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Book Reviews / Pneuma 35 (2013) 87-156
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John Corrie and Cathy Ross, Mission in Context: Explorations Inspired by J. Andrew Kirk (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2012). xix + 248 pp., $99.95 hardback.
J. Andrew Kirk was well received by Pentecostals at the Pentecostal Theological Seminary through the courses offered in mission studies by Rick Waldrop. In my last year in the master of divinity degree at the institution, I read Kirk’s What is Mission? right out of the press in 1999. Kirk was alluring to a group of students who wanted to explore his biblically oriented contextual methodology of the intersection of the Gospel and culture, justice for the poor, encounter with other religions, care for the environment, and building peace through pneu- matological lenses. It was like discovering a new concrete language to engage my own Latino/a Pentecostal tradition; a language, to my surprise then, constructed in conversation with Latin American Roman Catholic theologians.
Mission in Context is a collection of articles inspired by Kirk’s missiology. The book is crafted in four major sections. There are three biographical musings in the first section by Cathy Ross, Daniel Kirk, and J. Samuel Escobar showing the development of Kirk’s missiol- ogy in different contexts throughout his life. In the second section, What is Mission?, C. René Padilla, John Corrie, Peter Penner, and Hwa Yung explore the influence of Latin America liberation theology on Kirk’s missiology and how Kirk became an advocate of contextual hermeneutics. Padilla shows how Kirk’s interaction with contextual theology in Latin Amer- ica was crucial for the development of his own hermeneutics. Corrie follows Padilla in pre- senting Kirk’s suggestion for an alternative evangelical hermeneutics of liberation. According to Corrie, Kirk wanted to interpret Latin American liberation theology to a conservative evangelical audience suspicious of any undermining of biblical authority. For this reason, Kirk reversed the known definition of liberation theology from “a critical reflection on praxis based on the Word of God” into a “critical reflection on the message of revelation in the light of praxis.” Penner’s essay describes how the early Church practiced community according to texts from Acts of the Apostles. Finally, Yung presents how the Gospel could be used in nation-building in emergent nations.
In the third section, Truth in a Pluralistic World, Parush R. Parushev, Vinoth Ramachan- dra, Darrell Jackson, and Andrew F. Walls explore themes related to epistemology and the truth claims of the Gospel in a pluralistic society, issues of multiculturalism and interfaith dialogue, and the plurality of Christian worldviews. After an examination of Kirk’s writings on postmodernism and his concept ‘moderate foundationalism’, Parushev discusses the pos- sibilities of a non-foundationalist epistemology based on ‘convictional perspectivism’ as a theological response to postmodern relativism. Ramachandra’s essay on truth and pluralism seeks to move the current evangelical conversation on religious pluralism beyond mere tol- erance to an ‘engaged pluralism of the public realm’ (126). He advances ten theses describing how Christians could respond to religious pluralism by affirming cultural and religious diversity as normative, listening attentively to the best exponents and practitioners of a reli- gious tradition, by accepting the differences between religions as real and ultimate, inviting all people to present their unique contribution to national life, and being faithful and honor- ing Jesus Christ in all encounters. Jackson’s essay is illuminating for North American readers in seeing the efforts of secular and governmental institutions in Europe to come to grips with issues of multiculturalism and religious pluralism. Ironically, Jackson shows how the
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 DOI: 10.1163/15700747-12341301
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Book Reviews / Pneuma 35 (2013) 87-156
Church has been silenced and divested of its role as a partner in the dialogue by the Council of Europe. Finally, Walls describes the difficult path to understand the influence of world- views in Christian conversion by debunking the evangelical illusion that there is such a thing as the Christian worldview or the Christian culture. Instead, there are myriad of Christian worldviews with operational features similar to those practiced by our neighbors who are adherent of other religions. Here lies the inability of Western missionaries rooted in the Enlightenment worldview to understand or contribute to the vast universe of maps ingrained in the many cultures of the Majority World. Walls ends his essay by calling people from the Majority World to expand their theological activity.
In the final section of the book, Culture, Education and Religion, Wilbert Shenk, David Kettle, Alan Kreider, Peter Kuzmic, and Allan Anderson delve into themes related to the gospel and Western culture, missiology in Post-Communist Eastern Europe, and the signifi- cance of Pentecostal mission to the global church. There are two main themes that emerge out of these essays: contextual hermeneutics in revolutionary situations of poverty and alienation and epistemology and religious pluralism.
Mission in Context is a cohesive collection of essays describing and analyzing the missiol- ogy of Andrew Kirk. I find the work most helpful in describing the enormous contribution that Andrew Kirk has both in Latin America and in European circles by constructing an evangelical contextual hermeneutics of liberation. Despite the fact that it does not provide Kirk’s bibliography and being mostly oriented toward a European readership, the book is a great contribution for mission scholars, historians, and prospect dissertation writers on missiology.
Reviewed by Angel D. Santiago-Vendrell
E. Stanley Jones Assistant Professor of Evangelization
Asbury Theological Seminary, Dunnam School of Urban Ministries Orlando, Florida
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