Inculturation: New Dawn of the Church in Latin America

Inculturation: New Dawn of the Church in Latin America. By Diego Irarrazaval. Translated by Phillip Berryman. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2000. 134 pages.

A new kind of liberation theology is presented in this book from Lima, Peru. It is a theology of mission identified with the poor, but it concentrates on cultural settings and the religious traditions of communities not on political change. The author does not agree with conservative critics who say that liberation theology is characteristic of progressive elites and is too much concerned with social justice. On the contrary, he shows that liberation is a movement of inculturation of "the wonderful good news of God's love" which is holistic. Liberation embraces all human reality and its surroundings, based on the everyday experience and shared inspiration of the oppressed. Popular religious traditions are not just held in respect, after centuries of derision and attempted suppression; they are seen as the way God has drawn the poor to rituals of meaning, festivals of joy, and the spirituality of trust and love. Their faith has enabled them to survive!

The author writes that inculturation, which he says is giving new life to the Catholic Church in Latin America, is a work of ordinary Christian communities which practice evangelization and an ethic of solidarity. Inculturation responds to the Spirit of Christ, who inspires every person and every people, on the basis of "their own symbolic universe," to become responsible for the gospel. He warns that evangelistic attempts at a "new Christendom" by Roman Catholic traditionalists are bound to fail. And the negative inculturation of the values of "modernity" by the middle class is dehumanizing and alienating in the Latin American context. Furthermore, well-meaning missionary adaptations to native custom remain picturesque and superficial. The New Dawn of the Church is to be found in the indigenous culture and its blend of faith through the particular history of ethnic communities. He points out that Pentecostals have great appeal and have become the largest body among Protestants in Latin America because they are inculturated in the masses of the people, primarily in their social identity, spontaneous worship and evangelical devotional life.

Diego Irarrazaval, graduate of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago Divinity School, is a missionary of the Congregation of the Holy Cross from Chile. He has served for decades among the indigenous and mestizo people of the Andean region. But his insight is drawn from all of Latin America, especially Brazil because of its rich ethnic diversity and prominent variety of popular religions like Candomble. He is a longtime member and now vice-president of EATWOT, the Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians, so his point of view is neither parochial to the Southern Cone nor unaware of implications for oppressed peoples of other continents. He is in contact with the issues of feminist struggles in church and society around the world, the interreligious dialogue essential to Asia, the reality of black and Native American religions, the environmental and economic effects of the free market, and the need for practical models of social action.

But the Marxist analysis of liberation theology is no longer conspicuous. This book tends to generalities rather than social projections. It is a more modest utopianism of the people's hope in the future. It contains no mention of root causes of poverty, external debt, collective bargaining, land reform or militarism. Human rights appear only in passing. Inculturation is not primarily political dissidence but the moral and spiritual identity of the grassroots for creating conditions for living at the most elemental community level, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The author is a charismatic theologian, with frequent reference to liturgy, cathechesis, family life, and base ecclesial communities. The emphasis on healing appears again and again. Christology is essentially soteriology, with frequent use of the expression Pasch for the suffering and resurrection of Christ. This is why he is able to find continuity between the Latin American bishops' conferences of Medellin (1968) and Puebla (1979) with Santo Domingo (1992), which many Catholic missioners found to be extremely disappointing.

His openness to the struggle for religious meaning by all people is worth pondering and gives peculiar value to the book and its themes:

Each group and people journeys toward human and spiritual fullness ... We focus primarily on the mysteries of the Incarnation, the paschal event, and Pentecost, because they guide the task of inculturation ... The sources of inculturation are normative for Christian communities and are relevant for many who have other cosmic and transcendent points of reference . . . The human condition seeks its fulfillment in a variety of ways. This merges with the dynamic of the sacred, which is always on the side of the human being and every creature and with the primordial truth: the self-manifestation and salvation that the God of Jesus Christ offers to humankind... within their journey through history and culture" (p. 25).

He speaks of a "real ecumenism, not only between Christian groups and expressions but with the religions of the people (which until now have been classified as superstitions and as incomplete forms of Christianity)."

Inculturation is not meant as a strategy of mission but as a reality of evangelization. It is subversive of a dominant theology, asserting that "monocultural patterns are dehumanizing. In faith terms, we enjoy and give thanks for the love of God and human communion out of a beautiful mosaic of identities and life projects." Elsewhere, "The radical edge [of inculturation] is lost when Christianity is regarded as something uniform that needs to be translated into each situation." It will be interesting to see how this works out in the light of Dominus Iesus, the statement from Cardinal Ratzinger's office in September 2000, calling for strict adherence to dogmatic standards.

Padre Irarrazaval argues that inculturation is the way religious faith has always sustained Catholic people in Latin America from the time of the Conquista. What has been called syncretism at best and superstition at worst must be seen as the way the Spirit of God has used local cultures to nourish faith and to enable people to survive spiritually. The principle can be applied to people of all religions. We could learn from him that evangelism is not trying to correct someone's ideas but to share grace and love through the gifts of the Holy Spirit accorded to each one. It is interesting to note that the Mission and Evangelism Conference of the World Council of Churches in Salvador, Brazil, October 1996, said in its Report on Gospel and Culture that the only danger of syncretism is when inculturation fails to be "life-affirming, inclusive, liberating, and community-building" in a true expression of the gospel.

The author quotes Boff, Comblin, and Gutierrez, and he is critical of global capitalism, but socialism is no longer on the agenda. He explains, "Today other models are being attempted: small everyday contributions to the globalization of hope, connection between praxis and celebration, strengthening the family and local groups, a kind of production and consumption that is an alternative to a totalitarian market, art, and ecology, responsibility of people's organizations to resolve matters of the common good." His hope is seen in the words: "Mission is to be passionate for God's Reign."

William J. Nottingham

Christian Theological Seminary

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