Glocal Christianity

Global Interaction on Local Mission

I participated in a very interesting forum on Friday evening. Global Interaction, an organisation that you’d normally associate with overseas mission, hosted an evening on multicultural mission in Australia. Interested, I went along for a look see.

Well, I am glad I did. I think I have just found Sydney’s mosaics.

The forum was held at Bankstown Sports Club. Many of the participants, like myself, seemed to come from multicultural areas in Sydney’s south and west and many that I talked to seemed familiar with the Emerging-Missional conversation, including the writings of Hirsch and Frost. But like myself, they had some qualms and were keen to explore what it means to be missional in much more explicitly multi-religious and multi-cultural settings than what normally gets talked about.

At one point in the evening I raised the issue that I have raised here on a number of occasions, that I think the homogenous unit principle of cross cultural mission collapses in the face of utter pluralism (though I phrased it more in terms of how do you do incarnational mission when you’ve got more cultures than Christians). That seemed to stump a few of the mishos, which is unsurprising because it stumps me sometimes too, but simply the fact that they took the question very seriously was encouraging. The best response coming from the floor was the suggestion that maybe we have to start off incarnational but shift to multicultural church in the discipleship process. This was not dissimilar to Steve Hayes’ comments here at Glocal Christianity some weeks back. All I would add to that is the need for networking and pooling expertise, which this evening was a good first step towards. I hope there are more of these evenings in the future.

Thanks to the Global Interaction team for taking the initiative.

Globalized Christianity and World Christianity: Understanding the Difference

I wonder how many Americans understand the difference between Globalized Christianity and World Christianity?

If my experience with American Christian, American Atheist and American Pagan blogs is anything to go by, I would have to conclude ... only a minority. For example, in a recent conversation about Rob Bell, some Emergents said,

"...there are two completely different conversations taking place in Christianity today. One version is concerned with defending the religious assumptions rooted in the all important “either/or” duality that blankets American Christianity. The other conversation has already mourned the death of the previous conversation and has turned to page to a completely different set of questions."

Only two conversations? One exclusively American and the other emerging out of the old American one? Give me a break! These champions of holism and bigger perspectives all seemed oblivious to how dualistic and colonial these comments actually were.

Not that Pagans or Atheists fair any better. "You mean Christianity is different in different countries? You mean even evangelicalism is different in different countries?" After hours of explaining just that. Slaps head against brick wall. Ah, the privileges of empire.

So, to hopefully enlighten at least some folks in America, here is the difference. 

Globalized Christianity is that which you export to everyone else. It's synonymous with global Americanization and cultural colonization. Think Rick Warren. Think Brian McLaren.

World Christianity is the Jesus movement in all its diversity, where you are just one of many voices, and hopefully amongst the many listeners.

The two mutually interact but they are definitely distinct.

Now here is the red pill. When you confuse Christianity, unqualified, with national conversations, you're talking Globalized Christianity, not World Christianity. When you identify Christianity, unqualified, with national voices, national conferences, and  national networks, you're talking Globalized Christianity, not World Christianity. And I don't care whether you're Megachurch or Emergent.

Think I am being harsh? Test youself. How many non-American bloggers do you listen to? How many do you link to? Proportionately? If less than thirty percent come from a country other than your own let me suggest you think seriously before considering your conversation as being informed by World Christianity.

Here endeth the rant. For those of you who do get the difference between Globalized Christianity and World Christianity already, you are precious, you are gems.

Glocal giving

The ironies of the internet age. Yesterday I gave away a fridge on facebook. We had one to give away but were not sure who might need it, so we broadcasted. As it turned out, there was a family who responded from just a few houses down the street. I went global to find it was needed local. Thing was, unless I had I might not have found out. Have you ever had any experiences like this?

Glocalization, Social Networks and the Church

Is glocalization the same as globalization?

Danah Boyd writes:

When mass media began, people assumed that we would all converge upon one global culture. While the media has had an effect, complete homogenization has not occurred. And it will not. While some values spread and are adopted en-masse, cultures form within the mass culture to differentiate smaller groups of people. Style-driven subcultures are the most visible form of this, but it occurs in companies and in other social gatherings...

…As digital communities grow, they do not get homogeneous. In fact, quite the opposite. They get unwieldy as different communities within the system compete for resources where that resource is features that move the system in the direction they would like to see it go. Everyone is connected, meaning that all sorts of conflicts come crashing together. Language barriers make it hard for people to communicate. Cultural barriers make it hard for them to understand each other. Social barriers make them not care.

Consider then the difference between globalized Christianity and glocalized Christianity. What is the future of the world Christian movement do you think? What are the implications for us locally? How do you think Dana's comments on 'designing for glocalization' may have relevance for the Christian church?

Going Glocal

David Dunham writes on going glocal:

In the last several centuries the world, and the Western World in particular, has been changing rapidly ... The nature of this change has brought about a massive shift in the city so that to speak in terms of a “local” context really must include an awareness of the global context. When the majority of your city, or even a significant portion of it, is composed of various ethnic groups from various cultures your local context has taken on the flavor of the larger world.

Here is what I see as the implication. Going glocal means, not only accepting that the familiar distinctions between world mission and local outreach are collapsing and blurring, but also accepting that the emerging diversity transcends what even world missionaries were used to facing. Dave concludes:

Does “going glocal” impact the “doing of church” in North America? I believe it does, though I confess I don’t know exactly how just yet.

I believe it does, and I think part of the answer is emphasizing the essentials and not getting hung up on optionals. A western perspective on Jesus is too small - we need to be informed by a world perspective.

Become a glocal Christian

This reflection I found over at Living Spirituality was just too apt to ignore:

Become a glocal Christian. Those who follow in the footsteps of Christ are called to a local and a global community and are to have an intense passion and concern for both spheres of life in the body of Christ. Keep the fires of love, trust, and compassion burning for brothers and sisters wherever they are found.

Glocal Journalism

Fellow bloggers, you may be a glocal journalist.

According to Doug McGill, glocal journalism is about “trying to illuminate for readers the connections between their local communities and the international world.” 

For myself, I find I do this integration work on multiple levels. As a Christian I am interested in the connections between Christianity and other world religions. As an evangelical I am interested in the connections between evangelicalism and other Christian traditions. As an Australian I am interested in the connections between the antipodes and everywhere else. And because this is multifaceted, I find you guys, my readers, take interest at different levels too.

But in practice these different threads can become significantly intertwined.

In reading McGill’s article I was intrigued by this concept of a “worldplace” that he spoke of, as the focus of glocal journalism. I expect we could alternatively speak of “globalized locales”.

In the sense that every place is increasingly connected to every other place, people could be forgiven for concluding that place no longer matters. But it does. It gives this blog much of its flavour. What drives me here is questions of how everything impacts this locale, this place, my community. And how they impact the world. So it would be inaccurate to suggest I am writing on every religion impacting on every other religion - what I am writing on is “open Christianity”, on how Christianity impacts other religions and is impacted by other religions. In a similar fashion I am writing on “open Australia” and “open evangelicalism”. It’s an inclusive focus, one that invites participation, but it’s not an exhaustive focus. It puts a different spin on things.

Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West

My friend John Morehead has recently written a review of Lamin Sanneh's "Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West" that readers of this blog should find interesting.

One of things I found interesting is Sanneh's distinction between world Christianity and global Christianity. Personally I am not sure the two can be separated so easily. Many of the contributors to another book I am reading, Globalizing Theology, feel the same and use the phrases more interchangeably. Nevertheless it sounds like an interesting contribution

Thinking Global, Acting Local

Over the last few weeks I have been reassessing the direction of my blogging efforts and in the process have decided to launch a new blog, Glocal Christianity, which will be focusing on thinking globally and acting locally in light of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

This acknowledges my shift to a more (1) explicitly Christian and (2) locally embedded approach in the last 12 months.

What you can expect is that, while I will continue to explore Christian art and thinking from around the world and continue to explore the interaction between Christianity and other world religions, I will be focusing much, much more on the implications for me locally and how that informs my own everyday, everywhere practice, so that hopefully I might be a little clearer as to how it all hangs together, and what is most essential and what is not.

You will still be able to engage with old content at:

http://mattstone.blogs.com/journeysinbetween

But new content will be posted to:

http://mattstone.blogs.com/glocalchristianity

If you are simply linked to http://mattstone.blogs.com then no need to change. I have only swapped the sub directories.