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book reviews
303
Julie C. Ma
When the Spirit Meets the Spirits: Pentecostal Ministry Among the Kankana-ey Tribe
in the Philippines, 2nd. revised edition(Eugene, or: Wipf and Stock Publishers,
2010). 274 pp. $24.00 paperback.
Julie Ma was on the faculty at Asia Pacific Theological Seminary (apts) from September 1987–2006. She earned her PhD from Fuller Theological Seminary. Presently, she serves as a Research Tutor in Missiology for the Oxford Center for Mission Studies (ocms). She is married to Wonsuk Ma its Executive Director. While teaching at apts she was also a missionary to the Kankana-ey tribe. This book discusses the fruits of her research among these communities; she basically discusses their worldview of the spirit world. She has also published books among which are Mission Possible: Biblical Strategies for Reaching the Lost (2005), and edited with Wonsuk Ma, Asian Church and God’s Mission (2003). This book was originally published in 2000 by Peter Lang, has also been translated into other languages, but now in its second revision is published by Wipf and Stock.
Ma has taken a “slippery slope” type of topic and made it very tangible. She has sufficiently tackled the issue of “spirits” within the worldview of the moun- tain tribe of the Kankana-ey. She begins by painting us a very clear picture of the historical roots of missionary work among these people beginning from the Roman Catholics, Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ in the Philip- pines, Southern Baptist and finally resting on the Pentecostal heritage, which stems from a woman by the name of Elva Vanderbout. It is amazing how this widow obeyed God and came from the United States to the Philippines, and specifically to the mountain people. Ma writes, “Until she launched her work in the mountains, no missionaries or national workers of the Assemblies of God hasattemptedmountainministry”(74).MasummarizesVanderbout’sministry:
From the initial time of Vanderbout’s ministry in 1947 until the year 1959, eight churches were constructed under her direction. There were over one hundred preaching points throughout various mountain areas. She reached more than one hundred villages with the gospel. In the year 1955, Vanderbout has started to work in villages of the head-hunting people, a singular accomplishment of the thirteen years of her service in the mountains (Vanderbout 1959). Besides the ministry of evangelism and church planting, Vanderbout did not neglect training devoted young people. As a result of her labor, approximately one hundred young people from the mountains went to Bible school, and a majority of them became ministers to reach their own people. Vanderbout, out of necessity, erected
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-03602011
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an orphanage to care for poor, neglected and abandoned children. She took care of fifteen of the original children of the orphanage (Vanderbout 1959: 85).
Following the historical survey is the anthropological perspective. In the next section, Ma is very specific and detailed on the Kankana-ey tribe’s array of spir- its. She uses a grid to analyze spirits, priests and rituals, which is made up of domain, taxonomy and theme. The charts that Ma has constructed illustrate the use of this grid well. It shows clearly the relationships of spirits, priests and rituals giving specific names, ranks and functions. In the third section, Ma introduces three encounters: power, truth and allegiance. She maps out spe- cific biblical incidences where these encounters are evident. She also explains clearly the inner-workings of these three encounters stating: “Each helps to sus- tain growth and assurance” (159). Using a chart that she borrows from Charles Kraft, one of her professors at Fuller, Ma shows the progressive stages of these three encounters in a believer’s life into spiritual maturity. Finally, Ma does an ethnological analysis of the Kankana-ey’s Christianity by comparing non- Christian Kankana-eys, Pentecostals and Pentecostal Kankana-eys. She asks her respondents who are both men and women about their view of God in the aspects of blessings and curses. These aspects are put in concrete terms: blessings relating to their work on farming and mining, and curses relating to non-believers when they reject the gospel. Other topics probed are: healing, revelation and the spiritual world after death. The book concludes strongly with practical applications and implications for the church: power ministry, mobilizing of the whole church, women in ministry, contextualization, social work, and family planning, the environment, serving in the community, sensi- bility to cultural differences, evangelization, and growth in the word and mis- sionary work.
As hinted at the beginning, what impressed me most was that Julie Ma manages to take such a complex and broad reaching topic and make it mea- surable by providing some tangible tools in the forms of grids, which make up the two triangles of (domain—taxonomy—theme) and (power—truth— allegiance) quite useful to understand her findings on the Kankana-eys. That said, as she shows the change of allegiance of the Kankana-ey to Christ, she seems to follow the dangerous line of syncretizing Kankana-eys tribal religions and Pentecostalism. Another area of weakness is the fact that there is still a strong dependency of this tribe on external financial support from foreign mis- sionaries. So this missionary example is a case of “fishing the fish” and not “teaching them to fish”. In terms of organization, the book shifts between bibli- cal or theological foundations and the practical or ministry aspects that is con-
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fusing. However, the high quality and thorough research done in the process of writing this book shines through brilliantly. As Gary B. McGee summarizes Ma’s work, “She successfully defends her thesis that to understand the evan- gelization of this people group, one must see the impact of physical healings and other miraculous happenings in response to prayer as fundamental to their acceptance of the Christian faith.” (“Book Review,”apts2001 4 No. 2 (2001): 335).
Teresa Chai
John Bueno Chair of Intercultural Studies
Book Review Editor, Journal of Pentecostal Theology
Asia Pacific Theological Seminary, Baguio, Benguet, Philippines
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