Lesslie Newbigin and Mission to the West

I was asked to join an International Think Tank on Mission to Western Culture later this month, specifically focusing on Lesslie Newbigin's contribution to the conversation. Here is my brief response to the question...

Newbigin created a space for Western churches to analyze their relationship to Western culture. Returning to 1980s Britain after forty years in India, Newbigin viewed the Western church with a different set of lenses, and he spoke a message that the Western church needed to hear.

Newbigin returned to a church held captive by the culture and its own church traditions. He asked how the church had become so marginal to public life. He traced the church’s current form back to the Enlightenment, with its focus on reason, the individual, and the removal of values from the public (or factual) sphere. In addition, Newbigin identified another source of the lifeless nature of the Western church – Christendom. Because of the church’s historic relation to the state, Western churches served passively as chaplains to the culture, baptizing the culture’s agenda. With the church’s domination by the powers (the ‘isms’) and its historical relationship with Christendom, the church found itself beaten-down with little ability or energy to respond.

All was not lost. Newbigin argued for a response, another way out of the church’s predicament. Because of the historical nature of the church’s position (it was not a ‘given’), other trajectories were possible. He advocated that the gospel must be the starting point for Christians -- specifically the as expressed in the Incarnation and the Trinity. The gospel must frame all other structures and practices, not science or any other ‘tradition’. The gospel can handle pluralism, provided the gospel is located at the center. The church, not the culture, sets the agenda, speaking from within the biblical narratives to the wider world. 

For Newbigin, the church must embody this public truth in all realms, foregoing the facts/values split of the Enlightenment, e.g. in neighborhoods, in arts, science, politics and economics. Rather than accept life on the margins, the church must serve as pointer to the coming reign of God. In retrospect, Newbigin gave the church a gift by exposing the powers and encouraging a gospel-like response in all spheres of culture.

Comments

[George]

That's an excellent summary of Newbigin. Glad you're keeping his voice alive.

I remember first reading Newbigin and being blown away at his depth and insight. Finally, here was someone who had the maturity, knowledge and experience to reveal the pitfalls of Western expressions of Christianity, while also pointing the way forward--community as the hermeneutic of the gospel.

Good stuff.

[Bro. Bartleby]

I do think the unwillingness of many to face some of the realities of modernity, especially in respect to how many non-belivers in the science community, the professors who welcome each semester fertile minds, wow our youth with God's creations, but this creation in the hands of the atheist professor, makes a powerful case (in the minds of the students) for a godless universe. If you doubt any of this, I offer this very active blog, an atheist science professor (boldly proclaiming his atheism), who cleverly swats down any claims of the ID crowd.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

But to dismiss him is, I think, a grave mistake, for he and countless other university professors are daily spreading the gospel of science, and to them, it is indeed their religion.

[JohnWMorehead]

Ryan, this conference by Allelon is promising, and much-needed. Newbigin's work continues to be a prophetic voice for the church in the West.

I note that the conference is international. Do you know to what extent the voices of Third World theologians will be presented at the conference?

And if we are truly thinking missionally, we must think not only multi-culturally, but in light of increasing Western pluralism, we must also be thinking about the religious aspects of that pluralism. Will anyone at this conference be addressing the implications of religious pluralism for missions in local church contexts?

[Ryan]

Bro. Bartleby -- thanks for affirming his continued relevance -- I heartily agree.

John, I'm not sure about specific dialogues about religious pluralism, but I would be surprised if that was not discussed, as LB was all about pluralism, all shades and varieties.

I am unsure of the representatives at the forum from the Two-Thirds world...

It should be a good time...

[steve]

John (and Ryan), since the Newbigin conversation was a conversation about mission and the West, it is my understanding that the conversation remains true to that ethos ie it is a Western mission conversation. Is that elitist and marginalising, or is that simply the nature of contextual theology - freeing the 2/3rds world to explore their context and letting the West explore their context? Will the conference explore pluralism? I certainly hope so, since we are discussing "Gospel in a Pluralist Society." I am making a case in my conference submission for "glocal" theology as a Trinitarian local Western theology. Ryan, looking forward to seeing you there.