"daring to discuss the important and the amusing"

NEWSLETTER #8

SPRING 2002

Few topics are of greater current interest than Islam, and few scholars are more qualified to speak on Islam than Dr. Lamin Sanneh, the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale University. We are very privileged to be hosting Dr. Sanneh at the Upstate New York InterVarsity Graduate/Faculty conference on April 13th.

Dr. Sanneh tells the interesting story of growing up in Africa, the son of a Muslim cleric, and converting to Christianity as a teenager. When at the age of 18 he approached an English missionary minister with a request for baptism, the minister suggested that he reconsider the decision. This was Sanneh's first encounter with the African church's perplexing attitude toward religious conversion, which he says left him "surprised, frustrated, dismayed, saddened, and confused."

How could the church be embarrassed about conversion, which is its very mission? According to Sanneh, Western Christians are often embarrassed by native converts like himself because they see "the entire missionary movement as part of the machinery of Western cultural imperialism." This Western guilt complex is so pervasive that even many African churches are wary of native Christians who have not adopted an Enlightenment-styled reserve about matters miraculous, but who are rather "tainted with the brush of conversion."

Sanneh is no apologist for colonialism, but he doesn't buy the missions-as-imperialism story. Rather than speculate on the the murky matter of missionaries' motives, Sanneh prefers to focus on the empirical effect of missions, a process that begins with the translation of Scripture into native languages. First, the creation of a vernacular alphabet inspires and enables the recording of indigenous history and wisdom. Second, Scripture translation suggests not only that the most profound truths may be expressed in ordinary language, but also that the religious message is for ordinary people. "The Christian approach to translatability," he writes, "introduced a true democratic spirit into hitherto closed and elitist societies, with women in particular discovering an expanded role."

It gets even more interesting. Those who say Western missions inevitably impose Western culture have it exactly wrong. Translation preserves languages and thereby promotes pluralism in many ways. "Translation relativizes culture by denying that there is only one normative expression of the gospel; it results in a pluralism in which God is the relativizing center." The equipping of previously illiterate populations with a vernacular alphabet results in pride, and eventually to a resistance of "all schemes of foreign domination--cultural, political, and religious. In short, translation empowers.

Sanneh, who fondly refers to Chesterton as "the great English man of letters who couldn't write a sentence without a paradox," observes that the paradoxes in all of this are legion. Missionaries wary of preaching the gospel they profess to believe are seen by many as more enlightened than those who--well, those who actually believe what they profess. Contrary to popular opinion, translation empowers rather than disempowers native populations, relativizes rather than absolutizes culture, and promotes rather than extinguishes many kinds of pluralism. The final paradox of vernacular translation is that contrary to the cultural imperialist, missionaries work themselves out of a position of influence. In Africa, "The vernacular Scriptures and the wider cultural and linguistic enterprise on which translation rested provided the means and occasion for arousing a sense of national pride, yet it was the missionaries--foreign agents--who were the creators of that entire process. I am convinced that this paradox decisively undercuts the alleged connection often drawn between missions and colonialism. Colonial rule was irreparably damaged by the consequences of vernacular translation--and often by other activities of missionaries."

Having dispelled the myth of the Christian missionary as cultural imperialist, Dr. Sanneh makes an interesting contrast with Islam. Islam, he writes, is also a missionary religion, but one that does not translate its Scriptures, and which therefore advances where vernacular languages are dying and being assimilated into a lingua franca. Sanneh, who was speaking about the Taliban movement before anyone was listening, concludes that "The implications of Muslim success for pluralism are quite serious." In contrast to Islamic groups who reject the separation of church and state, Christians have erred in precisely the opposite direction. By privatizing and individualizing religious faith, Christians have retreated from political engagement and "still don't know how to apply religious teachings to public policy questions in society and economics."

These are provocative reflections from a world-renowned scholar with deep Christian convictions. All of which is to say that Dr. Sanneh is the kind of scholar, and his work is the kind of scholarship, that Chesterton House exists to make more widely known and appreciated. I hope you will consider joining us for the conference on April 13, at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and World Affairs, Syracuse University. More information and on-line registration for this conference, which is entitled "Sacred & Secular in Islam & Christianity: Disarming the Fundamentalists and Renewing Dialogue," are available on our website. Dr. Sanneh will also provide a roundtable discussion on Sunday evening and a lecture Monday afternoon, both on the Cornell campus.

Thanks to the Pew Charitable Trusts' Christian Scholars Program for assistance with funding, and a very special thanks to Christian Anible for all his time and effort to make this conference possible.

Thanks also to all of you for your interest in and support of Chesterton House.

-Karl E. Johnson

MUSIC & MIKE ROE

As Harold Best writes in his excellent book Music Through the Eyes of Faith (Harper Collins, 1993), "Christian musicians know of the obligation to make music as agents of God's grace. They make music graciously, whatever its kind or style, as ambassadors of Christ, showing love, humility, servanthood, meekness, victory, and good example.... Music is freely made, by faith, as an act of worship, in direct response to the overflowing grace of God in Christ Jesus."

At Chesterton House, we talk about a lot of stuff. This month, we are getting beyond talking, and joining two local churches in sponsoring a musical concert. Mike Roe, singer/songwriter for the Lost Dogs and the Seventy-Sevens, will perform solo folk and blues originals in Muller Chapel at Ithaca College on Friday, April 5th. Tickets are five dollars in advance at Logos Bookstore in Ithaca, or eight dollars at the door.

I also highly recommend the Music & the Spheres Conference, to be held at the Center for Christian Study in Charlottesville, VA, April 18-21. This conference will feature a number of leading Christian scholars and musicians, including Ken Myers, William Edgar, John Hodges, Jeremy Begbie, J.A.C. Redford and Brooks Williams.

Friday, April 5, 9:00 pm
Concert: Michael Roe
Muller Chapel, Ithaca College
Tickets at Logos Bookstore, 607-273-6360

Saturday, April 13, 9:00am-5:00pm
Upstate NY InterVarsity Grad/Faculty Conference:
"Sacred & Secular in Islam & Christianity: Disarming the Fundamentalists and Renewing Dialogue"
Dr. Lamin Sanneh
at Syracuse University
More information & On-line Registration

Sunday, April 14, 7:00 pm
Graduate Christian Fellowship Roundtable
Founders Room, Cornell's Anabel Taylor Hall
Dr. Lamin Sanneh will share his story of growing up the son of a Muslim cleric in Africa, and converting to Christianity as a teenager. Part of this story, and most of the material above, can be found in "Christian Missions and the Western Guilt Complex."

Thursday, April 18, 7:30pm
RQ Forum
We will be discussing "Play Boy! The Cultural Victory of Hugh Hefner"
Dinner provided at 7:30. Discussion at 8:00.

Friday, April 26, 10:00 pm
Movie Night: "Crimes & Misdemeanors"

Saturday, May 4, 7:00 pm
Graduate Christian Fellowship Roundtable

All Chesterton House events are open to the Cornell and Ithaca communities. Unless otherwise noted, all events are held at the Crossroads Life Center, 604 E. Buffalo St. The Chesterton House Resource Room is open and staffed on Friday afternoons when Cornell is in session, from 1:00-5:00pm. For a complete schedule of events for Spring 2002, please visit the Chesterton House website.

"In truth, there are only two kinds of people;
those who accept dogma and know it,
and those who accept dogma and don't know it."
-GKC, as quoted by Ravi Zacharias
(who has a dog named "G.K.")