Today we continue (check out part 1 here) with part 2 of our 3-part review and response to the Outsider Movement film Half Devil, Half Child. Today, our guest blogger, John Raines, shares some critical insights about discipleship and colonialism before taking on the film's take on the false reporting of mass conversions in Bangladesh.
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There Are No Shortcuts to Good
Missiology -OR- Real Problems Should Not Be Dismissed Because of Some Bad
Solutions
The problem with labels like the
"Insider Movement" and "insiders" is that they are a way of
bypassing helpful, but difficult, theological discussions of the particulars.
Rather than carefully attending to the discipleship of each new believer, you
simply have to ask, "should a person proclaim Jesus inside a mosque or
not?" If you say "yes", then you can support anyone who tries
to. If you say "no", then you can fight all the people who said
"yes". But neither answer is good missiology or real
contextualization. We might dig a little deeper by asking, "what would
someone have to do in order to be able to proclaim Jesus in a mosque?" The
answers to that question would vary greatly because there are so many different
types of mosques. In some mosques, in order to be listened to, you might need
to interpret the Qur'an like a radical Salafi. In other mosques, simply claiming
to believe in the God of Abraham would be enough. And, of course, there is a
wide spectrum between these two, and that spectrum is full of issues that we
need to think about and discern as the body of Christ. Boiling that discernment
process down to one question, "do you agree with the Insider Movement or
not", is perhaps the least helpful thing that anyone in the process has
yet done.
But here is the biggest problem:
even if these "Insider Movement" advocates have answered every
missiological challenge wrongly, they did so while responding to real problems
that exist in communicating the gospel to Muslim people. These are issues that
need to be addressed – wisely, and drawing from a wealth of theological
reflection and church history, certainly, but they must be addressed – because
they are real problems. It is a problem that when we say "Son of
God" a Muslim hears, "the offspring of God's sex with a woman".
It is a problem that the division between a believing son and an unbelieving
father might be historical baggage (like the Crusades), so that the true sword
of the Gospel is not even brought to bear. It is a problem that one of the most
important doctrines of the Christian faith, the Trinity, is almost universally
misunderstood by Muslims to be polytheism. These are all problems that we, the
Church, need to address in the way we share the gospel. Things like the film Half
Devil, Half Child dismiss all of them by attributing false motives to the
missionaries who are trying to respond to such problems. While it is true that
some people who follow these contextualization practices do it to gain money or
avoid persecution, the attempt to contextualize the Gospel for Muslims is not
driven by these motives, but rather by a desire to solve problems like the ones
mentioned above. The debate over contextualization can only advance helpfully
as it centers itself around answering these questions in a theologically sound
way.
Contextualization and
Post-Colonialism
The film Half Devil, Half Child
is framed to be a statement about the colonialism that is inherent in
practicing contextualized missions. It hopes to show that contextualizing the
Gospel is a Western idea, which the indigenous believers of Bangladesh reject
and which the Muslims of Bangladesh can see through, and therefore that
contextualization is colonial. Now of course, any missionary practice that
subjugates those with whom it is sharing the gospel is itself offensive to the
gospel and should be stopped, so this is a serious charge. But I wonder how we are
defining colonialism in this case. There is a certain definition of colonialism
which simply says that colonialism is the attempt of empowered people of one
culture to influence the disempowered people of another culture. Power in this
case may be defined as access to resources which enable one to realize one's
full potential, goals, and happiness. Westerners often have more access to
resources than others, are therefore more empowered, and are by definition
colonial in all attempts to teach or share the Gospel in Bangladesh. Or
as the film put it, "You know what we [Western Christians] should do? Sit
down and shut up."
But, the definition used above is
not the definition of "colonialism" as the global Church has sought
to address that problem over the past 50 years (or the last 2,000 years by
different names), and it does not really seem to be the definition at work on
the ground in Bangladesh, either. By the way the Church has addressed
colonialism, it seems to be defining colonialism more like this: colonialism is
the establishment and support of hierarchical structures in which the people of
one culture hold power over the people of another culture, and in this case,
power is defined as the freedom to choose how to use indigenous resources
(personnel, finances, time, energy, etc.). The Church has moved away from this
kind of colonialism by raising up indigenous leaders who exercise all the
authority within the power structures that steer the indigenous church. But
these leaders, by virtue of having often been "raised up" by
Westerners, themselves speak in the tones of the traditions of their spiritual
fathers and mothers, even though they speak with their own voices. There will
always exist that tension, which is why every Christian who disciples a brother
or sister must strive to be the image of Christ. Within this scheme, anyone may
bring the gospel to anyone else, and it is not colonial provided it comes not
in the power of man but in the power of the Spirit and provided that the same
Spirit is acknowledged in the lives of indigenous believers as raising them up
and gifting them for leadership among their own people in Christ's Church.
This, in fact, was the way that the established indigenous church in Bangladesh
came to be guided by the Bangladeshi brothers who were shown in the film.
How colonial is this wave of
contextualized missiology dubbed the "Insider Movement"? Insofar as
it is a general collection of ideas and practices initiated by Western
missionaries (and that is complicated) with the intent to create change among
Bangladeshi Muslims, it is colonial according to the first definition. However,
if these contextualized missionary practices are raising up Bangladeshi leaders
who exercise authority among their constituents, then it is not more colonial
than the established indigenous church in Bangladesh, although it will continue
to exhibit similar tensions, which are inherent in that form of
post-colonialism. Even based on the evidence of the film, the leaders and
practitioners of contextualized ministry in Bangladesh are now Bangladeshis. If
that is true, then the key concern is not so much colonialism, but whether the
tradition that these indigenous leaders echo is a faithful one. And so, again,
we must return to the specific issues of the contextualization debate in order
to helpfully move forward.
A Story and Its Use
Before I proceed to mention those
particulars, I feel the need to comment on one of the film's sub-plots: the false
reporting that hundreds of thousands of converts had come to Christ in
Bangladesh through "insider" ministries. The story receives a
prominent place in the film, but is a bit confusing and possibly misleading.
Some national missionaries had falsely reported 750,000 new baptisms to their
Western supporter, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, and they
had reported that these believers were all "insiders". They used
pictures of people taking their public baths, claiming that they were photos of
baptisms. Reporting massive numbers of baptisms insured that the organization
would continue to support their work. (It's a good example of what happens when
your organization is too numbers-focused, but everyone in the world has already
beaten the IMB with that stick, so I won't say more.) Eventually one of the
nationals' conscience was burdened by the lie, and he confessed, bringing the
whole house of cards down.
It's a very good story. Here's how
that story can legitimately be applied to the "insider"
debate:
Because
the baptism numbers were so high, we assumed that these methods were amazingly
effective, and that made us want to use them. Now, however, we see that the
methods are not the silver bullet we thought they were. This was a good lesson
to learn, and besides, we should never judge the validity of a practice based
solely on its perceived effectiveness anyway! Lesson learned.
I'm not sure that was the angle from
which this story was told, though. Here's how I fear that the story was illegitimately
applied to the "insider" debate by implication in this
film:
Advocates of the Insider Movement
are all liars and swindlers who report false numbers in order to receive money
from the West.
This isn't a logical conclusion to
draw from this story because the false missionary was not practicing any sort
of missiology – he was just lying about a lot of things. He wasn't an
"insider"; he was lying about being an "insider". If this
sort of practice were typical of the "Insider Movement", then there
would be no bad insider movements to worry about (or good ones, obviously)
because no one claiming to be using "insider" practices would
actually be doing so. They wouldn't be sharing the gospel at all. They'd just
be con-men pretending to use contextualized missiology, but not really doing
so. So there would be no mosques full of "insiders" for us to worry
about. There would just be a handful of people claiming that there were. To
imply that this was typical of "insiders" would therefore be
self-contradictory. And yet, by the way the film is put together, I'm not sure
that wasn't being implied.
