Decontextualization Is The Way

Or the case against extreme contextualization

I.

Whenever I’m in Ethiopia, it feels like home. There is something deeply familiar and comforting about the place. I often tell people. I love everything about it—the food, the melodic sound of the language, the mannerisms of the people. I love how they worship, how they pray, and how they dance with abandon."

Ever since my first visit in 2000, I have cherished the people and the culture. My appreciation grew so much that I even learned Amharic, the national language, well enough to get by. I say "get by" intentionally—I’m not fluent by any stretch. Still, I’ve embraced it enough to sing worship songs in Amharic and order a nice Ethiopian meal of tibbs or doro wat¹. Whenever I return, I try not to let my Americanness show, but inevitably, it does. It’s a lost cause, I admit. No matter how much berbere I season my injera with, I’m still a Black kid from Compton.

Part of my instinct to downplay my Americanness and embrace Ethiopian culture stems from the missionary principle of contextualization. Contextualization is the process of adapting to the context where one is doing ministry

Contextualization involves adapting methods and messaging to the audience. This is when missionaries study the group they are preaching to, adopting their customs and ways to better communicate the gospel. One of the main methods of contextualization is translation. Philip Jenkins, in The Next Christendom, notes, "Through the act of translation, and the use of familiar local terms and concepts, the Scriptures are forced to become relevant to each individual culture."

The opposite is assimilation, where missionaries follow in the footsteps of the Judaizers and some early Western missionaries. Judaizers, for example, gave people the gospel and circumcision, just as early Western missionaries gave people Christianity and civilization. This method uses Christ as a tool to make others more like the messenger.

Then there’s syncretism, where Christ and culture become so blended that Christ can no longer be easily recognized. Rather than using Christ to transform culture, syncretism reduces Christ to fit the culture, stripping the gospel of its true essence. It’s contextualization gone too far.

II.

Both assimilation and syncretism are problematic, each sitting at opposite ends of a continuum. But what about contextualization? Are there dangers there as well?

Consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23:

"Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews, I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law, I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law, I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak, I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings."

This verse has been used to motivate missionaries to contextualize the gospel or to become like the people they are serving. Missionaries are expected to eat the food people that cultural insiders eat, to dress how they dress etc. This goes further than the context demands. The point of the passage is found when looking at the context of the whole chapter and the surrounding chapters of 1 Corinthians 8 and 10. Paul is talking about Christians and their rights. He brings up his right to receive pay for gospel work and how he surrendered this right.

This goes against how some interpret this passage. We are not called to become a person of another culture. That’s impossible. We are called to surrender our rights in order to gain a hearing for the gospel. So we need to study the culture and know what will offend them or become an unnecessary barrier.

Paul expresses a clear desire to "become all things to all men," adapting himself to different contexts but not to disguise himself as an insider to the culture. He is saying he’s surrendered his rights as a Jewish Pharisee in order not to offend the audience he is preaching to. Yet, he is careful to state that "he is not outside God’s law or the law of Christ" in doing so his aim is clear: winning people to Christ, not reshaping the gospel itself.

Notice what Paul does not say—he doesn’t say he has made "the gospel all things to all people." The message remains unchanged. Some may point to Acts 17, where Paul quotes poets and philosophers to connect with the Athenians. However, Paul didn’t act like an Athenian. He remained a Jewish preacher, and his message remained consistent: You are in sin. You need a Savior. Repent and be saved. He did everything he could to not offend the Athenians but change the message of the gospel.

This is where our mission efforts often take a wrong turn. Our job is not to contextualize or update the gospel—it doesn’t need our help to become more relevant. The sinfulness of people and their need for a Savior doesn’t change from culture to culture. When we attempt to contextualize the message itself, we risk falling into the traps of assimilation or syncretism.

Assimilation leads to oppression, adapting the gospel for the messenger rather than the audience. It results in Jesus plus something else. The Judaizers promoted "Jesus plus circumcision”. British and American missionaries promoted “Jesus plus Western civilization”. Today, in some evangelical circles, it’s “Jesus plus politics”—specifically, Republican politics.

III.

The Chinese Rites controversy was a debate about whether Chinese converts could continue ancestor veneration and whether these and other rites were religious or secular. The Jesuits argued that they were secular but the Dominicans and Franciscans argued that they were religious. Eventually, the Catholic church condemned these rites. This led to the Chinese government expelling missionaries from China in the 18th century. It also led to increased persecution and a ban on Christianity in the country.

Later in the 20th century, the Vatican decreed that these rites were just honoring ancestors and not worshipping them. Whether you come down on the Jesuit side of the controversy or the Dominicans and Francisan side the truth is that the history of the church is filled with Christians adding their culture as a prerequisite to faith. This is wrong. As the Propaganda Fide stated centuries ago, "What could be more absurd than to transport France, Spain, Italy, or some other European country to China? Do not introduce all that to them but only the faith." Stephen C. Neill highlights the consequences of adding Jesus plus something else to the message of the gospel: "The Chinese Rites debacle and the cultural rigidity it symbolized crippled the progress of Catholic missions worldwide for over a century."

Conversely, syncretism dilutes or even erases Christ altogether. In efforts to be relevant, churches may reshape the message so much that it loses its substance. It’s also Jesus plus something else. This can be seen in progressive Christian circles that promote Jesus plus social justice. It also shows up in evangelical megachurches, where marketing strategies dictate relevance. As Peyton Jones said in Reaching the Unreached, "In the absence of a genuine spiritual encounter, they’ve opted for the best of spiritual entertainment. Thus the responsibility of telling the greatest story ever told is replaced by attempts to throw the greatest show on earth." It’s Jesus plus entertainment. Syncretism leads to a compromised church. This shows how there is a fine line between making Scripture accessible and distorting its core truths.

IV.

Another way to look at maintaining the purity of the gospel message is decontextualization. As David Watson in Contagious Disciple Making explains, "This is quite different from dressing Jesus up in a way that would be acceptable to another culture." The best approach, according to the book, is to "use only Scripture for curricula and allow local people to answer questions about Scripture, not listen to our answers." It further emphasizes, "With a doctrine-centered discipleship program, one must teach everything to ensure a person has the knowledge to be obedient. With an obedience-centered discipleship program, the emphasis is on how we can be obedient to Christ in every area of our lives and in every circumstance."

This is similar to the journey of Vincent J. Donovan. Donovan pursued church planting among the Maasai people of Kenya. He did it with an unorthodox method. Instead of asking the Kenyans to hear and obey the gospel according to his Western terms he decided to bring the gospel to them and see how they would embody and obey what they heard. In other words, he brought the message and entrusted how to live out the message to the Maasai people.

Here’s Donovan in his own words:

“I think, rather, the missionary’s job is to preach, not the church, but Christ. If he preaches Christ and the message of Christianity, the church may well result, may well appear, but it might not be the church he had in mind…if they accept it, what they must do is outlined in general in scripture, but that outline should not be considered part of the good news. I think it is rather the response to the good news. It is the church. While the general outline of the church is certainly present in scripture, the specific details of the church, the response to the good news, will certainly have to be as free and diverse as all the separate cultures of the human race.”

Presenting scripture to people and challenging them to obedience is the best way to disciple them and to avoid the dangers of assimilation and syncretism. You allow them to contextualize scripture based on their obedience to scripture. The Holy Spirit can do a better job of contextualizing the gospel for people in their culture than we can.

This is how we guard against assimilation and syncretism while the people we are discipling contextualize their obedience and response to the gospel—not the gospel itself. The gospel transcends culture. It will blossom and flourish in ways we could never dream of. It is the same truth yesterday, today, and forever. (Hebrews 13:8 NIV)

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1. Tibbs is stir fried lamb, beef, or goat meat. Doro wat is chicken stew with hard boiled eggs.

References

Donovan, Vincent J. Christianity Rediscovered: An Epistle from the Masai, 1978.

Jenkins, Philip. The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. OUP USA, 2011.

Jones, Peyton. Reaching the Unreached: Becoming Raiders of the Lost Art. Zondervan, 2017.

Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions, 1975.

Neuner, Josef, and Jacques Dupuis. The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, 1982.

Watson, David, Paul Watson, and Paul D. Watson. Contagious Disciple Making: Leading Others on a Journey of Discover, 2014.