The central figure in the Christian faith is the person Jesus Christ. An obvious statement perhaps, but it establishes a question of how a person who lived over 2000 years ago might be a present and living reality in communities situated within a multitude of diverse cultures. This issue of Jesus Christ’s present embodiment leads to further questions such as representation, localisation, and the type of questions he is understood to answer.
There is, of course, a spectrum of responses to this localisation or contextualisation of Christ. Taking African approaches to naming Jesus Christ as an ‘ancestor’ for example, this is contingent on the understanding and function of ancestors among the different peoples within that massive continent, contingent upon theological approaches to the continuity or discontinuity with the pre-Christian religious or cultural heritage, and contingent upon local concerns regarding improper appropriation of cultural images by Christians.
As one example of this later concern, see the reaction to a Madonna and Child statue placed in the grounds of a Catholic Church in Jharkhand, India. This statue included a traditional sari (white with red borders), Mary with a dark complexion, hair in a bun, and bangles around her wrists, and Jesus was being carried in a sling—all after the fashion of Adivasi women.
For the local Catholic population, many of whom are ‘tribals’, argued that this was simply an example of inculturation and no different from other forms of the cultural representation of Mary seen throughout the world.
By contrast, adherents of the Sarna religion, the traditional religion of the Adivasi, read this statue as an attempt at proselytization. To cite Bandhan Tigga, the chief priest of the Sarna Society: “Showing Mother Mary as a tribal is a part of the larger design to make the tribal population believe that she was from their community and confuse them…It’s an attempt to convert Sarna tribals to Christianity.” Due to the claimed identity of the Sarna religion and tribal cultural identity, such attempts at conversion would amount to cultural genocide. Executive chairperson of Adivasi Jan Parishad, Prem Shahi Munda said, “The number of tribals is reducing every day as they are forced to convert to other religions and we are scared that adivasis would become extinct in the future. We are supporting the protest march to save our culture.” Indeed, the matter escalated to the point of an estimated 10,000-15,000 person strong protest march in Singhpur and the imposition of “section 144” (an order to prohibit the assembly of four or more people in an area) within a 25m radius of the church.
As a further layer to the story, the general comments regarding Christianity and conversion occurred against the background of the increasing interest in Hindu nationalism, the suspicion of forced conversion (including through such activities as Christian social service) and of foreign influence through sending money to India for the purposes of missionary work.
For some local reporting, see:
- Anumeha Yadav, “Adivasi group to agitate for removal of ‘tribal’ Virgin Mary statue,” The Hindu, 28 August 28 2013.
- Deepu Sebastian Edmond, “Virgin Mary as Tribal Keeps Debate Running in Jharkhand,” The Indian Express, 2 August 2013.
- Shaikh Azizur Rahman, “The storm over Virgin Mary statue,“ Al Jazeera, 17 October 2013.
- TNN, “Section 144 imposed as tribal Mary’s statue controversy escalates in Jharkhand,” Times of India, 25 August, 2013.
This example highlights how what Christians might view as a positive and constructive element of the faith, its capacity to be contextualised, is itself embedded within a complex social, cultural, religious and political contexts, each with their own agendas.
The below range of bibliographies highlights the diversity of christologies present within world Christianity: a diversity of method, of questions being asked and answered, and of intent. But as ‘curated’ bibliographies, there are some notable limits.
Note that the texts which deal with world christologies in a ‘summary’ fashion are dominated by white male editors and authors. Aside from the more obvious reasons why this is the case, one of the complaints issued against ‘western’ theological method concerns the forms of control that come via systematisation and harmonisation, a ‘setting of things in relationship’ without reference to the framing which houses and interprets the difference it is investigating. One aspect of this is the trimming of the sharp edges which might not fit within the system. As Jione Havea observes, one impetus behind contextual theology is “transporting and constructing meanings that are relevant in different locations,” and this can include the “tendency to omit the differentiating and excess stuff. In this regard, contextual theologies, in subtle ways, resurrect the drive to harmonize, at the expense of diversity and complexity.” (Jione Havea, “The Cons of Contextuality…Kontextuality,” in Contextual Theology for the Twenty-First Century, Stephen B. Bevans and Katalina Tahaafe-Williams eds. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 38–52, here 47.)
Curated bibliographies can fall into this same trap. Identifying material in terms of geographical ‘region’ can amount to a ‘divide and conquer’ mode: discussions that flow across wide cultural differences become pigeonholed as ‘located’ in a certain place and so—by extension—are deemed to be of limited significance for the project of theology as a whole. It is possible to alleviate this downside of regionalisation by consolidating material around a certain thematic.
The key problem here, however, is the failure to attend to the range of local attitudes towards the particular thematic. For example, should one pursue the question through ‘ancestor’ Christology, we find significant differences between African understandings/cosmologies and Asian discussions located within a Confucian system, and between more theologically conservative and liberal approaches within and across these locations. There is no singular African or Asian approach that might be selected as the detached authority on the subject.
Alongside this lies the question of the methodologies in play and the ends towards which the theologies are directed. If we take Black christologies in the US as an example, these grow out of Black enslavement/liberation, are directed to political ends, and include the significant criticism of Whiteness as seen in Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree (2011). The resulting christologies are powerful political statements, embedded within communities demanding liberation. Reducing these to ‘one form of contextual christological presentation’ falls prey to precisely the critique that they claim: you occupy a position which sufficient privilege to treat these positions in abstraction, and so are yourselves participating in the mechanisms and structures of oppression.
The below bibliographies are ‘curated’, but story they are trying to tell is that world Christian perspectives on christology are not marginal in comparison to more ‘fundamental’ cosmologies or metaphysics underlying Greek and Latin formulations. These formulations are themselves contextual, and any claim to normativity is an act of violence which is anti-Christ.
