Witness: Converting Worlds (Spirituality for the World) (Amos Yong) - A Review
What does it mean for someone to convert? Does it always
involve leaving one religion for another? Could it be that we all experience
differing kinds of conversions, such that even Christians can undergo a variety
of conversion experiences? For example, during my earlier evangelical days, I
assumed that conversion entailed saying yes to Jesus so that I and others could
go to heaven when we die. After all, according to Jesus (in John’s Gospel), there
is no other path to God other than through Jesus (John 14:6). I know that
passage well, but could it be that this question of conversion is more
complicated than that? I approach these questions as someone who is fully
committed to following Jesus. At the same time, I have good friends who are
Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu. Should I try to convert them to Christianity so that
they might be saved and join me in heaven after we all die? In many ways, my friends
better exemplify what I understand to be Christian values than many who profess
faith in Christ. So, even though we do talk about Jesus, I will confess that I do
not actively try to convert my friends, trusting their destiny into the hands
of God. I say all of this as a preface to my review of Amos Yong’s book, Witness: Converting Worlds.
Amos Yong is, first of all, a
friend. In addition to being a prolific author, he serves as a professor of
theology and mission at Fuller Theological Seminary (my alma mater). By
tradition, he is a Pentecostal. Therefore, he is very interested in exploring
the ways the Holy Spirit factors into theology, mission, and Christian life. This
book, Witness: Converting Worlds, is, according to the author, the first
in a series of shorter books, written for a wider audience, that he has titled
Spirituality for the World: Explorations at the Edges of Late
Modernity. He focuses this particular volume on "Christian
faith-sharing in the 2020s." Again, as would be appropriate for a
Pentecostal theologian, in this book, which focuses on mission and witness, Yong
draws on Luke's two volumes, the Gospel as well as the Book of Acts. What is
interesting about this book is that Yong begins not with the Gospel of Luke, as
one might expect, but with the Book of Acts. He does this because he believes
that the story we find in the Book of Acts makes the Gospel relevant to our Christian
witness.
In Yong’s introduction to the book,
he suggests that his purpose here is to shift our rhetoric and practice from
mission to witness, and from evangelism to conversion. Writing as a
missiologist, he suggests that the concept of mission carries significant
baggage, with its "legacy of colonialism, racism, Eurocentrism, and, more
recently, American imperialism." (p. 1). That said, he also believes that
the church is called to bear witness to the gospel. To do this, he suggests we
must break free of the old paradigm by moving from mission to witness. As for
evangelism, it too has become encumbered by baggage. Even with growing
commitment to social responsibility, these efforts have been seen by the
targets of this outreach as attempts to buy conversions. My Hindu friend often
speaks about "rice Christians" in India, such that food is offered in
exchange for conversion. Although there are these important concerns, Yong
still believes that Christians have good news to share with the world. If this
is true, then we have to ask how this good news gets shared with the world. Here
is where Yong brings Luke's two volumes into the conversation. In his view,
they provide important guidance when it comes to sharing the good news. With
this in mind, Yong divides his book into two parts, with Part One focused on
"Christian Witness to/with Others in the 2020s," while Part Two
focuses on "Apostolic Evangelism and Conversion in the 2020s."
Part One of Witness includes
two chapters, the first focusing on "Acts and Christian Witness: Then and
Now." In this chapter, Yong demonstrates that beginning with the Book of
Acts reveals that the apostolic witness described in Acts provides the backdrop
for Luke's decision to write his gospel. In Yong’s view, there would be no
reason to write the gospel if there had not been an audience for it, and that
audience lived in an imperial and pluralistic world. Thus, we see how the
apostolic expansion of the church took place in the context of the Pax Romana
and the cultural-religious pluralism of the Mediterranean world. With this social/cultural
context revealed, we can ponder how the church expanded as it moved outward
from Jerusalem. This movement outward follows the pattern we find espoused in
Acts 1:8, where Jesus commissions a Spirit-empowered community to take the
gospel from Jerusalem outward to Judea and Samaria and on to the ends of the
earth. As we ponder this foundation, he asks us to consider what that means for
the contemporary church. Having established the importance of starting with the
Book of Acts in Chapter 1, when we move into Chapter 2, titled "Luke and
Christian Witness: Then and Now," Yong picks up the message found in Luke’s
Gospel. In this chapter, Yong offers a brief but helpful introduction to Luke's
gospel as a missional text. With that in mind, Yong walks us through the Gospel
with a missional vision in mind. Central to this vision is the idea that the
Christian mission is Spirit-led and empowered. He suggests that the vision of Christian
witness laid out in the Gospel will prove challenging to first world
inhabitants. He writes that “If we think we are going to bear effective witness
to the ends of the earth, much less beyond the enclave where we are
sequestered, we need to come back out into the streets, and be exposed to the
many tongues the Spirit speaks through the many voices. And exposure to the
many tongues invites attending to them, being instructed by them, experiencing
transformation through their witness” (pp. 50-51). Yong notes that his
engagement with Luke’s two volumes should not be viewed exegetically, but as
works of theology and missiology.
Yong titles Part Two
"Apostolic Evangelism and Conversion in the 2020s—Multi-Transformational
Witness Then and Now.” In this section, Yong takes up four forms that he
believes conversion takes. Again, he uses Acts and the Gospel of Luke as his
primary scriptural interlocutor. The four forms of conversion include:
"Intellectual Conversion: Apostolic Testimonies Then and Now"
(Chapter 3); "Affective Conversion: Apostolic Passions Then and Now"
(Chapter 4); "Moral Conversion: Apostolic Interactions Then and Now"
(Chapter 5); and "Sociopolitical Conversion: Apostolic Engagements Then
and Now" (Chapter 6). As you can see from the chapter titles, these four
forms of conversion mark the complexity of conversion, both in the context of
the early church and in the present age. It is more than simply convincing
people to embrace Christianity intellectually. Conversion involves the
emotions/passions; it leads to moral transformation and to sociopolitical
engagement. As he explores the four forms that conversion takes, we discover
that conversion is more than a one-off experience. It is an ongoing reality,
such that we are continually hearing the witness, responding, converting, and
moving onward. Of the four chapters in this section, I thought the one focusing
on sociopolitical conversion might prove to be the most important for this
moment, though moral conversion is clearly linked to sociopolitical conversion.
What is clear from this discussion is that conversion involves more than saying
yes to Jesus so we can get to heaven. Conversion is transformative and ongoing.
If you have read earlier works by Amos
Yong, you know that he consistently invites us to consider how our faith
interacts with the world around us. Standing at the heart of many of these
books is his belief that the Holy Spirit plays an important role in the way we
live out our faith. That is understandable considering that he comes to the
conversation from a Pentecostal foundation. That said, one need not be a
Pentecostal to gain important insight from his work. That is true in this
newest contribution. While some of Yong’s books are highly detailed scholarly
books, he is also the author of very accessible and thought-provoking books.
With his Witness: Converting Worlds, we have an accessible resource that
is rooted in both his scholarship and in a Christian faith that is open to the
Spirit. Since this is the first installment of his Spirituality for the
World, a series that is rooted in scholarship and yet designed to speak to
a broad audience, I look forward to what comes next.
You may purchase copies of Witness: Converting Worlds at your favorite retailer, including my Amazon affiliate bookstore and my Bookshop.org affiliate store.
Comments