Abstract
The Gospel Among the Nations: A Documentary History of Inculturation
Robert A. Hunt
Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010. 288 pp. $35.00
Robert A. Hunt, the Director of Global Education at the Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, has compiled a very interesting anthology of primary material pertaining to Christian mission. Part I of The Gospel Among the Nations, which takes up a brief 30 pages of the book, is a historical overview of the two millennia of Christian mission, almost exclusively in the western Roman Empire and its successor societies. The second part of this volume is the actual collection of documents culled from the history of Christian mission. It begins with an excerpt from Justin Martyr’s Apology from the second century and ends with an excerpt from a document on holistic mission prepared in 2004 for a forum of the Lausanne Committee on World Evangelism. While the anthology contains writings spanning the Christian era, it is heavily weighted towards material from the twentieth century. The collection and its introductory essay will be very useful for laity and clergy in the American context who are interested in the development of Christian mission. The focus on Western Christianity (which includes theologians from other parts of the world who are Western educated and speaking to a Western-educated audience) should make the volume particularly relevant and interesting to American audiences. The anthology also provides a good resource for college and seminary professors who are looking for primary materials on Christian mission for their courses. One of the great benefits of this collection is the deliberate inclusion of Roman Catholic and Orthodox voices, along with evangelical and “mainline” Protestant ones. Noticeably missing, however, are Pentecostal voices and perspectives, which are so important in contemporary Christian mission.
There are certain minor problems with the work that make it less compelling for experts in the field of missiology. First is the rather egregious omission of a working definition of inculturation. Presumably, the term refers to the process by which Christianity is understood and lived out in various local cultures. It is hard, then, to understand why an excerpt from William Carey’s An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens should be included, important as it is in the history of Protestant mission. Similarly, two fascinating letters from Russian Orthodox missionaries in Alaska to their superiors really concern intra-Russian conflicts rather than the inculturation of the Gospel. An explanation from the author regarding how he views inculturation and its role in Christian mission would have brought some added coherence to this anthology. In fact, the book begins with a discussion of the term “mission,” which really seems to be the organizing center of the whole work, rather than the history of the inculturation of the Gospel.
A second problem is the focus of the book, in both Parts I and II, on mainstream Western Christian mission. This is somewhat surprising, given the author’s many years of living experience in Asia. There are indeed notable and interesting exceptions to this focus: for example, the inclusion of material from early Chinese Christianity (52–58) and from twentieth-century theologians from Asia, Africa, and Latin America (145–89). However, in a time when there has been a burgeoning of interest and academic literature on non-Western Christianity, a more balanced selection would have been appropriate. The absence of women’s voices is also quite noticeable in this anthology and, again, is puzzling since so much significant work has been done in the area of women and mission in the last few decades. Finally, the quality of the introductions to the various pieces in the anthology is somewhat uneven. While a number of the introductions are quite satisfactory, others fail to provide necessary information, such as the date of the Jesus-Messiah Sutra (53–57) or who is a “promishlenniki” (90–99).
However, these and other shortcomings are minor, and should not deter those who are interested in the history of Christian mission from purchasing this work. It provides an excellent starting point for further exploration of this history in all its complexity and diversity.