In London I’ve been evangelised by the belief of Keralese Catholics in the power of prayer.
How can we allow people of other cultures to evangelise us? This takes place both explicitly and implicitly. Our own history is full of examples of cross-cultural evangelisation: the Irish and Roman monks coming to England, English monks such as St Boniface evangelising the Continent, and the French missionary orders in the 19th century. In our own time part of the richness of the new ecclesial movements is that they are made up of people from many nations.
But evangelisation also takes place less obviously. What about the way people from Zimbabwe and other African countries just enjoy being together and take time to do that: isn’t that a challenge to our culture of over-work? When I visited China I was evangelised by the sheer simplicity and hunger of country people to know answers to most basic spiritual questions. In London I’ve been evangelised by the belief of Keralese Catholics in the power of prayer: they really do believe that if enough people come together to pray, our cities will be converted.
I know this raises complex issues. We Western Europeans can’t suddenly pretend to be Zimbabweans or Keralese and throw all our cultural baggage out of the window. We have to translate into our own culture the values we are sensing in others’, just as we have to interpret our own culture for the immigrants. And there will be disagreements as to how that works itself out.
Image from: www.biblesociety.org/wr_393/393_07.htm
