Intercultural Theology (Studies in Missiology and Ecumenism)
The worldwide Christianity exists within an abundance of diverse cultural imprints and needs therefore methods or comparative research to decipher these imprints. The majority of Christian women and men lives nowadays (again) out of the so-called “western” world, like it has been during the first 1000 years of Christianity.
The worldwide distribution and cross-cultural condition of Christianity is not the result of coincidental developments in history, but it is already applied in the vision of the early Christian movement to create a community formation between persons beyond ethnical and political borders. To this process which we call today “globalization” Christianity and other religions already made 2000 years ago important contributions.
From these observations a couple of tasks are resulting for the academic self-reflexion of Christianity, e.g.:
- the research on specific cross-cultural types of community formation in which Christianity made innovative contributions to the history of social forms and their link to theological interpretation;
- the comparison with the transmission and expansion of other religions, especially with their transcultural social forms. This enables the theological self-reflection on Christianity to find the own place in the common history of transmission of the religions;
- the academic description of specific imprints on Christianity in its diverse geographical, political, social and economic contexts, including the placement of the own protestant form of Christianity as one contextual form out of many;
- the critique on eurocentric constrictions in the interpretations of Christianity, its history and even its history of transmission, which has only during the last fifth part of its 2000 years lasting history been a transmission because of an european initiative.
- a theological reflexion on the unity and the togetherness of worldwide Christianity (ecumenism), which does not only deal with the exposure to confessional segregations but also with the challenges within an appreciative co-operation among the diverse cultural forms of Christianity.