discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 172
172 New Contexts for Mission
counterarguments for textbook listings of the doctrines of those religions.
What people actually believe and the ways they practice their faith will differ
from what textbooks say about their religion. For example, it is often said that
the majority of those categorized as Muslims and Hindus and perhaps 20 percent
of those who are nominally Christian are actually animistic. Many Buddhists
are animistic as well, as is evidenced by the little spirit houses outside
homes and businesses throughout Southeast Asia.
The traditional short definition of animism is “the belief in spirits.” However,
to get a proper understanding of that term, one must go back a hundred years
to anthropologist James George Fraser. In his monumental 13-volume The Golden
Bough, Fraser noted that people in every culture are involved in a quest for the
supernatural. Through the years anthropologists have continued to affirm what
Fraser said about the universality of religion, putting it on their lists of cultural
universals. Even where leaders have claimed their followers were atheistic, this has
never been true for the whole of a culture. Witness the survival of religion in Albania
during the Communist years even though the attempts to erase all vestiges
of religion included sandblasting crosses off of tombstones.
That all groups of people seek the supernatural should not be surprising in
the light of the prevenient aspect of God’s grace in which divine grace is understood
to precede or go before the arrival of the missionary. Though Don
Richardson does not use the term prevenient grace, that was the foundation for
his words in Eternity in Their Hearts when he wrote, “God has indeed prepared
the Gentile world to receive the Gospel.” 11 John Ellenberger, professor of missions
at Alliance Theological Seminary, has also pointed to several examples of
the Holy Spirit’s preparatory activity in cultures prior to any contact with the
gospel message. 12
As Fraser examined cultures throughout the world, he saw two ways that
people approached the supernatural, ways he called the religious and the magical
(see fig. 12.1). Either approach can be used by believers of all religions.
They are not mutually exclusive and are often mixed in practice.
The religious approach to the supernatural, anthropologists say, is characterized
by submission. One example of that is the prayer of Jesus in the garden
of Gethsemane just prior to His arrest. His submissiveness in that prayer is exemplified
by the words, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Submission
is also a key attitude in the religion of Islam; indeed, the word Islam
means “submission” in Arabic. For many, Buddhism is also a religion of submission
to the point of being fatalistic.
The magical approach to the supernatural is characterized by manipulation.
People using this approach want supernatural forces to do something for
them. The supernatural quest by animists often uses such a magical approach.