The Christian Tradition by Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa
"The Christian Tradition" by Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa explores the intersection of Christianity, culture, and spirituality, particularly in the context of Asian experiences. Kitagawa's academic journey began in the United States before World War II, where his internment as a Japanese American profoundly shaped his understanding of racism and suffering. He examines the historical enculturation of Christianity within Eurocentric frameworks and poses a provocative question: What if Christianity had developed within Asian cultures instead? By analyzing the implications of this hypothetical scenario, Kitagawa highlights how colonialism and missionary efforts often marginalized indigenous spiritual traditions in Asia.
He argues for a recognition of the value of Asian spirituality, particularly as Western thinkers begin to appreciate diverse perspectives in a globalized world. The text also addresses the complexities of being a Christian in Asia, challenging believers to reconcile their faith with cultural values that may differ from traditional Western interpretations. Ultimately, Kitagawa envisions a transformative future for Christianity, one that moves beyond European dominance and embraces a more inclusive, globally resonant identity, inviting readers to contemplate the potential new expressions of faith arising from this cultural synthesis.
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The Christian Tradition by Joseph Mitsuo Kitagawa
First published: Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1992
Genre(s): Nonfiction
Subgenre(s): Critical analysis; essays
Core issue(s): Asian Americans; the divine; imperialism; religion; suffering
Overview
Joseph Kitagawa came to the United States just before the outbreak of World War II to further his studies in theology. He was a student at the University of California, Berkeley, when the government ordered the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans in the United States. The experience of living in a concentration camp with others of Japanese descent provided Kitagawa with two spiritual insights he could never have gained had history allowed him a peaceful academic career at Berkeley. The first was into the essentially racist nature of Eurocentric culture, including the very Christianity he had embraced before his arrival in the country. The second was into the nature of suffering and the resilience of Asian spirituality as demonstrated by the daily heroism of incarcerated Japanese Americans.
These insights shaped much of Kitagawa’s distinguished academic career in theology at the University of Chicago, and they inform The Christian Tradition, perhaps the least known of his many publications. The very title invites readers to consider the European enculturation of Christianity as a sort of Babylonian captivity from which a release may be at hand. Kitagawa is never polemical in his treatment of church history; he is thoughtful and deliberate and always careful not to demean the many positive aspects of missionary activity in Asia. Yet this low-key academic approach makes the question he asks all the more tantalizing: What if Christianity had traveled not westward, where it was absorbed into the Greco-Roman civilization, but eastward, where it would have been absorbed into Asian culture? How different would it be?
Kitagawa looks back to the Renaissance and the Reformation, when the powerful new synthesis of culture and religion called modernity first raised its head. Individualism, capitalism, and colonialism were the children of this new synthesis; hand-in-hand with colonialism came the missionary effort. The discovery of Asian civilization at this time was as great a shock to the West as the discovery of the New World. For the rational, pigeonholing West, steeped in a philosophical tradition that systematically categorized human existence, the appearance of a spiritual tradition in which humans and nature were not conceived of as separate entities presented a great challenge. In just the same way that Native Americans were classified as pagans by the European explorers, Asians were seen as heathens who worshiped strange gods but were destined to be converted to the truth of Christianity. No less an envoy than the Spanish missionary Francis Xavier marveled that the people of Japan could have achieved such moral goodness without knowing the Christian God, but such recognition did not lessen his determination to bring the peoples of Asia into the Catholic Church.
In the centuries after such early missionary efforts, European powers colonized most of Asia, subjugating its people politically, economically, and culturally. Missionaries presented Christianity as the spiritual engine that motivated European civilization. The churches founded by missionaries in Asia tended to be slavish imitations of the mother institutions, and positions of ecclesiastical authority were not entrusted to native clergy or church members. Even more damaging, Kitagawa says, was the determination to exclude all native spiritual traditions, which were seen as polluting. The nineteenth century was the culmination of this spiritual colonialism and stands as a metaphor for such blind, subjective domination. In many ways, the legacy of this blindness remained strong until after World War II, when the West gradually became aware of Asia and its traditions as possible resources for its own weakening traditions.
According to Kitagawa, part of this appreciation for the spiritual heritage of Asians and Asian Americans has come from the realization on the part of Western philosophers that the dualistic thinking characteristic of Western Christianity is fatally flawed and no longer tenable in a fragile global community. The damage caused by seeing the world in terms of good and evil is evident with every news broadcast. The Asian tradition of juxtaposing several truths and accepting a multifaceted reality has come to be valued as a more practical way to allow the coexistence of disparate peoples and cultures.
At the same time, Western thinkers have moved closer to an appreciation of the material and are less likely to value the spiritual over the material. Kitagawa argues that feminists have emphasized the importance of embodiment and distanced themselves from the bankruptcy of the logocentric tradition of Western metaphysics, a system that prioritizes the ideal at the expense of the real. Asian traditions have held that spirit and matter cannot be divided; in particular, the Japanese tradition has emphasized the importance of the actual and taken pains to preserve its integrity from the annihilating force of ideology. These cultural changes have highlighted the existence and importance of Asian religions at a time when many Westerners have turned away from Eurocentric Christianity.
The question that remains to be answered is how the Asian Christian churches might take up the challenge of offering a new synthesis, one that no longer rejects Asian spirituality. Kitagawa says the new millennium may well be the one in which Christianity moves out of its European captivity and into a more global setting. What will the new face of Christ be like, divested of its European complexion?
Christian Themes
Perhaps the hardest of all questions for a Christian to answer is to explain the essential features of Christianity apart from the cultural values that surround it and have come to inform it. Kitagawa asks: To be Christian, must an Asian believer endeavor to understand and follow those aspects of European culture that cling to the traditional churches? Is some understanding of the complex synthesis of philosophy and theology achieved in the Middle Ages and in the Reformation necessary for Vietnamese or Chinese Christians? Can the centrality of family and community in Thailand serve as a guiding metaphor for an understanding of the Christian experience? Can the suffering of Japanese Americans in the relocation camps scattered across American deserts be raised up as a light upon the mountain for mainstream American Christians?
At one end of biblical literature is the story of the Tower of Babel, an account that envisages a multiplicity of languages as God’s punishment for the sin of arrogance. At the other end we find the description of Pentecost, the great community-forging event of the New Testament, in which the Spirit bestows the gift of tongues, suggesting a Christianity without cultural borders. Other passages from the New Testament, like the story of Peter and Cornelius from the Acts of the Apostles, also involve key elements of going beyond culture in the presence of the Spirit. Of all the apostles, perhaps Paul, the convert from Judaism, aficionado of Greek culture, and citizen of the Roman Empire, demonstrated the most sophisticated sense of the place of Christianity in a Mediterranean civilization populated with a plethora of deities. In this sense Paul displays a biographical awareness of Christianity, as opposed to the merely autobiographical knowledge of the simplistic believer.
Christianity is entering a new global phase, in which the old paradigm of the West as teacher and the East as pupil no longer holds. As the confidence and identity of Asian churches grow, elements of the Christian experience that have not been emphasized in the traditional churches will appear and renew the faith of the global community.
Sources for Further Study
Carnes, Tony, and Fenggang Yang, eds. Asian American Religions: The Making and Remaking of Borders and Boundaries. New York: New York University Press, 2004. This book explores the hybrid nature of religious expression in contemporary Asian American culture.
Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Kogawa, an Anglican like Kitagawa, explores the theme of Christianity and the Japanese-Canadian wartime experience. This novel embodies many of Kitagawa’s concerns in a powerful story of suffering and love.
Moss, David M. “Internment and Ministry: A Dialogue with Joseph Kitagawa.” Journal of Religion and Health 32:3 (September, 1993). In this dialogue Kitagawa reviews many of his research concerns, including the internment experience of Japanese Americans and the characteristics of Asian religions.