Today I begin a summer-long sabbatical study in which I will be reading like a mad man and hopefully get some writing done. I plan to post throughout the summer, and thus share with you, challenging, provocative, disturbing quotes and thoughts that I stumble across. The first of these is from an essay by Andrew Walls regarding what the church in Africa could bring to us …
“The Western theological academy is at present not well placed for leadership in the new situation. It has been too long immersed in its local concerns and often unaware of the transformation that has taken place in the church. It is often hugely ignorant of the world in which the majority of Christians live, their social and religious contexts, and the history and life of the churches. Its intellectual maps are pre-Columbian; there are vast areas of the Christian world of which they take no account. Nor are its products always readily transferable outside the West. Western theology is, in general, too small for Africa; it has been cut down to fit the small-scale universe demanded by the Enlightenment, which set and jealously guarded a frontier between the empirical world and the world of spirit. Most Africans live in a larger, more populated universe in which the frontier is continually being crossed. It is a universe that comprehends what Paul calls the principalities and power. It requires a theology that brings Christ to bear on every part of the universe, making evident the victory over the principalities that Paul ascribes to Christ’s triumphal chariot of the Cross. The new age of the church could bring a theological renaissance with new perspectives, new material, new light on old problems, and a host of issues never faced before.” Walls, “The Great Comssion 1910-2010,” in Considering the Great Commission: Evangelism and Mission in the Wesleyan Spirit. Edited by W. Stephen Gunter and Elaine Robinson (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2005), 19.
This is good. This is challenging to all of Western Christianity and my own local Western ministry. Thanks for sharing.
Harsh yet true words. So what does the Western Theological Academy need to do to begin to transform? How do you begin to change an entire system? What should those changes be? What is the wanted outcome? Should we change completely…or are there some parts of our system that still have positive things to offer…and what are those? I look forward to conversing with you and others throughout the summer!