Research serving theology: A model for the era of World Christianity

Abstract

Christianity is a very diverse religion. People who consider themselves Christians follow different theologies and practise their faith in many different ways. In this era that has become known as ‘World Christianity’, one might question whether the search for what is an appropriate understanding of Christian belief and practice makes sense at all and, if so, who is in charge to set the criteria? In this article, the author argues, against the background of World Christianity, that (1) the development of theology is in fact important; (2) it must spring from people considering the biblical text in their own context in order not to be arbitrary; (3) if research methods are designed well, research can stand in the service of developing theology in context; and (4) in this way, missionary-researchers can help in the development of theology without dominating it. The author illustrates this by referring to his research among the Lele people of Papua New Guinea, where he investigated how ‘mature’ Christians deal conceptually with traditional understandings of sickness and healing.

Keywords

Research methods contextual theology local theologies World Christianity Papua New Guinea

Introduction

In one of Andrew Walls’ (1996) famous articles, he questions what image of Christianity a visitor from space would get if they came to earth every few centuries. In ad 37, they would find Christianity dominated by Jews who recognize Jesus as the Messiah. In ad 325, they would meet Gentile Christians as they discuss the divinity of Jesus at the Council of Nicaea to shield the faith against heretics. They would then find Christianity in Ireland, about 300 years later, and be astonished by the practices of the monks there. In the 19th century, they would find Europeans who desire to bring the faith to Africa and spread education and economic growth with it. Then, in 1980, they would encounter a charismatic church in Lagos, Nigeria, and wonder how to make sense of their impressions as they witnessed these diverse expressions of Christianity over the centuries.

The diversity of Christianity

Looking at our own time, the visitor from space would not have to wait a few centuries to find such diverse expressions of the Christian faith – they would find it all at once! While in some parts of the world they would recognize a more dominant way in how people live as Christians, they would nevertheless be surprised by the diversity encountered almost everywhere – there are charismatic African Christians gathered to worship in London; Chinese Christians mingling with local Christians in Nairobi; and African Anglicans celebrating mass in the cathedral of Bujumbura. They would find Christians silently meditating in front of an icon and others noisily casting out demons. They would find those who gather around a Bible in hiding, for fear of persecution, and others who are welcome guests in the residences of prime ministers and presidents. Some starve and others fly in private jets; some choose celibacy as a way of life and others accept forms of relationships that other Christians preach against. They would find Christians who live their faith privately, while others campaign for liberation or try to lobby politicians for more ‘Christian’ policies.

It is probably safe to say that never before in history has Christianity been as diverse and colourful as it is today. The emergence of the field of study called ‘World Christianity’ is the academic response to the recognition of this diversity. Pachuau defines it as follows:

World Christianity expresses the worldwide character of Christianity as it came to be owned at heart by people of diverse cultures and societies from every region and every continent, and portrayed in the multiplicity of church traditions, cultural expressions of faith practices, and doctrinal voices. This worldwide, diverse, and multifaceted character of Christianity as a (single) religion is what we have come to call ‘world Christianity’. (Pachuau, 2018: 2)

Possible consequences

If Christianity has so many faces, who would dare to judge what constitutes an appropriate Christian theology or lifestyle? At a recent conference on World Christianity at Princeton Theological Seminary, many presentations were given highlighting diverse aspects of how Christians live their lives in different places around the globe. But the question of whether all these expressions are adequate or appropriate expressions of the Christian faith was not even asked. It seems that, for scholars and informed missionaries, the dictum that ‘all theology is contextual theology’ can easily lead to a dismissal of the need for theological argument at all. I realized this in my years of teaching at a theological college in Papua New Guinea. Which version of Christianity should I teach? If there are so many expressions of the Christian faith, should one be concerned with ‘getting it right’ at all?

The continued need for theology

The question of how one should live as a Christian should, however, not be that briefly dismissed. Although Christianity can appear in many forms and ways, it is not endlessly distensible. At some point, it will lose its Christian character. The Bible, especially the New Testament, is full of exhortations for correct Christian understanding (1 Cor. 14:20; Eph. 4:14; Heb. 13:9) and practice (Eph. 4:17). Often, the two are directly connected.

It is true that what Christian belief and practice should look like and how it is to be developed has been contested and has varied vastly in history. Identifying oneself as a Christian has global as well as local aspects, and both dimensions need to be connected. People living their faith in a certain context do so as members of a worldwide movement. Some have endeavoured to work out the fundamental and universal features of the Christian faith that transcend time and culture (Bevans and Schroeder, 2004; Walls, 1996). Although the results are not uniform, these considerations are important and help us to see Christianity as a single movement.¹

At the same time, Christianity always becomes concrete within a certain place and time. The search for what it means to live out one’s Christian life in a given context is a necessary endeavour for Christians. Since the 1970s, different models of contextualization have been developed (Bevans, 2002; Moreau, 2012; Schreiter, 2015). Scholars have also introduced helpful insights from other disciplines. Hiebert (1978), for example, in an attempt to develop theology that fits the context, has shown that a centred set approach is to be favoured over a bounded set approach. What these models have in common, however, is the conviction that the question of what it means to live faithfully as a Christian is important, and that to work this out in and for a given context is a core aspect of Christian mission.

Kraft (1991) has argued that if Christians want to live faithfully as followers of Christ, they need to deal with the important questions of truth, allegiance and power. This quest for an adequate Christian theology is not motivated simply by a concern for orthodoxy, but has very practical implications for people’s identity and how they live their daily lives. Life is full of questions that demand answers, and if Christianity is seen as a way of life and not only as a profession of belief, the developing of theology in context is a task to be taken seriously.

Settling on a merely descriptive approach to the diversity of Christianity (as sometimes happens in the discipline of World Christianity) therefore does not go deep enough. There is a need for people everywhere to reflect on their faith and to theologize for their context. It seems that this needs to be argued afresh in today’s world. Not only will the results be of importance to the local Christian community, but the process of reasoning through certain issues pertaining to life and faith will deepen their understanding and identity as Christians.

But what is theology?

Scholars such as Shaw and Van Engen (2003) have rightly argued that instead of bringing theology from one place to another, theology needs to grow in context.² ‘Fidelity’, they write, ‘is defined as the receptors coming to “know God in context”’ (42). This happens when they ‘make inferences about God’s intent for them’ (42). The contours of a theology that is appropriate for their context ‘can only come from the receptors who live out the developing theology. Theological development can only be a local enterprise’ (168). Therefore, local Christians need to be at the forefront of interpreting God’s Word for their life and situation. While the Bible takes centre stage, the context plays an important role and is a factor that should not be neglected in how theology is constructed. Bevans (2009: 7) refers to the medieval scholar Anselm of Canterbury, who stated that ‘theology is faith seeking understanding’ – in other words, a dynamic process.

There is always a temptation for people from the outside with a concern for sound theology (e.g. missionaries) to determine what constitutes appropriate Christian belief and practice in the setting where they serve. Whatever does not fit within their Christian framework is seen as syncretism and therefore in need of change. Even though this approach is still widespread – especially among evangelicals – the missiological discourse has moved on and it is clear that, in an era of World Christianity, one Christian cannot claim theological dominance over Christians somewhere else. Shaw (2018: 11) rightly points out that ‘people must be given the right and the opportunity to process Scripture in light of their own socioreligious experience with its variety of expressions, both oral and written, and thus interpret God in a vital and meaningful way’. The standard is God’s Word, not the theology of someone else.

Taking this stance does not, however, provide a sufficiently satisfying answer to the question of what constitutes theological normativity or whether such normativity exists at all. If ‘bringing’ ready-made theology from the outside is not the way forward, would it be better to take the opinion of all Christians in a certain context and consider this to be the appropriate way to live one’s Christian life?³ The problem with this approach is that there are many nominal Christians who have exercised little reflection and have limited knowledge of the Bible. It is questionable how far their way of living as Christians can actually be characterized as ‘faith seeking understanding’. Can we come any closer to a theology in context that does not merely describe the range of ideas present among all the Christians of a certain group of people but represents a faithful, adequate, appropriate expression of the Christian faith? Who should represent Christianity or at least a theology that is appropriate for this context? The central argument in this article is that it should be those who are considered by their fellow Christians to be good examples of living as a Christian. I will lay this out in more detail below.

When Christians who take their faith seriously come together to reflect on their life in light of God’s Word and then try to reach conclusions about how this reflection pertains to their life, they develop their theology for this area of life. If this happens, the boundaries between ‘official religion’ and ‘folk religion’ or ‘the people’s religion’ diminish, as Schreiter (2015) has clearly established.⁴ The theology developed there is the theology for these people in this place and time.

Doing research among the Lele people

The topic for my research among the Lele of Papua New Guinea was concerned with traditional concepts of sickness and healing, and how Christians relate to these. What I wanted to find was a Lele theology of sickness and healing.⁵ As I will show below, this theology was not ready to be discovered but came to the forefront and was developed in the process of the research.

My goals were to:

find an authentic Christian understanding of sickness and healing, which would have to be relevant for the people in their context and faithful to Christ and his Word;

find out how people who took their Christian faith seriously set their traditional culture in relation to their Christian faith;

come to a Christian Lele perspective on the topic, which other Lele Christians could learn from and lean on.

The question, however, remained: Who could provide such a perspective? In line with what I have laid out above, I decided that in order to find answers to my question, I had to take guidance from mature local Christians.

Finding mature Lele Christians

Taking this approach required selecting those who were mature in their faith. But what should the criteria be for selection? To take those that I considered mature as representing the Lele Christians would have biased the outcome, and the same would have been true if I had set some criteria for what qualified someone as a ‘mature’ Christian. It might seem obvious to have chosen pastors or elders, but not all pastors and elders were highly respected for their lifestyles, and some ordinary members of the church would not even have had a chance of being among the sample. My decision was to leave both the definition of what constitutes maturity and the selection of the research participants to the Lele Christians themselves, in order to keep the selection of mature Christians as far removed from my own perceptions as possible.

What followed was a three-step process to find mature Lele Christians. In the first step, I met with 18 people individually and gave them the following task: ‘Please think of a man or a woman you know whose life as a Christian is a good example for other Christians to follow’. While they did not have to tell me who they were thinking of, they now had selected a concrete individual with an exemplary Christian lifestyle.⁶ I then asked: ‘Now, can you note five characteristics of this man or woman that you think make him or her a good example for other Christians?’ I compiled the answers and chose the 17 most mentioned characteristics in the second step,⁷ in which I showed the list to a new set of people. I asked them to mark the four responses that they, individually, found most important when it came to being an example of a good Christian. The four characteristics that were chosen most often were: being humble, being honest, showing love and sharing God’s Word with others. In the third step, I presented this descriptive collection of predominant characteristics of exemplary Christians to pairs of respondents and asked them to discuss and determine who in their view matched these criteria well among the people in their community.⁸ This final step helped curb any one respondent’s individual perception by filtering this through a process of reaching a consensus. Those people who were selected by the pairs of respondents could confidently be described as mature Lele Christians and became the candidates for the focus groups.

As the process outlined here shows, the task of finding mature Lele Christians moved from thinking of an exemplary Christian, then gathering general criteria of what Lele believers perceive in the lives of exemplary Christians, and finally identifying through consensus those people who convincingly live out these elements well in their lives.

Focus-group discussions

Following the selection process, I contacted the persons chosen and invited them to participate in focus-group discussions. In three groups of five to eight people, we talked about the causes of sickness, the ways to find the causes of a sickness and possible treatments – all based on the fact that the participants were both Lele and Christian. I also asked if there were any biblical passages that guided them in their reasoning.⁹

A highlight in the conversations was the personal stories the participants told and how they dealt with the challenge of sickness, especially as it pertained to the unseen world. One of the participants shared how he was sick to the point that his relatives feared he would die. They wanted to call for a traditional healer. He was so weak that he could only signal to his wife that he did not want such help as he believed that the healer worked with the power of spirits that were opposed to God. When, later, a Christian woman came and anointed him with oil and prayed over him, he soon recovered. For him, this was a sign that it was worth putting one’s trust in God and not in the power of spirits. There was a lot of sharing, reflecting and questioning going on in these groups, often related to such personal experiences. Important questions were discussed: Can plants which, in the traditional view, are understood as being effective in healing due to the power of the spirits associated with them be used within a Christian framework? How does one deal with the danger of sorcery? If God is more powerful than anything, should one still respect the dwarf spirits that reside in huge trees, and not provoke their anger? Or can/should Christians simply ignore them? In the best sense, these focus-group discussions were trying to work out the meaning of the Christian faith when meeting cultural understandings and the reality of the experience of sickness.

The focus-group interviews were of great importance as the Christians were able to think about the relationship between their culture and their faith in community with other Christians. These Christians gathered in what Hiebert (1987: 110) calls a ‘hermeneutical community’. It is an essential aspect of Christian theology that it is to be developed not in isolation, but in community with others.

Research in the service of developing theology in and for the context

The connection between research and the developing of theology needs to be explained as, at first glance, it seems to be contradictory. Research is concerned with finding out what is there. How, then, can research be in the service of developing theology?

There are three aspects that are noteworthy. First, by identifying ‘mature’ Christians, the people who were selected, and thus contributed to the ensuing discussion, were Christians who others considered as good examples of what it means to live as a Christian. In this way, out of all the opinions and ideas that people who self-identify as Lele Christians have, the perspectives of those who were good Christian representatives, by the standards of their own people, were brought to the table.

Second, it would be wrong to think that theology is something that can be collected or picked up, like apples that have fallen from a tree. While the persons gathered in the focus groups all lived their life as Lele and as Christians, and had to deal with the issues of sickness and healing at some point in their lives, they had reflected on the topic to varying degrees. They did not come with a ready-made formula for how Christians should relate to their cultural beliefs and practices in this area, which they could present to me as the researcher. Brinkmann and Kvale (2018: 2) write that ‘knowledge is constructed in the inter-action between the interviewer and the interviewee’. What Wigg-Stevenson writes of the participants in her research holds true for the participants in the focus groups:

I do not think that anyone ‘changed their mind’ in any major way about what they believed. But they did unpack their beliefs, come to understand them more deeply, hold them in fresh ways, and integrate them more fully with their other beliefs and practices. (Wigg-Stevenson, 2015: 6)

In the reflection time at the end of the focus groups, numerous participants mentioned that they were grateful for having had the opportunity to think through these issues with other Christians, as they had not done so in depth before.

In a third sense, the research contributed to the development of theology by the systematization of what the participants of the focus groups had said through writing up the research. It is, of course, a contribution from the outside; however, I tried to represent the views of the participants as faithfully as possible. In doing so, I tried to bring order into the statements that were made. Writing up the results also helped to preserve the theological contributions that the mature Christians had made and, at the same time, made them accessible for others. I also summarized the findings in a paper, which I handed out to several of the participants in the research and also to others who were interested. In this way, the reflection can continue.

What was achieved?

There are a number of positive outcomes that were generated by the research. First, local Christians were taken seriously as part of the worldwide church of God. They were given an opportunity to make their voices heard. In a postcolonial setting where missionaries from the western world have served for 100 years and often had a prominent voice when it comes to the evaluation of what constitutes proper Christian belief and living, this aspect is not to be underestimated.¹⁰ The bunch of flowers that represents global Christianity is made more colourful by the contributions of these Lele Christians.

In addition, through the research process, the local Christians were engaged in reflection about God, his Word and the way he deals with this world. In this way, they were part of developing theology in and for their context. While the research was focused on extracting theology, in the process, theology was formed, and local Christians were empowered to theologize for themselves (Hiebert, 1985). The theology that was developed represents what mature Lele Christians considered appropriate expression of Christian faith – it is their theology of sickness and healing.

Although this was the case, it was not uniform. The people who were present had different approaches in dealing with sickness and healing from a Christian point of view. While some, for example, had a rather critical perspective on the use of traditional healing methods, others accepted them if used with a Christian mindset (Herrmann, 2019: 349–351). Nevertheless, there were aspects on which the mature Christians agreed – for example, that people should not expect help from spirits, but from God, who is the sustainer of life. Therefore, according to their understanding, God would not use the spirits to heal people. At the centre of healing, for the mature Christians, is God. While he may choose to use some traditional means, they considered others as incompatible with their understanding of how God works in this world. They also gained a new appreciation of the positive elements in their culture that were there before missionaries arrived.

Another aspect they shared was that if sickness was caused by spiritual power, it needed to be overcome by spiritual power, as natural means were not sufficient for healing. They were quick to note that spiritual power can be found in God, who is also a spirit. One participant commented: ‘If the sickness is caused through demons or the power of evil spirits, well, we can use the spiritual power of God to destroy it’. Together with the other aspects they mentioned, they formed their theology as we talked and, by doing so, established a theological framework that provided guidance for other Lele Christians. Learning from them also enabled me as a missionary to teach and preach on the issue in a way that was relevant for the people and, according to the understanding of their mature Christian brothers and sisters, also faithful to scripture.

Further, the issue of normativity was raised. We can now return to this concept and ask: Is what was developed now the norm for what Lele Christians ought to believe and ought to do when they are sick? Taking into account the dynamic nature of theology and the variety of ways to deal with the issue among the mature Christians, to apply the rather static concept of ‘norm’ appears difficult. However, their contribution cannot be easily dismissed and should serve as a guideline. In a positive way, it can be stated that what the mature Christians worked out is an appropriate Christian theology and an appropriate way for other Christians to follow. Should other Lele Christians see things differently, they would need to have good reasons for doing so.

The role of the missionary as researcher

Missionaries, especially those involved in preaching and theological teaching, are in a difficult situation. They should not present their own theological perspective as authoritative but cannot ignore the need to provide guidance. Pachuau (2018: 99) has shown that contextualization approaches have too often given ‘the dominant role to the missionaries as the “contextualizers”’. Even in models like Hiebert’s (1987: 109–110) critical contextualization model, in which local Christians are heavily involved and have the last say on the evaluation of cultural practices, the missionary is seen as the expert in interpreting scripture. Pachuau (2018: 99) contrasts these contextualization approaches with the task of doing theology in context, where the process of theologizing is central and the focus is on the question: ‘How do people make the Christian faith their own?’

Shaw and Van Engen (2003) have laid this out beautifully and offer valuable insights. They suggest that communicators should not deliver propositional teaching about what is right and wrong, but ‘replicate God’s intent in the way God communicated in the biblical worlds’ (41). Their first and foremost task is to help connect people with God so that they understand better what it means to live as God’s people with God in their midst (13).

Stating this is not meant to suggest that there exists something like a pure, original Lele culture or a Lele Christian theology, unaffected by all outside influence. The mission work among the Lele was started more than 100 years ago by Liebenzell Mission, the organization I work with. There are good reasons to assume that missionaries have had some impact on the theology of the Lele Christians, including what it means to be a mature Christian and how to deal with sickness. However, there have been many other influences from the outside world that may have, to a greater or lesser extent, shaped how people think, experience their world and live their life as Christians today. Even my own presence among them in the years prior to the research and during the focus groups may have contributed to their perspectives. No theology falls from the sky. The study is a snapshot of how Lele Christians, who were at this time considered mature in their faith, thought about sickness and healing from their current Christian perspective.

With all this said and as this example of research among the Lele has shown, there is value in taking a step back as someone who comes from the outside, especially when working among a group of Christians where a number of mature Christians are capable of providing, together, theological and practical guidance for their own people. My role in this endeavour was that of a facilitator, moderator and catalyst for theological reflection and discussion.¹¹ I had made it very clear at the beginning of each focus-group meeting that the purpose of the conversation was not for me to judge who was a good Christian (a role sometimes taken by or assigned to missionaries), but that they had been selected as people who others saw as good examples in their Christian life. I had committed to learning from them and proved this by later including their ways of dealing with the issue of sickness and healing as positive examples in my preaching.

Another contribution I made was that I initiated the discussion and chose the topic at the beginning. Schreiter (2015: 187–188) cautions missionaries when he asks what areas they are investigating. Some issues might be of interest to people who look at a certain context from the outside, but not to the Christians in the context themselves. As for myself, having lived among the Lele for years, I was aware through conversations with local Christians that the use of traditional healing approaches raised questions for Christians and their loyalty to Christ.¹² By taking the initiative to discuss the topic, bringing people together and facilitating the conversations, I played a part in theological reflection and the development of theology without being coercive or dominant. In the focus-group discussions, I sometimes cautiously pointed out where I perceived inconsistencies or contradictions in what the participants said or asked for clarification while, at the same time, always trying to discover their own structure and processes of thinking and reasoning.

If missionaries want to connect God with people, they must do so by ensuring that people understand God’s Word and interact with it through facilitated conversations (Wigg-Stevenson, 2015). These conversations take into account people’s life experience and set it in relation to God’s intent for them as revealed in his Word. In this process, fruitful theological discussions will emerge and theology will be developed.

Conclusion

The methodological set-up of research projects – especially if carried out by researchers from the West – must reflect the reality of World Christianity. There is no room for paternalistic theological dominion, even in the way research questions are put.¹³ At the same time, research has the potential to help local voices to be heard, with faith and practice being reflected on and theology developed in the process of carrying out research. All of these are central concerns for Christian mission.¹⁴

Should Walls’ (1996) imagined visitor from space come to earth any time soon, they will certainly find many diverse and colourful expressions of Christianity. They may also find Christians everywhere who seek to understand God in their context and live faithfully to him. And they may find mission-minded researchers and missionaries with research skills dotted in between, who become catalysts for this reflective process.

Footnotes

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Simon Herrmann

Notes

Author biography

Simon Herrmann worked with Liebenzell Mission International on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, from 2006 to 2018. At the end of his time there, he also graduated with a PhD in Intercultural Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, USA. He spent the following two years in Southeast Asia to complete a Master’s programme in Islamic Studies and has recently returned to Germany. In fall 2020, he started teaching at the Internationale Hochschule Liebenzell while also conducting research at the Liebenzell Institute for Missiological, Religious, Intercultural and Social Studies.

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