New Directions in Mission and Evangelization 3: Faith and Culture (New Directions in Mission and Evangelization)

Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Resource
Review: This represents the third editorial compilation of the team made up of the Lutheran James Scherer and Roman Catholic Stephen Bevans. The focus of this volume is to bring together the best and most trend-setting thinking in the area of contextualization, or, the encounter of faith and culture. The thirteen page introduction to the volume traces the historical development of this missiological concern from 1970 to the present. This, in itself, warrants the purchase of the book, as it is the best survey of the trends and literature to date. The remainder of the book is divided into two parts. The first twelve chapters are general articles on contextualization or incarnation, while the last three chapters consist of documentation of official church statements on the encounter of Faith and Culture. One is a statement by the Lutheran World Federation and the other two are from the World Council of Churches. The articles in the first section are written from a wide spectrum of church traditions as well as geographical regions (half of them are written by non-westerners). One of the few weaknesses of the book is that only one of the authors is female and her (Kwok Pui-lan) article is about the oral hermeneutics of Asian Women. The editors have compiled an excellent index at the end, with all the major subtopics, conferences and people referenced, for easy access. Because this volume reprints some of the best current reading on the issue, I highly recommend it as a primary text for a course on Gospel and Culture or as a secondary text for a course on Issues in Missiology.