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A couple of questions:

What is Christianity like outside the West right now? Does it bear traces of Westernization?

Also, how much was Judaism-the practice and theology of the Jews before Christ-influenced by the lands from which the Jews came? In other words, did the near Eastern culture influence how they practiced the worship of Yahweh-and even how they believed in Him?

An interesting additional perspective comes from J. Kameron Carter’s Race: A Theological Issue. Was the problem that Judaism was extracted from the equation which led to the captivity of early Christianity to Greco-Roman culture? I.e. – the Christian faith was not meant to be rooted in either . . . or, but both . . . and. Being rooted in both worlds means that there is no one dominant human culture at the center and that both primary and secondary culture are present. Also see Linthicum who argues that Jerusalem should not be seen only as the heavenly city but as both the City of God and the City of Satan.

@JO

All throughout the Old Testament, you see examples of what happened to the Israelites every time they allowed external cultural influences to modify their religious practices.

Each time it happened, God punished them with famine, plague, invasion, death, destruction of their cities, etc.

Each time they finally repented and came back to what was written in the Book of the Law, God relented and allowed a remnant to return to Israel, rebuild, etc.

So I would say the answer to your question is both yes and no. Yes in that influence happened, and no in that God made sure that a remnant of Israel returned to the Old Covenant each and every time, up until the coming of Christ, which replaced the Old Covenant.

I had something a little different in mind, I think, Matt. What I’m saying, more or less, is not a falling from the covenant or fidelity to God, but something else regarding cultural impact on practice, beliefs, and understanding.

Abraham, for example, was not always the spiritual father of us all. He came out of Ur, where they had specific cultural beliefs and religious practices. Did this background influence his beliefs in Yhwh? Did it even impact his understanding of Yhwh? Can his underlying cultural background be traced in Scripture? Perhaps.

Moreover, is this idea that cultural influences are embedded in Scripture true? Or, is there some pure Christianity (or Judaism) that is separate from any cultural influences? I would say yes to the first and no to the second. There is a pure Christ and pure Father; they exist and are not in themselves malleable to our interpretations, but our understanding of the members of the Trinity comes through our own filter while in this world. In other words, when we are born to a second life, we are not born tabula rasa. Rather, I think God uses our backgrounds for his purposes.

I would argue, for example, at the risk of sounding heretical, that Psalms has many theological inaccuracies, but God allowed them in Scripture. These theological inaccuracies are in there for good reasons, I’m sure, but I think they occur because of specific beliefs of the Israelite culture at the time the Psalms were penned. Does that make the Psalms and the authority of the Psalms as Scripture any less? I don’t think so. God uses us as we are for his purposes and that includes our culture.

Now, do I believe that Christianity should be pursued as a contextualized Christianity, a belief for each culture? No, for part of knowing Christ means setting aside some of our pre-conceptions in order to accept the truth in Christ. and to deliberately seek a contextualized Christianity is much like the conservative Bible or a relativized spirituality. Can we strip Christianity or Scripture down, though, to some pure form uninfluenced by culture? I don’t think so, but we can continue to seek to know Christ as truly is, which I don’t think is the same thing.

God chose to bring about his plan of salvation through a culture (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob –> David –> Jesus). As a result, God is not a God who disregards culture; however, in the NT, the Gospel isn’t limited to any culture. Galatians does an amazing job helping us understand the necessity of a Christianity without any ties to a culture.

Having said all that, can religion and culture be separated? That’s the great question that must be asked when sociology and religion cross paths. I don’t think they can be separated completely, but that doesn’t prevent us from trying to get to the root of Christianity that transcends Judaism and Hellenism.

But I do think that we need to contextualize Christianity so that the current western domination of it decreases and a purer form of our faith arises.

@JO

Well answered. =) I think you could probably even argue that Paul strove to do exactly what you suggest — strip away the dross and present a pure and simple form of the Gospel. He argued against the Judiazers’ influence in expecting circumcision and adherance to Jewish laws (arguing against cultural influence of Christianity).

At the same time, Paul points out that for Christians, there ARE times that you need to allow your faith to be influenced (not corrupted, just influenced) — such as when your own non-sinful actions can cause another person to sin (Paul calls this person “the weaker brother”).

I would suggest that Paul was onto something here — Christianity is extremely pure in its core — “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved” sums it up pretty well. At the same time, we do get influenced by the local culture simply because of the differences in how cultures view certain actions.

I don’t think i stated all of this all that well…ugh…must get more coffee!

@ Daniel Sangi Im

I have to disagree with your statement. You are essentially focusing on a perception of “western domination” (whatever that means — can you define it?) and how to combat it in order to arrive at a “pure” form of the Christian faith.

I would suggest that the opposite is the correct path to follow — focus on your own faith in Christ and strip away all that is not essential Christianity. In that way, you have made your own faith pure, and can then focus on helping others who wish to do so to do the same. (essentially, following Jesus’ log/plank example).

“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”. I agree that faith in Christ and the salvation that comes only through faith in Him (as well as the sharing of this faith with others that they, too, might be saved) is the principal aim of the Christian faith, but what we believe about the Lord Jesus Christ, how we go about believing Him, and what we understand about his actual words will undoubtedly be influenced by many factors. I think to come to an understanding of Him as a He truly is must be the goal of the faith, and can truly only come through the mediation of the Spirit and an intense desire to know Him.

The reason I asked about Christianity in non-Western societies is to determine whether Christianity in the world today is truly western dominated. I’ve heard, though I have no direct experience, that Christianity is today most active in Africa and Asia, rather than the West. If that’s so, then what does Christianity look like in those countries and cultures?

The question itself is a thoroughly Western question at its core and a modern one at that. Is it possible to extract a pure essential core of Christianity from its cultural influences. We are back then to what the fundamentalists wanted to do, which was an admirable project though problematic in its outworking.

I say that if God be God, then that Christianity was birthed in the time and cultural framework that it was is a providentially foreseen reality and doesn’t necessarily “taint” Christianity. The problem at the root of the question is an assumption, albeit a subtle one, that the Greco-Roman Hellenistic culture “corrupted” pure Christianity, which implies that it was somehow an inferior vessel for the conduction of Christianity. This is primarily an issue now because of the increasing insecurity about the role of the “West” in world history and a consequent debate about the validity and beneficence of Western influence around the world, including in the Christian religion, i.e. Christianity would be okay if we could get rid of that pesky Euro-centric problematic baggage that accompanies it on every trip. The near obliteration of Christianity in what is now termed the Middle East during the era of Islamic conquest has heightened the sense that Christianity is necessarily and only tied to the West (notwithstanding the divergent path taken by Eastern Orthodoxy which despite sharing some of the same philosophic roots, is a decidedly different branch).

Christianity was at the outset in many ways, a translated, culturally malleable religion. The texts we have are themselves translation of the Aramaic that Jesus likely spoke on a daily basis, and the Jewish world Jesus himself inhabited was a world thoroughly steeped in Hellenistic culture. We must also take more seriously the extent to which the Christian religion itself has shaped Western thought and culture over the course of these two thousand years and the slow process of the Christianization of Europe which meant that for centuries, and continuing well into the modern (post 1750) era, preexisting cultural ideas and mental maps coexisted with Christian ideas and indeed continue to do so (the European fairy tales are decidedly pre-Christian and yet continue till this day to be taught to children)

All of this to say that Christianity has never been a religion of the West has always been a religion of the West has always been Christian. It is an inseparable reality that doesn’t necessarily have to be regarded negatively unless we decided on some a priori basis that Western culture is somehow an inferior conduit for Christianity that has irredeemable corrupted its message, which seems to me to be a direct contradiction of scripture which speaks compellingly of “earthen vessels” that contain the treasure of the gospel. The same process of inculturation and reinterpretation continues apace as the gospel more deeply penetrates heretofore non “Christian” societies and just as the Celts, Gauls, and Norsemen and Slavs reinterpreted the Christian religion in light of their own cultural inheritance as it was preached to them by folks steeped in Greco-Roman culture (itself dynamic and fluid), so too will these new believers cultures shape and be shaped by the gospel.