VULNERABLE MISSION

VULNERABLE MISSION: QUESTIONS FROM A LATIN AMERICAN CONTEXT
accompanied the rural to urban transitions of poor, oral, uneducated populations. 49 It is,
however, difficult to demonstrate that a principle of orality was the cause of indigenization.
It is perhaps a simpler explanation that lack of education, and therefore continued
orality, became endemic in transitional groups precisely because marginalization prevented
them from completing the transition they intended, which in turn led to a break
with the wealthy, educated, analytical culture that marginalized them. They did not
indigenize because they were oral but remained oral because they indigenized through
conflict at a time when their identity was shaped by limited access to education.
To put it this way highlights the fact that one notion of education is regnant in Latin
American urban society. There is no romantic notion of local indigenous education
at work here. Rather, there are systems of urban poverty that perpetuate a divide between
those with greater educational opportunity and those without. In this context,
an “oral” rather than analytically trained mind is indeed the default mode of cognition,
but it is hard to imagine idealizing such orality as an equally beneficial thinking style in
a society that functions economically, legally, and politically in a more analytical mode.
Indigenous migrants know as much and for that very reason seek every opportunity to
integrate.
Furthermore, it is similarly difficult to think that such orality in the church context should
not be challenged by the analytical theological mode that is itself indigenously Latin
American and understands its context in the socio-economic terms pertinent to the urban
reality of uneducated oral communities. There are strong links here to Paulo Freire’s
conscientization—part of a pedagogy for marginalized groups that focuses on “critical literacy,”
dialogue, and engagement. 50 Freire’s influence on Latin American liberation theology,
which much of Latin American evangelical theology has appropriated to varying
degrees, finds expression in mainstream Latin American theological scholarship in the
tendency toward discourse and interculturality. This disposition is especially concerned
to empower the voice of the marginalized, yet it certainly expects theological education
to be dialogical rather than monologically “local.”
Cross-Cultural Interaction in the Globalized World
Theological education cannot afford to treat local cultures as closed systems; especially
in urbanized contexts, attempting to treat them so is futile. The world is plugged in, and
there is no going back. Harries says, “The responsibility is on the West to communicate
and interact inter-culturally.” 51 That is a justifiable challenge to the ethnocentric Western
missionary force; a historically reasonable corrective. Especially because the missionary
enters the local culture to instigate the cross-cultural relationship, the burden to assume
an incarnational posture is hers. Yet, when it is a matter of the local Christians’ theological
education, to insist upon banning non-local thinking styles handicaps the resident
of the globalized urban setting. What is more, to place the responsibility of the cross-
49 González and González, ch. 10, passim, esp. 276.
50 For Freire, “critical literacy” was vitally important for conscientization, “the process of developing a critical
awareness of one’s social reality through reflection and action” Freire Institute, “Conscientization,” http://
www.freire.org/conscientization. For an overview of Freire’s theory of critical literacy, see also Peter
Roberts, “Extending Literate Horizons: Paulo Freire and the Multidimensional Word,” Educational Review 50,
no. 2 (June 1998): 105–114.
51 Harries, 64.
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