Marvin Mayers first explored the tensions felt by missionaries attempting to impact people from different cultural backgrounds. Mayers had been a missionary with Wycliffe Bible Translators and an educator at Wheaton College prior to his writing of Christianity Confronts Culture in 1974. Sherwood Leingenfelter became acquainted with Myer’s model of basic values during his time at the Summer Institute of Linguistics in 1975. He too served in various fields with Wycliffe and used the model to teach at Biola University in 1983 where it was welcomed by students and members of the surrounding community alike. Working off of Mayer’s Model, Leingenfelter utilized his own personal accounts of these tensions with people in the Pacific islands to write …show more content…
Likewise, we should practice incarnation of ourselves to the cultures we are to serve. Chapter two provides the model of basic values and a questionnaire designed to help the reader understand their own cultural biases. In Chapters 3-8, Leingrenfelter deals with each tension and explains their opposing views. These tensions include time-orientation vs. event-orientation (ch. 3), holistic thinking vs. dichotomist thinking (ch. 4), crisis orientation vs. non-crisis orientation (ch. 5), task orientation vs. people (ch. 6), status focus vs. achievement focus (ch. 7), and the concealment of vulnerability vs. the willingness to expose vulnerability (ch. 8). At the end of these chapters, Leingrenfelter implores the reader to be willing to adapt and accepting to any culture’s bias on this model of basic values. In chapter nine, he highlights that sin is social, not just personal and that we as cross-cultural ministers should bridge the gap between personal and other people’s values by becoming a 150-percent person whose incarnation requires complete submission and dependence on …show more content…
I had not realized that these tensions were so intrinsic and core to understanding and relating to other cultures. Furthermore, I had not realized that valuing either side of these tensions as more true than the other was unfair and bigoted. As Leingrenfelter establishes, these tensions are culturally and morally subjective. No side is right or wrong. I had concluded in my own life that some sides of these tensions were more right than others. For example, I had always assumed that an achievement focus stood as a more righteous set of system for determining prestige than that of a status focus. This was probably due to the fact that I grew up in America where capitalism reigns and people work to become great in the eyes of their peers. But neither of these systems is better. According to Leingrenfelter and Mayers, Jesus rejects them both and establishes a system of servant hood where no one is worthy but that worthiness comes only from God. We can’t achieve nor ascribe to this worthiness. It is freely given to us. This truth penetrated me to the heart and a challenged me to stop seeing my cultures ways, despite the western world’s success as better ways. According to my plots on the questionnaire, I prefer holistic thinking over dichotomist
Hanser, Matthew. “Killing,Letting Die And Preventing People From Being Saved.” Utilitas 11.3 (1999): 277. Academic Search Complete. Web. 30 April 2014
Overall, this book is an exceptional example of critiquing our culture with a firm grasp of the philosophies of the day. Our culture is rampant with idols that need to be destroyed. Twenty years have only made the idols more pronounced. This book ought to be required reading in Christian secondary education across the country.
Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity: A Revised and Amplified Edition, with a New Introduction, of the Three Books, Broadcast Talks, Christian Behaviour, and Beyond Personality. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001. Print.
Mere Christianity is divided into four books or sections that build and expand off of the prior. The first book is entitled “Right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe” and he examines the common understanding among all men of a universal moral law hardwired in the minds of men. He begins this examination with a presentation of man’s concept of right and wrong. The simplest understanding among all men is the concept of fairness. This fair play points to a law and can be seen in the reactions of mankind to justice and injustice. He contrasts this moral law, the Law of Human Nature, with the law of nature found in the world. The mind of the moral relativist denies such standards yet fail to recognize their call for fairness as a fatal flaw in their reasoning.
Winter, Gibson. Address. "Religious Social Ethics in a Postmodern World." Temple University, Philadelphia, 22 March 1995.
Geert Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions, and Organizations Across Nations. Second Edition, Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications, 2001
In the text, “The American Cultural Configuration” the authors express the desire of anthropologists to study their own culture despite the difficulty that one faces attempting to subjectively analyze their own society. Holmes and Holmes (2002), use the adage “not being able to see the forest through the trees” (p. 5) to refer to how hard it is for someone to study something they have largely taken for granted. The Holmes' article focuses predominately on paradoxes within our own culture, many of which we don't notice. In a paradox, two contradicting statements can appear to be true at the same time. This essay looks at two paradoxes commonly found in everyday life: the individual versus the family and religion.
The purpose of this reflective outline is to demonstrate a thorough understanding of theories, concepts, and/or strategies relating to cultural and social religions. “Whale Rider” (Caro, 2002) , is a depictive representation of a cultural religion that has survived on the belief of male inheritance as their form of guidance; however, history has shown that change is inevitable. For example, throughout history, religion has played a pivotal role in the development of individuals, including the evolution of societies. This shows that because religion/s around the world have practiced their core beliefs in an attempt to guide humanities behaviors, yet , as we can observe with the “Whale Rider,” even the most influential community and cultural leaders can become miscued in their ideologies. Because The Maori of New Zealand have developed deep seated beliefs within natural creatures; Katu is term used to relate to their god (Maori.com, 2014) steaming for their ancestral Polynesian descendants. In addition to what can be observed, such as beliefs, practices, and/or symbolic terminologies, each religion will ensure its presidential knowledge is passed to those who receive it accordingly. The factual concept stands and history has proven is evolution that without guidance and continuous religious and cultural support, decedents of a heritage may become lost and/or miscued within their mislead ideology. Although many religions are centered on the belief of normality’s cultural expectance, often times we can observe drastic changes in the reorganization of a cultural religion.
historically derived and selected) ideas and especially their attached values; Culture systems may, on the one hand, be considered as products of action, and on the other as conditioning elements of further action.”
Cunningham, Lawrence S., and John J. . Reich. Culture and Values. 7th ed. Vol. 1. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006. Print.
Experiencing a society of multi-cultures is beneficial through a variety of concepts to epitomize each individual identity. A person may vary in the degree to which he or she identifies with, morals, or...
Rachels, J. (1986). The Challenge of Cultural Relativism. The elements of moral philosophy (pp. 20-36). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Because of the colossal impact of religion in the countries surveyed the only accurate way to peek at how these people understanding themselves and their place in the world is to first have an understanding of the major religion or religions that are at work within a given society. But that statement demands the question, how is it that through religion we define ourselves? My research relies heavily on the inte...
How do personal values shape culture, and how does culture affect our understanding and interpretation of seemingly ordinary things?
What is the value of culture? This is the question that Lewis is addressing in this essay. He wrote this collection of papers for a periodical called Theology. They were published in March 1940. He seems to have wrestled with the amount of attentio...