The Gospel in our Asian Cultures

By Bruce Nicholls

The crisis of theological education in Asia is the crisis of its theology which in turn is the crisis of understanding the gospel in Asian cultures.

Our seminaries on the whole have not been successful in training pastors, educationalists and evangelists to reach the thoughtful and educated people of their national cultures, I felt this deeply when teaching a course in a seminary in Myanmar where I learned that in nearly all the seminaries there were few students who had a Burmese cultural heritage. Virtually all the students were tribals, and we can be grateful for the opportunity to build the tribal churches. There are 50 million Buddhists in Myanmar but the number of Christians with a Burmese heritage is probably only two to three thousand, despite Adoniram Judson having translated the Scriptures into Burmese almost 200 years ago.

Is this failure because few of the missionaries and the teachers in the theological schools have been able to show the relevance of the Gospel to the Buddhist mind? Or is it because most of the teachers at the masters and doctoral level have been trained in a western culture with a western worldview? For the Buddhists the word “God” is meaningless. And by “sin” they mean shame, Buddhists are appalled at our Christian view of eternal life. Their longing is to achieve nirvana, the end of life. The same is true for Hindus wanting to be liberated from the bondage of karma-sansara, the cycle of endless rebirths.

In most cases our theological curriculum is modelled on those that are common in the west, and our degrees such as MDiv and BD are a puzzle to the government officials. When I was a pastor in a north Indian church I had an able young woman in the congregation who daily lived with five demon spirits whom she knew by name. She has been cursed by a fakir. Sadly, an Indian pastor and I failed to cast out these evil spirits. In our theological education we had not been taught how to exorcise evil spirits, a work central to Jesus’ own public ministry.

The purpose of theological education is to serve the church, to mentor its members, to guide them in worship and to inspire them to engage in Christ’s mission to the world. At the recent ATA General Assembly in Singapore our main speakers were all millennials, chosen because they were the church of the future. They called on us to build communities of faith in which inquirers from other faiths would feel welcome and accepted, even though they were not yet believers. Conversion is normally a process that might follow years of struggle and doubt. Yet we can rejoice that when Christ miraculously heals sufferers or gives supernatural guidance, many of other faiths instantly believe. This happens often among jihadist Muslims. In some cases Christ appears to them on the night of power in Ramadan, or during the Eid al-Adha festival to honour Abraham’s sacrifice of his son (unnamed in the Qur’an).

Christ is calling us to build relationships of understanding and acceptance with the people of Asia, both the poor and illiterate and those who are educated. This is the concern of my new book, Building Bridges from Asian Faith to Jesus in the Gospels, published by Regnum. Oxford.

Our millennials also called for an authentic living of the Gospel in our pluralistic and changing cultures. They feel this deeply. The culture of my youth was pro-Christian. This is no longer true today in the western world where Christians are being pushed to the periphery of society.

In Asia persecution is increasing across Asia by the fundamentalists of each religion, Hindu, Buddhist and Muslim. Tragically there were more martyrs in the 20th century than in all the previous centuries. The 21st century is just as threatening. The task of training pastors to be good shepherd of their flocks suffering persecution should be emphasized in the curricula of our theological schools. Persecution is no longer a subject limited to church history.

Our millennials are no longer wedded to their traditional denominations. They want to be part of churches where Christ is Lord and the Holy Spirit is present in power. The millennials also showed their love for the creative arts and urged that these have a greater part in our churches. They emphasized their love of music and drama, and expressed their creativity in their hair and dress styles. But sadly, many millennials are addicted to the misuse of the social media. 

We conclude the curricula of our theological school need constant revision in the light of our changing cultures. This calls for more emphasis on research in the areas where we are failing and where we are succeeding and why.