A Critical Study (Introduction-cont.)

Heritagist reading

Heritagist approach is an attempt to find conceptual analogies in the Mara concept of culture, such as customs, religious and oral traditions which still exist from the past and which have a historical importance and taking them in theological hermeneutics for reinterpretations. It is an attempt to retrieve cultural memory from amnesia caused by colonialism and missionaries. Non-textual traditions such as the understanding of god, world and stories which are part of the heritage of the Maras will also be reemployed and placed alongside biblical materials for the purpose of taking them into hermeneutical implications. In addition postcolonial hermeneutics will be seen as a corrective to cultural amnesia and will offer a form of resistance to cultural impositions and silencing. The author will engage in the reinterpretation of the Mara religious concept and world view, stories, and legends as a remembered history of the Mara people in order to play corrective and supplementary roles to the inadequate definitions and interpretations of the western missionaries and the Maras as well. The purpose of adopting the postcolonial approach is to identify the biblical ideas in Mara tradition, thought patterns and forms as a way of explaining the basic elements of Christian Gospel rather than depending on the readymade western texts and writings. It will connect the past Mara thought-form and culture with the aims of reconfiguring the new Mara identity as a Mara and as a Christian.

Resistant reading

Resistant reading does not repudiate western rule, but made profitable use of a paradigm provided by the colonizer. In the colonial context, the Bible became a convenient cultural weapon for both the colonizer and the colonized. While the missionaries saw it as a tool for civilizing and rescuing the degenerate heathen, some at least, of the colonized employed it as a weapon of reprisal. For example, there was slavery before Christianity. But after believing Jesus as our personal Saviour, we know that slavery went against the teaching of Jesus and the Bible. Thus, we might claim that people were set free by the blood of Jesus Christ, and therefore should not end up as slaves and private property of their fellow human beings. In this way the colonized renegotiated the message of the Bible, and created a discourse of resistant reading.

Dissident reading

Dissident reading is a form of oppositional discursive practice undertaken by some colonialists. Although located within and co-opted by the colonial system, what the discourse of dissent did was to subvert it from within. It did this by indicating the awful things that colonialism had done or was capable of doing to those who were under its control. Prompted by both pangs of guilt and humanitarian motives, the intention of dissident discourse was to ameliorate colonialism and temper its predatory intensions. As a discursive practice, it could never hope to dismantle the whole edifice of imperialism, but in its own innocuous way it caused unsettlement, dislocation, and placed a question mark over territorial and cultural expansion. The issue of the slavery system in Maraland before Christianity, R.A. Lorrain was a relevant one in which the Bible played a vital role. His subversive challenges or dissident approach could not change the edifice of the colonial administration at first, but later liberated the Mara slaves.

1.      Contextual Theology

While postcolonial critique is useful in rediscovering traditional cultural practices for theology, it is not free from criticism due to its critical tendency towards Christianity and western culture. In constructing theology there is a danger of the gospel being domesticated and made captive to one particular culture. Rediscovery of traditional values does not mean “culturalism” in which culture is romanticized and venerated above the Bible. In this context, contextual synthetic approach will compliment the postcolonial theory by re-rooting cultural expressions with mutual interaction and positive contribution towards the wellbeing of the Mara people. This is necessary because the purpose of constructing a contextual theology is to help the community of faith in a particular socio-cultural context to understand Christian faith.

Contextual theology, without ignoring the importance of scriptures and tradition, considers culture, socio-economic and political issues and the struggle of the people for their liberation as important sources of theology. Stephen B. Bevans specifically defines it as a way of doing theology in which one takes into account of the spirit and message of the gospel; the tradition of the Christian people; the culture in which one is theologizing; and social change in that culture, whether brought about by western technological processes or the grassroots struggle for equality, justice and liberation.[1] K.C. Abraham an Indian theologian describes contextual theology as faith articulation emerging from the experiences of the marginalized that are committed to altering their struggle of injustice and bondage.[2] Contextualization is therefore, a process of interaction between the hidden gospel rediscovered in Mara culture and the gospel preached to the Maras by missionaries. Since, the gospel is present in every culture in an imperfect form, re-discovery of the hidden gospel from one’s own culture is necessary to interact with the gospel received from outside, only then the Christian gospel be contextualized.

Synthetic Approach

Synthetic approach primarily assumes that culture is good and valuable, and that within this culture God is working and revealing divine truth. Although Christ is present in all cultures, unless the culture interacts with the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, it is inadequate. It means the interaction makes the hidden presence of Christ in culture more meaningful. In other words, without the interaction with the gospel, cultural values are inadequate, incomplete and imperfect. According to Jose M. de Mesa, a Filipino theologian, theology is born from the respectful interaction between Judaea-Christian tradition and the local culture.[3] The source of theology is the fusion or interaction of the Judaea-Christian tradition which came to the Mara via western culture with the recipient culture. A synthetic model searches for a new theology resulting from the synthesis of the two or the fusion of two horizons. It is an honest and painful interaction as it seeks to disclose the inadequacies and fallacies of Christianity and other religions. As a result, a new form of Christianity or theology emerges which is what a synthetic model is searching for.

The primary reason for choosing postcolonial-synthetic approaches is to respond to the demands of the Mara context. When the Maras received Christianity from the western missionaries, there was an interaction between the gospel and Mara culture. Therefore, it is proper to adopt these approaches to look at this interaction. The author will first look at mutual enrichment and seek to discover a new theology born out of the interaction between the gospel and Mara culture. Secondly, there is a mutual transformation by rejecting dehumanizing aspects such as wild head-hunting and adopting liberative aspects such as the practice of community singing and dancing and Mara apiepasaihna hro. Thirdly, it will also take the form of mutual reinterpretation, which means reinterpreting culture in the light of the gospel and the gospel in the light of culture. In this case, our criteria will be first of all truthfulness to the gospel, not in terms of literal interpretation; secondly, faithfulness to the Mara religion-culture and finally, motivation for the transformation of the Mara society.

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[1] Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (New York: Orbis Book, Revised and expanded, 2002), 1. Hereafter cited as ‘Bevans Models of Contextual Theology’.

[2] K. C. Abraham, Transforming Theology: A Theological Basis for Social Transformation (Bangalore: Asia Trading Corporation, 2002), x.

[3] Jose M. de Mesa, ‘Doing Theology as Inculturation in the Asian context’ in James A. Sherer & Stephen B. Bevans, eds., New Directions in Mission and Evangelism 3, Faith and Culture (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999), 120.