Contextualization for philosophers

We've established the fact of the necessity of prayer, that there are "spiritual strongholds" or plausibility structures that hard work, boldness and theodicy cannot penetrate.

We have seen the difference that context and the individual make. E.g. while there are surely similarities, I doubt that one would share the gospel in exactly the same way with a Samurai of 16th century Japan as with a Manhattan model of the 21st.

Lesslie Newbigin explains that contextualization “directs attention to the actual context, shaped by the past and open to the future, in which the gospel has to be embodied now."

France’s past (see RELIGIOUS SMOKE blogs) explains its paucity of evangelicals (1 in 200 French people claim to be evangelical; 1 in 3 Americans make the same claim). Christ must, therefore, be shared in ways that the French understand in light of, and in spite of, their past in order to help them journey toward a relationship with Jesus in the present, so that they might look forward to intense enjoyment with Him in the future.

By the way, contextualization needs to be applied everywhere, whether it be the Czech Republic, the Central African Republic, Canada, S. Carolina or S. California. The gospel never changes, but the way it is presented must be tailored to the person in light of her/his culture and context.
So let's look at contemporary France's context. It was founded upon the thinking of philosophers reacting to religious carnage. These secular prophets excoriated the monarchy and Catholic authorities for their atrocities. While the philosophers denounced religious abuses they freely borrowed Christian concepts and ideals, stripping them of Christianity (and later God) to form the intellectual foundation upon which many Europeans build their lives today.

The following is an overview of a few major philosophical voices and the foundation stones that they laid. From their writings one sees that much European thinking has been staunchly anti-religious since 18th century when the United States became one nation under God. The philosophers' teachings are a major cause of challenges in evangelism and disciple making in France today.

We will pick up the story in the 16th century…

THE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS REACTED AGAINST THE CARNAGE ENGENDERED BY RELIGION WEDDED TO MONARCHICAL POWER
More than 4,000 Huguenots (believing French Protestants) were murdered in Paris during the Saint Bartholomew massacre (April 24, 1572). Neither women, nor children were spared. “The bodies, stripped naked, were thrown into the Seine,” a nationwide persecution ensued.

The French monarchy and Roman church joined forces in slaughtering the Huguenots

A Catholic neighbor invited my wife to see the film "La Reine Margot" which depicts the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. Afterward she exclaimed to Louise, "Why did I have to pick this film to see with you (a Protestant) ?!"

Louis XIV abrogated the Edict of Nantes (1685) and sent out the dragoons, the “booted missionaries.” “These soldiers lodged themselves in Protestant homes and exerted immense pressure so that the people would return to the religion of the king: theft, violence, rape were the means used by these ‘converters.’”

King Louis XIV

The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV

Protestant "pastors had two weeks to leave France, while the other Protestants were no longer permitted to leave France, under pain of the galleys or prison.” It is said that when the Huguenots emigrated France lost its soul.

PHILOSOPHERS CREATED A FRENCH FOUNDATION BASED UPON CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLES PURGED OF GOD
Philosophers decried the harshness and the Wars of Religion. Christendom (the dominant religion wedded with the political power of the Monarchy) incontrovertibly proved itself to be murderous and was “denounced as superstition.” The stage was thus set for the French Revolution.

The storming of the Bastille

Even though the French Revolution and the subsequent revolutions it catalyzed attempted to make breaks from religion, many Christian concepts were nonetheless retained; Christian ideals simply assumed secular forms. Historian Kenneth Scott Latourette comments:

“It is highly significant that this series of revolutions had its beginning and its early course in Christendom and that the ideas which inspired and shaped them had their birth and initial formulations in lands and among peoples which for centuries had been under the influence of Christianity. Many of the revolutionary programmes repudiated that faith, but most and perhaps all of them embodied ideals and conceptions which had come through it. They took only part of what had been given by Christianity and to a lesser or greater extent distorted what they took, but even when they did not recognize or acknowledge their source, they were deeply indebted to it."

The French Revolution freed the people from the domination and abuses of the allied French monarchy and Roman church. The revolutionaries dealt with those institutions in a way that resembled Old Testament judgments and established a secular state based upon Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment values. The resulting French Republic was designed to promote the Rights of Man and to protect its people from religion.

Robespierre, on the eve of the apex of the Terror (June 8, 1794), formally introduced the worship of the Supreme Being. Though his brand of spirituality did not last long, deism became the predominant belief of the Enlightenment with the philosophers as its high priests.

Robespierre and "the Terror"

Voltaire (1694-1778), denounced the religious hypocrisy of his day. In "Candide or optimism" (required reading in many French high schools today), the main character was interested in seeing the priests of the country of Eldorado. The old man with whom he spoke replied, “My friend, said he, we are all priests.” Candide retorts, “What! You have no monks who teach, who argue, who govern, who plot, and who burn the people who are not in agreement with them?”

Voltaire described the reputation of the religious leaders of his day; he was instrumental in transitioning France from Catholicism to deism, from the pre-modern era ruled by religious tradition, to the modern era ruled by reason. The Enlightenment accelerated, and its “deadening effects” in the religious sphere spread like a black plague.

The French title of Voltaire's book is "Candide ou l'optimisme" (Naïve or optimism)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) spoke of the “ardent missionaries of atheism” of the late 18th century. Then the 19th century saw “movements which seemed to threaten the very existence of the faith” in Europe. People increasingly put their belief in Man, in reason, in progress.

In "Reveries of the Solitary Walker," Rousseau presented his revelation that “man is naturally good and it is by these institutions alone that men become evil!”

August Comte (1798-1857) birthed Positivism, “which for many intellectuals… became a substitute for Christianity.” Positivism was the belief in “an invincible law of the progress of the human mind, to replace theological beliefs or metaphysical explanation.” It had “place neither for ‘subjective knowledge,’ nor for the idea that truth might vary according to its context.”

Positivism's hope was placed in politics that were “founded on a rational organization of society, as well as on a new religion without God: the religion of Humanity.” Positivism presupposed that “humans always act rationally.” This was the twilight of religion; the light of science had come. And the Enlightenment juggernaut plowed through the West.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) continued the deification of Man. Nietzsche's superman, Zarathustra, guided Western people into the 20th century declaring, “God is dead."


HOW'S YOUR CONTEXTUALIZATION?

One might react to all of this saying, "So what? Nobody reads philosophy anyway!" Not so. It is part of my cultural context. As a senior in French public high school my son, a music major, had six hours of philosophy per week (four hours on Monday morning!). His required reading list includes Voltaire, Rousseau, Zola, Diderot, Camus, Sartre and others.
If you are American, you been heavily influenced by Benjamin Franklin's pragmatism and other Founding Fathers writings (whether or not you have read their works). If you are an American evangelical, how much are you influenced by writers such C.S. Lewis, Ravi Zacharias, Bill Hybels, Lee Stroble, Rick Warren, Rob Bell, Donald Miller or others? That is how much Europeans are influenced by the philosophers.

The philosophers' staunchly secular teachings, paradoxically based upon and hostile towards Christendom, are accepted by most Europeans. The philosophers' defense against religious atrocities was to embed secular armor into people's intellect through their teachings.

In light of this French and European context, Stuart Murray says, “In post-Christendom evangelism and discipling will both take longer. Evangelism will start further back and move more slowly;… Patience is essential for mission and community-building after Christendom."

By the way, how is your contextualization?
My context causes people to be harder toward the gospel because in my city "Christians" burned Protestants at the stake.
Are you attempting to keep the gospel unadulterated while tailor-making its presentation to your interlocutor? (see 1 Corinthians 9:19-23; Colossians 4.3-6).

Are the non-Christians around you really understanding who Christ is and what life with Him could be like? Or have you been ignoring cultural elements that keep your unbelieving friends from wanting to know Him?

How might you tailor your presentations of the good news in order to help them become better acquainted with Jesus?

Sources (you can purchase the philosophy books mentioned above at www.barnesandnoble.com) :
Lesslie Newbigin, “Can the West be Converted?” 2.
Bost, 90, 142;
Denimal, 59-60, 63-64;
Latourette, 765-769, 1004, 1008, 1010, 1015, 1063;
Voltaire, “Candide ou l’optimisme,” 315.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire," 58, 206;
La Philosophie de A à Z (Paris: Hatier, 2000), 78.Friedrich Nietzsche, "Ainsi parlait Zarathoustra," 116-117.
Stuart Murray, "Church After Christendom," 156.

European / American: it's all the same?

When I have described to American evangelicals the intellectual and emotional resistance that one faces when sharing the gospel in France, I have on a number of occasions gotten the response, “Yes, isn’t it terrible. It is like that here in the States too.” Well, is it really?

My wife was in the courtyard of our apartment complex talking to the daughter of a neighbor. The seven-year-old exclaimed, “But in light of the suffering in the world, how can you say that God exists?!” Now how many American seven year-olds do you know who would respond this way at the mere mention of the name of God?

That neighbor has now become a believer but her daughter continues to wrestle with questions and doubts concerning a relationship with God through faith

As I mentioned in the earlier blog entries “RELIGIOUS SMOKE”, the Crusades and the Inquisition irreparably marred the European psyche. At about the same time that the United States was experiencing a tremendous spiritual revival, C.S. Lewis stated:

“Certainly I feel that very grave dangers hang over us. This results from the apostasy of the great part of Europe from the Christian faith. Hence a worse state than the one we were in before we received the Faith. For no one returns from Christianity to the same state he was in before Christianity, but into a worse state; the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress.”(“Letters,” 89)

C.S. Lewis' "Letters"

In the 16th through 18th centuries Protestant believers fled to North America to escape European politico-religious persecution. In 1776 on the New Continent, the United States consequently inaugurated religious freedom and separation of Church and State as founding principles to protect people from the tyranny of the power of the monarchy wedded with the authority of the Church.

In 1789 on the Old Continent, France inaugurated state secularism to protect people from the tyranny of the power of the monarchy wedded to the authority of the Church. Seeing no other way to uncouple the authority of the Church from the power of the Monarchy, the French revolutionaries overthrew both, and promoted secularism as the remedy to the problem of Christendom that had been plaguing the Continent for centuries.

The Rights of Man

So France and the United States arrived at two opposing prescriptions to the common menace of Christendom (the majority Church wielding domineering political power). To protect people the United States promoted freedom of religion, Europe promoted philosophical secularism.

The United States is admittedly pragmatic, while Europe is hubristically philosophical. Take for example the American philosopher Benjamin Franklin’s aphorisms: “a penny saved is a penny earned,” and “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

Now compare the tenor of Franklin’s sayings to some European philosophers:

“God is dead” (Nietzsche).
“God’s only excuse is that he does not exist” (Camus).
And “even if God did exist, it would change nothing” (Sartre).

Friedrich Nietzsche

Albert Camus was the second youngest-ever recipient of Nobel Prize for literature in 1957

Jean-Paul Sartre received the Nobel Prize for literature, but refused it.

Just as Jesus and his apostles formed the foundation of Christianity, just as the Founding Fathers formed the foundation of the United States, the Enlightenment philosophers formed the foundation of today’s Europe. And much of Europe's intellectual foundation was resolutely anti-religious, laid to protect people from suffering and death at the hands of Church authorities empowered by the monarchy.

So what? Pragmatically speaking concerning evangelism "one size does not fit all" cultures and in diverse contexts “different strokes for different folks” are in order.

As we all know, one faces obstacles when sharing the good news of Christ even in the United States where 35% of the population is evangelical, where laws were designed to promote religious freedom, where the mindset is pragmatic, where there is a favorable religious past—Christians made significant contributions to societal wellbeing.

How much more then does one encounter obstacles when sharing the good news of Christ in France where only 0.5% of the population is evangelical, where laws were designed to protect people from religion, where the mindset is philosophically anti-religious, where the atrocious religious past has marred Christ's reputation.
In light of these stark differences, it simply makes sense that one might use quicker, more direct approaches when sharing the gospel with an American, than with a European; it takes time for the European to overcome the visceral reaction against Christianity, to work through the intellectual questions, to discover who Jesus really is and what life with Him might truly be like.
C. S. Lewis captured the heart of these differences by simply saying that one does not woo a divorcée as one does a virgin.

Plausibility and prayer

A few years back… I had turned on the 8 P.M. news desperately wanting to get the latest on the reaction of the Muslim world to the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed with a bomb-shaped turban. “R-r-r-ring!” went the phone. “Gr-r-r-r” went I.

Things degenerated from there. The telemarketer was from France Télécom, the phone company touting its new service. “No thank you.” “But this will only take two or three minutes.” “No. Thank you!” “But it is for our premium service.” “I am not interested. Thank you for the offer. Good bye!” “Sigh!” “Click.”

Can you relate to this sort of exchange with telemarketers? Do you “just say no” before you even hear what they have to say? I mean, this was the French equivalent of “Ma Bell” ! Why did I react this way when this was my phone company offering me a way to save money?
Because in 2003, France Télécom was fined 40 million euros over a phone book dispute.
Because in November 2005, France Télécom was fined 80 million euros for obstructing DSL competition.
Because in December 2005, France Télécom’s mobile division “Orange” was fined 256 million euros having conspired with two other companies to hinder competition. (Source: Libération, Nov. 9 and Dec. 1, 2005)
So I just said “no!” because I could not imagine France Télécom offering me anything that was not overpriced, because I did not like the thought that the excess that I had been paying them was paying the fines levied against them, and because they had been hindering me from getting better, less expensive service elsewhere.

In comparison, this animosity is just a smidgen of the visceral reaction that many Europeans have toward the Church.

Due to the Crusades (killing others in the name of Christ) and the Inquisitions (killing Europeans in the name of the Church), Europeans often just say “No!” to any offer to discuss Christianity, Jesus or the gospel.

This refusal to even listen to potentially advantageous information, whether it be less expensive telephone service or the Good News of salvation, is due to the reigning plausibility structure.

Plausibility structure is a grid of unquestioned assumptions through which new beliefs and ideas are filtered.

Plausibility structure is society-wide group-think, the unquestioned, preconceived “givens” in that particular culture. Implausible, unfamiliar ideas, i.e. unbelievable according to that culture’s grid, are filtered out and rejected a priori. Those that are plausible—that agree with the grid—may be kept for further consideration.
For example, the evangelical movement in the United States asks the question, “Why, if there is so much evidence contrary to the theory of evolution, is it still accepted by many as a virtual fact?”

Australian microbiologist Michael Denton, in a book that shook the evolutionary world, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985: 75), opines that it is because of the reigning plausibility structure. He explains:

The fact that every journal, academic debate and popular discussion assumes the truth of Darwinian theory tends to reinforce its credibility. This is bound to be so because, as sociologists of knowledge are at pains to point out… the plausibility of any theory or world view is largely dependent upon the social support it receives rather than its empirical content or rational consistency. Thus the all pervasive affirmation of the validity of Darwinian theory has had the inevitable effect of raising its status into an impregnable axiom which could not even conceivably be wrong.

Evolution became the infallible, accrediting grid through which passed any scientific theory and empirical data prior to consideration. It is the active plausibility structure within science, that which is taken for granted without argument. Results and theories, therefore, are inevitably skewed and colored in favor of evolution.

I have often shared reasons for why evangelism and church planting is difficult in France and Western Europe only to receive the response, “Yes, it’s like that here (in the U.S.) too.”

No, it is not.

The United States did not initiate and, after two centuries of spent gold and spilt blood, lose the Crusade wars. The Church in the United States did not subject its own people, for 650 years, to the fear of torture and death to insure doctrinal purity. Europe has close to a millennium of Christian history riddled with the blood of its own people and carnage instigated by the Church. This affects Europeans in a way that those outside of the old continent can never comprehend.

Today, Europeans freely cite the atrocities of the Crusades (and the ostensibly religious wars in Belfast and the Balkans) and express their disgust at the Inquisitions as reasons to not even consider Christianity; it is no longer plausible.

John Robb, Unreached Peoples Program Director with World Vision, says:

“Satan works… by trapping a people in society-wide presumptions about reality.” In settings where “Christ is not obeyed… such strongholds go unchallenged, sometimes for centuries, gaining strength with every passing generation” (see Perspectives, 145-151).

But God has not left believers without resources to evangelize and plant churches within the European plausibility structure. Prayer is divinely powerful. As the Apostle Paul said:
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. (2 Corinthians 10:4-5 NIV).

I believe that in part, what Robb and the Apostle Paul called “strongholds,” sociologists call plausibility structure. John Robb observes:

Bold, determined spiritual warfare is required to weaken and dislodge these fortresses of presumption which are blockading “the knowledge of God” and denying “the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5). No amount of persuasion can liberate an entire people from such darkness. Prayer is utterly essential.

Would you please consider praying for a missionary in Europe, monthly, weekly or daily? I am deeply grateful to the many faithful pray-ers involved in the spiritual warfare here in Europe and to the intercessory teams that have participated in evangelism and church planting through prayer.

For example, Mary Ellen has been praying for Europe for over 30 years. She wrote:

“Dear Paul, I am thankful that all went well. I woke early Sunday (think I was to pray)…”

Another pray-er wrote:
“Dear Paul, We have been praying…. I still think of our prayers on the Eiffel Tower…you are working with a good team. Tell them that we are praying for their desires to be realized.”

I am convinced that “prayer is utterly essential” and that the good things that are happening in Europe today result as much from the ministry of intercession, as from the faithful efforts of the Christian workers in Europe. So thanks to all of you who faithfully pray for Europe!

RELIGIOUS SMOKE (part2): The Inquisitions

If the Crusades were a European Vietnam (that lasted almost as long as the United States has been in existence), the Inquisition was the McCarthy era to the 10th power.
During the “red scare” of the 1940s, Americans of various stripes and stations were accused “of political disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence and the use of unfair investigatory or accusatory methods in order to suppress opposition;” “those accused during the McCarthy trials had nearly no (sic) chance of proving their innocence.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy

Aaron Copeland, my wife’s favorite composer, Charlie Chaplin and others, were victims of McCarthyism.

The McCarthy trials have been called “witch-hunts,” an “American Inquisition.” This inquisition essentially lasted from 1950-1956, and those six long years profoundly impacted the way Americans view government and personal freedom.

The Catholic Inquisitions lasted 650 years and profoundly impacted the way Europeans view Christianity and the Church. There were four distinct though related Inquisitions: Medieval (begun by the Pope in 1184 to control heresy in Southern France), Spanish, Portuguese and Roman.

The Roman Inquisition (begun in 1542) blacklisted all of Galileo’s works condemning him for "grave suspicion of heresy" due to the influence of Copernicus. Thus in many Europeans’ minds today, Christianity remains associated with self-preserving obscurantism.

Galileo's trial

The Spanish Inquisition was notoriously grisly (and fertile as it gave birth to the Peruvian and Mexican Inquisitions). In 1478 under King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, subsequent to the Christian recapture of Spain (see previous blog: the Crusades), the Inquisition was mandated to convert Muslims and Jews to Christian faith; torture was a legitimate means to gain information and lead heretics to repentance (though at times they were thus persuaded to confess, but not permitted to recant).

Disembowelment

A Catholic encyclopedia unreassuringly attempts to debunk Inquisition fiction by presenting the facts:

“Curiously enough torture was not regarded as a mode of punishment, but purely as a means of eliciting the truth.… The general rule ran that torture was to be resorted to only once. But this was sometimes circumvented -- first, by assuming that with every new piece of evidence the rack could be utilized afresh, and secondly, by imposing fresh torments on the poor victim (often on different days), not by way of repetition, but as a continuation.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm

The Wheel

Now to be pragmatically cynical about this, if the Inquisition had only condemned Europe’s enemies, I doubt that it would have become the pejorative term that it is today. “All’s fair in… war.” But the Roman Church also unleashed the Inquisition on its own people, the Europeans, in order to ferret out religious unorthodoxy through a “reign of violence, terror and torture” (Monty Python).

The Judas Chair

As under McCarthyism, Europeans could be turned in on hearsay. But unlike McCarthyism, the Inquisition was permitted to employ torture to extract confessions, utilizing methods such as the Judas chair, the head vice, the pear, the wheel, the stake, burning at the stake, sawing, disembowelment. (I’ll let you do the research on these techniques, but be warned that they carry an R-rating.) The Inquisition was a religious Gestapo, the mere mention of which struck terror in Europeans’ hearts.

(I can sense a bit of the revulsion that today's Europeans might feel about the Inquisition. Do you remember the old Vincent Price movie, “the Pit and the Pendulum”? That was set in the Inquisition years. I saw it as a kid. Just last year I was reading “Ten Great Mysteries” by Edgar Allan Poe. Well, I only read nine and left “Pit and the Pendulum” for stronger stomachs.)

When a person was found to be a heretic, the Church turned the apostate over to secular authorities for punishment because “the Church does not shed blood.” Thus in many Europeans’ minds, the Church is viewed as the worse kind of hypocrite, having coerced secular authorities to act as its executioner.

(found on www.northernsun.com)

The following is an authorized (with imprimatur) Catholic Encyclopedia's attempt to put the Inquisitions in their context so that the 21st century reader might better understand how such things could have happened:

“Moderns experience difficulty in understanding this institution, because they have, to no small extent, lost sight of two facts.
On the one hand they have ceased to grasp religious belief as something objective, as the gift of God, and therefore outside the realm of free private judgment; on the other they no longer see in the Church a society perfect and sovereign, based substantially on a pure and authentic Revelation, whose first most important duty must naturally be to retain unsullied this original deposit of faith. Before the religious revolution of the sixteenth century these views were still common to all Christians; that orthodoxy should be maintained at any cost seemed self-evident.”
“The dogmatic teaching of the Church is in no way affected by the question as to whether the Inquisition was justified in its scope, or wise in its methods, or extreme in its practice. The Church established by Christ, as a perfect society, is empowered to make laws and inflict penalties for their violation. Heresy not only violates her law but strikes at her very life, unity of belief; and from the beginning the heretic had incurred all the penalties of the ecclesiastical courts.” http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08026a.htm

I will allow you to draw your own conclusions from the above text, but I know absolutely no European who views the Church as “a perfect society” due in part to the obscurantism, hypocrisy, abuse of unbridled power, torture and carnage of the Inquisition.

In the 16th century, believers were burned at the stake in Dijon were I live. This sort of religious smoke clouds people's understanding of the gospel even today.

If just six years of McCarthyism imprinted political paranoia upon the American psyche, try to imagine this...

Imagine, if you dare, that an evangelical doctrinal police force had existed since the birth of the United States until now, and that this evangelical gestapo will float from California to Texas to Florida to New York over the next 400 years. In order to keep the faith pure, and based upon allegations of doctrinal deviation by anonymous witnesses, they will continue to arrest, torture and turn people over to the civil authorities for capital punishment.

Now in the year 2410, what sort of thoughts and feelings might your descendants have concerning the Church and Christianity?

That might be how the Spaniards felt about the Church and Christianity by 1834 when the Inquisition finally came to an end. And so the Inquisition explains in part why today, Spaniards and other Europeans appear to be so resistant to the gospel in a way that is inconceivable to Americans.

So would you pray right now?
Pray that the light of the Good News would blow through the religious smoke of the Crusades and Inquisitions; pray that these people who have suffered under the heavy hand of Religion would nonetheless be drawn to Jesus Christ.