Abstract
The master storyteller is the historian who utilizes the voices that create history to tell history. In his book, The Gospel Among the Nations: A Documentary History of Inculturation, Robert Hunt compiles documents to present a history of Christianity’s global engagement. Hunt, the director of global theological education at the Perkins School of Theology, is ecumenical, drawing from the history of Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant traditions; he weaves their stories of inculturation through the early church, Christendom, and the fall of Christendom. In these eras Hunt examines the role of the church’s involvement in empire and colonialism, and bids the Western church to take responsibility for its colonialist practices.
Part 1 of Hunt’s book is a brief, four-chapter history of the cultural movement of Christianity. Hunt sets the tone of the book, defining mission. Mission ‘refers to the sending of a person or persons as agents of another charged with a specific task’ (p. 3). Hunt shows not the passive migration of Christianity, but the intentional inculturation by Christians.
Hunt covers inculturation in the early church and post-apostolic church, and then moves into the imperial shift within Christianity, discussing the rise of state-supported imperial missions. Hunt traces Christianity through the discovery of new lands and cultures and the resulting colonialism, placing equitable responsibility on the ecumenical traditions. He then recognizes the voices among indigenous churches that sought to ‘disentangl[e]…Christian engagement of the world with the gospel from the colonial engagement of the world with Western civilization’ (p. 23). Part 1 closes with the contemporary notion of mission as the care of creation – a unifying mission for ecumenical traditions.
Pieces by Justin Martyr and Tertullian open Chapter 4 and Part 2, demonstrating Hunt’s concern to locate Christianity in the midst of a plurality of cultures early. These two pieces call ordinary believers to ‘examine carefully the cultural influences on their faith’ (p. 37). Chapter 5 also includes a document called ‘The Story of Mār Mārī the Apostle’ (p. 40), a unique piece not often included in introductory church history texts regarding early Christian evangelism to royalty.
Chapter 6 collects documents about Christianity’s inclusion into Empire and the sending forth into a pluralistic world. While providing documents that surround Constantine’s appropriation of Christianity into the Roman Empire, Hunt’s narrative skill also gathers works telling of early Christian inculturation in Russia, Iraq, and Eastern China. These pieces demonstrate the vast reach of early Christian inculturation. The ‘Documents of the Eastern Church in China’ (p. 52) section begins an informal case study of Christian inculturation found throughout the book.
Chapter 7 depicts Christian extension of civility. Empires had crumbled, but confidence in the gospel’s ability to transform heathens into civilized people persisted. Early Protestant missionary William Carey stated, ‘Would not the spread of the gospel be the most effectual mean of their civilization?’ (p. 85). This statement represents the prevailing attitude in the chapter; however the questions of contextualization do begin to surface. Three documents on ‘The Chinese Rites Controversy’ continue the case study on China, highlighting the struggle for the church’s cultural engagement and perceived truth.
Hunt dedicates a third of this book to Chapter 8, expressing how uniformity of Western Christianity gives way to a contextualized gospel. His introduction to ‘Description of Traditional Kodiak Religious Beliefs Comparing Them with Scripture’, by Orthodox Bishop Petr, summarizes the intent of the chapter:
This description of the peoples of Alaska represents the growing awareness of the importance of understanding indigenous beliefs for missionaries and mission, and the ways in which that understanding was frequently built of firsthand observation by missionaries acting as ethnologists and anthropologists. (p. 94)
The second half of Chapter 8 features criticisms of the Western church’s methods by those outside of the Western church. Here Hunt recognises that cultures imbedded within Western culture were not necessarily Western, as highlighted in the document, ‘Black Consciousness and the Black Church in America’, by C. Eric. Lincoln (p. 137). The documents of Chapter 8 proclaim the indigenous desire to worship God without the shackles of Western civilisation. This section alone makes Hunt’s book valuable. Lest the Western reader of Hunt’s book feel overwhelmed by the weight of criticism, the concluding document, ‘Christian Missions and the Western Guilt Complex’ (p. 185), by Lamin Sanneh, does encourage the value of the Western missionary endeavor.
Chapter 9 is another long chapter, compiling contemporary documents. Hunt includes works produced by the World Council of Churches displaying recent ecumenical thought regarding inculturation. He also includes ‘Evangelical Mission Documents’ covering the Lausanne Covenant (p. 260) and documents from lesser known international conferences. The document, ‘I was Hungry and You Gave Me Food’ (p. 270), by Ronald J. Vos, is an excellent document, and shows the shift in Evangelical missions from colonial to holistic mission, and discusses creation care through a theology of food and agriculture.
Hunt’s focus on inculturation throughout history in the various ecumenical traditions provides a profound resource for students of mission. While he does express the negative attempts of colonial missions, he leaves the reader hopeful, expressing greater ecumenical partnership in global evangelisation through the shift from colonial dominance to holistic global interdependence. Hunt is not just a historian but a theologian, primarily a missiologist. Orthodox theologian, Petros Vassiliadis, writes, ‘… although to the eyes of the historian and the sociologist the Church is yet another human institution, to the theologian she is primarily a mystery, and we very often call her an icon of the kingdom to come’ (p. 216). The church in its mission history is an icon of the kingdom to come, reforming herself as she engages with culture. Hunt’s work exhibits the transformation of the human institution of the church and its growth in fulfilling her mission as an icon, creating a gripping history of the character of Christian inculturation. Hunt draws the reader in with conflict and redemption, and by the end of the book the reader finds a place within the church’s history of cross-cultural mission.