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.