On May 13, 2013 Pope Francis, the first South American pontiff, canonized Colombia’s first saint, a nun, Laura of Saint Catherine of Siena, who journeyed with five other women into the forests in 1914 to be a teacher and spiritual guide to indigenous people. Francis praised the Colombian saint for “instilling hope” in indigenous people and for “respecting their culture and religion.”
Missiologist Andrew F. Walls has long argued that the continuity in African religion, pre-Christian and Christian, is due in large measure to the usability of African worldviews and the application of the material of the Christian tradition to already existing maps of the universe. According to Walls, this has been the area in which African Christianity has been the most misunderstood—that the continuance of such maps somehow makes the resultant practice less Christian. While acknowledging that the components of the inherited categories undergo a process of radical reordering and transformation, Walls’s point is that only a vibrant and genuine Christian faith will emerge if there is an encounter between the goals of the old religion and that of the new.
While speaking from an African setting, Walls’s insight has important implications for Christian witness everywhere because of the patience, humility, and interdependence required by the translation process. Nowhere is this more evident than in Latin America, where the encounter between indigenous peoples and a foreign Iberian Christianity resulted in longstanding and (unintended) repercussions for the Christian faith in Latin America. From “crushing and coercing” to “conversing and commending,” Christians since 1492 have adopted various postures and approaches toward indigenous peoples.
In the lead article of this journal, Juan F. Martínez, a Latino theologian who has worked in Latin America and done research on the region, argues that the growth of popular religious practices, and the resurgence of native religions as well as their influence in many popular forms of Catholicism and Pentecostalism, call evangelicals in Latin America to re-think how to do mission among the native peoples of the region. Because of the region’s unique history and interreligious relations, Martinez notes that encounters between evangelicals and the indigenous must begin and be framed by confession. As evangelicals move forward, the call to humble service in the name of Christ will need to be heeded so that the message is good news to people who have heard a mixed message for centuries.
