Constructing Local Theologies PDF

Preview

Summary

Schreiter, Robert J. Constructing Local Theologies. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985.1-178 Reviewer: Ezekiel Adewale Ajibade (Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso). Author has been Dean of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago since 1977 as well as being an Associate Professor of Theology...

Description

Schreiter, Robert J. Constructing Local Theologies. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1985.1-178 Reviewer: Ezekiel Adewale Ajibade (Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso).

Author has been Dean of the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago since 1977 as well as being an Associate Professor of Theology. He is also Vice Provincial of his religious congregation, the society of the Precious Blood. In this work he identifies and clarifies the basic theological and cultural issues in constructing local theologies, facilitating and advancing the dialogue between theology and social science. Summary Local theology can be defined as the dynamic interaction among gospel, church and culture. Its genesis is in the shift in perspective in the theology of recent years which concentrates on the role that circumstances play in shaping one’s response to the gospel. It was becoming clear that theologies being inherited from the older churches of the North Atlantic community did not fit well into these quite different cultural circumstances. New questions were being asked and they got old answers. A new kind of Christian identity therefore emerged from the realities of those new question and old answer with particular sensitivity 1

to context, procedure and history. The result gave birth to terminologies like indigenous theology, ethnotheology, inculturation, contextual theology and local theology. There are three models for engaging in local theologies. They are the transitional, the adaptation and the contextual models. Among the three, the contextual model concentrates more directly on the cultural context in which Christianity take its root and receive its expression. It is seen increasingly as embodying the ideals of what local theology is all about. Who then do we call local theologians? These include the small Christian communities, the professional theologian, the prophets and poets in the community, the community insiders as well as the expatriate outsiders. The gospel raise question about the community context, the church raises question about the relation of the local church to other churches and the culture raises question about identity and social changes. The outline (schemed in a map form by the author) gives answer to these questions. - previous local theologies - the opening of culture through analysis - emergence of local theologies - the opening of church traditions through analysis - Christian tradition seen as a series of local theologies 2

- Encounter of themes with parallel local theologies - Impact of church tradition on local theologies - Impact of local theologies on church tradition (The circle begins again after completion) Culture must be listened to in the process of constructing local theologies rather than translations of the larger church tradition into the local circumstances. This would help develop a mode of evangelization and church development where Christ is found in the situation rather than concentrating in bringing Christ into the situation. Any approach to this task must be holistic and must be able to address the problem of social change. These are Functionalist approach, the Ecological and Materialist approach and the newest is the Semiotic approach. It is the study of signs. It sees a culture as a vast communication network, whereby both verbal and nonverbal messages are circulated along elaborate, interconnected pathways which together create the systems of meaning. It is suited for constructing local theologies. There is a relationship between theological form and cultural context. If theology is defined as faith seeking understanding, understanding itself is deeply coloured by cultural context. The experience of the cultural rootedness of theology rebounds again on a local community when it engages the church tradition. Encounter between culture and church tradition could result in the problem of seeing 3

the tradition less “positivitically” or “monolithically.” Solving this problem may involve reconstructing the witness of the New Testament to form an ideal type – the New Testament church; dealing with the great recurring themes in theology from a local perspective and finding the philosophical correlate in other cultures, or to construct one if it is lacking. When local theology that is truly Christian becomes engaged with the tradition, these problems arise. First is a difference of understanding of what unity mean in the midst of cultural diversity. Second is the possibility of syncretism. Third is theology laying different emphasis on the relationships between parts of a tradition while missing some parts altogether. Fourth is the question of when to challenge the new expression of faith arising from encounter of local theology with tradition. When these problems are taken care of, an adequate theory of tradition and criteria for Christian identity would evolve. In developing local theologies it is also important to understand the concept of popular religion and official religion. Popular religion (also called “folk religion” or “common religion”) is the religion of the poor, the majority class or middle class. It is those patterns of behavior and beliefs that somehow escape the control of institutional specialist. In contrast is official religion which has to do with belief and norms of an institution promulgated and monitored by a group of religions specialists. 4

It has the task of bringing into line with the established norm, the popular religion. The implication of this for local theologies is that it calls for listening to a culture on its own terms, adopting a holistic pattern of description, remaining attentive to the audience and the interest of the questioner in each event. Interpreting popular religion has been approached on negative (elitist and Marxist) perspective and in positive perspective. They all possess their merits and demerits. A pastor must however be careful not to change a people’s religion simply because he feels uncomfortable with it. He must rather look at what is done before trying to understand what is said, take into account all the class of relations in assessing the meaning of religion forms and initiating change to transform them. He should consider its value in freeing members to be more Christian, examine its influence on justice, cultural freedom and recognition of personal sin in people’s life and the community. Local theologies are in many ways the expression of popular religion. One must therefore listen to popular religion in order to find out what is moving in people lives. Only then can local theologies be developed and the librating power of the gospel comes into its full flower. The final question is, how does a local theology intend to be thoroughly contextualized without being syncretistic? This approach will be helpful. 1. Good evangelization will bring about culture change, no doubt. 5

2. Syncretism and dual systems are ultimately not about theology even though that may be the case on the surface. They are about the entirety of the religious sign system. 3. What “religion” means varies from culture to culture. 4. Conversion process is much slower than we may have first thought. Thus what appears to be syncretism or dual system may be but reflection of the stages of the conversion process. Personal Comments This material is a great eye opener to the problems of Christianity in Africa and perhaps all over the world. The disability of some missionary organization in making the gospel contextual to the communities has brought a lot of crisis of conviction especially in modern times. Questions such as dressing, language of worship or liturgy, style of music (and so on) are controversial issues we grapple with everyday. Yet the quest for evangelism and church growth as being advocated all over the Christian world now cannot be a reality until the gospel is no longer seen as the “white man’s” religion but the will and plan of God for humanity. We surely must construct our local theologies based on the ideas of Robert J. Schreiter – take our community and cultural contexts and tradition into consideration and contextualize our theology without the fear syncretism. 6...