Thanks, Sarah!

I hope you continue to be a part of discussions on this blog!

I wanted to comment on your comparison of Hinduism to Mormonism vs. Native Americans or Jews. I live in Utah, and Mormonism is every bit as much a culture as Hinduism is, in my opinion. There are Latter-day Saints who believe in multiple gods, there are Latter-day Saints who believe in one God, and there are people who culturally identify as Latter-day Saints who are agnostics and atheists. Also, there are Latter-day Saint followers of Jesus. There is wide diversity of belief within the LDS Church and culture. I don’t mean to be nitpicky, as what I want to say actually has little to do with Mormonism.

Is it possible that everything we consider to be a religion is really a culture, including American evangelical Christianity? That it is part of our jobs, as followers of Jesus, to incorporate into our walks the parts of our culture that are conducive to faith in Christ, and reject or reinterpret the parts that aren’t?

Westerners tend to view contextualization through a lens of “how do we contextualize the gospel for this foreign culture” without realizing that it is contextualized even for our own culture. I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that it’s not until I’m able to see the ways in which I have erroneously viewed evangelical Christianity as the uncorrupted, doctrinally pure faith (when really, it is a culture in its own right) that I’m able not to look down on other cultures. I want to be able to internalize the fact that a Hindu follower of Jesus is not a second-class Christian, that she is every inch as much a part of the Kingdom as I am, and that I have my own cultural baggage that I bring to the gospel, just as she does.

If Hinduism is a religion, then you’re absolutely right. The people we talked with in India, though, were adamant that being Hindu means belonging to a culture, not a religion. They emphasized that within the Hindu culture is a polytheistic religion that most Hindus follow (which we call Hinduism). Likewise, I understand a distinction exists between being Muslim (a culture) and Islam (a religion to which most Muslims adhere). If this is the case, then if a Muslim can’t be a Christ-follower, a Jew can’t be one either. Jews belong to a culture into which they’re born, and most Jews adhere to the religion of Judaism. Messianic Jews are then Jews who don’t adhere to Judaism; rather, they follow Christ.

A Jew can’t cease to be a Jew any more than a Mixed Person in our area can cease to be a Mixed Person or a Tree Person can cease to be a Tree Person (pseudonyms). I understand that this extends to Hindus and Muslims. A Hindu can’t cease to be Hindu, but they CAN follow Christ instead of following Hinduism. A Muslim can’t cease to be Muslim, but they CAN stop following Islam and start following Christ.

These issues are very complicated, and they are tough for us to get our Western minds around, as Ignatius Anand has pointed out in his comment. We have been trained to view being Muslim and being Hindu as completely synonymous with belonging to the religion of Hinduism or to Islam, but this may not actually be the case. Those of us involved in one way or another in cross-cultural ministry really need to wrestle with these issues, and we need to approach other cultures/religions with extreme caution. We need to be learners. In some cases, Western missionaries have done a fair bit of damage by coming in as teachers before being learners and making assumptions about the cultures and religions we’re dealing with that we ought not have made.

We are wrestling with these same issues in our work. When people in our area say they’re Catholic, they don’t necessarily mean what we think they mean. The lines here between religion and culture are blurry. We’re trying to learn to not make assumptions.

I think you nailed the most important thing. We must preach the pure gospel. Too often, we Western missionaries have bought into preaching religion rather than preaching Christ. If we simply preach Christ, we can trust the Holy Spirit to bring conviction and to show people exactly how they need to apply the commands of Christ in their lives. The Holy Spirit working in the heart of the believer can discern these issues far better than we can.

Thanks a lot for your input, Tabitha. I appreciate your being part of our conversation!