Abstract
Today's multicultural situation in many parts of the world requires a new missionary approach and practices. In addition, along with advanced understanding of culture and mission, interculturality is being presented as an alternative to complement the existing cross-cultural mission paradigm. In this intercultural mission paradigm, which emerges in the vision that people with various backgrounds and orientations participate in God's mission together with equal status on the Christian base, mission is not understood as a human strategy, but as a spiritual activity that involves the task of discerning God's initiatory work and of practicing a way of life appropriate for it. This article examines the possibility that the Christian mission as a joint participation in God's mission is practiced interculturally in today's multicultural situation. Focusing on the migration context, this article attempts to define “intercultural mission” within the larger framework of the missio Dei, and presents hospitality, solidarity, and marginality, which has been already recognized as important mission spiritualities in existing studies, as core mission spiritualities for intercultural mission. And, from this, this paper describes intercultural mission as a joint spiritual practice of creating space and building bridges for God's mission.
Keywords
Introduction
One of the most monumental events in the field of mission theology in the 20th century might be the emergence of the theology of missio Dei. Through reflection on past missions, the Church realized that mission is God's work before it is human work, and that the Church's mission is a joint participation in God's mission. And this realization led to an interest in mission spirituality, which is related to how we discern what God is doing on this earth and with what motivation and attitude we should participate in it.
Meanwhile, amidst the massive migration caused by the flow of globalization, many parts of the world today are in a multicultural situation. As the understanding of culture develops along with this change in mission contexts, another trend of change is detected in the field of mission theology. It is a shift in perception on the Christian mission from a mission as an “unilateral” (one-way) movement, which can be expressed as “cross-culturality,” to mission as a “reciprocal” (two-way or multi-directional) movement, which can be expressed as “interculturality.”
Inheriting the trends of these two paradigmatic shifts that are being presented as an alternative by the recognition of the limitations of existing missions, this article examines the possibility that the Church's mission as joint participation in God's mission be practiced interculturally in today's multicultural situation. Focusing on the migration context, this article asks the following questions: How can a Christian mission that has interculturality as a mission paradigm be defined? If it can be called “intercultural mission,” what are the mission spiritualities, or spiritual resources, that enable it to be put into practice properly in relation to God's mission?
Mission and Spirituality
Mission begins in the heart of God. “All who respond to the outpouring of the love of God are invited to join in with the Spirit in the mission of God” (Keum, 2013: 9). God's mission is not only a strategy. As Kirsteem Kim (2010: 254) observes, it ministers to all dimensions of human life; it takes place within, ministering to the fractured self; and it is operative at all the levels at which human beings relate.
Christian mission as participation in God's mission is a “spiritual” activity. It begins with discerning the spirits according to the revelation of Jesus Christ in order to discover the movement of the Spirit of God in the world and join in with it. The fruit of mission is given as a gift of God. “Human activity can prepare the way for it” (Kim, 2010: 255).
Christian spirituality is concerned with new life in the triune God. It is a new way of being made possible by being grafted into the life of God. It is expressed as intentional participation in God's eternal creative work in a constant committed search for God.
The purpose of the Spirit's active presence is “empowerment for mission—for witness to God's mighty acts” (Dietterich, 1996: 3). As Anthony Gittins (2015: 76) observes, people who strive for authentic Christian spirituality do not become inverted or preoccupied with themselves, but turned outward, open to, and concerned about the well-being of the other.
In this vein, we can think of “mission spirituality” that enables Christians’ relationships and lives to become the witness to the gospel toward the world. Mission spirituality is concerned with the spiritual resources from which mission springs. “It draws attention to the motives and attitudes that accompany mission activity. It shifts the focus from the missionary task to the ethos of mission, to the way in which mission is carried out, and to the question of how the medium or messenger embodies the gospel message” (Kim, 2010: 256). In theological terms, mission spirituality connects the human spirit in mission with the Spirit of God sent into the world.
Mission and Interculturality
Christian mission always involves relating across cultural differences. The term “cross-cultural” illustrates the missionary movement of crossing cultural boundaries to spread the gospel. However, as John Corrie (2014: 294–296) points out, this cross-cultural mission paradigm seems to have its roots in modern view of culture and enlightenment thinking. It tends to see culture in clearly defined terms with an identifiable set of characteristics uniformly shared across the culture. Assuming one-way movement from those who come from the missionary culture as “the givers” to those of the receptor culture as the “needy,” it tends to set out from first principles and move logically through to a desired outcome.
But cultural identities are much more complex and hybrid than these generalizations: everyone has a unique set of cultural variables and a complex set of sub-cultures. As stated in today's advanced cultural understanding, cultures are in constant change, absorption, and exchange; they are dynamic and interactive. As Kathryn Tanner (1997: 38) says, the modern view, based on the presumption that cultures are “self-contained and clearly bounded units, internally consistent and unified wholes,” seems less and less plausible, and a postmodern stress on “interactive process and negotiation, indeterminacy, fragmentation, conflict and porosity” replaces these aspects.
Culture is now more a place where people come together in engagement rather than agreement or consensus. As Frans Wijsen (2001: 220) perceives, “today's multicultural society is not multicultural in the sense of a patchwork quilt or mosaic of separate pieces with hard and well-defined edges, but a cultural mix or cocktail.” In reality, there are the “boundaries” because we experience them as such, but now they are very diffuse and porous, and cultural identity becomes “a hybrid, relational affair, something that lives between as much as within cultures” (Tanner, 1997: 57–58). As Henning Wrogemann describes, “people are always busy staging and stylizing their own culture in order to maintain, construct, or readjust demarcations between outsiders and their own collective we” (Flett and Wrogemann, 2015: 220). As Robert Schreiter (1997: 38) states, “boundaries of territory are now replaced by boundaries of difference.”
This advanced understanding of culture and the characteristics of today's mission contexts captured from that perspective require a reconsideration of existing mission paradigm or theologies. As often thought of evangelism, if the gospel has to cross cultural boundaries, to what culture and how? Or, “Inculturation in what culture?” (Wijsen, 2001: 220) The new idea of “interculturality” explicitly moves beyond mere peaceful coexistence “to emphasize and make more explicit the essential mutuality of the process of cultural interaction on both the personal and social level” (Kisala, 2009: 335). Internationality and multiculturality refer to the fact that persons or groups of different nationalities and/or ethnic groups simply coexist. As mentioned earlier, cross-cultural relationships point to a one-way movement from one worldview to another. As sincere as this may be, its goal is assimilation or accommodation. In contrast, interculturality implies “a mutually enriching and challenging two-way or multi-directional exchange among different cultures” (Schroeder, 2018: 65).
Interculturality offers a counter-colonial framework, which substitutes attitudes and actions of superiority and paternalism. In his article on the historical development of intercultural theology, ecumenical missiologist Werner Ustorf (2008: 229–251) reveals that when the term was first used in relation to theology in 1975, it emerged as a consequence of decolonization and postcolonial discourse. Intercultural theology was born out of the conclusion that Western categories could no longer be used to describe non-Western forms of Christianity.
This trend emphasizing the need for theological equality and mutuality between cultures gave rise to the term of “interculturation.” Joseph Blomjous, the Dutch Father Bishop of Mwanza in Tanzania who is credited with first using the term in 1980, called for this new term “in order to express that the process of inculturation must be lived in partnership and mutuality” (Blomjous, 1980: 393). Blomjous’ insight influenced David Bosch, a prominent South African missiologist. In his well-known book, Transforming Mission, Bosch refers to interculturation in terms of the need for exchanges between local theologies (Bosch, 1991: 456).
Despite this trend, the concept of interculturality at that time had limitations in that it emerged in a state of being combined with the postcolonial discourse. In this ideological frame, mission and interculturality could be misunderstood as incompatible with each other. Gradually mission studies came to be understood as intercultural theology, which began to replace “mission.” Ustorf notes that Margull, one of the initial proponents of intercultural theology, stopped using the term “mission” because for him it was based on a Christian claim to a universal truth that he saw as no longer credible (Ustorf, 2011: 23). But does linking mission and interculturality necessarily lead to this conclusion?
Gradually it has been recognized that mission and interculturality are in fact in an intrinsic connection with each other. German missiologist Andreas Feldtkeller says that “the attention paid to Christianity's interculturality is not a new idea… it is itself located within the faith's own missionary self-understanding” (Flett and Wrogemann, 2020: 209). In his view, mission is the consequence of an intercultural openness—a moving toward those who see differently and who pose different questions. Dutch missiologist Stefan Paas also argues that it is not appropriate to regard intercultural movement as only the next stage of cross-cultural movement in mission. In his view, “the missionary encounter in itself is intercultural from its very beginning, since it always includes an interaction between the old and the new, the known and the unknown, God and the gods, the traditional and the eschatological” (Paas, 2017: 134). In this vein, Flett and Wrogemann (2020: 184) redefines intercultural theology in terms of mission: Intercultural theology reflects on the missionary/boundary-crossing interactions of Christian faith witness motivated by the claim that its salvific message has universal validity. These interactions interrelate with the respective cultural, religious, social, and other contexts and players to give rise to a wide range of local variants of Christianity. The awareness of being affiliated with each other challenges these variants of Christianity to keep on renegotiating normative contents of Christian doctrine and praxis with each other in the tension between universality and particularity.
Interculturality as a Mission Paradigm
In this vein, new mission theologies that take interculturality as a mission paradigm are presented. This task was most actively made through Catholic mission theologians who belong to SVD (Societas Verbi Divini/The Society of the Divine Word). Doing this task on the basis of the primary mission theologies of the Catholic Church over the past fifty years, Roger Schroeder, SVD, one of the key players in this field, presents the Trinity and the Reign of God as two main theological foundations for that (see, Stanislaus and Ueffing, 2018: 70). If the realization of perfect communion of humanity within the community of the Trinity is the goal of God's mission, he says, interculturality is an essential part of our participation in God's mission. Every culture/society contains both the seeds of the Word of God and those elements which are contrary to God's reign. Therefore, intercultural interaction among individuals, cultures and local churches is crucial for mutual enrichment and for the recognition of the continual call to conversion for all.
John Corrie, an English evangelical missiologist, examines the implications of the term intercultural mission, and proposes it as the best mission model for today's situation in which “mission from everywhere to everywhere” has been a fact of global mission for a number of years. In his article titled “The promise of intercultural mission,” he explores the possibilities of speaking of mission as intercultural, rather than cross-cultural, as a way of expressing the cultural engagement that is more appropriate to a post-modern world. Corrie (2014: 293) explains what intercultural relationship means: It begins from a presumption of cultural and relational equality and mutuality, and from the very outset of the relationship it invites us to put to one side our own cultural predilections, preferences and prejudices, emptying ourselves kenotically of all power intentions, more willing to receive than to give, open to where the Spirit is leading, and as open to our own spiritual and cultural transformation as to that of others.
In this intercultural framework, the importance of mission as proclamation however can be retained, “except that now the proclamation is first of all for God to make and it is proclaimed to us as well as to others, and through others to us as well as through us to them” (Corrie, 2014: 297). Interculturality demands that we listen together to the demands of the gospel, not making those demands in a unilateral way, but recognizing our own vulnerability to them. The focus of mission is placed on “being” before “doing.” If we or they are transformed in the course of the intercultural encounter, it is the work of the Holy Spirit, not of ourselves. However, my presence with the other becomes a condition for God's mission to be mutually experienced. “The interaction between those of different cultures causes them to relocate, renew and revitalize their identities because it creates the space within which the Triune God can do his transforming work” (Corrie, 2014: 299).
In Miroslav Volf's description of a relationship that resembles the perichoretic relationship of the Triune God (Volf, 1998: 410), we can get a glimpse of the relationship that this intercultural mission is aiming for: The boundaries of the self are porous and shifting. The self is itself only by being in a state of flux stemming from “incursions” of the other into the self and of the self into the other. The self is shaped by making space for the other and by giving space to the other, by being enriched when it inhabits the other and by sharing of its plentitude when it is inhabited by the other, by reexamining itself when the other closes his or her doors and challenging the other by knocking at the doors.
However, at the same time, from the perspective of Christian faith, the Trinitarian relationship names the reality which human communities ought to image, and the church as the body of Christ is called to be a community that witnesses to the reign of God that has already penetrated into this sinful world and yet awaits its complete fulfillment. For this reason, in today's world, where differences often lead to confrontation, division and conflict, the church's pursuit of this relationship of mutual self-donations in a communal life, following the path of Christ, can be a way of responding to that vocation.
In this vein, intercultural mission can be defined as a Christian joint spiritual practice in which people with different cultural orientations intentionally form one community with equal status on the Christian base, aiming for a new reality that will be achieved through God's presence and intervention, and participate together in God's mission, embodying a distinctive social life authentic to the gospel through mutually enriching and challenging interactions within and beyond the community.
The encounters between people with different cultural backgrounds, and therefore between strangers to each other, can lead to situations of misunderstandings or conflicts. In case of the journey of intercultural mission that intentionally aims and facilitates such relationships, the possibility of occurrence may increase further. So what is the role of these misunderstandings and conflicts in the context of intercultural encounters or mission?
The human beings that are foreign to us are not simply those whom we call “the others,” who may be part of our order in spite of their differences. On the other hand, culturally strange human beings or foreigners are those with whom, when we encounter them, we miss immediate experience of belonging to “our” group. So we cannot understand them from the horizon of our world. In the encounter with the stranger in a particular context, it is not only human beings who meet, but also their respective worlds. Also, human reality is diverse and never explained by reference to culture alone. As Barbara Hufner-Kemper and Thomas Kemper observe, while people used to blame culture for everything we do not understand, misunderstandings and conflicts can occur not only cultural differences but also differences of life circumstances and personality (Stanislaus and Ueffing, 2018: 36). Therefore, as Raul Fornet-Betancourt points out, “fundamentally the strangeness of strangers can only be translated by human beings who are aware that one cannot understand the strangers without their cooperation as subjects and that, consequently, to really understand them, one must learn to understand together with them” (Fornet-Betancourt, 2008: 216). This insight implies important consequences for our own self-interpretation. Our way of thinking is not innate, but has been developing through history, and, in fact, under conditions marked by social conflicts. In the same vein, the situation of encountering strangers, which may cause a misunderstanding or conflict, can raise the following question in ourselves: “why do we think or understand exactly in the way that we do, and not in another way?” As such, the encounter and interaction with strangers can be not only a process of learning to understand their strangeness, but also an opportunity for us to recognize our own reality as unfamiliar, and for us to be formed into a new reality. In that sense, the moment when we are aware that we do not understand, when we misinterpret and put ourselves and others in embarrassing situations, that is the very moment when our intercultural learning starts.
One step further, this hermeneutical insight that the experience of understanding strangers and the experience of understanding ourselves are not separate from each other, can lead to a new communal vision for today's multicultural societies, in which people from different backgrounds coexist in the same region. It is a vision of a community of which members learn to situate and define identity beginning with the mutual relationship and practical dealing with differences, and not only from the centrality of one culture. It does not point to the reestablishment of a supposed unity, which was supposedly disturbed by the strangers. Rather, as Fornet-Betancourt describes, it seeks to work with the strangeness of the strangers in order to achieve an ecumenical reconstruction of the new social order in which they are recognized not only as equal, that is, as subjects to whom are given the same rights of political integration to the order of the majority's culture, but also and precisely as strangers, that is, as those before whom the established community commits itself to create the new social order in which all the worlds have a place and belong (220).
This social vision goes beyond the horizon of the model of a multicultural liberal society, which is based on a cultural pluralism that brings out the ethnic origin and for that reason tends to consider cultures as ghettos, in order to foster a praxis of overflowing of borders that put limits to differences. And by means of this praxis of overflowing borders, the fact of multiculturality begins to acquire a new quality: the quality of intercultural convivencia (see, Sundermeier, 1996), which implies living together in the sense of sharing in such a way that there is celetration and a mutuality of enrichment. According to the politics of strangers proposed here, the cultures of origin do not function as barricades for the defense of a self-affirmation of the difference. On the contrary, they represent the starting point from which concrete human beings enter into contact with a daily world, deal with what is their own or foreign, and develop a new relationship, not only in regard to the others but also in relation to themselves.
Perhaps this may be presented as a model for an alternative society in today's multicultural reality, but it would be unreasonable to expect that this hermeneutical and political practice based on mutuality and intentionality will be practiced by all members of a society. However, I am convinced that this can be a promising missionary vision and approach that today's churches that is situated in a new mission context can take in their Christian vacation. In today's multicultural contexts, Christians from various backgrounds can intentionally form one community with equal status on the Christian base, aiming for a new reality that will be achieved through God's presence and intervention. And as a way of participating together in God's mission, they can attempt to embody a distinctive social life authentic to the gospel through mutually enriching and challenging interactions within and beyond the community. This is a joint missionary effort made in the hope that the social life of Christians, distinct from the world, would become a witness to the gospel toward the world. As Brian Stone (2007: 15) argues, “the most evangelistic thing the church can do today is to be the church—to be formed imaginatively by the Holy Spirit through core practices…into a distinctive people in the world, a new social option, the body of Christ.” And the success of this effort depends on the extent to which community members live a spiritual life authentic to the gospel in a proper relationship with God and others. The decisive work is done by God. Our task is to “prepare the way for the Lord” (Mk. 1:3) with spiritual resources flowing from God.
Spiritual Resources for Intercultural Mission
Then, what are the mission spiritualities for intercultural mission, that is, the spiritual resources that make it possible? The first answer that comes to mind is probably “love.” Love is the fruit of the Holy Spirit and the new commandment of Christ. What characterizes the community of Christ's disciples is mutual love that follows the example of Jesus' love. Noting that Christian mission is the task of mediating between different people and cultures, as well as bridging the gulf between the gospel and the world, Paul Hiebert (2009: 188) insists that at the heart of this intercultural mediation is good intercultural relations based on true Christian love. However, as Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, love is expressed as more specific virtues in various human situations.
This article builds on my thinking about interculturality in the context of migration and how it works in the ecclesial relationships between migrant Christians and local Christians. From this focus, I present three things as mission spiritualities for intercultural mission: hospitality, solidarity and marginality.
In the context of mission alongside migrants, Corrie (2014: 293) refers to hospitality as a key mission concept, and this is also identified by George Newlands (2004) as lying at the heart of intercultural theology. According to him, Christian generosity involves a commitment to unconditional giving. But if it is to be saved from elitism, generosity also requires mutuality and reciprocity. Hospitality embraces all that can be said of generosity and underlines the need for concrete interaction.
As alluded in Together Towards Life, the new ecumenical affirmation of the World Council of Churches, today's context of large-scale worldwide migration challenges the church to be not only places of refuge for migrants, but also “intentional focal points for intercultural engagement” (Keum, 2013: 26). Local congregations are called to serve God's mission together beyond ethnic and cultural boundaries, stepping out of their comfort zone. “All churches can create space for different cultural communities to come together and embrace exciting opportunities for contextual expressions of intercultural mission in our time” (Keum, 2013: 27).
Presenting this intercultural community as an alternative vision for today's multicultural societies, Fornet-Betancourt describes it as “a community of worlds that are different and yet in solidarity with each other, that is to say, of worlds that are reshaped by means of the interaction of their members in their daily life” (219). In this vein, thinking of mission in the context of migration, Brazal and Guzman (2015: 126) envisions an “intercultural church” that “facilitates the meeting and alliances of different cultural groups for the common good.” And as a key concept that describes the nature of interaction within the intercultural church, she presents solidarity.
Our mission as participation in God's mission is however not limited to activities within an intercultural community, but includes movements beyond our little world. After all, the very purpose of intercultural living is to enable us to move from the relative security of our community in order to reach out and encounter people. As Jesus chose a marginal position precisely as a way of doing mission, those who presume to follow his missionary example can also choose it intentionally. In this vein, while recognizing margins or boundaries, which serve not only to separate but also to connect spaces or people, as hot spots for intercultural living, Anthony Gittins (2015: 115) presents marginality as a crucial mission spirituality.
In my view, hospitality is the core spirituality for intercultural mission. And if solidarity is the centripetal expression of hospitality, marginality is the centrifugal expression of hospitality. How these three mission spiritualities relate to intercultural mission will be explored in more detail in the following subchapters.
Hospitality and Intercultural Mission
The Greek word for hospitality in the New Testament, philoxenia, refers not so much to love of strangers but to a delight in the whole guest-host relationship and in the surprises that may occur (Ross, 2008: 170). The nature of hospitality implied here is mutuality. It is characterized by sincere graciousness between strangers. Outcome cannot always be predicted. To practice hospitality is to take a risk. Hospitality involves the risk of inviting others into our own environment and of being prepared for reciprocal hospitality. As Christine Pohl (1999: 4) says, hospitality is not an extra activity when time or resources are surplus, but “a dynamic expression of vibrant Christianity.”
The story of two disciples on the Emmaus Road shows impressively the moment when the distinction between the guest and the host is blurred during the bread-breaking fellowship by the act of hospitality. As Cathy Ross points out, this intermingling of guest and host roles in the person of Jesus demands that Christian mission be understood as mutual welcoming and sharing rather than one-sided giving (Ross, 2008: 170). Amos Yong (2007: 64) offers this insight: “Christian mission… is dependent both on the spiritual and material welcoming offered by the missionized and on the ability of missionaries to be recipients of the hospitality of others.”
In speaking to a host of a feast, Jesus instructs us to invite into our own home those who are less capable of repaying rather than those who are close or rich (Lk 14:12–14). The reward is foretold to be given later by the Lord. In the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25, Jesus says that what one person does to one of the least, including a stranger, is the same as what one does to the Lord Himself. Likewise, Christian hospitality is related to see and treat the other in connection with the Lord.
While hospitality in the Christian sense is a practice that does not demand or expect reciprocation from the other party as such, in the relationship of true hospitality the giver does not always exist only as a giver. Strangers can save us from cosy, domesticated hospitality and force us out of our comfort zones. As John Koenig (1985: 6) says, “hospitality to the stranger gives us a chance to see our own lives afresh, through different eyes.”
Christian hospitality reflects God's greater hospitality. Jesus’ parable of the Great Banquet is a powerful metaphor for the Kingdom of God, where all are universally welcomed (Lk. 14). And Jesus’ table fellowship with such outcasts and sinners signifies that the core of his mission was to announce God's hospitality to all people. By this modest and equal welcome to all, Christian hospitality has a subversive dimension. The practice of hospitality without discrimination can break, or call into question, social boundaries that have excluded certain categories of persons, and create a new community that transcends social differences or prejudices.
The practice of hospitality begins with creating space not only in our places but also in our hearts. A brilliant definition of hospitality was given by Henri Nouwen (1976: 68–69): “Hospitality… means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.” This definition has important implications regarding Christian missions. As Ross says, mission as the divine invitation from God to enter into a loving relationship with God is not about invading space of others to make them like us, but rather about allowing space for them to change (Ross, 2008: 174).
Christian mission surely has the character of a kind of confrontation because the divine invitation is oriented toward a certain change called conversion or repentence. However, mission as hospitality is based on the belief that genuine change is only possible in free encounters and that it is only possible by God, not by ourselves. What we can and should do is to create a space within which the changes by God can take place. Also, the changes assumed here are not unilateral. Mission as hospitality “involves a giving and receiving within a shared space of encounter with God” (Corrie, 2014: 293).
In that sense, hospitality is not only “a metaphor for Christian mission” (Ross, 2008) but also a core spirituality for intercultural mission. Intercultural mission is related to creating a space where God's mission can be experienced within the context of encounters and interactions between people from different backgrounds. For a Christian and the church to create a space for God's mission within themselves from this spirituality of hospitality is to witness to the gospel of God's hospitality toward all people and to prepare the way for the Lord who will come there and work in His own way.
Hospitality as a mission spirituality for intercultural mission is the practice of self-emptying love. Genuine hospitality as well as genuine engagement in mission can begin as we realize our own emptiness and our own need for God (Ross, 2008: 173). This realization leads us to follow the path of missional life of Jesus Christ, who “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness” (Phil 2:6–7/NRSV). In that sense, hospitality can be said to be a core spirituality for intercultural mission that begins with putting oneself aside and creating space for God and others.
In contexts where domains of different groups are related each other, there may be complicated situations where the practice of hospitality toward one group of people is perceived as harmful to another group of people. We cannot say that hospitality is only for those who belong to and come from a different culture. Then, how can one allow the other to be other without starting out from the I and without harming the Third? This was a question that both Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, two Jewish philosophers who emphasized hospitality, were concerned about, and also a question that is at stake when responsible political decisions are to be made in today's Europe. “How does the right of the migrant interact with the right of the inhabitant of a particular place, how does the duty to respond to the call of the other relate to the duty to respond to the call of another other?” (Noble and Noble, 2016: 58).
Although it is difficult to address this issue in depth here, it is clear that hospitality drawn from the well of Christian spirituality goes beyond the category and level of so-called “conditional hospitality” that is required and implemented in consideration of the self-interests of each individual or group. Conditional hospitality is necessary, as law and order cannot work without it, but it is not a beginning or an end in itself. Therefore, despite differences in details, both Levinas and Derrida “arrive at the need for the deconstruction of pure self-interest as the dehumanizing driving force, and for negotiating between the laws on which societies can function, and the still deeper ‘laws’ of love which give rise to the other laws but also challenge and suspend them in the time of need” (Noble and Noble, 2016: 64).
However, there are also limits to deal with this issue solely as a matter of Other-centered ethics under names such as “infinite responsibility” (Levinas) or “unconditional hospitality” (Derrida). While these two philosophers’ emphasis on the unconditional welcoming of the other is one that accords with the Christian understanding of the universality of God's grace, it is still questionable whether such a philosophical explanation serve as a basis and driving force for a person to actually practice genuine hospitality to a stranger “in an age of ‘terror,’ where the stranger on one's threshold may be either the refugee seeking sanctuary or the suicide-bomber bringing unwanted gifts of death” (Shepherd, 2014: 31).
In contrast to these approaches, which assume an oppositional relation with others and emphasize the asymmetrical and uni-directional hospitality, as Andrew Shepherd observes, a theological understanding of the human practice of hospitality finds the source and impulse for this ethical action in the ontological and performative drama of the Triune God, and conceives of hospitality not as a duty or obligation but rather as a free response, as an expression of love in response to that prior divine hospitality (Shepherd, 2014: 12). The Christian belief that Being is primordially the communion of Divine persons presents an ontology in which unity and difference are seen not as mutually exclusive, but rather as mutually constitutive (see, Zizioulas, 1985). Those who, taking the leap of faith have their lives re-narrated according to this meta-narrative, participate in God's eschatological hospitality and thus offer nourishing hope to the world.
Solidarity and Intercultural Mission
The term solidarity refers to the empathetic foundation of Christian love. In order to truly serve the neighbor, that love must be born out of an identification or solidarity with the neighbor in his or her joys, suffering, and struggle. The call to solidarity is a call to affirm in one's life the interdependence and unity of humankind before God; what happens to one happens to all (Downey, 1993: 906).
The saints of the newly established churches in Corinth, Achaia, and Macedonia decided to collect and send generous donations to the saints of the Jerusalem church who were suffering from famine, even though they themselves were in difficult circumstances (2Cor 8-9; Acts 11:28-30). And Apostle Paul exhorts the saints of the church in Rome: “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another” (Rom. 12:15–16).
In the Christian perspective, solidarity is a moral virtue that affirms the intrinsic value of all persons who share filial bonds as children of the Creator. Chapter 25 of Matthew's Gospel speaks of Christ's identification with the needy and powerless; hence the Christian's identification with Christ is verified by his or her own identification with them. Solidarity with one's brothers and sisters is the verification of one's unity with God.
In his theological reflection on a growing movement of solidarity in the early 1980s toward Christians and churches in Latin America, Jon Sobrino and Hernandez (1985: 1–5) say that solidarity is not mere humanitarian aid from one church to another nor an alliance between different churches in order to promote their interests. According to him, solidarity has been set in motion when some churches help another church that is in need becaue it has taken on solidarity with the poor and oppressed among its own people. However, solidarity is not a matter of a one-way flow but of mutual giving and receiving. Those helping churches find out that they not only give but also receive from the church they aid. What they receive is of a different and higher order. And through this mutual giving and receiving the churches establish relationships and make the discovery that it is essential that a local church be united to another church and that this mutual relationship embraces all levels of life.
In his Encyclical Letter Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (SRS/1987), John Paul 2 refers to solidarity as “the correct moral response to the fact of interdependence” (Baum and Ellsberg, 1989: 148). The person who recognizes human interdependence and wants to act in an appropriate moral way is called to overcome distrust of others and to collaborate with them instead. When applied to the migration context, “Solidarity helps us to see the other—whether a person, people, or nation—not just as some kind of instrument with a work capacity and physical strength to be exploited at low cost and then discarded when no longer useful, but as our ‘neighbor,’ a ‘helper,’ to be made a sharer, on a par with ourselves, in the banquet of life to which all are equally invited by God” (Baum and Ellsberg, 1989: 152).
In his article titled “Opening Space for a Culture of Dialogue and Solidarity,” Konrad Raiser, former General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, raises the radical demand to expand our understanding of oikoumene to a vision of an “earth community” characterized by the sustainable interaction of all life processes. Against the culture of domination, Raiser (1999: 175) says, “solidarity emphasizes the mutual dependency which characterizes the intricate web of life.” The church, called to participate in God's mission for fullness of life, can offer an alternative culture of dialogue and solidarity that “accepts the contemporary reality of intercultural and interreligious encounter and seeks to transform the threatening experience of globalization into the creative challenge to build an earth community where life can grow.”
In an era where “diversity” is emphasized, talking about “unity” can make feel provocative. However, this concept of solidarity, which emphasizes the mutual dependence of human cultures and also interdependence between Christians from different backgrounds, can play a role in connecting and enriching each other without allowing differences to undermine the diversity of each individual or group. In today's migration context, the Christian spirituality of solidarity can lead to the formation of an “intercultural church,” which takes the multicultural situation a step further by promoting opportunities for meaningful interaction between various cultural groups toward mutual enrichment and positive change in the perspective of the other. As Agnes Brazal and Guzman (2015: 135) indicate, the intercultural church can function as “bridge of solidarity” which connects persons or groups in its in-between space.
The church as bridge of solidarity eschews the rigid separation of communities or churches but rather, promotes a genuine sense of belongingness in a church composed of diverse individuals and communities. An intercultural church can not only act as a bridge to link the nationals with the different groups of Christian migrants, but also provide a space to relate or interact with immigrants from other confessions, faiths or religions (138). An intercultural church can also be a site where new identities can be formed; where both the local Christians and the immigrants can forge a new reality as church.
Of course, solidarity is costly and may lead to opposition or even suffering. When one share the living conditions of a community, one can begin to share their sufferings and joys, their fears and their hopes. Moving toward solidarity with one group of people may result in severance of relationships with other groups of people who do not wish to do so. In case of my church in Prague, which is a multi-ethnic congregation, 25 years ago, when the representative pastor suggested his Czech members to form one church with Korean migrant Christians and tried to adjust to the new situation many aspects of church life, including the church liturgy and structure, some church members, who did not like it, moved to another church. As such, as Pope John Paul II states, solidarity is “not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortune of so many people,” but is “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good” (Baum and Ellsberg, 1989: 41). It is a costly practice of spirituality based on theological conviction.
Hospitality requires the spirituality of solidarity. Welcoming total strangers is not an easy task. When there is no way to mediate strangeness, when there is no space or means by which people can safely and comfortably engage in initial encounters with one another, then potential hosts worry about danger and deception and strangers are less frequently welcomed in. According to Christine Pohl, one of the ways to reduce this risk is to make hospitality more public (Pohl, 1999: 94). This is not to suggest making hospitality less personal, but rather that welcome be initiated in a more public setting. As Pohl points out, “hospitality begins at the gate, in the doorway, on the bridges between public and private space. Finding and creating threshold places is important for contemporary expressions of hospitality” (Pohl, 1999: 95).
An intercultural church as bridge of solidarity can be such a public space by which people with strangeness each other can safely and comfortably engage in initial encounters. Mission is a mediation. We were all strangers until God welcomed us into his household, and for our inclusion, Jesus became a bridge. Intercultural mission is not only about creating space for God and others, but also about building bridge between two worlds or to become a bridge over their disconnection. And solidarity is a crucial mission spirituality for this intercultural mission.
Marginality and Intercultural Mission
A margin is an edge, but it also draws immediate attention to a center. Every person is situated in a particular place or center that is itself defined in relation to an edge, boundary, or margin. In other words, we exist within a web of boundaries and margins, which function to keep in, to keep out, and to serve as contact points, bridges, or meeting places (Gittins, 2015: 124).
Marginality occurs in every society, not just in relation to migrants. One form of marginality familiar to us is liminality. From the Latin word for threshold or boundary, liminality describes a state of in-betweenness in a rite of passage as one is moved from a former social status to a new one (Gittins, 2015: 122). As such, marginal living is viewed as a process of being in between two cultures with emphasis on being in transition rather than being on the periphery of one culture. If liminality is the technical term that usually emphasizes the positive movement in that direction, the word marginalization is most commonly used with negative connotations, signifying a passage from life to social death. Yet while acknowledging the dreadful effects of imposed marginalization, as Anthony Gittins points out, it is particularly important missiologically to identify the potential benefits of positive marginalization, not only on the person who chooses it but also on the beneficiaries of that choice (Gittins, 2015: 124).
From the perspective of centrality, ethnic minorities are marginal people, who live in between their original home and their current domicile. For them, the margin as in-between space used to be recognized as negative: To be in-between two worlds means to be fully in neither. However, marginality can also have a positive meaning as a nexus, where two or multiple worlds are interconnected. In a pluralist society, this idea of interconnectedness can lead us to a positive understanding of marginality as “in-both”: I am more than an Asian because I am an American, and I am more than an American because I am an Asian. Here, the norm for marginality shifts from the center to the margin; it is no longer imposed on the outsider but is born within it.
One step further, Korean-American theologian Jung Young Lee (1995: 28) presents a comprehensive definition of marginality as “in-beyond.” To be in-beyond does not mean that marginal persons are outside of the two different worlds; they are part of them, but it does mean that they live in both of the worlds without being bound by either of them: In the world, but not of the world. In this holistic definition of marginality, the margin is no longer the margin of centrality, defined by dominant groups, but now the margin of marginality, newly defined by the marginal persons who take the stance of in-beyond.
Identifying Jesus Christ as the “new marginal person par excellence,” Lee notes that “if God was in Jesus Christ, the people of God must also be marginal… The fellowship of God's marginal people is known as the church, [which] becomes authentic when it is situated at the margins of the world” (Lee, 3). As Gittins adds, “to live ‘in-beyond’ does not mean to be free of the two different worlds in which persons exist, but it means that we are not bound by either of them because we are liberated by the example and promise of Jesus” (Gittins, 2015: 122).
Interculturality corresponds to this new marginality derived from the in-beyond perspective. Intercultural mission involves moving toward the margins as meeting points of two or multiple different worlds with this Christian in-beyond stance: “Here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (Heb 13:14). Recognizing the in-between space not only as a nexus that connects different worlds or cultures but also as a creative edge that opens up for a new reality to develop, intercultural mission pursues a mutually enriching and challenging interactions between people with different cultural orientations within and beyond the church.
Hospitality requires the spirituality of marginality. As Pohl contends, “The period in church history when hospitality has been most vibrantly practiced have been times when the hosts were themselves marginal to their larger society” (Pohl, 1999: 106). The most transformative expressions of hospitality are associated with the distinctive lives of the hosts who deliberately choose marginality as Jesus did. Hospitality from the margins establishes the authentic human connection of appropriate intimacy and creates a new space where, in encountering the other, we encounter a hitherto unrecognized face of God (Gittins, 2015: 12).
God's mission is not limited to the church. The Spirit of God leads Christ's disciples who are committed to God's mission to where God works and where they can meet the people God is looking for. In that sense, if solidarity is the centripetal expression of hospitality, marginality is the centrifugal expression of hospitality. Marginality as a mission spirituality based on the Christian in-beyond perspective leads us to participate in God's mission not only within the church but also beyond the church.
Conclusion: Intercultural Mission as Creating Space and Building Bridge
Christian mission as a common participation in God's mission is a spiritual activity in which all of God's people work together in one Spirit to prepare the way for the Lord. This Christian mission requires mission spirituality that makes it possible in connection with the Triune God. Meanwhile, today's changing landscape of Christian mission and the complexity of mission contexts captured in advanced understanding of culture demand a new missionary approach, and interculturality is presented as an alternative to complement the existing cross-cultural mission paradigm.
In this backgrounds, focusing on the migration context, this paper examines the possibility of developing mission theologies and practices that have interculturality as a mission paradigm. From the position that it is not only possible but also a more promising vision than the existing mission paradigm, this paper defines intercultural mission as a Christian spiritual practice in which Christians from different cultural backgrounds intentionally form one community with equal status on the Christian base, aiming for a new reality that will be achieved through God's presence and intervention, and participate together in God's mission, embodying a distinctive social life authentic to the gospel through mutually enriching and challenging interactions within and beyond the community. And, as mission spiritualities for this intercultural mission, it presents hospitality, solidarity and marginality.
Hospitality, practiced through the self-emptying love in the form of creating space where mutual change can take place, is not only a metaphor for Christian mission as the divine invitation from God to enter into a loving relationship with God, but also can be understood as a core spirituality for intercultural mission, which involves creating space where God's mission can be experienced within the context of encounters and interactions between different people.
Solidarity, practiced through the empathetic love in the form of identifying oneself with others and promoting the common good based on awareness of mutual dependence, is also a crucial mission spirituality that can bridge people with strangeness and give birth to an intercultural church in which Christians from different backgrounds in a multicultural society form one community and is formed together into a new reality authentic to the gospel.
Marginality, practiced as an intentional movement toward the margins where one can meet marginalized people from the Christian in-beyond perspective, is also a crucial mission spirituality that allows Christians to recognize in-between space as a field where God's mission is carried out and a place where God can be experienced and witnessed in a new way, and to challenges them to move beyond their familiar environment along the path of Christ.
Intercultural mission, practiced based on these spiritual resources, can be referred to as a Christian joint spiritual activity of creating space and building bridge for God's mission.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author biography
Kwanghyun Ryu is a doctoral student at Evangelical Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague, CZ, and a Korean pastor who has been working in a multi-ethnic church in Prague since 2012 when he was sent by the Presbyterian Church of Korea as a missionary to the Czech Republic. He is preparing his doctoral thesis on the theme of intercultural mission through intercultural church in relation to his mission context.