|
subscrIBE / Renew / current issue / previous issues / Advertise International
Bulletin of |
||||
|
OCTOBER 2007 [31:4] On Page [169]
Mission
and Mammon What are Western missionaries to do with the highly pliable, contextually framed, but still deadly sin of greed—the insistence on personal entitlement to more than enough, in contexts where neighbors have less than enough—when by most prevailing standards of adequacy they bear conspicuous personal witness to the Good News of plenty? In this issue of the IBMR we explore this question and others, all arising from the complex interstices of mission and mammon. Can the good intentions of an end user sanctify or at least mitigate the moral taint of a benefactor’s ill-gotten gains? Can one generation be held accountable for the sins of its ancestors, from whose evils it is a direct beneficiary? And what is the relationship between material possessions and one’s personal, ecclesiastical, or cultural identity? There are no easy answers to such questions. [171] Missions
and Money: Affluence as a Western Missionary Problem . . . Revisited
SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE My interest in the relational dynamics flowing from material and social disparity in close social proximity was probably inevitable. As a child of Canadian missionary parents, I spent my formative years in Ethiopia, where I absorbed the values, assumed the entitlements, and confronted the burden of missionary material and social privilege. The boarding school that I attended stood as an unapologetic bastion of Western privilege, with Ethiopians permanently relegated to kitchen, laundry, garden, and custodial roles. At the tinkle of a small bell at the head table, a bare-footed servant would patter in from the kitchen, white apron barely concealing his own threadbare clothes. The school was surrounded by a chain-link fence, intended to keep the entitled in and the unentitled out. Aware that we were members of a privileged superior class, we came to accept, expect, and sometimes demand the obsequious deference shown to us by "them," including adults. In our play and discussion, Ethiopians were subjects of curiosity, sometimes the objects of ridicule, and occasionally admired for their stoicism in the face of poverty and persecution; but they were seldom friends, and even more rarely social peers. [176] Possessions, Wealth, and the Cultural Identities of Persons: Anthropological ReflectionsSherwood G. Lingenfelter SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE The practice of mission and how we use money in missions flow fundamentally from the identities and values of persons engaged in ministry. In this article I argue that missionary identity and values are derived from the socioeconomic systems in which they were born and nurtured. I approach this topic from three distinct perspectives: a comparative economic framework, a comparative sociological framework first articulated by Mary Douglas,2 and some reflections on social and personal power.3 The article moves from a global economic perspective to considerations of particular social and individual values and behavior. The purpose of these reflections is to provide a framework from which to understand how the link between material possessions and identities bears on the ethical and practical issues of gross material inequity and the uses of money for the mission of the church in the twenty-first century. It will not be possible here to do more than to sketch the framework in outline. See my Transforming Culture for examples and case studies of ways the framework can be applied to enlarge missiological understanding. [182] New Priority for Churches and Missions: Combating CorruptionEdward L. Cleary, O.P. SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE The International Conference on Combating Corruption, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was held at Rome in June 2006. Eighty experts from around the world attended, as did seventeen ambassadors of various countries accredited to the Holy See. It was the first such conference, but it was not the opening bell in a new fight. Rather, it was recognition of what has been going on for the last few years at the grassroots and national levels. [188] The Economies of Temple Chanting and Conversion in ChinaEric Reinders SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE "We have always found the most earnest idolaters make the best Christians; indifference is the hardest thing to combat," said a Miss Harrison of the Church Missionary Society in 1910.1 Active but low-ranking Buddhists and Taoists were special targets of missionaries in China because they were perceived as easier to convert than those who were simply indifferent to any religion. So-called heathenism was widely thought to be a expression of an inherent human impulse toward God, however misguided. [190] Major Consolidation of Digital Missionary Photo ArchivesJon Miller SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE At the University of Southern California, the Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the USC Libraries’ Digital Archive have received a grant from the Getty Foundation to create a federation of two important repositories of historical missionary photographs. One of these, BMPix, is the collection held by the Basel Mission Archive in Switzerland, available at www.bmpix.org. The other is the "collection of collections," called the Internet Mission Photography Archive (IMPA), online at www.usc.edu/impa. Bringing these two repositories together under the permanent oversight of the USC Libraries will greatly enhance their long-term viability and their value as research assets for the scholarly community. [194] Commentary: Tainted Mammon and Righteous CausePaul Jenkins SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE When I became an adult in the Britain of the 1950s, the moral world of money seemed simple. Capital belonged to the people—and indeed many of the key "means of production" had been "nationalized." The people’s capital was administered, directly or indirectly, by the people’s representatives. And so our legitimate rulers provided the finance, for example, to run a meritocracy, in which talented young people from deep in the shires could win scholarships to the best universities. If they had the ambition to influence the way society would develop, they went in for careers in academia, the civil service, or a government corporation like the BBC, doing so in the belief that both salary and project money would be forthcoming as was appropriate for a public service, with no compromise between principle and expediency. [195] Edinburgh
II—A New Springtime for Ecumenical Mission?
SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE Anniversaries are occasions for remembrance, thanksgiving, and celebration. They are mostly of short-term significance, providing a brief emotional high, to be enjoyed and then forgotten. But one-hundredth-anniversary celebrations are generally more significant because they are less common and usually give rise to higher expectations. A centennial anniversary may become the occasion for significant reflection, planning, and renewal. [200] My Pilgrimage in Mission Theo Sundermeier SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE I was born in the small town of Bünde, in the Westphalia region of Germany, on August 12, 1935. The religious life of this town was affected by the revivalism of the nineteenth century. An encyclopedia from this period mentions Bünde as "well known for its sausages, cigars, and mission festivals." My father, a committed member of the YMCA and a presbyter in the church, in fact owned a cigar factory. The main event every year in the town, and the high point for me of the church year, was the annual mission festival, which attracted thousands of visitors. Also, smaller meetings were held at other times during the year on the surrounding farms. My three brothers and I were in the church’s brass band; during the large festivals we would play at all the services. [204] The
Legacy of Francis Thomas McDougall
SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE Although only a minor prophet in the record of Anglican mission history, Francis Thomas McDougall (1817–86) deserves more than honorable mention in the continuing assessment of nineteenth-century European missionary attitudes. Destined by birth and upbringing to an active and adventurous life, with a combative nature that rendered dialogue irksome, an intolerant streak that made him a difficult colleague, and a melancholic hypochondria that resulted in his being galvanized more by physical danger than by theological challenge, McDougall could never have become the stereotypical Victorian missionary. Yet in his life he mirrored many of the contradictions inherent in the nineteenth-century missionary movement, although—unlike his brother-in-law, John W. Colenso—he could never decisively or satisfactorily resolve the challenges his missionary experiences posed to his theology. [206] Noteworthy [210] Book ReviewsSUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE [221] Index (Volume 31) SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE [224] Book Notes SUBSCRIBERS: READ MORE
|
|||
|
Get
the Missions Research Advantage! For more
information, contact: International Bulletin of
Missionary Research
|
||||
