Inculturation

[Frank Logue]

A major focus for the APLM Council Meeting for 2009 will be inculturation of the liturgy. We will meet in San Antonio, Texas at the Mexican American Cultural Center. The Rev. James "Jake" Emereur, S.J. will speak of inculturation at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio. To help further our discussion at the May Council meeting, it will help to read Jake's book La Sacra Vida: Contemporary Hispanic Sacramental Theology prior to the meeting.
The dates are May 7-11, 2008. More information on the event will be added here as it is known.

One place to look within APLM for a related discussion is at Juan Oliver's article for the most recent issue of Open, Against Inclusivity: Reclaiming the Latino Liturgical Agent.

What has been your experience of inculturation in the liturgy? Where have you seen this done well? Where have you experienced it yourself?

I'll begin with one icident of my own. As an intern in the Diocese of Tanzania in 1999, I saw how that province had gone against some longstanding ideas brought with missionary zeal, that traditional African ways of teaching did not fit with Christian catechesis. At a youth rally in Kibondo, Tanzania, churches brought their dance teams to teach through song and dance. Using a traditional way of teaching common in East Africa before the arrival of Christianity, the groups presented Christian teaching through skits that used song and dance to convey their meaning. Below is a photo I took at that youth rally:

What is your experience of inculturation?

[Juan oliver]

HI Frank,

Sorry for my delay. I´m transitioning into retirement!

I first got interested in the inculturation of the liturgy in 1986, I think, when I took a seminar at CDSP on the topic. Later, during my doctoral course work, I took another, more advanced seminar taught by Jake Empereur.

The term inculturation was coined by the superior of the Jesuits in 1971, during a speech. He defined inculturation (I paraphrase) as "..the incarnation of the Church´s life and worship in a given culture in such a way that it brings the culture to be all it can be and confronts it.¨

There are some assumptions in this definition:

1. Cultures are a mixed bag, containing good and bad elements.

2. The church should take on the flesh (incarnate) in the culture if it´s going transform it.

3. This means that the gospel itself, our worship, theology and governace need to be recast in terms of the local culture if they are going to bear fruit. One must join the culture (" ..to the Greeks, Greek") in order to transform it.

5. Cultures are NOT naturally Christian but are made so through the preaching of Jesus´ message.

6. Just as a preacher must always keep in mind the audience to which she is preaching, the liturgical designer needs to keep in mind the culture in which worship will take place.

7. The liturgical design elements subject to inculturation are:
a. the space or place for worship
b. the way bodies are deployed and move in that place (choreography and ceremonial)
c. dress
c. the objects used in worship
d. music employed
e. texts employed, both service texts and scriptural translations.

I have tried several time to do this in very different cultural contexts:

I St Marks´Palo Alto, --a comfortable congregation of mostly professionals and students from Stanford U., mostly white (some Asians and straight (only two out gays) t1988-90 Joe, Clay and I asked ourselves and others, How do people here worship? What could be adapted or changed so the liturgy is truly their liturgy? The overwhelming emphasis that I heard was that they wanted to DO worship, not just watch it. They were extremely aware that the asembly is the main doer of liturgy, assisted by ministers. Processions, for example, rarely involved only the clergy. As much as possible they were a movement of the whole people from one place to another. This had several implications:

A. The space had to be changed at considerable cost to eliminate the dichotomy: stage (chancel vs. auditorium (nave). As a result the whole assembly gathered in an open circle around the scriptures for the liturgy of the Word, then moved to stand together in a circle around the Table (a real table, round, and rather large). The space was increasingly flexible. Pews were unscrewed from the floor and repositoned in different ways, depending on the liturgical season.

B As a community, we took seriously the celebratory nature of Sunday and our coffee hour became a full brunch.

C. We became very aware of the process by which adults become Christians. We discovered that newcomers were generally very interested in a process of exploring the Word and allowing it to transform their lives. This led us to implemented the Cathecumenate as a deliberate, programmed way of pastorally welcoming new people into the fellowship of the church. A similar process was developed for those who had been baptized as infants but were functionally, non-Christians.

D. This led us to seriously evaluate baptismal practice. We decided that the death and resurrection element of baptism is lost when the person is not immersed. We accompanied the neophytes (the "newly" planted after their baptism for the seven weeks of easter, exploring the meaning that the rite had had for them. Personally, I found these sessions amazing in their theological depth and very moving. I believe that the experience of the Catechumenal process transformed the parish, making everyone an interpreter of scripture and an active worshipper. This led naturally, to an increasing concern with social justice.

E. We had excellent music thanks to Clay (he can chime in about that), both ancient and modern. The choir saw itself and acted, as inciters of congregational singing, and only seperated themselves from the congregation at specific time, eg, during an anthem or a psalm. Otherwise they were in the pews, unvested.

F. Acolytes were re'trained to understand the liturgical action and do what was needed.

G The altar guild became the stage crew, amplified at feasts such as Xmas and Easter

H We used real bread and real wine, changing the type and flavor by teh liturgical seasons.

I when decorating, we no longer stressed the altar area over the seating (Word) area.

I´m afraid these specifics do not carry the feeling of the change. In sum, it´s enough to say that by concentrating on questions like,
What would the Gospel of JC sound like today?
What is the church?
What is the church´s place of worship supposed to facilitate?
What are the elemental actions of the Eucharist? (ie., Assemble, listen to Word, share Word, Pary, Give
Thanks, Eat Go in mission).
What is ¨the Reign of God?¨ and ¨the Body of Christ?¨ How can we as a community embody this?

And the inculturation question:¨ How do these people in these parts do these things?

I have gone on too long. I´ll post again on later efforts at Bolinas (a hippie coastal town in CA) and with a mostly gay congregation in San Francisco. Then I´ll post on the liturgy at General Seminary´s Latino Program.

Best,

Juan

[L. Celeste Gardner]

Hmmm... Can I revive this old thread?? As I look forward to the meeting in San Antonio and carve some time out (after many months) to look again at a project on the liturgy in Haiti, here are some thoughts...

Language: Translation of the rites we use is a very involved process, but one that may be crucial in some contexts due to the inherent power dynamics of language and literacy. In the Haitian context the use of French rather than Kreyol is itself performative. There are one or two Haitian ex-pats currently working on translation, but their work is isolated and not supported by the current hierarchy in Haiti. This gives rise to a sticky problem for those of us stateside, but one that I believe we need to consider.

"Experts" v. "the people": How do those in leadership, those given the responsibility of "designing" or "inculturating" the liturgy bring people who are not theologically trained or ordained into the process? Should this happen in the designing process? Should there be spaces in the liturgy during which members of the congregation are invited to improvise (to use a term Sam Wells explores)? Both? I think it is important to think about the idea of "Mutual Ministry" as applied to issues of inculturation so that we can get beyond a dynamic that parallels a kind of colonialism - whether we are talking about obviously different "cultures" or not - while still ensuring that the cultural practices that are adopted have been thought through theologically.

Finally - Nothing from culture is neutral or easily categorized as "good" or "bad"... For example: while a lot of the emergent church settings use Power Point, and see it as a positive measure of incluturation, for me Power Point evokes my stint in the computer hardware industry and frankly, gives me hives!! I'm not one of those people who views MS as "the evil empire," and yet I'm hard pressed to think of anything more contrary to the gospel than the money grubbing yuppies I worked with in the 90's. My time as an admin for computer sales people was nearly soul killing. For that reason it is actually very hard for me to worship when PP or the like is part of the experience - of course I do make an effort since I seem to be in the minority in this regard! :^)

Looking forward to seeing everyone in May!!
Celeste

[Juan oliver]

Celeste!

I wrote a full reply and then erased it by mistake...

Language: You wisely point to the fact that unless one is starting a congregation (or a diocese...) from scratch, there is going to be a clash of some sort between two types of intra-church cultures. In the States we label these two "Rite one" and "Rite two" --except of course that recently more brazen inculturators ("emergers"?) are clashing with both.

Your example from Haiti is complicated by the dynamics of colonialism. Over the last 500 yrs. The millions living south of the Rio Grande have been trained to think that "their own" ways of doing things are somehow less worthy than those imported from first, Spain, Portugal, & France, and now the US.

Ironically, the same colonial expansion that eventually created the "Anglican Communion" by bringing the benefits of civilization (!?) to natives imposed Northern European (and now North American) ways of doing things on them. Colonizers of course were not the only culprits. In many cases the locals found that promotion --nay, survival! was only possible by joining the invaders. And so we have the sorry situation of Anglicans endowed with very rich local cultural forms who would rather die than bring them into the Anglican church they were formed into.

I see three basic ways of redeeming this great sin:

Option 1: The dogs may bark but the caravan moves on (Arab proverb). One goes on with inculturation --maybe in a parallel development plan to have a second service or evan a different mission. This is less threatening to the traditionalists than trying to change their worship (and it is very much theirs).

Option 2: Create a congregation from scratch. (St Gregory´s comes to mind) so that all the energy spent on worrying about not offending the traditionalists can be channelled to creative efforts.

Option 3. Beg borrow, or steal (a very Anglican thing to do) forms inculturated in other locations and make them your own. This is at times necessary, but not ideaL, as it keeps the local People of God from actively designing their worship. Which brings me to:

"Experts" v. "the people": People in leadership have a responsibility not just to repeat what they learned to do in seminary, (or for that matter their parish as a child!) but to prod, support, encourage, etc., their congregation into creating its worship. --Of course, there are basic rules and structures.

Thus the "experts" (Ha!) for example, should NOT present their (grateful?) laity with a liturgy already inculturated, but as good teachers do, will encourage them to grapple with the central questions of inculturation practice:

How do people here gather?
How do they communicate good news?
How do they respond?
How do they pray?
How do they thank God before eating together?
How do they share the food?
How do they empower each other to go out and do something about what they have seen and heard?

You ask, "How do those in leadership, those given the responsibility of "designing" or "inculturating" the liturgy bring people who are not theologically trained or ordained into the process?"

A small story with a big lesson:

One day the diocesan powers decided that parishes should bring banners to the Convention Eucharist. Our little Latino congregation did not have a banner. Bein somewhat trained in paintinga and drawing I started to sketch one. But I noticed my sin and repented.

"Mercedes!" I called the matriarch of the group,

"We have to bring this thing to the convention!" I described what a banner is (not what it should look like) and she recognized what I was talking about from her experience.
Two weeks later she brought in a banner. I gulped. It was tacky by my upper middle class standards, made of polyester velvet with gold fringe, an appliquéed St. James, and his name.
Everyone else loved it. I swallowed hard.

My (agnostic) partner later said to me: "Aren´t you big on the idea that the House of God is the House of the People of God? Well, that´s their house. This is ours.

Inculturation can and should happen in the designing process at all levels: at the drafting of a prayer book, at the bishop´s discernment of how to make that a reality locally, at the congregation´s embodiment of their liturgy. We are very very bad at this. Most of the latitude granted by the 1976 BCP for example, is wasted on congregations and clergy who do not want to try anything or create anything, just repeat the same old same old, which is usually put together to please the priest --or the big pledgers or the head of the altar guild.

The liturgy in its basic structure has several places where people can do their thing their way:

Gathering. Like it or not people will arrive their way. This means eg., that a Latino congregation should not be expected to be in church at exactly 11 AM on Sunday. They will not. Something --music, hymn singing, individual prayers-- needs to be going on as they stream in. Let´s not impose an Anglo conception of time on them.

Sitting and listening to the Word Why do we assume that the Liturgy of the word must be geared to adults who have gone to college? How about the five yr. olds? The BCP give a lot of room for creativity in this area.

Responding. This is hard, but the preacher might try, "Betty, what do you think?" of Bob, have you ever been in a situation like the one we just heard? Sometime people who have not been churchified don´t know that they are not supposed to talk back, and it is sooo refreshing!

Praying Imagine a Prayers of the People that are just that! Why does the deacon or leader have to do it for them? And Lord! Americans love to speak to God out loud, looking at their shoes!

Giving Thanks This is a presidential job. But a presider who cannot at least deliver the EP in a way that is meaningful to the congregation should not complain if they sleep through it. Better still, how about making a local "translation" of the text? Do it as Rite II on a weekday...
Still better, lead the congregation in a project to write their own EP. A seminarian who does not know how to do this (however tentatively or badly) should not be ordained.

Eat together We complain about American individualism but we rehearse it every Sunday. Who eats kneeling at a bar? We complain about individualistic pietism, but many people¨s experience of the Eucharist is introverted awareness of having Jesus inside them. (Not Bad!) But how about encouraging the experience: "WE are the risen Body of our head, Christ?"

Seeing off (Sending) In practice, the real sending takes place in our churches by default, sometimes during the recessional. It is an individual event: "I think I´ll leave now." How do these people see each other off? Who is staying behind? Who was the host, or the image of the Host?
In a sense the actual sending is the handshaking with the clergy at the door . Kind a creepy IMHO.

Apparently many people have never learned a basic ethical rule: WHAT IS NOT FORBIDDEN IS ALLOWED! They expect to be given permission to act.Kind of like High School students who don´t dare ask a question unless they are asked to ask.

So the leadership has to take responsibility for asking. I wish we didn´t have to, but we have created a passive laity over centuries. I suspect those who are not passive are sorely tempted to go to seminary so they can do something.

Inculturation and ethics.
I think I´d rather leave the question of "Is ______ good or bad? to the individual conscience as shared in community. Sooner or later the group has to struggle with articulating a sense of the good. This is also inculturated, since (I hate to bore you) we now know, thanks to St. Foucault, that all knowledge is contextual. To build on your image of Power Point, if you were a member of an assembly in which you had a part in shaping the worship event, you might not end up with a Power Point liturgy --and hives. I´d join that congregation!

Perhaps Inculturation is our penance for falling into colonialism and "Father --or Mother-- knows best" (at all levels). I know it is also work of the Spirit renewing the church, and indispensable for evangelization.

Can´t wait till May!

Juan

[L. Celeste Gardner]

Juan,
Your answers about "how" leaders involve individuals were exactly the kinds of things I was hoping to hear...

1. giving specific things (like the banner) over to someone or some group in the parish - and letting go of your own vision of what it "should" be like, what is tasteful, etc..
2. noting and educating the congregation about the basic form (components and sequence) and allowing for experimentation within that form
3. asking questions that unite cultural experience with aspects of the liturgy - Your list above is great!! I had not thought of those questions before, but seeing them spelled out makes it seem so obvious.

As I have discussed liturgy with people in my parish and in seminary the question about how we do those things (gather, communicate, respond, bless, share...) in our daily culture was never asked. The question was always "how has the church historically done x, y and z?" It seems to me that the question of historic Jewish and Christian practices need to be brought into dialogue with our cultural experience. A good list of specific questions may be the kind of tool that bears wider dissemination. Perhaps we can work on a discussion method that clergy/leaders can use (the way the the Education for Ministry program has discusson methods for theological reflection that can be applied to any specific starting point.)

As for colonialism - yep!! You spelled out what I was hinting at: The people who overthrew the colonialist were able to because they adopted a certain measure of the colonizing culture. And now it is theirs! French itself is a two-edged sword in the Haitian context. Speaking it indicates a measure of status in the culture. Not using it could indicate to one person that indigenous culture is worthy while it could indicate to another individual that you don't think they are worthy to participate in the world outside their village.

On the institutional level - should TEC support the work of translation into Kreyol it might be interpreted as championing indigenous culture or it might also be interpreted as challenging indigenous leadership. That is why this is sticky. I need to write a longer article about that...

so looking forward to being with APLM folk again!!
Celeste