Deep listening: A call for missionary anthropology

Two intuitions

First, we stand at the end of Christendom in our nation – in the twilight zone of the time when church, culture and nation were all deeply interconnected. Many of the assumptions that underscored Christendom are now breaking down; knowledge of the Christian faith is at an all-time low especially among young people; implicit affiliation to Christian faith of the population is constantly brought into question and attendance at public worship is static or steadily falling (depending on how optimistic a statistician is presenting the figures). Responses to this situation vary from the (very English) ‘“keep calm and carry on” as inevitably the tide will turn again in the future – we had simply better be ready for it when it happens’, through sticking with the parish system (for Anglicans at least and however thinly spread) to the despairing – ‘as long as we can keep the church going long enough to see me out’. Others understand the end of Christendom as an opportunity for a renewed ‘missionary’ engagement with our nation.

The word missionary has unfortunate connotations these days, tainted as it is for us with post-colonial guilt. Perhaps because we have been too self-preoccupied in recent decades, however, we may not have noticed the deeply reflective and creative work that has gone on in missiology over this period. David Bosch, as a South African Protestant, presented his now classic Transforming Mission in 1991 ² and Roman Catholics such as Robert Schreiter, Stephen Bevans, Roger Schroeder and Anthony Gittins ³ have also made enormous contributions to the field since Vatican II. All this theological reflection is based on what is now World Christianity since the centre of gravity of the Christian faith moved to the global South in the twentieth century. ⁴ My contention is that the wisdom gained in the movement of Christianity from the West can now be critically reapplied to the West itself as the ‘mission frontier’ (or ‘mission field’ as the Victorians quaintly put it) returns to our front door. ⁵

All of which brings me to my second hunch or intuition. One of the most important critical elements of missiological reflection especially among the Roman Catholics cited above has been the use of social anthropology to understand the missionary task. My book referred to above asks a question about English culture in relation to Christian faith that I don’t believe has been asked for probably more than a thousand years. It is the question most asked in places where Christianity is expanding rapidly in the world today – how can this faith be truly and authentically integrated with my culture – how can I be Masai, Tamil, Han Chinese and Christian? I answered the question via an extensive social anthropology study of the English carried out by Kate Fox ⁶ in which she describes the ‘English cultural genome’. In correspondence with me over a recommendation for my book Fox showed some initial surprise and even shock that her work as an anthropologist might be used to further the mission of Christianity in England, but did eventually warm to the project.

My second contention is then that social anthropology is for us while sociology is largely against us in the new missionary task we face ‘post-Christendom’. I need to explain this statement further at this point as it could cause some confusion. There are two levels at which it can be taken. I am referring positively both to the study of social anthropology and its results. While I am not saying that the study of sociology is against us (far from it), however, it seems the results of sociological study are. Of course there is a deal of contest over the sociological theory of secularization characterized by differences between such scholars as Callum Brown ⁷ and Grace Davie. ⁸ Nevertheless, overall the sociological ‘plausibility structure’ for the existence of the Christian faith is breaking down which requires us, I believe, to delve deeper into the anthropological.

In studying the work of Fox in relation to the majority of English people who, when asked on a census form will tick the ‘Christian’ box, ⁹ I realized that we could use the remaining innate, anthropologically identified ‘christiannness’ of English culture as a possible starting point for new ‘missionary’ work. This is not the place to rehearse those arguments but it is a stepping off point for this article which is calling for the teaching of social anthropology in our theological education institutions. We need to form missionary priests and ministers who will engage in new and creative ways with our culture beyond the Church.

The definitions and method of anthropology

Normally the word anthropology has to be adjectivally qualified to define it correctly. Thus we are not talking about ‘somatic’ or ‘bodily’ anthropology which studies the physical aspects of human bodies in the present or the past. Rather the terms ‘social’ or ‘cultural’ are added to delineate the field correctly. Gittins ¹⁰ shows how the qualifier ‘social’ has won out in general over ‘cultural’ since there is more of a sense of change, pluralism and fluidity in it.

Fundamentally, social anthropology is the critical study of human behaviour and ‘meaning making’. It has passed through various phases and schools over the period of its existence since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some readers will be familiar with Malinowski’s functionalism and the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss which inevitably led to ‘poststructuralist’ approaches via deconstruction of the field itself. This leaves us with, as Gittins states: ‘an anthropology that no longer chases spurious objectivity or a purely dispassionate study but acclaims the “reflexivity” of the anthropologist, making virtue of his or her embodied and engaged involvement with the people’. ¹¹

Another term used for the discipline is ethnography although this could be understood as a subset of anthropology (and it is also used in sociology) – the focus in ethnography is always on the description of human behaviour in context.

More important though is the agreed methodology of social anthropology – that of participant observation. The method has been honed and refined over decades since first postulated by Malinowski. It places the anthropologist directly in the midst of the people to be studied for an extended period – as both an outsider who comes to observe at the same time as becoming as much of an insider as possible. Fox defends the method from a welter of criticisms, concluding that ‘this rather uneasy combination of involvement and detachment is still the best method we have for exploring the complexities of human cultures’. ¹²

There are clear resonances here with the task of the priest in a local community. Usually from outside the immediate parish ¹³ one of the tasks of the minister is to hold together the bigger vision of the Church catholic with how that works out in this locale. In my own experience fruitful ministry with the possibility of longevity grows from spending quality time with the people, listening to and understanding their culture, concerns and desires. An anthropological approach which develops skills in what we could call deep listening would surely enhance what most priests (but not all) do intuitively – not least because, as Gittins observes, participant observation goes beyond ‘attention and intuition’ (which are inadequate without ‘intellectual depth’) to providing ‘comparative and contextualized data as a hermeneutical key’ to understanding a people. He concludes in a suggestive turn of phrase:

Shortsighted and perhaps foolish is the missioner [for our purposes read priest/minister] who does not stand upon the shoulders of anthropologists in order to view what lies ahead and on all sides. Participant observation may be the best vantage point. ¹⁴

Some assumptions explored

In proposing the importance of anthropology for a missionary engagement with our culture and people it is worth exploring some of the theological assumptions I am making behind this assertion.

It would be difficult to understand why anthropology should be taken seriously at all without beginning with the idea that grace builds on nature. That is: we need to utilize as a starting point the idea that culture, society or whatever name is put to the ‘glue’ that holds human beings together is a potential domain of the holy. This is the standpoint of theologians like David Tracy ¹⁵ who hold to an analogical theology which put simply supports the idea that there is something right with the world which can be built on by grace and faith. Opposed to this are the stronger forms of dialectical theology which begin with what is wrong with the world and then offer the appropriate salvific ‘fix’. Actually both forms of theology in their better manifestations eventually overlap and interpenetrate but our starting points do matter.

One of the phrases I find most helpful in this discussion is a quotation from the Orthodox theologian Micahel Oleksa quoted by Bevans and Schroeder: ‘We can never be sure where Christ is not.’ ¹⁶ The double negative here allows the space for a proper spirit of inquiry or deep listening to the context and culture which is also discerning. The missiological concept developed in the last sixty or so years of the Missio Dei helps us to understand the missionary nature of God at work in the world before any mission is undertaken at all – anthropology is therefore part of the skills required to work with the Missio Dei and ‘find out what God is doing and join in’. ¹⁷

Second, and following on from the starting point of the analogical imagination, is the idea that all theology now is local and contextual. ¹⁸ Here we have another of the fruits of missiological reflection on world-wide Christianity. The hegemony of Western Christianity exported as it was ‘from the West to the rest’ has largely (although not entirely) broken down now. While universals and catholicity remain, the right of every language and people to be able to express their faith in their own idiom is clear and incontrovertible. If this is the case then theologians need the tools to offer a critical and reasonable hermeneutic of culture in every place, and anthropology is clearly well placed to provide some of those tools.

Pioneers and practitioners

So just who are those who have employed the tools and skills of anthropology to missionary use? It is probably helpful to divide them between Roman Catholics and Protestants and to deal with those outside the UK to begin with.

In the Roman Catholic world there was an early recognition that anthropology was of some importance for the Church although it is worth noting with Louis Luzbetak that ‘from the earliest times ethnographical information was employed by the church for communicational and adaptational purposes’ ¹⁹ – the Apostle Paul, Gregory the Great (d. 604), Cyril and Methodius (c. ninth cent.) and Matteo Ricci (d. 1610) are worthy of mention.

It was the Austrian priest and Society of the Divine Word (svd) missionary Wilhelm Schmidt (1868–1954) who first recognized the importance of anthropology for missionary work in the founding of the journal Anthropos in 1906 and an Institute of the same name in 1931. ²⁰

The tradition has continued in the Roman Catholic Church up to today particularly through the svd order. The American priest Luzbetak (1918–2005) himself is a good example of the missionary-anthropologist who was concerned that good anthropology meant a non-colonizing form of evangelism that always respected those to whom the missioner was sent. His classic work The Church and Cultures ²¹ was rewritten after Vatican II. The Catholic Theological Union in Chicago continues his legacy with a professorial chair in his name currently held by Stephen Bevans who has eminent colleagues such as Robert Schreiter, Roger Schroeder and Anthony Gittins to whom I have already referred.

It seems there has always been good ecumenical co-operation and cross-over – particularly in USA – among missiologists and certainly the tradition of the missionary-anthropologist is also prevalent in the Protestant churches. ²² Perhaps Eugene Nida (1914–2011) is the best-known example who employed anthropological techniques in Bible translation and devised the so-called ‘dynamic equivalence’ method whereby the meaning of the original text (rather than the literal words) becomes the basis for finding words of equivalent meaning in the receptor language. Needless to say a description of culture in the receptor language is needed for such translation to take place.

In this mould is the Baptist William Smalley (1923–97) another Bible translator, among the Hmong people, who developed a missionary journal, Practical Anthropology, and published the best of the journal in his edited Readings in Missionary Anthropology. ²³ Paul Hiebert (1933–2007) is another well-known American missiologist – his final book was published posthumously as Transforming Worldviews. ²⁴ Finally, it is worth mentioning Charles Kraft who has a whole textbook for the missionary: Anthropology for Christian Witness. ²⁵

In the UK there really is no equivalent to these European and North American movements for the integration of anthropology and missiology. Where there is anthropology undertaken by theologians and church researchers it tends to be either driven by personal interest or for the purposes of congregational studies – perhaps with both remaining in a somewhat Christendom paradigm. The one exception to this is the recent interest in the study of popular culture particularly in relation to mission among young people; even here, however, anthropology is one approach among many. ²⁶

Thus we have the Durham based theologian, Douglas Davies’s Anthropology and Theology, ²⁷ which is really a text about understanding Christian religion in its rituals and theology rather than engaging with the context in which the Church finds itself. Anthropology is employed alongside the disciplines of sociology, organizational studies and theology in Studying Local Churches ²⁸ and Davies, among others, is a contributing editor to that collection of essays. Edward Bailey’s journal and conferences on Implicit Religion certainly require anthropological study to an extent, although again how formative they are for Christian mission and ministry is another question. ²⁹ Timothy Jenkins is both ordained and a trained anthropologist and does demonstrate the kind of pure ethnography that we need to interact with in Religion in English Everyday Life. ³⁰ Perhaps the theologian who comes closest to the purposes of the missionary anthropologist and is clearly abreast of the relevant methods is Martyn Percy in his prolific writings published by Ashgate. ³¹

Anthropology in UK ministerial formation

A question remains – is the teaching of anthropology for the purpose of deep listening to context at all a part of ministerial formation in UK?

For this article I conducted a small and I admit somewhat unscientific survey of the eleven Anglican residential theological colleges (some of which also have the part-time regional course attached). From their websites I identified the member of staff responsible for teaching mission/missiology (in one case there was only a staff member who taught evangelism and apologetics) so out of ten email inquiries sent I received five replies (a 50 per cent response rate). Four offered a (usually peripheral) short course or part course in the basic principles of ethnography for the purpose of completing a congregational study or placement in a context. One mentioned anthropology in both pastoral and systematic theology teaching and one, on an embryonic ‘pioneer ministry’ course, was developing a new module specifically for the purpose of deep listening to context.

Needless to say, given the large amount of material generated in this field across a broad range of church traditions in Europe and North America the dearth of missionary anthropology in our theological schools is disheartening.

Curriculum: What might we teach?

It would seem appropriate to end this short article with at least some proposals for the content of an introductory course in social anthropology. A note of caution needs to be sounded here. It would be hoped that any curriculum would be developed collaboratively with actual anthropologists ³² and since I am not one all I can propose here is a starting point for a wider discussion. The field is huge and trying to do justice to it in one course is not a simple task.

The purpose would be to enable incarnational mission and ministry in the diverse contexts that make up English parishes. Indeed this very fact would make a good starting point for the module given the implicit assumption in most theological training that it will equip the minister to deal with any UK context, which is patently questionable. Most clergy at some point in their ministries, if they are going to be at all courageous in their calling, will be working cross-culturally.

So we could imagine (broadly following Charles Kraft’s textbook) ³³ a defence of anthropology and its usefulness in eliciting the culture and world-view of a people. Related to this would be studying family and kinship, status and role and theories of social relationships – included here could be the importance of set theory (bounded, fuzzy, centred etc.), Mary Douglas’s grid/group distinction and the nature of boundaries in communities. ³⁴ Understanding implicit or ‘folk’ religion and perhaps even the importance of gossip would benefit most clergy. There is the possibility that our culture is moving from a guilt culture to a shame culture ³⁵ at the moment which would need to be addressed. Learning to read a culture from its signs, symbols and metaphors (or semiotics to use the technical term) is a key anthropological skill (see, for instance, another Roman Catholic’s important contribution – that of Gerald Arbuckle). ³⁶ Probably the one item of anthropological insight which is currently taught in our theological schools is Victor Turner’s theory of liminality and the structure, anti-structure and communitas that goes along with rites of passage. Turner’s theory is very fruitful for understanding many kinds of ministry and mission. It could be extended in a course such as this into theories of change and transformation which hopefully all clergy as leaders are being inducted into in their training. ³⁷

If such a field is created for theological formation it would be hoped that eventually it would develop a research base and offer a serious contribution to UK contextual theology which takes local culture seriously.

In summary a ten-session module drawn from the discussion above and in the wider article might cover the following topics:

Introduction to studying culture and world-view (including ‘Why Anthropology?)