Abstract
This article investigates the significance of cultural plurality for social and ecclesial life in a post-imperial age. It argues for a view of culture that recognizes and accommodates the diversity of each culture, conceives of culture in terms of social imaginaries and practices, and incorporates a nuanced view of intercultural dialogue. It begins with a précis of Stuart Hall’s account of culture, then examines at length the conceptions of culture in the works of James Tully and Charles Taylor, focusing on cultural diversity. In this context, the article contends that the ecclesial task of inculturation must be one of intercultural dialogue.
For the Roman Catholic tradition, the Second Vatican Council’s document Gaudium et Spes acknowledged the integral role of culture in human existence and valued the plurality of cultures. 1 In doing so, it embraced the 20th-century ethnological concept of culture. The council’s adoption of this understanding has borne fruit in the intervening decades, not only in mission contexts but across the whole life of the church. Since the mid-1970s, theologians and the magisterium have employed the term inculturation as a means of exploring the dynamics of the communication of Christian faith and its lived expression in particular contexts.
More recent decades have seen an increasing emphasis not only on the plurality of cultures but also on the internal plurality or ‘hybridity’ of each culture. The processes of globalization and the shifting politics of our post-imperial age have resulted in more diverse cultures. 2 In this context, an important set of questions arises: What implications does this internal diversity have for both political and ecclesial life? Nikolas Kompridis notes that some political theorists and postmodernist scholars so emphasize hybridity that they see cultures as ‘radically internally hybridized and polyvocal—as fluid, permeable, and ever-renegotiable constructions of meaning and significance.’ 3 Yet, if cultures are ‘radically internally hybridized,’ what could it mean to be a culture? Can we still speak meaningfully of a culture while recognizing its internal plurality? And if so, what import would culture have for political life? From a theological perspective, what would the inculturation of the faith look like in a radically hybridized culture?
In addressing these questions, this article draws on the work of Canadian philosophers and political theorists James Tully and Charles Taylor. It examines their views of cultural plurality, and proposes their dialogical perspectives as an insightful approach to the task of inculturation in a post-imperial age. The argument proceeds in three steps. The first sketches the ethnological concept of culture through discussion of the work of Stuart Hall, the founder of the British Cultural Studies movement. The second examines the conceptions of culture in the work of Tully and Taylor, especially their conceptions of cultural plurality. The third section argues for the essential place of intercultural dialogue in the ecclesial task of inculturation. It seeks to establish the dynamics of intercultural dialogue as foundational for inculturation. In making this case, I contrast my view with the radically hybridized view proposed recently by Judith Gruber. 4 The argument, therefore, serves as a prolegomenon for the task of inculturation.
The Significance of Culture and its Contours
In his 2017 memoir Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands, 5 Stuart Hall relates the deep dislocation he experienced after arriving in London in 1951 to take up a scholarship at Oxford University. Born in 1932 into a coloured middle-class family in Jamaica, still a British colony at that time, Hall’s high-school education was modelled on the English system, which, in his words, embodied ‘deep in [its] very purpose the “enlightened” elements of the colonial project.’ 6 Yet while much in England was familiar to him, much was also ‘strange,’ ‘un-homely,’ even ‘dangerous.’ 7 He found the ‘difference’ of English culture confronting, as he says of his early days in London: ‘I didn’t really get the deep structures of Englishness: what governed its styles of social interaction, its reservations, ironies, and ambiguities, its silences and evasions. I didn’t understand how the place hung together, to use a favourite Henry James phrase, as a “scene”.’ 8
While the Cultural Studies movement developed over decades, and entailed intense academic exploration and cooperative engagement, Hall’s early experience of cultural dislocation was germane to his life’s work. He says, in retrospect: ‘I . . . realized that I had known the predominating fault lines instinctively before they’d become conceptually available to me.’ 9 As is clear from the movement’s name, cultural studies is fundamentally concerned with the role of culture in personal, social, and political life. Hall sees cultures providing the background against which individual existence as well as social and political action make sense. In his terms: ‘Connotative contexts of meaning offer pictures of the world, rules of interpretation, a set of unspoken background assumptions, non-rational discursive logics, “taken-for-granteds,” pleasures and sentiments which constitute the semantic langue of a culture. They allow us to make sense of particular events, images, texts, utterances or acts.’ 10 His view of culture has a great deal in common with the symbolic approach of anthropologist Clifford Geertz. 11
While culture was Hall’s ‘analytically organizing principle,’ 12 he was heavily involved in political debate on a range of social issues, including nuclear disarmament, colonialism, racism, and modern capitalism. 13 Yet, his analysis of these issues sought to arrive at ‘the deeper cultural and social structural levels which provided the underlying historical conditions out of which politics in the narrower sense . . . always arises.’ 14 As he tantalizingly frames it, the early Cultural Studies movement was ‘talking culturally about politics and politically about culture.’ 15
Political philosopher Thomas McCarthy identifies both strengths and limitations in the way that scholars have approached the concept of culture in the second half of the 20th century. He argues that while they studied meanings expressed in particular cultures and were thus engaged in subject-to-subject conversations, those conversations were often virtual not actual. That is, in McCarthy’s words: ‘The interpreter continues to assume an ethnographic authority to represent meanings in ways that are not exposed to actual contestation by those whose meanings are being represented.’ 16 In effect, McCarthy calls for anthropologists to be attentive to the plurality of voices in any culture, particularly divergent voices, and to conceive the anthropological task as one of facilitating the expression of diverse voices. Yet McCarthy’s critique does not disprove the anthropological approach to culture. Rather, he identifies an essential dynamic of any appropriate approach to culture in this pluralist age. In his words, anthropologists must aim for: ‘cross-cultural communications that [are] actually, rather than virtually, decentered and multi-vocal, that is, only through the actual empowerment of others to participate as equal partners in the conversation of humankind.’ 17 Yet the key to overcoming the problem of virtual voices is not simply one of literary self-consciousness or textual ingenuity, the problem runs far deeper. 18 As McCarthy puts it, ‘the root problem is political and thus cannot be resolved by new devices of representation, however useful they may be in their own rights.’ 19
How, then, can we best account for the plurality of cultures, and for the diversity within each culture? And further: what impact does this diversity have upon the concept of culture itself? Does it still make sense to speak of a culture when there is such diversity within it? And from an ecclesial perspective, what implications does this understanding of culture have for the inculturation of Christian faith? To pursue these questions, we turn to the recent work of two leading Canadian scholars.
A Profile of Cultural Plurality
This article proposes that key insights of Canadian philosophers and political theorists James Tully and Charles Taylor into cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue can usefully inform the work of proclaiming the gospel, and enable believers to embrace both the diversity of cultures and the truth of the gospel. Tully and Taylor are apt subjects of this enquiry not only because of their outstanding scholarship, but also because of their strong commitment at the practical, political level to issues of multiculturalism and intercultural dialogue. While engaged in several aspects of Canadian political life, Tully has been highly committed to Canada’s First Nations people’s struggles for self-determination and their search for reconciliation with non-Indigenous peoples. He worked as an academic advisor to the Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1992–95), consulting with the commission’s Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers on the vision of a renewed relationship. 20 He further developed the approach he advocated there in the 1994 John Seeley Distinguished Lectures, delivered at Cambridge University and published the following year as Strange Multiplicity.
The distinguished philosopher Charles Taylor has long been involved in the politics of Canadian multiculturalism, publicly advocating diverse federalism and even, on several occasions, standing for parliament. 21 While ‘The Politics of Recognition’ 22 is his most celebrated essay on matters of culture and intercultural dialogue, reflection on these questions is found throughout his work. 23 In 2007, in light of cultural tensions in the province, the Quebec Government appointed Taylor and sociologist Gérard Bouchard to lead a commission of inquiry into the reasonable accommodation of cultural differences. 24 The analysis that follows here shows the capacity of Tully’s and Taylor’s thought to generate new insight into cultural diversity, intercultural dialogue, and the ecclesial task of inculturation.
James Tully: The Recognition and Accommodation of Cultural Plurality
Strange Multiplicity addresses the question: ‘Can a modern constitution recognize and accommodate cultural diversity?’ 25 An adequate response to this question requires insightful accounts of both the phenomenon of cultural diversity and the concept of culture on which it relies. Here Tully turns to the works of anthropologists from the second half of the 20th century, in particular Michael Carrithers and Eric Wolf, 26 and argues that this period has seen a growing recognition of the internal diversity of cultures. Following Carrithers, he describes this development as a shift from a ‘billiard ball’ conception, where cultures were understood as ‘separate, bounded and internally uniform,’ to one which recognizes their internal diversity, seeing them as ‘overlapping, interactive and internally negotiated.’ 27 Each of these three features is significant.
First, cultures are overlapping because, in innumerable ways, they are entangled across the globe. This is evident in the major political transitions of the 20th century, for example, in the tensions between and within states formed after the breakup of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and in the tensions in several African nations. Tully argues that the ongoing conflicts within and between these emerging nations and cultures were, at heart, demands for recognition by minority cultures. In his words: ‘As new nation states were formed and recognized, overlapping minority cultures within, as well as nationals left without the new boundaries, in turn immediately demanded recognition as nations. Cultural minorities in these minorities in turn demanded recognition and protection.’ 28 This feature of cultures overlapping abounds in contemporary social and political life.
Second, cultures are also ‘densely interdependent’ 29 because, historically, each has been formed in interaction with other cultures; the identity of each culture has been forged through this process. Interdependence is just as evident in societies close to home as it is in cultures which appear more exotic. For this reason, Tully calls our age intercultural rather than multicultural—we live in engagement with other cultures and see ourselves as members of more than one culture. And third: because, as just noted, cultures can no longer be regarded as homogeneous, the diversity within each culture must be internally negotiated at multiple levels of social life, including at the constitutional level. As Tully puts it, cultures ‘are continually contested, imagined and reimagined, transformed and negotiated, both by their members and through their interaction with others.’ 30
A major consequence of these three features is that the experience of cultural difference is internal to each culture. 31 While in the billiard ball approach, the experience of otherness was always associated with another culture, in the contemporary view ‘the experience of otherness is internal to one’s own identity.’ 32 Diversity is now innate to each culture. That is, we are always already in a situation: ‘to some extent on a negotiated, intercultural and aspectival “middle” or “common” ground with some degree of experience of cross-cultural conversation and understanding; of encountering and being with diverse others who exhibit both cultural similarities and dissimilarities.’ 33 Therefore, there is no one appropriate way of recognizing diversity within cultures; rather, in diverse societies, recognition will involve the constant task of intercultural dialogue.
From the perspective of this understanding of cultural plurality, Tully investigates how contemporary constitutions can recognize and accommodate the ‘tangled demands’ of diverse cultures. 34 While such an investigation belongs to the field of political theory, and the ultimate concerns of my essay are theological, much can be learnt about the ecclesial task of inculturation both from Tully’s historical argument and from his approach to constitutionalism, which he conceives of as a post-imperial, intercultural dialogue. 35 I will sketch both his historical argument and his approach to constitutionalism in the paragraphs below and, in this article’s final section, discuss the implications of post-imperial dialogue for the inculturation of faith.
The difficulty in achieving the intercultural dialogue Tully desires, through which ‘each listens to the voices of the others in their own terms,’ 36 is that the language and practice of constitutionalism itself can interrupt or even occlude the required dialogue, as I will show. For that reason, his genealogical account of constitutionalism’s various languages is crucial. He traces the path through three distinct phases from the 17th century to the present, and he argues that this history has resulted in a composite of two dissimilar languages about constitutionalism: a ‘modern’ language and a ‘common’ language. 37
Modern constitutions are distinguished from ancient ones by the practice of popular sovereignty. Whereas ancient constitutions conceived of the people as already constituted from a time-out-of-mind, modern constitutions conceive of the people as sovereign, imposing a law upon themselves. The first of Tully’s phases locates the emergence of modern constitutions in the 17th and 18th centuries, and he argues at length that the way in which they were conceived suppresses diversity. He identifies seven features of modern constitutions, 38 the first of which is that ‘the people are sovereign and culturally homogeneous in the sense that culture is irrelevant, capable of being transcended, or uniform.’ 39 Further features include the contrast with ancient constitutions and their irregularity, and the modern constitution’s identification with a specific set of legal and political institutions. In showing how these features are expressed in European and American constitutions, Tully contends that although modern constitutions claim to be universal in intent, they have dispossessed Aboriginal peoples of their authoritative traditions, and have undermined diversity in European societies. In Tully’s summary, modern constitutions are ‘imperial in three respects: in serving to justify European imperialism, imperial rule of former colonies over indigenous people, and cultural imperialism over the diverse citizens of contemporary societies.’ 40
Yet despite the dominating, universalizing language of modern constitutionalism, the practice of constitutionalism developed through two further phases to accommodate greater cultural diversity. The second phase encompasses the struggles of diverse cultures to gain constitutional recognition. Tully describes these struggles: ‘As contemporary societies begin to enter a post-imperial age, a vast undergrowth of cultural diversity and its partial recognition in constitutions has begun to come to light as the shadow of the imperial epoch begins to recede.’ 41 He examines, at length, Canadian and American examples of Aboriginal peoples negotiating the recognition of their sovereignty as nations with the British Crown and successor governments. Through these examples, Tully shows how the three conventions of contemporary constitutionalism—of mutual recognition, consent, and continuity—are operative within the treaties negotiated. That is, first, that both the Crown negotiators and the Aboriginal negotiators recognized each other’s political organizations as ‘nations,’ 42 with the Aboriginal nations being prior or First Nations. Second, and in the context of mutual recognition, the Crown could acquire land only through the consent of Aboriginal nations. 43 And third, through both the negotiation and the treaties arrived at, ‘the mutually recognized cultural identities of the parties continue . . . unless they explicitly consent to amend them.’ 44 Here Tully shows that the convention of continuity itself guides the mode of negotiation. That is, the negotiations are intercultural: ‘each negotiator participates in his or her language, mode of speaking and listening, form of reaching agreement, and way of representing the people, or peoples, for whom they speak.’ 45 While, in the 19th century, a number of these treaties were overwhelmed by the practice of modern constitutionalism, the 20th century has again seen the acknowledgement of Aboriginal claims for recognition. 46
The third phase in the journey that Tully charts to contemporary constitutionalism is the form of association he names ‘diverse federalism,’ which enables peoples ‘mutually to recognise and reach agreement on how to assemble or federate the legal and political differences they wish to continue into the association.’ 47 The example Tully pursues at length here is the 1867 confederation of four provinces to form Canada. He shows that in this act, the three conventions of mutual recognition, consent, and continuity were operative, and that ‘the resulting federation is an irregular and multiform assemblage . . . [with] the equal recognition and autonomy of the diverse forms of provincial self-government.’ 48 Through this example and others, including India, the United Kingdom, and America, Tully argues that, despite the universalizing tendencies of modern constitutionalism, ‘legal and political pluralism is the norm rather than the exception in contemporary societies.’ 49 And further, in more recent times, the three conventions of mutual recognition, consent, and continuity have been adapted, and can be further adapted, to accommodate the demands of linguistic minorities and intercultural citizens, and to give women ‘an equal say “in their own voice” in constitutional dialogues on the gender bias of contemporary constitutions.’ 50
To draw together this discussion on Tully’s approach to cultural plurality, I want to highlight two interrelated points: his focus on intercultural dialogue, and the significance of his historical argument. I have charted Tully’s argument in some detail because these two points about transitions in cultures are central to the view of inculturation which I will expound later. The first of Tully’s points is intercultural dialogue. The fundamental argument of Strange Multiplicity is that the language of contemporary constitutionalism better accounts for the practice of multicultural nations than does the language of modern constitutionalism and, therefore, that contemporary constitutions are best understood as post-imperial, intercultural dialogues. In his words: ‘Constitutions are not fixed and unchangeable agreements reached at some foundational moment, but chains of continual intercultural negotiations and agreements.’
51
Yet, while Tully’s focus is the nature of constitutions, he sees intercultural dialogue permeating every level of society: dialogue is the reality that holds diverse cultures together. Integral to this dialogue is the ability of citizens of each of the cultures to participate in their own language, with their own cultural forms—a dialogue that does not presuppose one ‘comprehensive’ language, and in which each of the ways of participating are mutually recognized.
52
Such a dialogue requires each to be able to listen to the voice of the other, on the other’s terms, crisscrossing in a back-and-forth exchange of the form: ‘let me see if I understand what you said,’ ‘let me rephrase what you said and see if you agree,’ ‘is what you said analogous to this example in my culture,’ or ‘I am sorry, let me try another intermediate example that is closer,’ or ‘can you acknowledge this analogy?’ ‘now I think I see what you are saying—let me put it this way for I now see that it complements my view.’ The participants are gradually able to see the association from the points of view of each other and cobble together an acceptable intercultural language capable of accommodating the truth in each of their limited and complementary views.
53
Later I will propose that for those engaged in the task of inculturation, a further dimension (itself dialogical) must be added to that of intercultural dialogue as Tully conceives it; nonetheless, the dynamics of each speaking in his or her own voice, and of revisiting and rethinking one’s own perspective, are integral to what’s entailed in finding expression for Christian faith in a new cultural context.
The view of intercultural dialogue articulated in the above quotation recognizes that interlocutors can get closer to or further away from the meaning of another’s statements and, therefore, that dialogue can lead an interlocutor more deeply into the meaning or truth of another’s life, even into a richer view of his or her own life. Such a view of dialogue relies on an adequate account of practical reason, one that moves beyond moral scepticism and grants that we can reason toward clearer accounts of common concerns. Taylor puts it in this way: ‘we can sometimes arbitrate positions by portraying transitions as gains or losses, even where what we normally understand as decision through criteria—qua externally defined standards—is impossible.’ 54
Second, as is clear from the above summary, Tully’s historical narrative or genealogy, partly indebted to Foucault’s later method, 55 gives an account of the complexity of the constitutional history of the past 400 years, and it shows how major elements of that history have shaped practice. So, while modern constitutionalism presses towards uniformity, the language of contemporary constitutionalism is far broader. Tully insists: ‘Indeed, to decry the language of contemporary constitutionalism as solely a European, imperial monolith, imposed from the centre on the periphery without any change or interaction is, ironically, uncritically to accept the very self-image the most chauvinistic imperial theorists of modern constitutionalism sought to uphold.’ 56 An adequate account of the functioning of cultures must embrace the complexity of history.
And further, Tully distinguishes his genealogy from that of some postmodern writers who, while likewise keen to dismantle European imperialism, judge that ‘any concept of identity is self-deconstructing and contingent, thereby heralding the end of sovereignty and constitutionalism in an unidentifiable fragmentation.’ 57 Tully focuses, in particular, on anthropologist James Clifford’s The Predicament of Culture, 58 pointing out that, in Clifford’s desire to overcome the billiard ball, or ‘separate, closed, and homogeneous’ approach to culture, ‘he reduces postmodern societies to a homogeneous culture of contingent and dissolving differences.’ 59 While, in our context of cultural plurality, coming to an understanding of another culture, understanding it on its own terms, and arriving at common ground will always be an immensely sophisticated task, Tully argues that ‘dissolving this difficulty into a homogeneous “post-cultural situation” is to finesse rather than to face the problem postmodernism sets out to address. The end result is strikingly similar to that put forward by conservative critics of cultural diversity.’ 60
In conclusion, perhaps Tully’s reflection about the dynamics of intercultural dialogue between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, a dialogue in which he has been practically engaged for much of his professional life, can portray graphically both the challenge and the significance of intercultural dialogue. In ‘The Negotiation of Reconciliation,’ an essay first published five years after Strange Multiplicity, he writes: It is important not to misunderstand the inherited intercultural middle ground on which Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people must begin to discuss their ways of cooperating in the future. It is far from an ideal speech situation. It is shot through with relations of inequality, force and fraud, broken promises, failed accords, degrading stereotypes, misrecognition, paternalism, enmity and distrust. Notwithstanding, there is also a multiplicity of paths and ways Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people have walked together over their long history in peace and friendship, with good intentions and mutual respect. They have shared goods and knowledge, made treaties and traded together, built bridges, airlines and computer systems, managed resources, learned about ecology and language, defended Canada together through many wars, fallen in love and stood in mutual awe of each other’s art and spirituality. The resulting intercultural institutions and practices, as distorted as they are, provide the starting ground for a new dialogue of equality. There is no alternative; no ideal speech-situation, no Esperanto language of discussion that transcends Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cultures, no one universal language.
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For Tully, dialogue transforms from within the distorted intercultural practices.
Charles Taylor: Cultures as Social Imaginaries and Practices
On questions of culture and multiculturalism, Taylor is best known for his 1992 essay, ‘The Politics of Recognition,’ in which he argues that recognition is not simply a courtesy owed to cultures that have animated societies but is both a vital human need and a respect due to those cultures. 62 Since the human condition is dialogical by nature, and identity and recognition are intimately connected, Taylor argues that we should approach the study of other cultures with the starting hypothesis: ‘that cultures that have provided the horizon of meaning for large numbers of human beings, of diverse characters and temperaments, over a long period of time—that have, in other words, articulated their sense of the good, the holy, and the admirable—are almost certain to have something that deserves our admiration and respect.’ 63
In a further step, Taylor argues that if recognizing the value of another culture is to have real meaning, the task of recognition entails a deep dialogue, seeking to understand that culture on its own terms, through the back-and-forth process of a Gadamerian ‘fusion of horizons.’ He concludes that as a result of the endeavour to understand the unfamiliar culture on its own terms: ‘if and when we ultimately find substantive support for our initial presumption, it is on the basis of an assessment of worth that we couldn’t possibly have had at the beginning. We have reached that judgment partly through transforming our standards.’ 64 It is only through such a deep dialogue, including the transformation of the enquirer, that judgements about equal value can have real meaning.
While ‘The Politics of Recognition’ is a landmark essay in the field of multiculturalism, Taylor develops his conception of culture in his major work on the contemporary place of religion, A Secular Age, and the works that have flowed from it. 65 The word culture does not appear in that book’s index, nor does it feature prominently in the text itself, but in a later work he describes the approach taken in A Secular Age as a cultural account of the place of religion in modernity. 66 Taylor argues that the shift in the place of religion from the 16th century to the present is best understood not simply either in terms of a decline in religious practice, or in terms of new institutional arrangements. Rather, the culture has shifted, and so has religion’s place in that culture.
In an earlier essay celebrating the work of Stuart Hall, Taylor argues that cultures are not best understood in terms of explicit theories and institutions, since the same theories and institutions may be shared across many cultures.
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Rather, they are better understood in terms of social imaginaries and the practices that embody the understandings at work in the social imaginaries. In A Secular Age he defines the first term as follows: By social imaginary, I mean something much broader and deeper than the intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existences, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions that underlie these expectations.
68
A social imaginary, then, is not a theory. It is a broad set of background, often unarticulated understandings out of which a society lives, that makes sense of its institutions and practices. Some social imaginaries, such as the modern one, begin as theories which gradually impact upon the social imaginary—but theory and imaginary are distinct realities. Taylor sees the modern social imaginary expressed in the primary institutions and practices of modernity: the modern economy, the public sphere, and popular sovereignty.
Important here for our focus on Taylor’s construal of culture is the relationship he envisages between a social imaginary and the practices in which it is embodied. 69 At the immediate level, for example in the election of governments, the practices of elections are interwoven with the understandings of the modern social imaginary, particularly that of the people as sovereign. Yet the social imaginary extends well beyond a view of these immediate practices to ‘a wider grasp of our whole predicament, how we stand to each other, how we got to where we are, how we relate to other groups, and so forth.’ 70 Taylor adds that this wide and deep background ‘doesn’t include everything in our world, but the relevant sense-giving features can’t be circumscribed; and because of this we can say that sense-giving draws on our whole world, that is, our sense of our whole predicament in time and space, among others and in history.’ 71
It is my argument, then, that Taylor’s construal of culture in terms of social imaginaries and practices accounts well for culture’s impact on individual and social life, and for the internal plurality of cultures. In terms of the impact of culture on social life: the background understandings carried in cultures are embodied in the practices that shape social life. And these various social practices can only be understood by bringing into focus the background or social imaginary against which the practices have meaning. As Taylor puts it: ‘If the understanding makes the practice possible, it is also true that it is the practice which largely carries the understanding.’ 72 As noted above, the background of those practices is expressed both in the most immediate explanation (e.g., the mechanics of elections) and at the same time, at a far broader and deeper level, through the fundamental notions of equality, sovereignty, and freedom that underpin our common life.
On Taylor’s construal, plurality is built into the growth and functioning of cultures. Both the imaginaries that shape cultures and their associated practices emerge over time through long processes, which are not overseen or controlled. 73 Further, the background picture of society that Taylor sees functioning in the West, which he names the order of mutual benefit, is inherently pluralistic. This is a view of free and equal individuals, not embedded in a hierarchical order, coming together, and through the pursuit of their own ordinary, legitimate individual goals serving to benefit the good of the whole. 74 This background picture finds expression in the modern economy, the public sphere, and popular sovereignty.
Tully’s and Taylor’s accounts of cultures—as internally plural, as conceived in terms of social imaginaries and practices, and fostered through intercultural dialogue—can aid our reflection about the dynamics of inculturation in a post-imperial age. So, to that reflection we turn.
Inculturation and the Indispensability of Intercultural Dialogue
The Second Vatican Council’s recognition of the cultural embeddedness of human agency and of faith is intimately related to the impact that historical consciousness had on the council. John O’Malley has noted that Vatican II was more historically conscious than any previous council, ‘attempting to treat of religious truth in its historical dimension with as much earnestness as had traditionally been applied to its metaphysical dimension.’ 75 The late 18th- and early 19th-century philosophers Herder and Hegel were pivotal figures in modernity’s theorizing the historical and cultural embeddedness of human subjectivity. 76 Closer to the council, theological movements were the immediate influence on its embrace of the historical and cultural location of faith, in particular the work of Ressourcement theologians, 77 and H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture. 78 The word ‘culture’ appears in Lumen Gentium, and more frequently in Ad Gentes. Yet Gaudium et Spes marks the breakthrough in magisterial teaching, as Gilles Routhier notes: ‘up to this point, no conciliar document or encyclical had ever dealt specifically with culture.’ 79
While Gaudium et Spes occasionally uses the term ‘culture’ in in its classicist sense, which is almost synonymous with ‘civilization,’ 80 the document foregrounds the sociological and ethnological meaning of the word—culture as the particular form of life of a people (GS 53). In this regard, the council acknowledges the plurality of cultures (GS 53), their legitimate autonomy (GS 55, 57), and the believing community’s obligation to contribute to the proper development of cultures (GS 57).
Against this background, Gaudium et Spes reflects on the cultural embeddedness of Christian faith. It states that the history of God’s revelation has occurred in various cultural contexts—‘God . . . has spoken according to the culture proper to each epoch’ (GS 58)—but especially in the culture of first-century Palestine, in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. In its turn, too, the church has taken root in various cultures, not only to explain the good news of Christ, but to ‘more deeply understand it, that [the church] might give it better expression in liturgical celebration and in the varied life of the community of the faithful’ (GS 58). Hence, the church should not identify itself exclusively with any one culture, but through its expression of and dialogue about Christian faith, seek to purify and enhance the form of life of peoples ‘as it were from within’ (GS 58).
Since the 1970s, theologians and church leaders have adopted the term ‘inculturation’ to denote this process of the engagement between faith and culture.
81
Jesuit Superior General (1965–83) Pedro Arrupe formulated an influential early account,
82
and since then the term has found a consistent place in papal teaching.
83
In a recent work, Walter Kasper defines inculturation as: A complicated and complex process of cultural encounter whereby Christianity does not only adopt language in individual cultural forms, but like leaven it permeates the other culture from inside, purifies it and forms it anew, as conversely Christianity thereby adopts legitimate values of another culture and so itself is enriched. In other words, inculturation is a complex historical event.
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What Kasper describes here is a dialogical dynamic. 85 Members of the Christian community, themselves culturally located, enter a dialogue about the meaning of Christian faith with people of another culture. The goal of the conversation is not the imposition of one culture upon another—not even the imposition of a culture integral to the development of the Christian tradition. 86 Rather, the goal is to enter into the language and form of life of the other culture, and explore what Christian faith, fully lived, might look like in the new context—‘translating the gift of God’ into that context, as Pope Francis puts it (EG 122). In the process, the church is enriched with a new cultural expression of faith. Marcello Azevedo describes the process in this way: the evangelizer seeks to assist the person being evangelized ‘to reach an active understanding, assimilation, and expression of the message from a point of departure in the latter’s own cultural identity . . . in terms of and according to the particular character of his or her own culture.’ 87
This task demands of the evangelizer not only the desire and capacity to understand the other culture on its own terms, but also a keen awareness of his or her own cultural situatedness, and an adequate grasp of the plurality of cultural expressions of Christian faith through history. This dynamic reflects Gadamer’s view of the goal of dialogue, expressed in his evocative line: ‘In a successful conversation they both [the dialogue partners] come under the influence of the truth of the object and are thus bound to one another in a new community.’ 88
Yet the major concern of this essay is not only the plurality of cultures but also the internal diversity of each culture. What can inculturation as a process of intercultural dialogue mean in that context—one increasingly evident in recent decades? With Tully’s and Taylor’s accounts of culture in mind, I propose that what is required is both a keen awareness of diversity in the context of a culture’s background understanding, and a resolute commitment to the dynamics of intercultural dialogue.
This essay focuses on concepts of culture because cultural transformation is what is at stake in the ecclesial task of inculturation. From the analysis of Tully’s and Taylor’s accounts of culture, three points are central to our discussion of inculturation. First, Tully’s foundational point that the shifting politics of our post-imperial age have brought about internally diverse cultures—overlapping, interactive, and internally negotiated. Thus, the experience of otherness or cultural difference is internal to each culture.
Second, Taylor’s finer-grained analysis of culture in terms of social imaginaries and practices values both what unites a culture and the diversity that flourishes against that background. The social imaginaries or background understandings are carried in the practices that shape social life, and these various practices can only be understood by bringing into focus the background or social imaginary against which they have meaning. Diversity is built into this understanding in that individuals and social groups live in and out of the social imaginary, taking a stance in relationship to and making an impact upon it—each individual, in his or her own way, influencing the culture’s emergence over time. So, while not determinative, the social imaginary provides the background against which individual action makes sense.
Third, Tully’s study of transitions in constitutions shows that not only are contemporary constitutions formed by intercultural dialogue, but that the dynamic of intercultural dialogue has the capacity to hold diverse societies together at every level. And while intercultural dialogue is an immensely sophisticated task, ‘dissolving this difficulty into a homogeneous “post-cultural situation”’ defeats the very challenge of cultural plurality.
My argument, then, is that in an ecclesial context, inculturation should be understood as intercultural dialogue: it can accommodate greater cultural diversity and can aim to arrive at authentic expressions of Christian faith in particular contexts. Two entailments are operative here: first, inculturation requires of the evangelizer an openness to the diversity of voices within the host culture. Diversity is built into this dialogue: since cultures are themselves diverse, a plurality of embodiments of faith will be required within each broader culture. This is what Taylor, in his essay ‘A Catholic Modernity?,’ calls the ‘Catholic principle,’ referring to the related senses of the original Greek word katholou, meaning both universality and wholeness. Since human diversity is, itself, God’s gift, Taylor frames his principle as: ‘no widening of the faith without an increase in the variety of devotions and spiritualities and liturgical forms and responses to the Incarnation.’ 89
Second, finding expression for Christian faith in any culture entails a deep dialogue between faith and culture. As Pedro Arrupe has emphasized, inculturation’s goal is not a superficial adaptation of the Christian message, but rather an understanding of faith that has the capacity to animate, direct, and unify a culture. 90 Living Christian faith in that way demands an insightful view of the host culture. In Taylor’s terms, inculturation demands that theologians and church leaders grasp the particular cultural practices they encounter against the background of the culture’s social imaginary—‘the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows.’ 91 As such, theologians and church leaders must work to understand the culture on its own terms, bringing out the strength of its social imaginary and, only from that perspective, bring the faith alive in appropriate devotional and liturgical expressions.
There may well be several strands influencing a culture’s social imaginary. For example, in the late 1980s Stuart Hall saw three primary ‘presences’ fashioning the complexity of Caribbean culture: Présence Africaine, inherited from the everyday life and customs of African slaves, their religious practices and beliefs, crafts and music; 92 Présence Européenne, which interrupted Caribbean life, imposing the language and practice of ‘exclusion, imposition and expropriation’; 93 and Présence Americaine, the territory of the New World where strangers from Africa and Europe collided. Hall’s argument is that these presences, and the interaction between them, form the background of Caribbean life, or what he names the diaspora experience: ‘The diaspora experience as I intend it here is defined, not by essence or purity, but by the recognition of a necessary heterogeneity and diversity; by a conception of [cultural] “identity” which lives with and through, not despite, difference; by hybridity.’ 94
At the outset of an intercultural dialogue about inculturation, therefore, no point-to-point correspondence can be drawn between elements of the Christian tradition and the social imaginary of the culture addressed. The process of evangelization as inculturation engages evangelizers in a constant movement from diffuse views of the other culture to more perceptive ones through the back-and-forth of the deep dialogue that Tully describes. The aim here is that the evangelized might find expression for Christian faith from the perspective of their own cultural identity and, in the process, enrich the broader Christian community with new and deeper insight into its shared faith. Further, the lived expression of faith in this new context opens a two-way dialogue: it presents a challenge—a stance of critique—both for the individual practices of the culture and for the culture’s background assumptions. The dialogue is underway.
Alongside the cultural background of the addressees, there are two further ‘voices’ in this intercultural dialogue. First, the cultural background of the evangelizers. Their presuppositions about the other and about Christian faith, influenced by their own cultural context, will be refined through the back-and-forth of intercultural dialogue, to ensure that their perceptions and judgments serve to reveal rather than obscure both the culture of the other and the meaning of Christian faith. The other ‘voice’ in the dialogue is what Gadamer calls the ‘object’ (or what we might call the ‘topic’ or ‘subject’) of the dialogue. 95 In the process of inculturation, this voice is, in a real sense, the whole point of it all—the Christian tradition. In light of Vatican II’s Dei Verbum, ‘tradition’ includes not only key doctrinal teaching, but the whole life and practice of the church. As Dei Verbum says: ‘Now what was handed on by the Apostles includes everything which contributes toward the holiness of life and increase in faith of the peoples of God; and so the Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes.’ 96 The intercultural dialogue between evangelizer and evangelized, therefore, seeks to come to the fullest expression of Christian faith in the new cultural context. It moves through a process of refinement, from what might be more circumscribed accounts of faith to better accounts in the new cultural context.
An Alternative View
At the beginning of this essay I noted that the approach to inculturation that I am advocating has rivals, and one recent, very well-developed alternative is offered by Judith Gruber. In a book that aims to clear the methodological ground for an ‘intercultural theology,’ Gruber locates the cultural turn as the pivotal event in the emergence of such an endeavour. She traces the development of this turn from Geertz’s anthropological approach, through the work of James Clifford, to her preferred metaphor of ‘culture as translation.’ 97 One of her key concerns is to articulate a view of culture that can accommodate the diversity of each culture; not only its various voices, but especially the range of social and political struggles that impact upon it, re-shaping it. While acknowledging Geertz’s foundational role, Gruber argues that his ‘culture as text’ approach fosters a certain holism, conceiving cultures as whole or distinct ways of life and, as such, can fail to account for the porous, overlapping, interrelated, and political dimensions of a culture.
In Gruber’s judgment, it is Clifford’s work that undermines this ‘holistic and self-contained understanding of culture’ 98 and foregrounds the impact of individual, social, and political actors upon a culture, recognizing the culture’s diverse or fragmented character. Thus, she adopts the metaphor of ‘culture as translation’ to express the change, interaction, and transformation characteristic of each culture. 99 This metaphor is more dynamic, she argues, more ‘processual and negotiative’ than is allowed by Geertz. 100 So, Gruber arrives at a concept of culture that ‘does not view cultures as self-contained units’ but, rather, sees them evolving through contact with other cultures—‘cultural identity is always intercultural.’ 101 And following postcolonial theorist and literary scholar Homi Bhabha, she envisages the intercultural process as an ‘in-between space between cultures’—‘a conflictive space of mutual differentiations and demarcations that are forged in the production of cultural identity.’ 102
So, what of Gruber’s view of interculturality as a ‘conflictive space of mutual differentiations and demarcations’? Does it amount to the view criticized by Tully, of cultures as conglomerates of contingent and dissolving differences, or the one Stuart Hall critiques in Foucault, which rules out articulating the preferred shape or even the emerging meaning of a culture? 103 While Gruber acknowledges the roles of power and language in culture, at this point of her argument it is difficult to give a definitive answer to that question; greater clarity may arise as we consider the relationship between faith and culture.
A major premise of this article has been that different conceptions of culture result in differing views of the ecclesial task of inculturation. In this light, I have argued for a view of culture that acknowledges the diversity of each culture, that conceives of cultures in terms of social imaginaries and practices, and that incorporates a nuanced account of intercultural dialogue.
From Gruber’s perspective, however, the deep dialogue between faith and culture advocated here would seem to make little sense. She advances a Foucauldian-inspired critique of Paul Ricoeur’s notion of testimony, 104 arguing that his claim that inherent meaning can be found in particular events does not properly account for history’s contingency. 105 For Gruber, the flow of interpretations through history is all that constitutes the meaning of a particular culture, or of God’s revelation. However, such a radical hermeneutics (or post-hermeneutical stance as she also names it) means that it makes no sense to attempt to reason toward a better account of a social imaginary, or even a more faithful interpretation of the Christian tradition in a particular context. 106 As Gruber puts it, ‘In order to do justice to the radical contingency of its founding event, theology has to be performed as radical hermeneutics.’ 107 From the perspective of accounts of culture, this does amount to Tully’s analysis that postmodern societies are ‘reduced to a homogeneous culture of contingent and dissolving differences.’ 108
Such is the importance for a theology of inculturation of the accounts of culture and intercultural dialogue examined in the central section of this essay. It’s why the detail of Tully’s argument matters. In the ecclesial context, as in the political sphere, recognizing the tangled demands of diverse cultures requires a practice of intercultural dialogue with the aim of finding appropriate expression for Christian faith in the receiver’s cultural context—a dialogue that can move beyond diffuse views of both the other culture and Christian faith to more perceptive views of those realities in that context. I am not arguing here that any one voice in this dialogue should have an ‘observer’ status; both the receiving culture and the evangelizer engage in dialogue from their own contingent perspectives. But the burden of this essay’s argument is that true dialogue requires interlocutors’ capacity to move from diffuse views of culture and meaning to more lucid ones. Therefore, to conceive of cultural identity as radically internally hybridized or radically contingent, as Gruber does, is to abandon the real purpose of intercultural dialogue.
The deep dialogue required for our post-imperial age presents a major challenge both to societies and the churches; it is the reality that holds diverse societies together, as cultural groups within them explore their immediate concerns in the context of a broader social imaginary. It is a dialogue in which each group participates in its own language, with its own cultural forms, while listening to the voice of the other on the other’s own terms, in a back-and-forth exchange. The burden of this article’s argument has been that the inculturation of Christian faith demands the same deep dialogue, challenging the church to engage with the social imaginary of each culture so that believers embody the faith in appropriate, vibrant, and diverse forms. Through such dialogue, cultures might be transformed by the love of God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. 109
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am blessed with insightful theological interlocutors and want to thank especially Richard Lennan, Orm Rush, Norman Porter, Robert Gascoigne, Chris Jacobs-Vandegeer, and Jamie Calder. I am also very grateful to ITQ’s editor and its readers for incisive, generous responses. Their attention has improved the article markedly.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
1
2
I am following James Tully in characterizing this age as ‘post-imperial’ (or ‘postmodern’ in the political sense of that term, without accepting the epistemological implications drawn by some scholars). As the central section of my essay will spell out, Tully argues that, while the understanding and practice of modern constitutions was imperial and enforced uniformity, in contemporary societies ‘a vast undergrowth of cultural diversity and its partial recognition in constitutions has begun to come to light as the shadow of the imperial epoch begins to recede’ (James Tully, Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1995], 99.).
3
Nikolas Kompridis, ‘Normativizing Hybridity/Neutralizing Culture,’ Political Theory 33 (2005): 318–43, at 319.
4
See Judith Gruber, Intercultural Theology: Exploring World Christianity after the Cultural Turn (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2018).
5
Stuart Hall with Bill Schwarz, Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands (London: Allen Lane, 2017). The work was published posthumously as Hall died in 2014.
6
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 109.
7
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 204.
8
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 204.
9
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 206.
10
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 208.
11
See Clifford Geertz, ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,’ The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic, 1973), 3–30.
12
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 249.
13
Hall’s writing on political questions is voluminous. For two important essays see, on neoliberal economics, Stuart Hall, ‘The Toad in the Garden: Thatcherism among the Theorists,’ Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1988), 35–73; and on Jamaican cultural identity amidst struggles with colonialism and racism see Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora,’ in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford, 2nd ed. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 2003), 222–37.
14
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 247.
15
Hall, Familiar Stranger, 242.
16
Thomas McCarthy, ‘Doing the Right Thing in Cross–Cultural Representation,’ Ethics 102 (1992): 635–49, at 642.
17
McCarthy, ‘Doing the Right Thing,’ 645.
18
McCarthy, ‘Doing the Right Thing,’ 643.
19
McCarthy, ‘Doing the Right Thing,’ 648.
20
James Tully. Correspondent, email message to author, 2 January 2020. See also Tully’s description of his research: 
. For the commission’s chapter see ‘The Principles of a Renewed Relationship,’ Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples: Volume 1—Looking Forward, Looking Back (Ottawa: RCAP, 1996), 643–63. For Tully’s latest work on this question, see James Tully, ‘Reconciliation Here on Earth,’ in Resurgence and Reconciliation: Indigenous–Settler Relations and Earth Teachings, ed. Michael Asch, John Borrows, and James Tully (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1998), 83–131.
21
For a discussion of Taylor’s political involvement see Mark Redhead, Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), esp. chap. 2, ‘The Politics of Deep Diversity.’
22
Charles Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition,’ Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1995), 5–56.
23
Among many other works see Charles Taylor, Reconciling the Solitudes: Essays on Canadian Federalism and Nationalism, ed. Guy Laforest (Montreal: McGill-Queens University, 1993).
24
See the final report Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation (Quebec: Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, 2008).
25
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 1.
26
See Michael Carrithers, Why Humans Have Cultures: Explaining Anthropology and Social Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University, 1992); and Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, CA: University of California, 1982).
27
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 10.
28
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 10.
29
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 11 (italics added).
30
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 11.
31
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 13.
32
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 13. Clifford Geertz develops a similar argument about the significance of the internal diversity of cultures. See Geertz, ‘The Uses of Diversity,’ Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 2001), 69–88. This essay was first published in 1986.
33
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 14.
34
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 17.
35
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 24, 29. For an incisive, appreciative study of Tully’s argument, see David Owen, ‘Political Philosophy in a Post-Imperial Voice: James Tully and the Politics of Cultural Recognition,’ Economy and Society 28 (1999): 520–49. Owen writes that Strange Multiplicity ‘provides the most perspicuous account thus far of the character of struggles for cultural recognition, but also (and this is integral to its achievement) that it exemplifies an approach to political philosophy which is consonant with this spirit’ (521).
36
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 24.
37
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 31.
38
For his account of the seven features see Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 62–70. Tully then shows how these features are present in the work of Locke and Kant, and in European and American constitutions (Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 70–96).
39
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 63.
40
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 96.
41
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 99.
42
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 117–22.
43
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 122–24.
44
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 125–29, at 125 (italics added).
45
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 129.
46
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 136–37.
47
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 140.
48
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 143.
49
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 164.
50
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 178.
51
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 183–84.
52
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 24, 53, quote at 57.
53
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 133.
54
Charles Taylor, ‘Explanation and Practical Reason,’ Philosophical Arguments, 34–60, at 42.
55
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 35.
56
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 38.
57
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 45.
58
James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1988).
59
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 46.
60
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 46–47.
61
James Tully, ‘The Negotiation of Reconciliation,’ Public Philosophy in a New Key Volume 1: Democracy and Civic Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2008), 223–56, at 240–41.
62
Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition,’ 226, 252–53.
63
Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition,’ 256.
64
Taylor, ‘The Politics of Recognition,’ 253.
65
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2007). Prior to the publication of A Secular Age, Taylor published an expanded version of key sections, particularly the discussion of modern social imaginaries, in Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2004).
66
See Charles Taylor, ‘Afterword,’ in Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2010), 300–321, at 302.
67
Charles Taylor, ‘Modernity and Difference,’ in Without Guarantees: In Honour of Stuart Hall, ed. Paul Gilroy, Lawrence Grossberg, and Angela McRobbie (New York: Verso, 2000), 364–74, at 370. For Hall’s view of culture as understood in terms of meanings and practices, see Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Studies: Two Paradigms,’ Media, Culture, and Society 2 (1980): 57–72, esp. 59–64.
68
Taylor, A Secular Age, 171.
69
In an essay first published in 1971 Taylor demonstrates the integral relationship between social practices and intersubjective meanings. He argues that intersubjective meanings are constitutive of social practices: ‘The meanings and norms implicit in these practices are not just in the minds of the actors but are out there in the practices themselves, practices which cannot be conceived as a set of individual actions, but which are essentially modes of social relation, of mutual action.’ See Charles Taylor, ‘Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,’ Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1985), 15–57, esp. 32–37, at 36.
70
Taylor, ‘Afterword,’ 309.
71
Taylor, ‘Afterword,’ 311. With a notion analogous to social imaginary, Taylor sees a cosmic imaginary at work in our background understanding, finding expression for ‘the ways in which the surrounding world figures in our lives; the ways for instance, that it figures in our religious images and practices.’ Taylor, A Secular Age, 323–51, at 323.
72
Taylor, ‘Afterword,’ 309.
73
Taylor, ‘Afterword,’ 302. Taylor adds an important caution when using constructivist language about culture. While cultures are clearly ‘constructed’ by communities over time, the fact that no one person or group oversees or controls them means that constructivist language can be quite misleading. Cultures function as social imaginaries in relation to which, and out of which, individuals and groups act. Individuals both act upon cultures and are acted upon by them.
74
Taylor, A Secular Age, 159–71.
75
John W. O’Malley, ‘Reform, Historical Consciousness, and Vatican II’s Aggiornamento,’ Theological Studies 32 (1971): 573–601, at 584. See also O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2008), 297–302. For a summary of the council’s embrace of historical consciousness see Ormond Rush, The Vision of Vatican II: Its Fundamental Principles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2019), esp. 165–87.
76
See Charles Taylor, ‘Comparison, History, Truth,’ Philosophical Arguments, 146–64; Taylor, ‘The Importance of Herder,’ Philosophical Arguments, 79–99; Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1975), ch. 1. See also Johann Gottfried Herder, Outlines of the Philosophy of History of Man, trans. T. Churchill (New York: Bergman, 1800), esp. Book IX.
77
The works of Chenu, de Lubac, Congar, and Rahner, amongst others, were influential around the time of the council. See Gerald O’Collins, ‘Ressourcement and Vatican II,’ in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University, 2011), 372–91. See also Fergus Kerr, After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); and Rush, The Vision of Vatican II, 165–87.
78
H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1951).
79
Gilles Routhier, ‘Finishing the Work Begun: The Trying Experience of the Fourth Period,’ in History of Vatican II, vol. 5, The Council and the Transition: The Fourth Period and the End of the Council; September 1965–December 1965, ed. Giuseppe Alberigo and Joseph A. Komonchak (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2006), 49–184, at 163.
80
On the range of meanings of the word ‘culture’ see Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), ch. 1.
81
Jerome Aixala SJ, editor of an anthology of Pedro Arrupe’s letters, claims that the term originated with the Society of Jesus. See Pedro Arrupe SJ, Jesuit Apostolates Today: An Anthology of Letters and Addresses III, ed. Jerome Aixala SJ (St Louis, MO: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1981), 171.
82
Pedro Arrupe, ‘On Inculturation,’ in Jesuit Apostolates Today, 171–84. See also Arrupe, ‘Catechesis and Inculturation,’ in Jesuit Apostolates Today, 163–67.
83
Among other places see Pope Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi (8 December 1975), 18–20; 31–35, https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi.html; Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Missio (7 December 1990), 53–54, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_07121990_redemptoris-missio.html; Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), esp. 115–29, (hereafter cited in text as EG). While Paul VI does not use the term inculturation in Evangelii Nuntiandi, he explores the process over several paragraphs.
84
Walter Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature, Reality and Mission (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 326. See also Marcello de C. Azevedo, ‘Inculturation I: The Problem,’ in Dictionary of Fundamental Theology, ed. René Latourelle (New York: Crossroad, 1994), 500–510.
85
For his description of the church as a ‘dialogistic sacrament’ see Walter Kasper, Theology and Church, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM, 1989), 140.
86
On this point see Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 117.
87
Azevedo, ‘Inculturation I,’ 507.
88
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 1989), 379. On the implications of Gadamer’s view of dialogue for proclamation see James Gerard McEvoy, ‘Proclamation as Dialogue: Transition in the Church–World Relationship,’ Theological Studies 70 (2009): 875–903, esp. 895–903.
89
Charles Taylor, ‘A Catholic Modernity?’ Dilemmas and Connections: Selected Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2011), 167–87, at 168.
90
Pedro Arrupe, ‘On Inculturation,’ 173.
91
Taylor, A Secular Age, 171.
92
Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora,’ 230–32.
93
Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora,’ 232–34, at 233.
94
Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora,’ 235 (emphasis in original).
95
Gadamer, Truth and Method, 379, and passim.
97
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 63–72.
98
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 66.
99
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 69.
100
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 69.
101
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 70, 71 (italics original).
102
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 72. See Homi K. Bhabha, ‘The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,’ in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Rutherford, 207–21. See also Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994).
103
See esp. Hall, ‘The Toad in the Garden,’ 53.
104
See Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Hermeneutics of Testimony,’ Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1980), 119–54.
105
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 82–86.
106
For Taylor’s argument that practical reasoning is always reasoning in transitions see Charles Taylor, ‘Explanation and Practical Reason,’ Philosophical Arguments, 34–60. For an extended account of his ‘unproblematic realist’ epistemology against a radical hermeneutical one see Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor, Retrieving Realism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 2015).
107
Gruber, Intercultural Theology, 95.
108
Tully, Strange Multiplicity, 46.
109
I am grateful for the very interesting suggestion from one of ITQ’s readers that I explore the relationship between intercultural dialogue and contemporary reflection on interreligious and interfaith dialogue. The limits of this essay prevent such exploration but hopefully the future will allow it.