THE CHRISTIAN WORLD MISSION IN A TECHNOLOGICAL ERA

Van Leeuwen’s book Christianity in World History was read imme- diately upon its publication. Richard Shaull’s comment on its implica- tions for the Christian mission of our time has been read recently. What follows is, by invitation, a comment on both.

On p. 317 of his book van Leeuwen has a brief sentence which may be said to be the heart of his book, prompting as it does his reflections on the presence of God in human history. The sentence runs

The Industrial Revolution has become a kind of irresistible bull- dozer forcing a way for Western civilization into the non-Western areas of the world.

Van Leeuwen rightly discovers that what is constituting this as “one world” is the fact of this phenomenal expansion of western technological civilization and the surrender of all other cultures to the technological fascination and usefulness of what is coming from the West.

We may well agree that on the broad canvas of history this process is irreversible. Manifestly it is of the first importance that the Christian should come to understand the providential ordering of this development and its implication for mission. I would want to go all the way with Richard Shaull in his interpretation of the inwardness of the challenge which contemporary events pose for the Christian Church in the world.

It is in no sense at all to invalidate what Richard Shaull says in his article if three points are made which would seem to be of some real importance if, in accepting the inwardness of this challenge as he has pointed out, we are, in practice, going to do anything about meeting it.

(1) In a recent book Man and his Symbols, conceived and edited by Carl G. Jung, one of the contributors has this passage in a chapter on “Symbolism in the Visual Arts.” Writing of “the existential dilemma of contemporary man” he says

Nietzsche.. . has given a name to the ‘dreadful void’ in his saying ‘God is dead.’ Without referring to Nietzsche, Kandinsky wrote in On

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the Spiritual in Art : ‘Heaven is empty. God is dead.’ A phrase of this kind may sound abominable. But it is not new. The idea of the ‘death of God’ and its immediate consequence, the ‘metaphysical void,’ had troubled the minds of 19th century poets in France and Germany. It was a long develop- ment that, in the 20th century, reached the stage of open discussion and found expression in art. The cleavage between modern art and Chris- tianity was finally accomplished.

He continues

Dr. Jung also came to realize that this strange and mysterious pheno- menon of the death of God is a psychic fact of our time, In 1937 he wrote : ‘I know - and here I am expressing what countless other people know - that the present time is the time of God’s disappearance and death.’ For years he had observed the Christian God-image fading in his patient’s dreams - that is, in the unconsciousness of modern man. The loss of that image is the loss of the supreme factor that gives life meaning.

If what that quotation says is true, and it is difficult to doubt it, then the Christian mission is facing a crisis in depth which needs to be taken very seriously in estimating the probabilities, viewed with our human limitations, of any future programme such as Richard Shaull proposes. For the “metaphysical void” is present among Christians and not only among Ihose who have abandoned the Christian faith. And this is one direct result of mankind’s technological triumphs. For multitudes God is dead because he does not appear to be necessary. It is, indeed, the supreme merit, as it is the missionary significance, of Dr. Robinson’s book Honest to God that it seeks to grapple with a real situation. It is arguable that the grappling is inadequate. But far too many of his critics have been seemingly quite unaware of the real human situation today -- what happens when men believe that God is dead.

I suggest that this is a crisis in depth for the Christian Church. It may well be the real long-term value of van Leeuwen’s book that he insists that this technological civilization of ours is a providentially- ordered development. In this way the Christian can take a positive attitude towards it, and towards all scientific development, and so mobilize spiritual resources for those “frontier” initiatives of which Richard Shaull writes so forcefully. But such mobilization will not take place if we shut our eyes to the existential situation within the Christian community as well as outside it.

A supplementary point may be made here which again in practical experience may have its bearing on the Christian mission. The response of religious cultures, such as those of Asia, to the bull-dozing of which

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van Leeuwen speaks, may be a most vigorous reaction, at least for a time. When men are really frightened they revert to old and tried fundamental securities, even if with half their minds they no longer believe them. It would be a rash assumption to take it for granted that the religious cultures of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are on the brink of collapse. Van Leeuwen’s book has an eschatological perspective, and rightly so, for that is the essential Christian perspective. But the eschaton, in this particular sense, may be a very long time ahead.

The Christian mission, even while it is in sympathetic relationship with the young revolutionaries of the technological age in Asia and Africa may well have to contend with a religious renaissance of these ancient religious cultures, which will prove more resistant than ever.

In passing may I register the hope that in all Christian writing about other religions and religious cultures we once and for all abandon the use of the words “non-Christian” in referring to them. What is signscant about them, what for the Christian ought to be the key to their under- standing, is not that they are “non-Christian” but that they represent the positive hopes and aspirations of men who have still to discover the universal relevance of Jesus Christ. This matter of language is no detail, To think of what a person is is spiritually more creative than to think of him as what he is not.

(2) My second point is prompted by another book read recently, a book which deals with a very different field of knowledge and experience from that dealt with by van Leeuwen. In GeneruZ Jack’s Diary, 1914-1918, edited and introduced by John Terraine, we have the reflections of a serving soldier who was in the front-line almost without respite except when out of action for six months as a result of a serious wound. He was an officer of the line and only achieved the rank of a Brigadier- General a few months before the war ended.

His day-to-day reminiscences are interesting because he not only records what happened but reflects on its meaning. At one point he has what seems to me a very important observation. He is writing of the need, for regimental morale to be maintained in the monotony of trench warfare, of always having a number of men going out prospecting the enemy’s position. In a word pioneering by some is indispensable for the morale of the whole. But at the same time he insists that the “pioneers,” those probing the enemy’s position, can only function satisfactorily against the background of a regiment observing the strictest and highest discipline in the course of its largely routine activities.

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The moral of that for the mission of the Church would seem to be that while we must encourage all those forms of pioneering which Richard Shaull advocates, and I would underline the word all, they will only be successful against the background of a Christian community whose “routine” life is at concert pitch. And this inescapably involves some external form. In circumstances of emergency Christians can operate from “house churches” and not miss their cathedrals. In cir- cumstances of emergency Christians can survive without ministry or sacraments. If for all Christians future history is to be one long emer- gency then no doubt we must be prepared for a “form” of existence for which history offers no precedent. The Bible certainly offers no precedent. The exiled Israelites might have no central sanctuary, might have no opportunity to offer sacrifices. But they invented the Synagogue. Some form of “institution” is inescapable if the Church is to be “visible.”

What is most important for Christian thinking is surely the realization that the Church has more than one function to perform. It has indeed to penetrate the world and witness in the world to the purpose of God. Richard Shaull has pointed out ways in which this can be done. But the Church has also to build up its members. The Church is not only an army on the march, let alone only a widely diffused Maquis, a com- pany of franc-tireurs. The Church is also a hospital for those being healed from sin, a community in which men and women grow to be saints.

For all these reasons the time is overdue when writers about the Church’s mission in the world cease to talk as if the Church can, qua institution, discharge its total missionary task. What is most urgently needed is an interpretation of structure which sets a premium upon flexibility and decentralization, and makes provision for a maximum freedom for individual and groups to respond to particular inspirations of the Holy Spirit. When the authorities of the individual churches, and of the ecumenical movement, do this ungrudgingly and unfearfully, there may well come a wholly new release of spiritual energy such as will be necessary if even a fraction of Richard Shaull’s vision is to be realized. It can be safely assumed that behind this encouragement of freedom for initiative there will continue the proper institutional life of the Church.

(3) The third point which perhaps calls for some consideration is prompted by Richard Shaull’s statement about ecumenical relationships between the churches of the West and those of Asia and Africa that

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we have moved a long way from the paternalism of a former era toward a relationship of church with church on a basis of equality. It is encouragingly true that there is a genuine consciousness in some

missionary circles of the West, but only some, that paternalism is otiose in a world self-conscious nationalism. Progress toward a more general acceptance of this fact is, however, still slow. What is more serious is the amount of wishful thinking generated in ecumenical circles about the “relationship of church to church on a basis of equality.” Let me be brutally frank : “equality” is moonshine, as between persons, unless both parties are equally open to receive friendly criticism from each other. The same applies to churches. How much readiness is there on the part of Asian and African churches, and individual churchmen, to receive constructive and friendly criticism from the churches of the West, whether at the top official level or at the level of the local churches where the relationship is between a local Christian leader and a foreign mission- ary? As long as the foreigner has to “fall over backwards” in being polite and sensitive and dare not point out what is lacking in a local situation, while there are no inhibitions from the other side, there is no “equality.” This is a far more serious matter than discrepancies in economic resources.

Richard Shaull puts his finger very surely on the other reasons which may raise queries as to this likelihood of many of the churches of Asia and Africa being engaged on the new frontiers. They are heavily burdened with the incubus of our western institutions. Alas, they love to have it so. That is part of the problem.

I think that these three points merit some attention. But I would reiterate that the main burden of Richard Shaull’s article, as of the argument in van Leeuwen’s book, has my vote. The points raised here are complementary and not contradictory either to the article or to the book. But I would end on a hopeful note.

There is much evidence that an increasing number of individuals and groups are understanding the contemporary situation and are coura- geously exploring this new world in which a technological civilization is being “bull-dozed” into countries hitherto the preserve of age-old religious cultures. Such individuals and groups are to be found widely distributed in Asia and Africa, in Latin America, as well as in the West. It is perhaps prophetic and providential that so many of them have arisen spontaneously and owe nothing to the direction of ecclesiastical authorities !