Abstract
Melanesia in the Southwest Pacific, with less than nine million people, is home to the world’s greatest linguistic and cultural diversity—so what better place to test the theories of contextualization? One of the goals of Living in the Family of Jesus is to document concrete expressions of contextualization based on the metaphor of family, which is foundational to Melanesian societies. William Longgar, principal of the Christian Leaders’ Training College in Banz, Papua New Guinea, and Tim Meadowcroft, senior lecturer in biblical studies at Laidlaw College in Auckland, New Zealand, have brought together chapters from eighteen different authors—seven Pacific Islanders and eleven expatriates, seven of whom have years of ministry experience in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Five of the chapters are reprinted from previous publications.
The four sections of the book deal with Melanesian examples, Melanesian challenges, examples from the wider Pacific and Asia, and reflections on critical contextualization. In “Authenticating Melanesian Biblical Theology: A Response to Foreign Theologies,” a brilliant essay that sets the tone for the whole book, William Longgar argues that foreign theologies have not addressed, and are not now addressing, the needs of Melanesians, such as guarding against the proliferation of harmful nonbiblical theologies from without. At the same time, there is widespread fear of Melanesians crafting their own theologies that would address Melanesian problems and challenges. Longgar notes, “There is a need for critical reflection on the kind of theology we need in order to untangle us from the cocoon of foreign theologies and move us forward toward authenticating a true biblical Melanesian theology” (49).
A true Melanesian theology addresses challenges such as an abuse of the otherwise strong and positive wontok system, which focuses on the welfare of family and community but too often leads to cronyism and corruption in PNG. Another theological challenge is to encourage the Jesus model of servant leadership in Melanesia in place of the self-serving leadership model that so often predominates.
Drawing on over forty years as an anthropologist and Bible translator among the Samo people in PNG, Dan Shaw shows how and why an exciting five-year Christward movement that brought 75 percent of the Samo into a vibrant church later degenerated into a nominal and irrelevant form of Christianity, a change precipitated by outside missionaries. Shaw documents how today the Samo are rediscovering God’s power to heal and intervene in daily issues, developing more contextualized and relevant forms of Christianity and becoming a truly Samo church once again (153).
The strength of this book lies in its breadth of examples of contextualization, some good ethnographic studies, biblical studies applied to the Melanesian context, and authors who are confronting real problems that the church in Melanesia often struggles to address in ways that are biblically faithful and culturally relevant. The book should be heralded as a great example of Western and Melanesian collaboration, for it has given Melanesians their own voice as they emerge from the colonial era into a new recognition of their own strengths and theological issues. I highly recommend it to Bible schools and seminaries in other parts of the world who also face the need to connect the whole Gospel to the deepest part of peoples’ worldviews for the advancement of the kingdom of God and the transformation of their communities.