This issue of Cultural Encounters is dedicated to the memory of one of our former editors and authors, Dr. Richard Leo Twiss, Tayoate Ob Najin (“He Stands with his People”). Richard passed from this life to the next on February 9, 2013, in Washington, D.C. He was fifty-eight years of age when he died unexpectedly as a result of a massive heart attack. He was encircled by his wife, Katherine, and sons Andrew, Phillip, Ian, and Daniel at the time of his passing. Richard is now part of that great cloud of witnesses that encircles us. This is Cultural Encounters’ opportunity to honor Richard for the great witness he was to Jesus Christ, as he stood with his people.
Richard journeyed far in this life as a “two-legged.” He was born on the Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota, in the midst of his mother Winona (Larvie) LaPointe’s community, the Sicangu Band of the Rosebud Lakota/Sioux. Richard’s father, Franklin (Buster) Twiss (deceased), was Oglala from the Pine Ridge Lakota/Sioux Reservation, which is also in South Dakota. I will leave it to the contributors to speak to various aspects of Richard’s story and the importance of his work. Let it suffice to say that Richard’s sojourn as a First Nations person and as a Christian led him far and wide and back again to his roots. By the time of his passing, he was one of the most prophetic evangelical Christian leaders of his day, as he championed the concerns of indigenous peoples worldwide. In addition to the thousands of people who were impacted by Richard through personal relationship, his international labors in contextualized theology through such literary efforts as Christ, Culture and the Kingdom of God, 500 Years of Bad Haircuts (later republished under the title One Church, Many Tribes), and his crowning achievement, Rescuing Theology from the Cowboys, furthered the impact of his vision for Christ’s kingdom community. Among other notable achievements, Richard cofounded NAIITS (North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies) and Evangelicals for Justice. He and his wife Katherine created Wiconi International, whose mission is “to work for the well-being of our Native people by advancing cultural formation, indigenous education, spiritual awareness and social justice connected to the teachings and life of Jesus, through an indigenous worldview framework.” Richard’s as well as Katherine’s work highlights at every turn the need for contextualization of the gospel and the brokenness and contrition that must always accompany it. My hope and prayer is that just as our Lord was a kernel of wheat that providentially fell to the ground and died to produce many seeds (Jn 12:24), Richard’s passing will be used providentially by God as the Spirit breaks forth to produce many new seeds that bear fruit for Christ, as Richard’s did.
Memorials and tributes in honor of Richard’s legacy from several scholars and practitioners follow immediately after the editor’s introduction. In addition to the series of reflections in honor of Richard, the journal turns its attention to a rigorous debate that has gone on for years at Biola University in Los Angeles, California, concerning the towering Jesus Mural, painted by a renowned artist. Central to the debate, which has included representatives of various disciplines and diverse constituents, is the concern over cultural hegemony (Jesus is portrayed as a white man) in addition to artistic freedom. The journal gives you a glimpse of various dimensions and perspectives that were involved in the ongoing discussion as Biola’s professors, alumni, and current President weigh in on how to address what to do about the mural. Together with consideration of Richard’s work, the dialogue draws attention to the need for Christians of all walks of life to guard against amorphous and homogeneous thought forms and hubris; central to the celebration of a diverse community of faith in honor of Christ is contextualized theology and a broken and contrite spirit.
The scene then shifts from the West Coast of the United States to the Asian continent and India. We turn from consideration of a recent debate surrounding a white Jesus mural on a conservative evangelical Christian campus in Southern California to the burning of widows in India in a previous era. What unites the two subjects, along with the tributes to Richard Twiss, is concern over contextualization of the gospel free of Western white cultural elitism, including Christendom. On the subject of widow burning, I interviewed Drs. Mrinalini Sebastian and J. Jayakiran Sebastian, Indian Christians and scholars who have labored at length to contextualize the gospel in pluralistic settings with great sensitivity in India and abroad. For them, the contextualization of the gospel in our global era will, for example, guard against the hubris that pitted the West against India and the East, and Christianity against Hinduism. It will instead favor missional concern for our fellow humans. Missional concern will involve among other things an appeal to the inhumanity of such acts as widow burning. These appeals will often win collaboration from diverse religious and ethnic others, as was the case historically, as many Hindus shared those Christian witnesses’ concern.
Attention to the contextualization of the gospel has led many Christians to talk of “incarnational ministry.” Is such language appropriate, or does the terminology reflect a category mistake? What is the import of such language as “incarnational ministry” for the Christian life positively or negatively? J. Todd Billings and I engage in a conversation that begins with his Christianity Today article titled “The Problem with ‘Incarnational Ministry,’” with a tagline that reads, “What if our mission is not to ‘be Jesus’ to other cultures, but to join with the Holy Spirit?” Each of us is concerned for abuses associated with “incarnational ministry” but comes to different conclusions as to the merits of a chastened use of such language. In addition to noting our shared concern over abuses and differences over usability of such language, it is important to point out that Billings and I celebrate the mystery of the incarnation and our participation in Christ’s life with all that is entailed by such participation for contextualized ministry today. Taking seriously Christ’s life and our union with him in the Spirit will lead us to taking seriously the concrete situation in which we find ourselves without taking ourselves too seriously.
It is crucial that we take to heart our participation in Christ’s life and our sharing in his ministry among those we are called to serve. Participation in his life is always a particular participation. There is no such thing as an amorphous Jesus or an amorphous Christian or an amorphous theology: they are always particular and concrete. Still, that does not mean that Jesus is enslaved to a particular context, as if we could objectify and control God’s revelation. Rightful concern for contextualization will always guard against hubris in that Jesus as the Word made flesh is always revealed in hiddenness and hidden in revelation. We can never master him but must always submit ourselves in a spirit of brokenness and contrition to be mastered by him and so be set free. Whenever the church fails to submit itself to Christ’s lordship in revelation but seeks to gain mastery of the revelation event, the church takes matters into its own hands. Such arrogance and control will lead eventually to the loss of faith as pride always goes before a fall.
Such was the case for Christianity in the North and South during and after the Civil War era. As Kimlyn Bender argues, the forces of Christendom in the North and South respectively claimed to know far too much of God’s providential workings and viewed themselves as serving on God’s side against the other. Drawing especially upon George C. Rable’s God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War, Bender traces the specific features of a particular and deterministic doctrine of divine providence that was widespread in the North and South. This doctrine’s inherent faults led in part to the unraveling of a Christian understanding of history in the post-war period in America. Perhaps we Christians can learn a thing or two today in view of the tragedy of the war and its aftermath for the North and South: no matter the era, overconfidence in claiming to discern providence and presumption over one’s alignment with God’s purposes often backfires and leads to the loss of faith.
Here we come full circle to where we began with the editor’s introduction. The North and South’s respective Manifest Destiny ambitions were also at work in the conquest of America through the use of African and Native American peoples. The failure to take seriously the particular identity of Jesus Christ as a marginalized Jewish male under imperial Rome, as the Lord of the Christian faith, means that we will fail to identify with orphans, widows, and aliens in their distress. It will also entail our lack of identification with indigenous peoples and God’s mysterious operation in and through these resilient and richly tapestried, though marginalized, communities. Only as we reframe our witness as Christians and draw upon the work of prophetic witnesses such as the late Richard Twiss will we be prepared to speak and live out our faith from the margins with renewed energy in the Spirit. Only then will Christ’s church in North America be in position to counteract the dynamics of pride and power that result in disillusionment and the marginalization of the faith.
—Paul Louis Metzger, Editor