Saturday, July 14, 2007

Evangelical Western "Christian" Culture...

The fact of the matter is that Evangelicals are no more likely to convert millions of Roman Catholics or Orthodox or Muslims or Hindus or anybody else if we insist on them adopting the Evangelical western "Christian" cultural tradition with all its different strengths and appalling weaknesses, such as high divorce rate, sexual licentiousness, pornography and other terrible things.

--- Ralph D. Winter, Ph.D.
Editor of Mission Frontiers and General Director of the Frontier Mission Fellowship

Ouch.

(Hat tip to VirtueOnline)

2 comments:

SocietyVs said...

"all its different strengths and appalling weaknesses, such as high divorce rate, sexual licentiousness, pornography and other terrible things."

The thing that is failed to be mentioned is we are free to choose what limits and constraints we will apply to our lifestyle - we do have statistics and crap like this in a free country but we do have to the right to limit what we will partake in. But the culture thing that is mentioned here - I am down with that - we need to preserve all world cultures and celebrate the diversity.

Abu Daoud said...

Thank you.

You know, I right now have so many thoughts in my head and my throat hurts so I'm not gonna even try to put this into comments, but I will write something about this challenge.

Specifically, we need something that is evangelical in spirit but that is not Western. We don't have that here in the ME yet. You go to an Orthodox church and it is Eastern in every way shape and form. You go to an evangelical church and even if it's all in Arabic it feels totally Western, either American or Brittish.

But the Orthodox don't seem to have a great zeal, unfortunately, to reach out to Muslims, even though they are quite respected by them. Evangelicals DO have a desire, sometimes at least, to reach out, but everything about their community is perceived as profoundly foreign and imported.