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Eugene Hillman, CSSp The nations (gentes) to whom the Christian community is divinely sent, and supposed to become incarnate through faithfulness to the missionary principle of inculturation, are not the world’s politically constructed nation-states as such. They are, rather, the multitude of indigenous ethno-cultural nations, sometimes sill called "tribes," enclosed within the boundaries of politically constructed nation-states. This view of missionary activity has far reaching social, cultural, ethical, theological and ecclesial implications. Introduction This paper offers some reflections on the political and religious dimensions of humankind’s historical existence as a multitude of distinctive ethno-cultural groups of people. The particular focus is upon those living in Africa south of the Sahara. Their total population is about five hundred million, currently threatened massively by an HIV/AIDS pandemic; also by countless struggles for power, wealth and mere survival, not to mention neo-colonial controls and constraints. Under colonialism these peoples were categorized politically as "tribes." In the terms of 19th century Social Darwinism they were taught in schools and churches, at least implicitly, to see themselves as backward peoples, or even as aggregates of competing individuals, marching slowly along a road called "progress." Their modernizing "development"---consisting largely in the pursuit of wealth and power by elites --- would, presumably, be achieved by imitating Western ways of being social, civil, economic, political and religious. (1) Nowadays these peoples are properly recognized as "nations," but still enclosed within the arbitrary boundaries of the 48 multi-ethno-cultural-political nation-states constructed in the 20th century by the former colonial powers. In Kenya, for example, there are about fifty distinctive nations; in Nigeria, there are at least two hundred. What is the political and religious significance of these peoples so recently recognized as nations, each with their own distinctive ethno-cultural heritage and growing political consciousness? What is their significance for political policy makers, and for the leadership in the Christian churches among them? Two quotations help to elucidate the meaning and urgency of these questions. First, the distinguished political scientist, Walker Connor: Political developments since World War II clearly establish that national consciousness is not on the wane as a political force, but is quite definitely in the ascendancy. Its force is currently being felt throughout sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, as ethnic consciousness demands political recognition, in place of the present political division that reflects colonial patterns. Moreover, the influence of nationalism is expected to increase greatly throughout these continents as the multitude of ethnic groups, many of whom are not yet cognizant of their identity, further acquire national awareness. The multinational states of Europe and of areas settled by Europeans are also experiencing an increase in nationalistic orientations. (2) The second quote is from Pope John Paul II, speaking to a gathering of Australia’s indigenous nations, still called "Aborigines. "Mutatis mutandis, the substance of this message could as well be addressed to any one of the thousands of distinctive peoples or nations inhabiting the continents and islands of our planet: For thousands of years you have lived in this land and fashioned a culture that endures to this day. And during all this time, the spirit of God has been with you. Your "dreaming," which influences your lives so strongly that no matter what happens you remain forever people of your culture, is your own way of touching the mystery of God’s spirit in you and in creation…. Your culture, which shows the lasting dignity of your race, must not be allowed to disappear. Do not think that your gifts are worth so little that you should no longer bother to retain them. Share them with each other and teach them to your children. Your songs, your stories, your paintings, your dances, your languages must never be lost…. You have learned how to survive on your own lands or scattered among the towns and cities…You must learn to draw on the endurance which your ancient ceremonies have taught you… Take heart from the fact that many of your languages are still spoken and that you still posses your ancient culture…The Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ speaks all languages. It esteems and embraces all cultures. (3) Nations and Nation-States The world’s population today is divided into many thousands of distinctive nations enclosed within the boundaries of some 168 so-called nation-states. (4) The British nation-state has its English, Irish, Scots and Welsh nations. The European nation-states have their Walloons, Flemings, Bretons, Basques, Croatians, Serbs, etc. At least two thousand such nations are indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. (5) They live within, and sometimes on both sides of, the state boundaries drawn by their former colonial masters. (6) Examples of African nations: Maasai, Kikuyu, Nandi, Tem, Ganda, Luba, Karimojong, Chagga, Sukuma, Gogo, Toposa, Dinka, Nuer, Amhara, Turkana, Yoruba, Housa, Luo, Tiv, Igbo, Somali, etc. A nation is an indigenous human group regarding themselves, and explicitly identifying themselves as a people apart in the global family of humankind. They are recognized as such by their neighbors most of whom also distinguish themselves, ethnically and/or culturally, as peoples apart from all the others. The distinctive ethnicity of a people may be self-evidently a matter of extended kin relationships variously developed in the course of history, but still retaining the physical similarities of family members. Or, their ethnic and cultural unity may be, in large part, fictively established and sustained by their respective myths of origin, enhanced by stories of heroes, cultural commonalities and references to actual historical events interpreted with local variations and elaborations. (7) A people’s social and subjective beliefs about themselves give rise to their self-image, identity, and much more. Their beliefs, orally communicated through the ages, are ambiguous and mythologized, but also historically and geographically grounded. Such ethno-cultural groups, whether literate or not, whether politically weak or powerful, are endowed with the right to be themselves as nations with their respective cultural identities, and a fair measure of self-determination --- no less than Europe’s Basques, Bretons, Croats, Serbs, Flemings, Walloons, Scots, Welsh and Irish; and no less than North America’s Lakota, Navaho, Arapaho, Quebecois, Algonquin and Inuit. Of course, many of these peoples are content within their respective political enclosures. Some of these peoples may be too disorganized or disintegrated, thus lacking a collective political will to change their condition. Increasing numbers of them, however, are not so content. A nation’s unity, identity, coherence, autonomy, territorial claims, commonalities, sense of integrity, belonging, continuity and common destiny are rooted in their long historical experience of being human together, sharing their joys in the best of times, and surviving their tribulations in the worst of times. These and other factors --- such as religions, languages, environments, and economics --- shape, color, drive and restrain the dynamic components of each people’s unique cultural matrix and world-view. But no society is without some openness to learning and borrowing new ways of being human, social, religious, ethical, economic, secure, artistic and so forth. Winds of change, whether for better or for worse, continue to blow everywhere. Forced changes, however, while sometimes succeeding partially, are apt to reinforce a people’s nationalism, and to stimulate their resistance to the socio-cultural homogenization promoted by the elite classes in multi-national states. Aside from a few nation-states like Iceland and Somalia, where a single nation is exclusively coextensive with the state’s boundaries, modern states are almost all multi-national political constructions outwardly resembling what, in earlier times, were called "principalities," "kingdoms" or "empires" established by war-lords or emperors claiming sovereignty over varied numbers of indigenous nations within more or less fixed boundaries. These populations pay taxes and receive benefits, but may also be exploited or dispossessed by the governing elites at various levels of the social control system. In contrast to the self-governing traditions of indigenous peoples, modern nation-states ---whether they are simply dictatorships or honest participatory systems --- are controlled by extensive bureaucracies backed-up by force of arms. Under the guise of "nation-building," or "forging a new national consciousness," various forms of coercion are used to foster the interest of elite groups, or the dominance of one nation over all the others, sometimes even imposing and enforcing an alien culture and language on the enclosed indigenous nations, as attempted in imperial Ethiopia under the Menelik family. The victims of colonialism respond variously along a spectrum---from "prudent" acceptance of their lot, to active resistance --- while embracing, consciously or not, at least some of the historical views and cultural ways of their oppressors. Presumably, each people’s original national consciousness, ethnic loyalty, cultural heritage, and territorial claims, are destined to get lost through the quasi-imperialist modernization processes of the multi-ethnic state within which, in consequence of historical events beyond their control, they find themselves enclosed. Alas for the much vaunted principle of national self-determination! In some of these multi-ethnic nation-states there is now a substantial measure of inter-ethnic and cross-cultural homogenization as in Britain’s United Kingdom where nevertheless the Scots, the Welsh, the English and the Irish are still clearly recognizable, periodically reminding everyone of their respective identities. Other European states --- especially those created in the 19th and 20th centuries --- have shown themselves much less durable. Recall, for example, the violent separation of Yugoslavia’s member nations, or the peaceful division of Czechoslovakia into two states. Even greater fragility is displayed in some of the new nations-states of Africa, the former "possessions" of various European powers. There are also instances of states continuously at war with many of their own peoples who are officially called "rebels," as in Sudan, a 20th century invention of British imperialism. Still, the sovereignty claims of multi-national nation-states, even those controlled by pirates notoriously violating the human and civil rights of their own indigenous peoples, are usually honored by other states for which economic and political interests, more than rights, determine international policies---as in the case of Zaire under Mobutu, and Rwanda under its genocidal Hutu regime. So there are good reasons for wondering about the durability of some of sub-Saharan Africa’s multi-national nation-states. Some appear to be managing equitably the ethno-cultural pluralism of their populations. Others, as in Ethiopia today, seem to be taking positive steps to recognize and support ethno-cultural differences and traditional land rights, with a view to precluding a return to the domination and exploitation of all the others by one nation or cognate group of nations. This issue is succinctly expressed by the title of a books edited by Crawford Young, The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism --- The Nation-State at Bay? "In short," says Young, "a transforming relationship between cultural pluralism and the nation-state is a central drama of our time". (8) Some of the far reaching implications of this drama have long been recognized by religious leaders, and clearly articulated by Pope John Paul II, quoting the words of one of his predecessors: "The split between the gospel and cultures is undoubtedly the drama of our time". (9) "Side by side with economic globalization," observes Archbishop Rembert Weakland, "people continue to seek their identity by clinging to local cultures and particularizations, [suggesting that] cultural pluralism will be the issue on the main stage of the world for the next half-century," impacting all organizations including the churches worldwide.(10) Nations and the Christian Mission As a sacramental continuation of the mission of Jesus, the Christian community is supposed to become "a sign raised up among the nations inviting all who have not yet believed".(11) The church even describes its mission in terms of becoming a "universal sacramental light of nations (lumen gentium)," already signifying and promoting the unity and salvation of all peoples. (12) This is Christianity’s primordial mission: "to the nations (ad gentes) the church is divinely sent". (13) In other words, the mission of Jesus Christ has a church as its instrument for summoning God’s witnesses from among the nations. The task of these witnesses in their turn is to make known, in word and deed, God’s good news not only among their own peoples but also among all the others living "in the lands beyond" (II Cor 10:16); and thus to "all nations" even unto "the ends of the earth" (Lk 24:47-8; Acts 1: 8). "Accordingly," in the words of Vatican II, "missionary work among the nations differs from the pastoral care of the faithful…". (14) Indeed, the church’s very reason for existing is both expressed and realized in and through the Christian community’s actual participation in the mission of Jesus whose good news is for the whole of humanity in its spacio-temporal extension, and its ethno-cultural diversity. In the relevant ecclesiastical documents our human species, with its irreducible ethnic and cultural pluralism, is frequently designated by the Latin term gentes, appropriately translated as "nations" or "peoples". These interchangeable terms refer clearly to "large and distinct groups united by enduring cultural ties, ancient religious traditions and strong social relationships", referring "specifically" to those who "have not yet, or only barely, heard the gospel message".(15) We take it therefore that the specific anthropological category upon which Christianity’s missionary outreach is primarily focused is not political nation-states as such, much less kingdoms, principalities and empires. Rather, the mission ad gentes, as described above, is directed in the first instance to each distinctive nation, with its own culture and world-view as delineated in the following paragraphs. Culture and Inculturation As described by anthropologist Aylward Shorter, a culture with its concomitant world-view "embraces the whole context of life, and is as relevant to modernity and modern problems, as it is to traditional beliefs and values…". Shorter continues: Culture is a mental world, a web of meanings clothed in images and behavioral norms. It is a pattern of human thought and behavior. It is the prism through which a human society views the whole of its experience, domestic, political, social, economic, religious. Culture is learned by the human being in infancy and developed throughout life. It enables the individual to relate cognitively, emotionally and behaviorally to the world, and to communicate this understanding to others. It gives identity to groups of individuals. Culture is therefore an essential aspect of the human phenomenon, indeed a human right.(16) For sociologist Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, "Culture, very simply, is the way of life of a people. It is the sum total of all those ways of doing things, of thinking about things, of feeling about things, of believing, that make up the life of a people".(17) In other words, it is the complex of symbol systems and institutions through which individuals, in the course of their brief historical sojourns, learn to be authentic members of the human family identified, however, with the historically conditioned ways and views of their respective nations. This learning experience, called "socialization", imparts an all-pervasive cultural heritage, which has for every person the character of a "second nature". Each people’s right to their own culture with its indigenous institutions, ethos and world-view, although usually violated grossly under colonial or other dictatorial regimes, is rooted in the essentially social nature of humankind. God’s gloriously pluriform creation is imitated in humanity’s countless and varied cultural creations. It is through their inherited cultural systems — religious, ethical, philosophical, educational, economic, security, legal, artistic, healing, and so on — that each individual is enabled, through the socialization process, to become a balanced and secure human person with his or her own identity, self-understanding and sense of responsibility. Our cultures humanize us and hold chaos at bay. This is why the destruction, or even the erosion, of a nation’s cultural world is so apt to reduce human persons to the anomy of "howling animality" (Peter Berger). The erosion of cultures --- through the impact of new technologies, mass communications, the commercialization of life, utilitarian individualism, the greed of global corporations, the ambitions of war-lords and the tyranny of certain nation-states --- may be seen as a major threat to the survival of cultural values and humane traditions everywhere. This is so obvious that "many people are now asking", with Herve Carrier, "what moral and spiritual force can guarantee the future of the humanum?"(18) We might ask now whether and to what extent we ourselves recognize and accept the urgent task of promoting the cultural rights of peoples everywhere. Cultural survival and human survival are synonymous. This may be taken as a psycho-social reasons why Pope Paul VI, and later Pope John Paul II, spoke so unambiguously about the urgent need to evangelize cultures as such, "not in a purely decorative way as it were by applying a thin veneer, but in a vital way, in depth and right to their very roots in the wide and rich sense which these terms have in Gaudium et spes"(19) and in subsequent church documents. Another reason --- a theological one --- for this new emphasis on the leaven of the Gospel operating from within cultures, and in the very terms of each culture’s own values, rituals, myths, metaphors, parables, images, narratives, ethos, world-view and common sense, is the missionary model of the divine Word’s historico-cultural communications with humankind in and through Jesus of Nazareth. This process, nowadays called inculturation or contextualization, is described in the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and by two subsequent popes, as "incarnating the gospel" in the local cultural terms of every distinctive nation, thereby making the good news of Jesus fully accessible to each people --- thus enabling them, in the words of John Paul II, "to bring forth from their own living traditions original expressions of Christian life, celebration and throught". (20) Clearly, however, this does not imply that every single individual, in numerical computability, must or should or could become a member of the Christian community. Much less does it suggest that those who do not become Christians are damned.(21) That would be bad news indeed for the vast majority of human beings who have always had, and continue to have, other ways of touching or being touched by the holy mystery of God’s saving presence, always and everywhere, not far from anyone (Acts 17:24-28). God’s good news for humanity is not exhausted in the teachings of the New Testament (Jn 21:25). But the parables of Jesus, especially the Good Samaritan story (Lk 10: 29-37) and the final judgment scene (Mt 25: 31-46) tell us much about the ways of salvation and damnation, amounting to a choice between good news and bad news for each of us regardless of our particular religious affiliations or lack thereof. Questions of Church Order Given this understanding of Christianity’s missionary outreach, and in view of the currently developing ecclesial structures in areas once called "mission territories," and with respect to the unfinished task — hardly begun — of inculturating the gospel in the diverse cultural worlds of "every tribe and tongue and people and nation", there are many questions of church order needing attention. As an example, we note here just one question about the cultural shape and character of the local Christian community as an intelligible witness to the good news of Jesus Christ. In a nation-state, enclosed by arbitrary colonial boundaries drawn without respect to the pluralistic ethno-cultural composition of the population, is the church supposed to take on the cultural flesh of the numerically or politically dominant nation, and just let all other peoples adapt themselves to the cultural ways of this one nation or cognate group of nations? Alternatively, if most of the Christians happen to be identified ethnically and/or culturally with one of the less numerous peoples, is their limited cultural system and ephemeral world-view to be given priority in the process of inculturation? In any case, the canonical practice of forming local Christian communities simply on the bases of the numbers of individuals within circumscribed geographical zones appears problematical; it even smacks of colonial enclosures designed for administrative convenience or social control. The substantive issue here has nothing to do with convenience and control; it is a matter of every people’s psycho-social need and fundamental human right to have their own culture and world-view. It is also a matter of the Christian community’s duty to understand this need and right, not only with respect to all the nations enclosed with them in the same nation-state, but also with regard to all the other peoples constituting the whole family of humankind. An appreciation of this is particularly important for people now living in parts of the world disfigured by colonialism’s de-humanizing distortions of the meaning of human development and progress. Real development and progress require people to be themselves, not the camp followers of the dominant nation in their multi-ethnic nation-state; much less should they become shabby imitations of their former colonial tormentors. "The biggest weapon" used by colonialism against indigenous nations is, according to the Kenyan writer Ngugu wa Thiong’o, "the cultural bomb…annihilating a people’s beliefs in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement…. It makes them want to identify themselves with that which is furthest removed from themselves…".(22) With explicit reference to the ethnocentric and Eurocentric, methods of most early missionaries, and many even today, theologian Eboussi Boulaga of Cameroon puts it this way: A Christianity of empire imposes itself only by tearing up its converts by the roots, and out of where-they-live, out of their being-in-the-world, presenting them with the faith only at the price of depriving them of their capacity to generate the material and spiritual conditions of their existence.(23) A New Pauline Boldness Against the chronic ethnocentrism of many Westernizing missionaries, and of some local pastors trained by them, there is emerging today a quite positive appreciation of humankind’s multiple and diverse ethno-cultural nations. This fresh approach, so reminiscent of St. Paul’s bold departure from the methods of the Judaizing Christians of his time, was powerfully articulated by Pope Paul VI on several occasion and subsequently reaffirmed by John Paul II, as noted in this paper’s introduction, as also in his encyclical letter on the church’s mission ad gentes: From now on, the Church opens he doors and becomes the house which all may enter, and in which all can feel at home, while keeping their own cultures and traditions, provided these are not contrary to the Gospel. (24) Is this a promise of restitution for the Christian church’s long and painful history of Eurocentric monomania and cultural obtuseness? At least, the pope’s words might be taken as a pledge to the nations that the directives of the Second Vatican Council regarding the divine Word’s incarnational approach to humankind will eventually be honored among them by the church’s ministers striving to enflesh the gospel in the authentic cultural terms of each distinctive nation. The mission of the divine Word in Jesus of Nazareth is paradigmatic for the church’s mission. Notes: * Eugene Hillman, CSSp., professor emeritus of humanities at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island, U.S.A. was a missionary in Africa for 26 years. He has been a visiting professor at Yale University Divinity School, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Maryknoll School of Theology, and the University of Nairobi. His writings on the Church’s mission ad gentes have appeared in such journals as Concilium, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, Missiology, Irish Theological Quarterly, New Blackfriars, and Louvain Studies. His most recent book is Towards an African Christianity: Inculturation Applied (1993). 1. In describing "the elites" (evolues) emerging from sub-Saharan Africa’s modern sector, which is less than 20% of the population in most of these countries, George Ayittey distinguishes three general classes: super elites (political rulers, top government and corporation managers, financial functionaries, etc.), professional elites (doctors, lawyers, university lecturers, military officers, teachers, etc.), and sub-élites (secondary school dropouts, ordinary soldiers, office staff, etc.). Ayittey, Africa in Chaos (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998) 119-20: "…Much of the instability that characterizes Africa emanates from internal power struggles within the elite class itself…". "On the tensions between the elites of the modern sector and the rest, see also Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Mahamood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton University Press, 1996); and Basil Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-State (New York: Times Books, Random House, 1992; London: James Curry, Ltd., 1993; Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, Ltd., 1993). Davidson argues that Africa’s educated elites had, early on, internalized the negative assumptions of their colonial masters concerning the viability of indigenous African cultures as grounds for development and modernization, and that this tragic misconception, which has its European parallels, goes a long way in explaining why the nation-state in Africa might now be seen by many as "a curse". 2. Walker Connor, Ethnonationalism: The Quest for Understanding (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) 24. 3. John Paul II, "A Defense of the Rights of the Aborigenes" (Alice Springs, Australia, 29 Nov. 1986), Origins, vol. 16, no. 26 (11 Dec. 1986) pp. 474-5, nos. 2, 3, 7, 8,12. 4. On the plight and numbers of "indigenous nations" in the modern world, see Bernard Nietschmann, "Third World War: The Global Conflict over the Rights of Indigenous Nations," Global Issues 1992-3: Annual Editions (Guilford, CT.: Dushkin Publishing Group, 1992) 168-172 reprinted from Utne Reader (November-December 1988) 84-91; excepted from Cultural Survival Quarterly (Anthropology Department, Harvard University, Sept. 1987). For more, see Cultural Survival Quarterly (Spring 1994; Summer 1995); and Ayittey. op. cit. On the volatility of nation and nation-state relations worldwide, and the ambiguity of these terms, see Clifford Geertz, "What is a Country, if it is Not a Nation?" Brown University Journal of World Affairs, vol. 4, no. 2: 235-247. 5. Ayittey, op. cit., 43, 93. 6. For a critical historical examination of the impact of the nation-state impositions upon African peoples, see Basil Davidson, op.cit.; also B. A. Ogot & W. R. Ochieng, eds., Decolonization & Independence in Kenya (Athens: Ohio University Press; London: James Currey, 1995; Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers, Ltd., 1996); Jan Nederveen Pieterse & Bhikhu Parekh, eds., The Decolonization of the Imagination: Culture, Knowledge & Power (London & New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd., 1995); Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind (Nairobi and Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann; London: James Currey, Ltd., 1986); and Ayittey, op. cit. 7. On the historical development of ethno-cultural identity and nationhood, see Gyekye, op. cit., ch. 3; also John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith, eds., Ethnicity (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Nathan Glazer and Daniel P, Moynihan, eds., Ethnicity Theory and Experience (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1975); and Donald L. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1985). 8. Crawford Young, ed., The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay? (Madison: University of Wisconsin. 1993), 4. 9. John Paul II, Redemptoris mission, an Encyclical Letter on the Permanent Validity of the Church’s Missionary Mandate (Vatican, 7 Dec. 1990), no. 37c. 10. Weakland, "The Church of Many Cultures, World of Globalization", Origins, (12 Nov. 1998) vol. 28, no. 22: 392-96. 11. First Vatican Council, session 3 (1870) Denzinger, Encheridion Symbolorum, no. 1794; also Karl Rahner, ed., The Teaching of the Catholic Church (Cork: Mercier Press, 1967), 210. 12. Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium: Constitution on the Church (Vatican, 21 Nov. 1964), nos. 1, 48. 13. Idem, Ad gentes: Decree on Missionary Activity (Vatican, 7 Dec. 1965) no. 1. See also John Paul II, Redemptoris missio (Vatican, 7 Dec. 1990), nos. 31-34, 37a-40. 14. Ibid., Ad gentes, no. 6; and John Paul II, Redemptoris missio, nos. 32-34, 37a: "Care must be taken to avoid the risk of putting very different situations on the same level and of reducing, or even eliminating, the Church’s mission and missionaries ad gentes…. The specific nature of the mission ad gentes consists in its being addressed to ‘non-Christians’…. It is therefore necessary to ensure that this specifically missionary work…does not become an indistinguishable part of the overall mission of the whole people of God and as a result become neglected ... missionary activity ad gentes being different from the pastoral care [of the faithful]". 15. Ibid., Ad gentes, no. 10; Redemptoris missio, nos. 32, 34. 16. Aylward Shorter, Christianity and the African Imagination: After the African Synod Resources for Inculturation (Nairobi: Pauline Publications, 1996), 16. 17. Joseph P. Fitzpatrick, One Church Many Cultures: The Challenge of Diversity (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1987), p. 28. For another widely accepted definition of culture, see Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 89ff. 18. Herve Carrier, Evangelizing the Culture of Modernity (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1993) 2. See also David Tracy, On Naming the Present (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books; London: SCM Press, 1994) 9: "…We have seen our life worlds, in all their rich difference, increasingly colonized by the forces of a techno-economic social system that does not hesitate to use its power to level all memory, all resistance, all difference, and all hope…. All the great classics…of every culture become more consumer goods for a bored and anxious elite. Even the public realm…becomes merely technicized". 19. Paul VI, Evangelii nuntiandi (Vatican: 8 Dec. 1975), no. 20, and as reaffirmed by John Paul II, Redemptoris missio, no. 37c. 20. John Pail II, Catechesi tradendae (Vatican: 16 Oct. 1979) no. 53. For many more references with direct quotations, see S. Iniobong Udiodem, Pope John Paul II on Inculturation: Theory and Practice (Lanhan, New York, London: University Press of America, Inc., 1996), passim. 21. See. Karl Rahner, Karl Rahner in Dialogue: Conversations and Interviews, edited by Paul Imhof and Hubert Baillowons, trans. editor Harvey D. Egan (New York: Crossroad, 1986) 106: "The Church’s mission to all peoples does not mean that outside its visible confines there is no salvation. The winning of new Christians is not a matter of saving people who would otherwise be lost. Rather, it is a matter of winning over witnesses, who can be a sign to all of the grace of God at work everywhere in the world." For more, see Eugene Hillman, Many Paths: A Catholic Approach to Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1989), passim. 22. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, op. cit., 3. 23. Eboussi Boulaga, Christianity Without Fetishes: A Critique and Recapture of Christianity, trans. Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984), 17. 24. John Paul II, Redemptoris missio, no. 24.
Ref.: First Published in Louvain Studies, (Winter 2001).
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