Alan Tippett was
an Australian who worked in Fiji for twenty years before joining Donald
McGavran at the School of World Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary.
In the third
edition of Perspectives on the World Christian Movement, A Reader a chapter of Tippett’s is included
on “The Evangelization of Animists”.[1] That chapter is not included in the latest
edition but I want to interact with it because I think many of the sentiments
that are expressed are still common currency in missions. Much of what Tippett
writes is good and helpful. He tries to resist the comparative religionists’
insistence of categorizing animists alongside other traditions such as Hindus, Muslims
and Buddhists.
Nevertheless, and while acknowledging the great variety of
expressions of animism, for the sake of simplicity he deals with animists
together, as a category in contrast to
other categories – “a discrete enough philosophical ‘system’ among the
religious,” as he calls it – and for this reason the chapter comes
significantly unstuck. Put crudely animists, according to Tippett, are considered
those that would not consider themselves to belong to one of the so-called
Great Traditions.
But animism, or
primalism as it is better called, deeply affects the religion of vast numbers
of people globally, not just those belonging to tribal communities (with which
the phenomenon is usually associated). There are many people that would identify
themselves as Buddhist, Hindu, or Muslim (or Sikh, Jain or Parsee for that
matter) that exhibit primal tendencies in belief and practice, and plenty of
people who identify themselves as Christians! Tippett himself is not unaware of
this but seems not able to draw the logical conclusion that his categories need
a shake up. Andrew Walls writes that “the word [primal] helpfully underlines
two features of the religions of the people indicated: their historical
anteriority and their basic, elemental status in human experience.”[2] All other faiths, Walls adds, are
secondary to that basic primal experience. A key aspect of the culture and
religion of primal peoples is a shared belief in a multitude of spirits or
other non-material phenomena that interact freely with the material world.
Now Tippett outlines
six problems with which the evangelist to animistic peoples must come to terms.
The first of these is that in the evangelization of animists we must expect a
particular sort of encounter on the
part of those who come to Christ. Citing the example of Joshua (24:15) and the
Ephesian converts (Acts 19:18-19) Tippett asserts that “animists cannot drift into the Christian faith”. They
need, he says, a visible demonstration that the old way is finished with, a
rite of separation, to use Van Gennep’s phrase. It may involve the burning of
fetishes or amulets or other such event.
Missionary
stories often describe just such an encounter in the conversion of primal
peoples. But I want to question the biblical basis for expecting or requiring
such an event. To come back to Joshua’s story, the people of Israel had left Egypt several decades before. They
had now come to occupy the vast majority of the Promised Land. But clearly all
was not well with the people. The fact that they possessed ‘foreign gods’ to
throw away suggests that there were some deep-seated issues of allegiance that
had not been resolved. Perhaps they had carried these with them all the way
from Egypt
(as Josh 24:14 suggests). But this story is not that of the conversion of a
tribe of primal people. This was the people of God, the people to whom the Lord
had said, “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you
on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself” (Exod 19:4). Judging by the cycles
of infidelity over the following generations, neither did this incident prove
so much of a turning point for the people. So I do not find it a helpful
analogy to Tippett’s description of the kind of encounter he expects among primal
peoples.
The incident in Ephesus is equally
difficult. The description is not detailed enough to conclude much about the
order of events but we are told that “Many of those who believed now came and
openly confessed their evil deeds” (Acts 19:18). The Greek perfect participle
suggests that these were already
believers. This was no conversion event. So the biblical basis for expecting an
“ocular demonstration” (Tippett’s phrase) at the animist’s conversion is simply
non-existent.
This being so,
perhaps those who work with tribal groups and others exhibiting primal tendencies
need to re-examine this concept and seek a more robustly biblical and
theological rationale for their expectations when they see people turn to
Christ.
I will address the other five issues in the next post.
[1] Alan R. Tippett, “The Evangelization of Animists” in Perspectives
on the World Christian Movement, A Reader (edited by R. D. Winter & S.
C. Hawthorne; 3d ed. Pasadena: William Carey Library, 1999), 629-40.
[2] Andrew F. Walls, “Primal Religious Traditions in Today’s World,” in The Missionary Movement in Christian History:
Studies in the Transmission of the Faith. Maryknoll,
NY: Orbis,
1996, 121.
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