When it comes to creating cultural resistance to the gospel, Hollywood is often a player. There are many talented and upstanding actors and actresses, producers, directors, and so on…so don’t hear what I am not saying. The creativity that whirls around L.A. is remarkable. However, Hollywood is also the face of American Christianity to the world. Places with state religions, like India and Iran, view America as a nation of state religion, though we are most certainly not.  In the eyes of the Rest, the U.S. is a Christian nation.

Richard Gere’s culturally insensitive sweeping and kissing of Shilpa Shetty just throws another log on the fire of non-Western peoples perception of immoral Christianity (see article). What are we to do? Denounce all of Hollywood? Write off Richard Gere?  Gere is a Buddhist, so he has no claim to Christianity, but Buddhist cultures (some are in India) also look down on public display of affection. One wonders just how Buddhist Gere is and how Christian Hollywood he is?  A good question for us to ask ourselves.

How are we to respond to these issues? Do you see a wise way forward?

It appears that Wright’s book on theodicy, “the justification of God” as it pertains to evil and suffering, is gaining more and more attention this side of the pond. Chuck Colson recently added Evil and the Justice of God to his recommended reading list to Breakpoint readers and Wilberforce followers.

R. C. Sproul just offered a review at Reformation 21. I offered a few comments on this post. What are your thoughts?

See also Carson’s helpful review.

The Shan-Dai are an unreached peoples scattered throughout Northern Thailand, Laos, Burma and Southern China. They are folk buddhist, believing in powerful spirits as well as the traditional Buddhist philosophy. Many of these people are oppresed by the Burmese government, displaced from their homeland, and are suffering from poor health and living conditions.

Several mission agencies are working to begin a churchplanting movement among the Shan-Dai, but they need help. Check out www.surehope.net for more information. Several short-term teams will be going to Thailand this summer. Consider Going, Praying, Adopting or Sending but don’t just sit there! Make contact here.

To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Shan-Tai Prayer bulletin contact; maisung@bigfoot.com

With the great demographic shift to the southern hemisphere in terms of evangelical Christianity, the issue of listening to the voices of brothers and sisters from these newly significant areas is a pressing one.  But I want to raise some concerns.

2. The demographic shift may be to the south, but the economic power of Christianity lies stubbornly in America.  This is significant for several reasons:

* it means that theological education, for better or worse, is likely to remain controlled by America (insitutions, books, journals, magazines all require money — and if you don’t have the capital, sheer numbers of people are less relevant).

* it means there is a very great danger of the old imperialism and paternalism of previous generations simply co-opting the language of cultural sensitivity while continuing with business as usual.  Cultural sensitivity, like all cultural phenomena, can easily be processed through the three `c’s of the modern West: commercialisation, commodification, and consumerism.   When it does this, it ceases to be a critical force and becomes simply one more product in the cultural marketplace, internalised and emasculated.   Thus, putting `Worldwide’ or `International’ in the title of an organisation which is funded by Americans and basically run by Westerners does not make the organisation truly international or worldwide.   There seems to be a problem when church leaders give lectures on listening to brothers and sisters from the Third World when said leaders have never taken the time or had the courtesy to learn the languages of those to whom they claim to be listening, and who assume that this `listening’ should self-evidently go on in organisations founded by — you guessed it — Westerners, funded by Westerners, and run by Westerners.  There is a real danger here of paternalism: yes, we want to listen to you; but you first have to learn to speak our language and come to our conferences.

The answer?  Well, I’m a Reformation academic.  I could not credibly be so without being able to operate in four or five different modern European languages (not well, but well enough) and a few ancient ones.  It would be absurd for me to lecture my students on listening to, say, German scholars, if I could not read some German.  I also have to attend, on occasion, meeting where the medium language is not English, and which are run by, say, the Dutch, the French, or the Germans. Those church leaders who are rightly called to lead us in listening to our Third World brothers and sisters but who wish to avoid looking like old-style imperialists need to show their commitment and integrity by backing this up with a few linguistic skills in the appropriate areas, and perhaps by surrendering their organisations and their status to these brothers and sisters.  Only when such leaders learn a few relevant languages and sit humbly and quietly at conferences organised by `the Other’ will their words begin to possess that most elusive quality: authenticity.By Carl Trueman

HT: JT via R21