This is the third (and I think the last) part of this three part saga.
Similar to the Celtic peregrini was the early Jesuits of the 15th century. John O’Malley (1993) gives an interesting perspective of how the early Jesuits, primarily between 1540 and 1590 viewed themselves and their purpose which, in many ways is not unlike that of the Celtic Christians. Later Jesuits (after 1590) became intertwined in the political and social power struggles of the Roman Catholic Church. These Jesuits became identified with ministry of “location” such as educational efforts which required them to remain in one place over a long period of time. The Jesuits of the 16th century (1540-1590) however, saw themselves primarily as pilgrims or apostles who like Paul moved from place to place with the urgency to spread the Gospel as they went. In these examples, the Celtic Christians were not unlike much of the contemporary short-term mission movement which does not focus primarily on evangelism, but rather on what earlier Christians would call works of piety.
One clarification, I believe is necessary at this point. Definition of “place” and “journey” are broader than simple locations of a building or a trip. A primary difference between many aspects of historic pilgrimage and pilgrimage as I am describing it is that historically, the primary motivation for pilgrimage was to go to sacred spaces, and it was therefore very focused on “place”. The shift that I am describing and which is articulated by the sources that I am referencing is that pilgrimage has become something other than a focus on “place”, it is a movement toward community (social bonding capital) and a movement toward authentic faith. This type of pilgrimage is often expressed in physical journeys, but the physical journey itself does not make it pilgrimage as I am describing.
Similar aspects of a focus away from location to a focus on journey or pilgrimage are evident in the writings of mission theology which builds on an understanding of the missio Dei as the central identity of Christianity. (Newbigin 1978, Bosch 1991, Guder 1998, Goheen 2000). The focus of these writings is a move away from an ecclesiology of location toward what Michael Goheen calls missionary ecclesiology.
In his book, The Open Secret, Lesslie Newbigin develops a missionary ecclesiology out of a Trinitarian approach to missions. “Newbigin’s approach to the theology of mission underwent a significant change of emphasis in the 1960’s, particularly as a result of the WCC’s New Delhi assembly in 1961.”(Weston 2006, 81) Before this time, Newbigin (as well as most others) saw the Church as the primary ‘agent’ in the work of world mission, or to use Wuthnow and Putnam term, “location”. During the New Delhi assembly, however, he began to understand that a Trinitarian approach which set the work of the trinity instead of the Church as the primary agent of mission as an understanding that would do justice to what the Bible said related to God’s Mission. This development can be seen in The Open Secret in which Newbigin argues that “a Trinitarian approach to mission holds together three facets of the work of God in a dynamic and creative tension: the ‘proclamation’ of the Kingdom (in the authority of the Father), the ‘presence’ of the Kingdom (in and through the Son), and the ‘prevenience’ of the Kingdom (through the ministry of the Spirit who ‘goes before’ the Church in its missionary work)” (Newbigin 1978,72). This core Trinitarian understanding of mission is not particularly new in Newbigin, David Bosch builds on the ecclesiology of Karl Barth in a more explicit way than does Newbigin and comes to many of the same conclusions that mission is not an activity of the church, but rather the very nature of the Triune God reflected in the church (Bosch 1991, 373-380). Church and mission are interdependent elements in Bosch as well as Newbigin. This is clearly seen in the words of David Bosch; “It has become impossible to talk about the church without at the same time talking about mission. One can no longer talk about church and mission, only about the mission of the church…A church without mission or a mission without church are both contradictions.” (1991, 372).
A trinitarian or missional hermeneutic points out that scripture does not particularly give a foundation for developing missions, but that the missio Dei is foundational for understanding all of scripture since mission is God’s nature (Wright 2006). In the New Testament, the Church sends apostles to people of varied ethnic groups. The church, however, did not limit mission to sending missionaries to “the ends of the earth.”As the body of Christ which reflects Gods nature of mission, The Church didn’t just have missionaries; the Church itself was the missionary in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria as well as to the ends of the earth. Another way to state this perspective is to say that the church is not just a sending church; rather it is a “sent” church (Guder 1998). The emphasis is not on church as “location”, but rather on church as a people who are reflecting the mission nature of God.
Seminal work which describes this shift in postmodern culture was done by Paul Hiebert (1994) who described epistemological shifts in terms of bounded and centered sets. Heibert describes a bounded set, as a grouping with well defined bounds. A centred set groups things on the basis of how they relate to other things. For the sake of this study, a church that is defined by location could be defined in terms of a bounded set. The primary boundaries would be church membership and focus on identity with the location or structure. The societal as well as theological shift, however, that is defined, not according to identity with location, but rather pilgrimage, could be defined in terms of what Heibert calls a centered set since the church would be defined by its center, the Triune God of Scripture. The trouble with the former, writes Hiebert, is that this may become too exacting and exclusive, while an advantage of the latter is that Jesus Christ becomes the focus of all that the Church is and does.
Interestingly, this theological shift which defines the church in relation to the missio Dei instead of location is parallel with sociological movements in the U.S. which reflect a general movement of society toward meaning or reality that is discovered in pilgrimage or to use Heiberts terms, a centered set. These are also parallels to the phenomenon of short-term missions which is a move away from a professionalization of missions in which mission activity is professionalized through structures and organizations which prepare, send and filter missionaries toward what Ralph Winter has called “re-amateurization of missions” similar to that of the Student Volunteer Movement (1996). Although there are similarities in short-term missions and the Student Volunteer Movement, I would argue that there is more dissimilarity which flows out of the socio ecclesiological context which has fostered short-term missions and which is quite different than the context out of which the Student Volunteer Movement emerged.
Although it is evident that the phenomenon of short-term missions has occurred within the atmosphere of social change, it is debatable if this shift away from a focus on location to a focus on pilgrimage is a shift that is contrary to the essence of the Christian Church. Perhaps it could more safely be argued that it is unnatural for the church to focus primarily on location and consider mission as something that is above and beyond the normality of the church.
If it is within the nature of God and in turn, within the nature of the church to be translated from one context to another, this would indicate obstacles as the Gospel is carried from societies which are perceived as societies of power. Some have stated that it is inevitable that movement from cultures which have been “colonializers” to other parts of the world is by nature oppressive and racist (Said 1978). In this understanding, Christianity would by nature be bound to location or would inevitably be colonialistic as they carry the gospel from one location to another.
Similar to the thesis of Edward Said is the work of anthropologist, John Hutnyk (1996). In his book, The rumour of Calcutta: Tourism, charity and the poverty of representations, instead of exploring the people of Calcutta as a normal approach for anthropologists, his study is focused on those who visit Calcutta. There is a wealth of parallel theory and implications to short-term missions since Hutnyk focuses on people who travel to Calcutta on a budget, mostly from North America, Europe and Australia. Like short-term mission travelers, budget travelers (or backpack travelers) come not to bask in the glory of the Raj, but to explore the underbelly of Asia and to do some volunteer work in order to alleviate their guilt. Hutnyk explains that although these travelers (like short-term mission travelers) have the best of motives, like short-term mission travelers, they do not question the way they frame their exposure to Calcutta. They frame or represent what they see, based on what Hutnyk calls “the rumours of Calcutta”. He states, “they have heard the ‘rumour of Calcutta, the imagery by which the city is known. For them the city is already enframed” (Hutnyk 1996, 163). This framing is similar to Edward Said’s argument that the colonializers often ‘orientalize’ the other based on ‘the rumour’. In a similar vein is Robert Priest’s article, Missionary Positions: Christian, Modernist, Postmodernist (Priest, 2001) which questions the ‘rumour’ related to the origins of term ‘missionary position’ as a means of orientalism or a way of enframing a ‘rumoured’ perception of missionaries. In the case of Calcutta, Hutnyk points out that budget travelers, have a perception before they arrive (the rumour) which provides the framework by which they will experience the city. Similar to John Urry’s (2002) perception of the ‘tourist gaze’, Hutnyk says that this ‘enframing’ leads to a problematic aspect in which Third World tourism participates in a voyeuristic consumption of poverty (1996,11). This consumption by what Hutnyk calls budget travelers of backpack travelers, which are parallel to short-term mission travelers includes photographs and souvenirs, but also entails ‘good works’ experiences and cultural capital. The ties between Hutnyk’s work and short-term missions are unmistakable and disturbing. The interesting connection related to this study is that this class of tourist which Hutnyk describes are people who are critical of what he calls “modern lodge” tourists who are explicitly seeking their own comfort and a sense of similarity to their home. He also points out that these backpacking travelers are also in search for ‘authentic experiences’ (1996,9), and a ‘once in a lifetime experience’, which, is often warped by ‘enframing’, but which is similar to Wuthnow’s and Putnam’s theory of a search for authenticity.
Contrary to the theories of Said and Hutnyk, Lamin Sanneh (Sanneh), defines a distinct position for Christianity as the gospel is carried from one culture to another. Sanneh defines the difference between what he calls mission by diffusion and mission by translation. Mission by diffusion is related to religion which expands from its initial cultural base and is implanted in other societies primarily as a matter of cultural identity. This would be consistent with the observations of Said and Hutnyk. Mission by translation, however, carries with it a deep theological vocation, which arises as an inevitable stage in the process of reception and adaptation. These two ways are not always easy to separate. “Mission by diffusion (, however,) is unquestionably the stronger strand of Islam, whereas mission as translation is the vintage mark of Christianity”(Sanneh 1990,29). A central theme for Sanneh is that “mission as translation makes the bold, fundamental assertion that the recipient culture is the authentic destination of God’s salvific promise ...it is the missio Dei that allowed translation to enlarge the boundaries of the proclamation”(1990,31). The understanding of Sanneh is that Christianity is fundamentally not a faith of location, but rather is by nature, a faith that finds its purpose as well as its identity as it moves beyond location.
In Paul D. Hanson’s biblical theology (Hanson), a common thread of the nature of the people of God is “community”. An interesting concomitant to community found in Hanson’s research is the theme of pilgrimage. Reflective of Paul Hieberts centered sets in which we move toward a center, Hanson indicates that the person of faith remains a pilgrim in this world, who looks yet “to the things that are unseen” (2 Cor. 4:18). And since that pilgrim shares with fellow believers an important role in God’s plan for the redemption of creation, Paul’s eschatological paradox lies at the heart of his understanding of the community of faith (Hanson 2001,444). In this sense, Hanson moves away from an individualistic approach to apostolic calling and is indicating that the church is apostolic in nature, as it is called of God. Another key component of Hanson’s thesis is the forward-looking, eschatological nature of biblical community which leans forward toward the fullness of the Kingdom of God. The community of faith was thus a pilgrim community. It oriented its life toward God’s future, as the people called to participate in the in breaking of a divine order of shalom (2001, 13). This emphasis on pilgrimage being an essential part of the Christian identity is found throughout Hanson’s research as he states that “the true community of faith is thus a pilgrim people, seeing its forms and structures as provisional within a world being transformed from brokenness to wholeness” (2001,493).
