Jenkins,
author of a recent book entitled The Next Christendom,
has evidently gained some notoriety for his views on the demographic
changes currently taking place in world Christianity. These
are the same changes that Andrew Walls described in his article
in the Princeton Seminary Bulletin in 2001
under the title, " From Christendom to World Christianity:
Missions and the Demographic Transformation of the Church."
(reviewed in HeRB 1). Where Walls celebrates current demographic
trends, however, Jenkins fears them, and the tone of this
article is alarmist, heralding the possible demise of Christianity
as we know it in the face of the rise of what he calls "Southern
Christianity." It is also a gem so far as religious polemics
are concerned.
Jenkins'
article discerns a growing, deepening rift between liberal,
progressive "Northern Christianity" and reactionary,
spiritualist Southern Christianity. This split is fueled by
the undeniable fact that the demographic center of the Christian
faith has shifted from its old European-North American axis
to a new and more diverse Asian, African, and Latin American
one. What Jenkins fears is that the liberal North will be
swamped by the illiberal South, swamped that is by the fact
of burgeoning southern and dwindling northern Christian constituencies.
He has his statistics in place, supported by a flock of scary
examples, mostly taken from "primitive" Africa,
which he parades across the pages of his alarm. The whole
presentation, as well done as it is polemically however, is
also a gaggle of false assumptions and sweeping generalizations.
Those
assumptions and generalizations begin with the author's focus,
which is primarily on the Catholic Church. Although the article
is ostensibly about world Christianity, much of the contents
revolve around a contrast between northern Catholicism's desire
to reform the church and southern Catholicism's anti-reformist,
anti-abortion moralism and hierarchicalism. International
Catholic power politics, thus, underlies Jenkins J fear that
the northern church is about to be inundated by the South.
From time to time, he broadens his focus to include Protestants,
but only to return
47
quickly to a
central anxiety over the future of northern Catholicism's
place on the stage of international Catholic trends. The Orthodox
family of churches is never mentioned at all, and Jenkins
entirely fails to address the question of whether or not the
supposed tension between Catholic liberals in the North and
ultra-conservatives in the South is an accurate measure of
the state of the whole faith across the whole globe. He assumes
it is, but for those of us who are not Catholics, the fear
that Vatican II is being undone by Southern Christianity seems
to be a less immediate issue. The fact that since at least
the 1860s important liberal factions within the American Catholic
Church, in particular, have been out of step with the more
conservative Vatican and the larger church reinforces one
Js sense that Jenkin Js presentation is more melodramatic
than reality warrants. It is questionable, in other words,
that the situation facing contemporary global Catholicism
is really a new or essentially different one. This is not
to deny that there are serious problems facing the Catholic
Church, which may have some impact on the rest of us, but
one cannot but wonder whether or not Jenkins J alarmism is
justified.
Where
the author's questionable assumptions leave off, his grandiose
generalizations take over. Most glaring among those generalizations
is the stereotypical way in which the author treats Northern
and Southern Christianity, so called. Each category encompasses
hundreds of millions of Christians from dozens of nations
and thousands of cultures. Yet, he treats the two sides only
as two discrete, distinguishable objects. The one is progressive,
the other reactionary. The one is enlightened, the other superstitious.
The one is democratic, the other autocratic. And so it goes,
until the reader realizes that, yes, the one is White and
the other is Black (and Brown and Yellow). The ultimately
racialist distinction Jenkins makes between Northern and Southern
Christianity fails because it does not account for the far,
far more complex historical and contemporary realities underlying
the missionary expansion of the faith.
The
distinction between North and South also fails because it
attempts to transform undeniable, global ideological and theological
divisions among Christians into a geographical-ethnic-cultural
division. If we set aside for a moment the labels of North
and South, it is clear that the world's churches are frequently
split between more liberal and more conservative factions
with the conservatives generally stronger
48
in numbers but with the liberals, in some mainline
denominations at least, lodged securely in positions of authority.
It is a split that at times digs a vast chasm between the
members of particular churches and denominations. Jenkins
is entirely wrong, however, in treating this ideological-theological
division as a geographical and cultural category. Pentecostalism,
for example, which he identifies as the engine driving much
of the global ecclesiastical change that he fears, is a widely
popular Northern religious phenomenon, which the North exported
to the South. It is common knowledge, furthermore, that the
so-called mainline churches are in general decline and that
in the United States, in particular, the most demographically
successful churches are conservative, fundamentalist, and
Pentecostal churches. This is as true of white Americans as
it is of the population generally. Viewed historically, again,
there seems to be nothing new or especially startling about
this virtually inherent tension with the Church Universal.
New Testament scholars and historians of the early church
find strong evidence of its presence from the very beginning
of church history. Christians argue. They fight. Sometimes,
they even go to war against each other for reasons that make
little sense to those beyond the pale of the faith. One tragic
contemporary example is the struggle between Catholics and
Protestants in Northern Ireland, which arises historically
out of theological disputes going back to the time of the
Reformation. Ireland, we need to remember, is in the North.
Without in any way making light of the ongoing impact of the
deep divisions within Christianity, one again has to wonder
why all the sudden, dramatic alarm?
The
author, in fact, operates out of an American Christian religious
frame of reference dominated by the rhetoric of the modernist-fundamentalist
split, which emerged into full bloom in American church history
after the Civil War (1861-1865). Informing that rhetoric is
a long-cherished Western dualism that draws an absolute divide
between good and evil across all of creation. God and Satan.
Right and wrong. Truth and falsehood. North and South. Jenkins'
perspective is thus strikingly similar to that of 19th century
Protestant missionaries in Thailand. He claims that Southern
Christianity is anti-progressive and strongly implies that
it is superstitious. He believes that it has been corrupted
by the cultural orientation of Southern peoples, most particularly
in Africa. He describes the terrorism employed by right-wing
African Christian sects, implying (but not stating explicitly)
that their barbarism typifies the nature (or potential nature)
of the whole of Southern Christianity. (One might just
49
as easily draw on the Ku Klux Klan or George Bush to typify
all of American Christianity). He describes the Southern Church
as being primitive and rural in contrast to progressive, urban
Northern Christianity. This is old-time missionary talk of
the most blatant sort, the only thing missing being an overt
contrast between Christian civilization and heathen superstition.
That contrast is implied, nonetheless, throughout the article,
most especially in the author's assumption that Southern culture
is the cause of Southern Christianity's repressive, reactionary
orthodoxy. He explicitly equates Southern Christianity's "anti-intellectual
fundamentalism" with the pressures of Southern culture.
Southern Christianity is reactionary and repressive, in sum,
because of its cultural setting.
What
a strange idea.
Setting
aside the question of whether or not the churches of Africa,
Asia, and Latin America are truly so reactionary as Jenkins
believes, it is still strange that when I walk over to our
local temple at Ban Dok Daeng I am greeted with semi-rural,
culturally conservative, lSouthern L local people who firmly
believe that all religions teach people to be good. They think
that all religions have the same intentions and directions.
They share, that is, a generally held attitude in lowland
Thailand about people of other faiths that is astonishingly
open and enlightened by today's standards. If, in the past,
I wanted to find people who had narrow, negative attitudes
about people of other faiths, I would have had to trot over
to the local church, which has been heavily influenced by
Western missionary Christianity. It was missionary representatives
of lNorthern L Christianity, that is, who taught the lSouthern
L Christians of Ban Dok Daeng a narrow, Western dualistic
attitude about peoples of other faiths. The attitudes that
Jenkins thinks are culturally Asian have been imported into
Ban Dok Daeng, in fact, from the West. We have found in Ban
Dok Daeng that there are local cultural resources available
to deal with the religious prejudices imported into the community
from the North. Primary among those resources is a deep concern
for village unity.
It
is difficult to take Jenkins' alarmism seriously at another
level. His own words, if read with a little less bias, indicate
that the churches of his South are deeply committed to the
Bible, display a strong sense of spirituality, and effectively
minister to people who are living in poverty and under oppression.
They bring physical and
50
mental healing
to people who have little recourse to expensive Western medicines
and psychologists. Indeed, he himself points out certain parallels
between African churches and the early church. Yet, the author
manages to twist even these biblical parallels into lproof
L that the African church is spiritual-istic and backwards,
an indication of the consistent bias he displays against the
non-Western church.
There
is much more to criticize in this article. It typifies mainline
Western Christian attitudes about Pentecostals, heaping the
lot into one massive pile and charging them all with being
the vanguard of a conspiracy to overthrow the Northern Church.
Yet, the author also describes them as being a set of Christians
who reject tradition and hierarchy and even set direct personal
revelations in place of the Bible-characteristics that are
just the opposite of those that are supposed to typify authoritarian
Southern Christianity. Therein lies the problem with Jenkins'
grand, stereotypical scheme. It does not work. It does not
work when, as another example, he repeatedly points to supposed
parallels between the Protestant Reformation and Catholic
Counter-Reformation to the present. It is five hundred years
later, the world has changed almost beyond recognition, and
the cases are not the same.
There
are minor incongruities as well. The author, as one example,
exemplifies the orthodox, reactionary faith of the South in
the person of Francis Cardinal Arinze of Nigeria. Although
affable and articulate, he is also "rigidly conservative
and even repressive" in terms of academic freedom and
orthodoxy. The author states, "In his theology as much
as his social views he is a loyal follower of Pope John Paul
II. Anyone less promising for Northern notions of reform is
difficult to imagine." (page 59). Yes, but isn't the
Pope himself a northern European? You see the confusion, even
in the details and minor points.
In
the end, Jenkins' real concern can only be called petty, in
the face of all of the heat and smoke he generates in the
article. Towards the close of the article, he draws on the
experience of the American Episcopal Church to warn Catholics
of the dire future they face. He cites the case of an African
Anglican archbishop who has been ordaining dissident Episcopalians
as bishops, who then go back to the United States to minister
to conservative congregations that disagree with certain liberal
stands taken by their denomination. That's it. The author
himself points out that nothing in international Anglican
ecclesiastical law prohibits the archbishop's actions.
51
The dire future of Jenkins' nightmares is that conservative
forces among American Catholics will find ways to circumvent
the liberals to gain control over the American church. Southern
Christianity, by his own admission, ministers to tens of millions
of people in need, gives them hope and meaning, provides them
with healing, but the author casts aspersions on these Christ-like
achievements for reasons of patent ecclesiastical politics.
Petty institutional politics is really all that the author
is on about. Who is in power and who Js agenda is taken up
in the Catholic Church is weighed as more significant than
the religious and spiritual needs of the Two-Thirds World.
None
of this is to say that the state of world Christianity is
all rosy and wonderful. Christians are deeply split and treat
each other across denominational and theological lines with
appalling intolerance. Triumphalism is rampant in many quarters
of the church, as is belief in the gospel of success, which
is nothing more than self-aggrandizement in the name of Christ.
Let us, however, not confuse matters by applying to them false
constructs, a narrow dualism, and a petty alarmism. And let
us see that in the midst of all this human confusion and ecclesiastical
nonsense, Jesus of Nazareth is still Good News to a significant
part of our world.
Dirk
Van der Cruysse.
Siam & The West 1500 -1700.
Translated by Michael Smithies. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books,
2002.
This
is a large work for a single volume, running to 565 pages
by the end of the last index. While not precisely a "difficult
read," the writing style of the book does not invite
one to continue apart from a serious motivation to do so on
the part of the reader. Siam & the West, moreover,
is an old-fashioned history book in at least three ways. First,
it harkens back to the grand old days when political and diplomatic
historians dominated professional history and defined how
the rest of us understood the past. Second, the author seems
to see himself as primarily a story-teller; there is relatively
little critical historiographical analysis anywhere in the
book. Third, Van der Cruysse focuses on the splendors and
depravities of the ruling classes, both in Siam and in Europe.
Ordinary people appear here only as nameless slaves, servants,
and soldiers-a part of the backdrop against which the grand
morality play of European and Siamese diplomacy was played
out by Kings, royalty, and priests. It is surely quite acceptable
to write old-fashioned history, however, and the author does
a
52
better than adequate job of putting
the story of Siam's diplomatic relations with the West on
the table.
In
telling that story, the author also relates a substantial
amount of background and "surround" information,
some of it so extensive and detailed that the reader almost
forgets the subject of the book. Whether the details of European
history, in cluding the history of Catholic missions, detract
from the overall story or not depends on the individual tastes
of the reader. While those details distract the reader in
one sense, they also put the emergence of Siam's relations
with Europe into a clear context. To a degree, Van der Cruysse
tells us about the larger world in which Siam found itself
in the 16th and 17th centuries.
One
can find things to complain about. The author, for example,
treats some of his subjects with a snide sarcasm and indulges
in cute asides that add nothing to the quality of his account.
One curious feature, furthermore, is that while the book has
an index of all of the ships mentioned (on the voyages of
diplomats back and forth between Europe and Southeast Asia)
it does not have a subject index. On the other hand, it does
have a good chronology that helps the reader keep events and
details straight.
I
will leave a fuller evaluation of these various aspects of
Siam & the West to those reviewers who are more
qualified to comment on them than I am. I would like to focus
more narrowly on the insights this book gives us into the
history of Christian missions in Siam/Thailand, Protestant
as well as Catholic. Although there is a huge difference between
the historical era described by the author and that of 19th
century Protestant missions, the similarities between the
earlier Catholic and later Protestant missionary movements
are striking. One of the facts of church history in Thailand
today is the dearth of information available on Catholic church
history, whether in Thai or English. Reading Van der Cruysee
suggests the value of having a continuous narrative of Christian
missions in Siam/Thailand from the 16th century down to the
present. Our lack of knowledge of Catholic history (and large
portions of Protestant history), however, means that it would
take an extended research effort to create such a narrative.
53
The
author, to take one important example, links French intentions
to Christianize and gain control over Siam in the 1680s to
Louis XIV's persecution of French Protestants, which began
when he revoked of the Edict of Nantes. The French government,
that is, pursued domestic and foreign policies with a crusader
mentality that combined politics, diplomacy, and religious
concerns focused alike on dissident Christians and heathen
Buddhists. Van der Cruysse, more generally, highlights the
religious intolerance and cultural arrogance that characterized
the Catholic missionaries and their sending agencies in the
period under study. He presents a particularly striking contrast
between the religious attitudes of Siamese Buddhists and the
Catholic missionaries who came to convert them to Christianity.
He observes that each side found the religious views of the
other impossible to understand, but it is the European Catholic
inability to understand Buddhism's tolerance of other view
points that the author highlights and criticizes. Of one encounter
between a Buddhist monk and Catholic priest, the author asks,
"What can a man convinced of believing a unique truth
say to another who is content with his own version of truth,
without questioning that of his interlocutor?" (pages
140-141). He goes on to contend that this "fundamental
misunderstanding" between the two religion's view points,
"was to underlie the relations between France, full of
propagating zeal in the second half of the seventeenth century,
and the serenely Buddhist Siam of Phra Narai." (page
142). Phra Narai was the King at the time of the French ascendency
in Siam. It becomes clear in the course of the book that Christian
zeal fails before Buddhist serenity.
The
contrast between zeal and serenity is, in some ways, an over-simplification
of Buddhist-Christian relations in historical Siam/Thailand.
Still, it does call our attention to the demographic failure
of both Catholic and Protestant Christianity to make inroads
in lowland Thailand, a failure as persistent in the 21st century
as it was in the 17th and 19th centuries. The author's critique
of the Catholic missionaries' failure to understand the Thai
religious mentality applies with equal force to the Protestant
missionary movement as well. Dr. Maen Pongudom, in his landmark
doctoral dissertation comparing Presbyterian missionary strategies
in Thailand to the thinking of the early church fathers, argues
that missionary ignorance of the Thai Buddhism has been a
key factor in the failure to present the Thai people with
a contextually meaningful Christian message.
54
The
author's description of Catholic missions in Siam reveals
other parallells with later Protestant work. One that I find
especially intriguing in light of my own research is the way
in which 17th century Jesuit and 19th century Presbyterian
missionaries both utilized scientific knowledge as a medium
for the communication of their missionary message. In the
case of the Catholics, the Jesuits sent teams of priests trained
in math, astronomy and other sciences to establish centers
of learning in Siam, this on a model that they used previously
in China. Phra Narai, furthermore, seems to have taken as
keen an interest in Western learning in the 1680s as King
Mongkut did 150 years later. The reception the people of France
gave to the diplomatic envoys sent to Siam suggests another,
somewhat quirky parallel. According to Van der Cruysse, France
went through a Siam craze in the 1680s with large crowds mobbing
the Siamese envoys to France whenever they went out in public,
and the French populace displayed a deep curiousity about
everything have to do with these exotics. From the late 1860s,
the people of Chiang Mai and northern Siam displayed strikingly
similar interest regarding the
farang missionaries
until they eventually became used to the Western missionaries'
strange habits, manners, and customs.
One
important contribution the author makes to our understanding
of missionary history is his detailed descriptions of the
Catholic missionary voyages to Siam. The trip out to Siam
was an important time for study and preparation. The long
voyages also include stops in various ports where the prospective
missionaries formed their first impressions of "heathenism."
Van der Cruysse mentions the sometimes touchy relationship
between missionaries and sailors, who became the first objects
of missionary evangelism. Presbyterian missionary families
coming out to Siam in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
had virtually the same experiences until the advent of air
travel, although their ships were much safer, faster, and
more comfortable than those used by French missionaries travelling
in the 1660s and 1680s.
Siam
& the West is not a religious history. It is not
church history. Although the history of the Catholic Church
in Siam, in fact, receives little attention, warranting only
a few asides, the author devotes considerable attention to
the Catholic missionaries to Siam, particularly the French
missionaries, because of their role in the diplomatic events
recounted by the author. The result is that there is not a
little to be gleaned concerning the history of Christian missions
in Thailand, and the author's
55
story
of Siamese and European diplomatic relations offers numerous
insights into the larger history of the Catholic Church in
Siam.
56
