The eCrozier

My hunch is I never would’ve paid much attention to this particular newspaper headline and story if I hadn’t been in Taiwan at the House of Bishop’s meeting. The headline read: “Americans Neutral On Taiwan.” The story was about a survey done by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. In the survey Americans ranked Taiwan 12^th among 25 other countries. That score indicated that Americans were neutral about Taiwan. If I read that story in Savannah, I would’ve moved on to the sports page. But reading it here gives me a chance to experience how that story feels to the Taiwanese. It matters a lot to them that Americans have a more favorable view of Japan and South Korea than they do Taiwan. A story I would’ve ignored if I were elsewhere is front-page news here.

That’s why culture and context matter so much. We perceive the import of matters based on the context and culture in which we live. We do this all the time without noticing even as we think we’re being objective and dispassionate in our assessment of a situation. But pure objectivity is elusive, we must know. That’s why a healthy and humble stance in relationship to the world involves acknowledging our lack of pure objectivity and our, at least, semi-captivity to our own cultural prejudgments and proclivities.

And that brings me to the Church of the Good Shepherd in Taipei. Here I am pictured with the Rector, Mother Lily Chang. It seems to me this parish has, more than most, a healthy and humble stance that embraces Chinese culture while acknowledging its own limitations on objectivity. For example, they practice what the Chinese have traditionally called “ancestor worship,” but they do so in the context of the Christian tradition of the communion of the saints. It thus becomes not so much worshiping one’s ancestors as honoring those who have gone before us in the faith.

Mother Chang said Protestant churches who first evangelized Taiwan forbade “ancestor worship” and thus were less effective in their evangelization than those who contextualized the faith while maintaining the larger tradition. Before we forbid or condemn something we discover in another culture, we should ask ourselves: Is this coming from the Gospel or just from our own subjective cultural lens on the Gospel?

One other interesting and compelling thing I discovered about the Church of the Good Shepherd, Taipei. In the Taiwanese form of Mandarin, the Church’s name is Mu Ai Tang, which literally translated means the Church of Shepherding Love. I find that both interesting and compelling because at the heart of the church’s name is a verb not a noun. That means the church’s identity is shaped by the action of a verb more than by the subject of a noun. The church’s mission then is activating the love of Jesus in the world rather than simply being subjects receiving that love. Their name compels them outward rather than inward. It identifies them more by how they believe rather than only by the content of their belief.  In western culture, we too often fixate only on what we believe and fail to put those beliefs into action. Mu Ai Tang reminds us that what we believe cannot be separated from how we believe.

+Scott