ChristianityToday.com article: A fresh call for Christian workers from the West: Americans should focus less on 'Western guilt' and more on sharing the gospel.
Here's just two of many good quotes you'll find in it:
My point is perhaps best summarized in a 2008 article in The Times (UK) by Matthew Parris, a journalist and former British Conservative MP. He reflects on a visit to Malawi, where he grew up as a missionary kid. He confesses that the visit challenged his present ideological beliefs and "has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God." He came to see Christianity as necessary to effect changes in the mindset and culture. He wrote:
"Now a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular ngos, government projects and international aid efforts. These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do. In Africa Christianity changes people's hearts. It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good… . Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted. And I'm afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone, and the machete."
Lamin Sanneh, a Muslim convert to Christianity, made a counterintuitive argument. Formerly at Harvard and now at Yale, Sanneh explored whether the history of Christian missions justifies the Western guilt complex. Did Western missionaries actually help destroy indigenous cultures? He examined the vast Bible translation enterprise and concluded that through the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages, Christian missions actually helped preserve cultures and languages.
As he put it, "Christian missions are better seen as a translation movement, with consequences for vernacular revitalization, religion change and social transformation, than as a vehicle for Western cultural domination." I don't know of any serious scholar refuting Sanneh's thesis.
The very fact of Western guilt may be one of the supreme evidences for the enduring validity of the gospel in the post-Christian West. For it shows that the gospel has the power to shape the conscience of a culture, even when its propositional claims have been forgotten or largely rejected by that culture. Seemingly, despite being abandoned by many Westerners, the gospel continues to simmer in an unquenchable manner in a society that once acknowledged Christ.
Read the whole article here:
ChristianityToday: A fresh call for U.S. Missionaries
