent on a healthy environment for their most basic needs such as clean water, food, fuel and medicine. This video shows how families in one of the poorest communities in Kenya, who were over-exploiting their natural resources, are changing their practices and caring for their forests. Why? Because of ASSETS, an eco-bursary scheme which has enabled over 500 students to attend secondary school and involves them and their parents in environmental education. Colin Jackson, Conservation and Science Director of A Rocha Kenya, explains the origins and aims of ASSETS and its significance for some of the most wildlife-rich sites in all Africa.

The challenge of globalisation and injustice to Christian theology and living

I just finished reading Globalisation, Spirituality, and Justice by Daniel Groody, for the theological book club I just joined.

I really enjoyed it and found it quite stimulating and challenging. The book represents an ambitious project because of its wide scope [globalisation, poverty, politics, injustice, racism, theology, history, personal devotional life, community building, church sacraments, ...], the wide range of sources and authors it draws from to address these issues [Bible, church fathers, Catholic church teaching, many Protestant writers, liberation theology, personal experiences,... ] and then it attempts to synthesise and draw it all together in a common vision. I particularly appreciated getting a Catholic perspective from a Catholic rather than some caricature from a Protestant critic. It was impressive the extent to which Groody engaged with Protestant writers ranging from Charles Colson to Jim Wallis to John Calvin! As I gravitate toward activism rather than private contemplation I found the call to a balance and integration of the two challenging. I also got a much better understanding of liberation theology, whereas in the past I have been mostly exposed to caricatures of it.

There were a few parts of the book that I thought were weak due an overruling desire to be positive, affirming, and inclusive. This led to glossing over significant differences and challenges. Although critical of the injustices and inequalities of globalisation at the end he seemed to take the affirming "Christ in culture" route trying to assign it an almost mystical cosmic value. I found the positive discussion of justice in other religions [Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism] superficial. For example, it glossed over the issue of caste in Hinduism and women in Islam. At the end of the chapter Groody says "learning to live together as a common family does not mean watering down one's beliefs into a bland commonality". I agree but I feel that is what happens in that chapter. I prefer the treatment of the
Prophecy sometimes means "calling a spade a spade". Tolerance does not mean forced agreement but civil agreement to disagree and respect one another. Here I much prefer the treatment in Vinoth Ramachandra's Faiths in Conflict: Christian integrity in a multi-cultural world.

Groody quotes positively from Teilhard de Chardin, a mystical French Catholic priest who was a palaeontologist. Unfortunately, I think he has little to offer. To me he is a good example of how not to combine science and theology. I feel he tries to give a pseudo-scientific justification of a mysticism that has little connection to real Christian theology, which is ultimately rooted in the person of Jesus Christ.

An unfortunate consequence of some of the above weaknesses is that some may dismiss the book rather than engaging with the challenging message of the bulk of it.

The paradox of weakness

“Christianity is never as weak as it appears, nor as strong as it appears.  And whether we look backward or forward in history, we can see that time and again, Christianity demonstrates a breathtaking ability to transform weakness into strength.”

These are the final words of the second edition of the book The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins (Oxford University Press, 2002)

Mercy and Grace in the midst of colonial injustice

Last night my wife and I watched The Mission. Although it was made almost thirty years ago and has a very famous musical score I had never seen it before.

It is based partly on true events: in the mid 1700's Jesuit missions to Guarani, indigenous people  in South America, became pawns in a political battle between Portugal and Spain. The Catholic church hierarchy is more concerned with preserving their power and influence than siding with the weak. Unfortunately, this leads to massive slaughter of the Guarani, including un-armed women, children, and Jesuits. It is tragic and depressing.

The movie highlights the convoluted and perverse relationships between Western churches and colonial expansion and ruthless business interests. Money, power  and violence trump humanity, community, and peace.
Questions are raised about whether Christians should use violence to stop oppression and injustice.

But there are a few redeeming moments in the movie.
There is one particularly powerful scene is featured in the Youtube video below.
Mendoza [Robert de Niro] was a slave trader who is trying to do penance for the guilt of killing his half-brother. He carries a burden of all his weapons up the falls to the Guarani who he previously killed and enslaved. He is then confronted by them. How will they react?



We have "killed" and offended God who has the right to judge and condemn. We are burdened by guilt. We sometimes try to redeem ourselves by doing good works. How will God react?
With mercy and grace, forgetting our offenses, and taking away our burden.
Not because we deserve it but because what Jesus did on the cross.

Slavery in Australia

Nicholas Kristof has a fascinating and challenging op-ed Slavery Isn't a Thing of the Past in the New York Times [I read it in a hard copy of the Times of India. Such is globalisation!].

There is an interesting twist in the article that involves Australia and shows that some short term- "mission/social service" trips involving teenagers can have big impact!

Resources for engaging with the church in the Majority world

Last night I gave a talk "Engaging with the church in Majority world" to the Stanford InverVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship.

I described some of my recent experiences, particularly visiting theological colleges, and student Christian groups affiliated with IFES. I really enjoyed the questions and discussion.

Here are some of the resources I recommended:

The Message of Mission by Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra

Poor Economics: a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty

When helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor and yourself

Africa Bible Commentary

Connecting Resources for Tertiary Chemical Education with Scientists and Students in Developing Countries. A recent article I co-authored in the Journal of Chemical Education

"Science and theology in non-Western contexts"
An editorial I wrote in Science and Christian Belief

Compassion for child sponsorship

Overseas Council for partnering with theological colleges in the Majority world.

My work/science blog has a lot of career advice and some discussion of mental health issues for academics.

Child sponsorship is effective in alleviating poverty

I am a big fan of Compassion, including their child sponsorship programs.

I also believe that aid and development programs aimed at alleviating poverty need to be critically evaluated. Indeed, it is painful to acknowledge that some are not just inefficient or ineffective but can even be counter-productive. This is an important message of the wonderful book Poor Economics that my son and I just finished reading. The point is made from a Christian point of view in When helping hurts that my wife has read.

Hence, I was very interested to see the results of an extensive and independent study by a team of economists of the effectiveness of Compassion's programs. The study
Does International Child Sponsorship Work? A Six-Country Study of Impacts on Adult Life Outcomes was published in the Journal of Political Economy. Here is the abstract:

Child sponsorship is a leading form of direct aid from wealthy country households to children in developing countries. Over 9 million children are supported through international sponsorship organizations. Using data from six countries, we estimate impacts on several outcomes from sponsorship through Compassion International, a leading child sponsorship organization. To identify program effects, we utilize an age-eligibility rule implemented when programs began in new villages. We find large, statistically significant impacts on years of schooling; primary, secondary, and tertiary school completion; and the probability and quality of employment. Early evidence suggests that these impacts are due, in part, to increases in children’s aspirations.

Learning about poverty and wealth from refugees

In Christianity Today there is a challenging and fascinating article Saved by my refugee neighbours by Russell Jeung.
It raises questions about the nature of poverty. Many affluent people are actually poor because of the lack of relationships and community. Indeed much of Western affluence is aimed at being independent of others and withdrawing from community.

Why do charities spend so much money on fund raising?

Whose fault is it? How do we stop it?
It is easy to blame the charities/NGOs/churches/mission agencies and their leaders and staff.
But what about us, the prospective donors?

The problem is that many people do not give systematically and regularly but do respond to "crisis" appeals.
So a solution is to not respond to these appeals but rather to start giving small amounts in a regular fashion over a sustained period of time (3+ years). Electronic banking makes this very easy.

Once the charity realises they have a certain stable income stream and their "crisis" appeals have little effect, they may accept their budget and focus on spending it wisely rather than on raising more money.

Sorry, if I am a little idealistic. You can't change everyone else. But you do have a choice as to whether you join me in this strategy.

Helping the needy

How do Western Christians learn from non-Westerners?

There was recently an article What can we learn from African Christians? in the Briefing. It was written by an Australian church leader who for a decade has been involved in short term visits to Africa for providing theological education to African church leaders.

The article stimulated a fascinating array of comments that highlighted that Westerners making short visits may not see the real situation. Partly this is because they don't know or understand the local culture and so mis-interpret what they see. Also they are sometimes partly not shown the real situation because their hosts show them what they want to see (a vibrant enthusiastic church) and what will impress them leading to more financial support.

I will just give one of the comments from an African: 

I found that the comment section so qualified what the article was saying that it created the impression that there is very little to nothing to be learned from African Christians. This is very worrying for me. What is additionally worrying to me is that the solution most people are proposing is that more theological education from either missionaries, or organisations from outside the continent coming in to ‘partner with’ or just plain ‘educate’ local pastors is what is needed.

What this says and does is this – on the one hand, it communicates that viable solutions are not forthcoming from Africans themselves, which isn’t true. A lot of grassroots training programs are springing up across my country as well as others – some funded from outside the continent, others organised entirely locally. On the other hand, while showing a seeming lack of charity toward African Christians, saying that the solution is more theological training from ‘outside’ parties shows a remarkable lack of self-reflection as well. What flaws are there in Western Christianity, and are these not being imported into Africa with missionaries and educational programs? The question is, “Why is flawed Western Christianity welcome, and indeed is one of the major solutions to strengthening African Christianity, while flawed African Christianity is critiqued to the point it doesn’t even make it out of the gate?” If we are meant to check the log in our own eye before we speak of the speck in our brother’s, perhaps it would be great to have a companion piece to this present article, entitled “What can African Christians learn from us?” that we can similarly critique and reflect on.

Social justice and the Reformed tradition

Vinoth Ramachandra has a challenging post Reformed Amnesia? which considers the problem of rich Western Christians deciding what books Christians in the majority world should be reading and studying. Colonialism never ends....

It also raises whether a question that Reformed enthusiasts should be troubled about. Is the new Pope closer to Calvin on social justice issues and a better example of humble servant leadership than modern Western Reformed church leaders?