From “The Truth” to a Presence: my journey out of Fundamentalism towards more progressive, contextual Christianity

By Jen Galicinski

Originally written for Prof. Mary Jo Leddy for Doing Theology in a Canadian Context at Regis College, Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto, Fall 2018

12 min read

Having been raised in various conservative, fundamentalist and evangelical protestant churches, I had always been taught that theology was the study of “timeless, universal Truth of God”. The source of this “Truth” was the Bible. The job of theologians, pastors, and lay Christians was to learn this “Truth”, taught to us by past theologians who valued the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, and to simply transmit them to people around us.

This often terrified me as a young person, often because I didn’t fully understand or resonate with the “timeless Truth” myself, and nobody around me seemed to take a liking to the version of the gospel I was taught – that “all people are sinners bound for hell, unless they believe in Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour.”

I found myself anxiously trying to convince my non-Christian friends of this “gospel” even though, deep down, I didn’t fully see it as “good news” either. In addition, these churches were not at all engaged in the wider community or concerned themselves with anything political. About ten years ago, my faith journey led me to join more liberal, progressive protestant faith communities, whose gospel resonated more deeply with me. The focus on solidarity with the victimized and activism for the poor, being incarnational in our communities, incorporating the arts in life and worship, and humbling approaching the sacred text of Scriptures as a Mystery to be adored, rather than “universal Truth” to access, deeply spoke to me, and made more sense as “good news” to those around me.  

The readings and lectures in Mary Jo Leddy’s class Doing Theology in a Canadian Context at Regis College have helped me to make more sense of my upbringing, and have helped me to put words to my dissonance with that particular approach to theology, and why I resonate so much more with an contextual approach that deeply listens to the particular social anxieties, questions, and issues of our time and place in 21^st century Canada.

This is important because, as Mary Jo Leddy said in our first lecture, we are called to “preach the gospel in a way that is heard, attended, and obeyed.”[i]  Great harm can and has been done by Christians misreading the times, including preaching a “gospel” that is not heard as good news, like the one I grew up with. I agree with Leddy that we are called “to become followers of Christ in this time and place, with the REAL burdens and blessings.”[ii]

The theologians heard from in our readings and lectures have named various problems with theology that claims to be “timeless” (mostly Hall, Schreiter, and Leddy). I will briefly summarize these problems below. Next, these theologians have sought to describe the importance of contextual theology and describe it using various metaphors and models. It is a way of doing theology that is primarily about deep listening and discerning what is the appropriate word for here and now based on the “animating questions” of our time (Hall, Schreiter, Leddy).

This requires immersive participation in the context and engagement and struggle in discerning the gospel’s answer to the animating questions and anxieties (Tillich, Hall, Leddy). It is helpful to understand it as the meeting of God’s story with our human story (Hall). Then, I will summarize some of the named dangers of contextual theology: falling into relativism and being swept away by changing fads and whims of our times (Hall). And lastly, I will outline Hall and Leddy’s suggested guidelines for how disciple communities can discern the context of here and now.

Prior to the rise of contextual theology in the 1970s, much of academic Christian theology has sought to be “universal in scope”[iii] and has had a “reputation for timelessness.”[iv] Many theologians thought of their work as searching for the “great facts about man, the world, and God”[v] and then simply transmitting it to the people of their time using more contemporary language. There are many problems with this approach that I will briefly address, though there are many philosophical nuances that I will not be able to discuss in depth here.  

First, as Hall writes, “Christian theology is contextual by definition”, and there “no human undertaking ever occurs in a cultural vacuum, a historical no-man’s-land.”[vi] The theological claim to objectivity was itself rooted in the Cartesian method, and was a product of its particular Enlightenment context.[vii] All theology mirrors its context, whether it is aware of this or not.[viii] Hall argues

there is no eternal “text”— no theologia in se (ideal theology as distinct from actual theological work) which is our duty as Christians to interpret for our context, no abiding ‘content’ that permits itself to be shaped, reshaped, and perhaps inevitably misshapen in response to the molds that time provides. There are only historical testimonies to a Presence, to events in which this Presence was experience as being very near (‘with us’), and to utterances which helped and still help to locate and illuminate the mystery of which this Presence is the center.[ix]

This Presence is still being experience here and now, and we are to record our own testimonies of this mystery, which will and should surely reflect our own context.

Another significant problem with the idea of “universal truths” is that “they did not reach far enough.”[x] Schreiter writes that “they did not take up the issues that were the most pressing in many local circumstances: the burden of poverty and oppression, the struggle to create a new identity after a colonial past, or the question of how to meet the challenge of modernization.”[xi] The universal theologies were consumed with other questions and concerns, and as such “the universal theology turned out to be less than universal.”[xii] The subject of our faith, the incarnational dwelling of God amongst real people with real struggles, must also inform our method of doing theology today, and thus our gospel must address these real concerns.

Some great theological work has been done by theologians who addressed the real concerns of their time and place. Anselm, for example, as described by Hall, “spoke to an age whose primary anxiety was that of guilt and the fear of eternal punishment.”[xiii] However, these social anxieties are quite different from those of North America in the 21^st century.

Paul Tillich says our anxiety is much closer to “the anxiety of meaninglessness and despair” than to guilt before God.[xiv] So our theology must reflect these differences, or the gospel we communicate will not resonate with the people in our midst. We can learn from these past theologians, as long as we know that “it was not their vocation to have done our theological work for us.”[xv]

By claiming universality, theology that does not acknowledge context represents, as Hall says, “a dangerous flight from our own present moment.”[xvi] When theology is unaware of its context, or does not engage with the local human situation, “it carries with it assumptions about the human situation which are either not concretely accurate or (as has frequently happened) are quite patently false.” It is then that it “it functions…as ideology.”[xvii] We must avoid this by intentionally engaging with the questions, anxieties, and fears of our particular time and place.

What exactly is contextual theology? There is no one definition that is all-encompassing and agreed upon. What we have instead is a number of metaphors and descriptions that can help us understand it better. First, as Clemens Sedmak writes, contextual theology is an “invitation to wake up: to be mindful and attentive” and it is always “done locally” like a “local village cook using local ingredients.”[xviii]

It is about deeply listening to and discerning what is the defining “concern” of our culture (Northrop Fyre) or “animating question” (Albert Nolan) of our own time and place. We do this best, as Douglas Hall and Paul Tillich suggest, by being immersed in and participating in our context.[xix] “Where there is no participation there is no communication,”[xx] Tillich writes. We must not simply study what is happening, but struggle with it and for it. Hall points out that “if Martin Luther had not been compelled to experience at first hand the terrible anxiety that gripped his age – the anxiety of an almost inescapable judgement by an almost implacable God – he would never have discovered the gospel of “justification by grace through faith.”[xxi]

This is essential because, as Hall writes, “the Christian church throughout the ages has not distinguished itself by the appropriateness or good timing of its proclamation”.[xxii] It has often gone into foreign cultures, like Asia, with “’glad tidings’ fashioned in the English countryside, and it has offered 16^th-century doctrines of salvation for 20^th-century sinners”.[xxiii] 

This is important because “a theology which does not help the church to discern…the appropriate word…inevitably functions as an ideational construct within which Christian may find refuge from history, and which therefore lends itself to the support of the status quo.”[xxiv] Paul Tillich’s method of correlation, that is finding the questions of our culture and seeking the answer offered by a fresh view of the gospel, and Leddy’s adaption of the correlation of images – of the culture and the Scriptures[xxv] – are helpful for discerning how the gospel can be heard as good news here and now, rather be used to further the status quo — the oppressive power structures– of our time and place.

It is also helpful to think of contextual theology as “the Meeting of Stories”, as Hall suggests.[xxvi] The metaphor of story is especially helpful and rooted in the language of the Scriptures, as we find in them not dogmas or lists of philosophical theorums but narrative and saga.[xxvii] At the same time, “humanity is telling its own stories”, and they can be very different at different times and places.[xxviii] Sometimes, as Hall writes, humanity depicts itself like Prometheus, and sometimes like Willy Loman. “Theology lives between the stories – God’s story of the world, and humanity’s ever-changing account of itself and all things. Theology is what happens when the two stories meet.”[xxix]

These stories are not fixed or finished, though, but rather are “ongoing” and “on-the-move”, distinctive in different times and place, and God’s stories responds differently to different characters.[xxx] “Jesus had something quite different to say to John the beloved disciple from what he had to say to the impulsive and demanding Peter.”[xxxi] In the same way:

A theology which continues addressing itself to 19^th-century industrial Prometheanism long after Western humanity has cast itself more characteristically in the role of Willy Loman is not only anachronistic; it isn’t theology! A theology which offers tried and true remedies for the human anxiety of guilt and condemnation when the regnant anxiety is the anxiety of meaninglessness and despair is no theology; it is probably ideology.[xxxii]

These strong words of warning and guidance are a helpful reminder to pay close attention to how God’s story is meeting with and responding to the current, local, story that humanity is telling about itself. The danger of contextual theology, as Hall writes, is that it will fall into relativism, if it is too focussed on the particular current context and finds itself “capture of currents and ever-changing trends within its host society.”[xxxiii] This is why it is important to note that contextuality is to be a “dialogue” between the current moment, the Christian past, and the disciple community. It is not to approve of the dominant values or whole heartedly disapprove, but simply focus on the engagement of society. [xxxiv]

We are to follow the example of Jesus, as Clemens Sedmak says, who was simultaneously “rooted in the religious traditions of his time and place” and was “challenging local cultural standards and raising a universal claim.”[xxxv]

Likewise, the disciple community is not to focus solely on what is new and current, but instead “implies a continuing dialogue with the tradition.” This is quite different from traditionalism, which upholds dogma at all costs, but instead involves: a continuous wrestling with the past, a struggle born, not of the need to escape from the complex realities of the here and now, nor yet of the attempt to avoid the risks of confession, but simple of the need for help. It is still the present, with its often strident demands and uncertainties, which sets the tone for our visitation of the past.[xxxvi]

The present moment, then, is not to dictate our prime concerns and full attention, but it is a starting point for tapping into the wealth of wisdom and spiritual resources that are to be found in the past as discerned by the disciple community.

Another concern Hall discusses that will likely be of particular importance for the fundamentalist and evangelical communities that I was raised in, is what the Reformation teaching of Sola Scriptura has to say about contextual theology. I can imagine many saying, as Hall points out that “the context itself contributes nothing to the message” and that “no doubt it is always necessary to ‘translate’ the Bible…but this is strictly a concern for the transmission of the biblical message, not a quest for its meaning as such”.[xxxvii]

It is first important to note that the Reformer Calvin himself never affirmed the literal inspiration of the Scriptures, for he said “the word we possess in the Scriptures is a mirror which reflects something, but does not impart to us the thing itself. The Scripture itself is ‘an instrument by which the Lord dispense the illumination of the Spirit to the faithful’ but not to be identified with the Lord himself.”[xxxviii] Likewise, Luther, though insistent upon the centrality of the Scriptures in theology, thought that:

the substance of belief…is not that the Bible is true, but rather that towards which the Bible points us is true…It is the spirit and not the letter of the text that we must hear, and this hearing can take place only if we, in all the explicitness of our personal existences, are caused by the Spirit to do so. Thus the situation of the hearer or the hearing community is a central dimension of Luther’s concept of scriptural authority – the existential context and the biblical text are not separable, rather, in the process of faithful theological exegesis of the Scriptures, text and context are made to encounter each other.[xxxix]

Thus, Luther believed that “the singular authority of the Bible for theology does not exclude contextual reflection, but that it positively requires it…Scriptural understanding presupposes that it is the heightened awareness of our context that gives to the text, under the impact of the Holy spirit, its power and wisdom.”[xl]  Even the theologian who introduced Sola Scriptura believed that being firmly rooted in the context and being aware of the social anxieties of his time and place was essential for understanding how the Spirit was address these anxieties with an appropriate word of good news.

How then are we to discern what our context is? Douglas Hall and Mary Jo Leddy give several helpful guidelines for how to “name” a context. First, we are to listen to the “testimony of the victims”[xli] or as Leddy puts it the “authority of those who suffer.”[xlii] Liberation theologians have pointed out that “the God of the tradition of Jerusalem has “a preferential option for the poor.[xliii]

Second, it will be important to listen to the “insider/outsider” – those who are contemplatives or those who have lived outside of our context for a while and can see it with fresh eyes, such as missionaries.[xliv]

Third, we must listen to the artists in our society who are gifted in “naming what is not yet known” – poets, musicians, writers, film-makers have unique insights we can benefits from.[xlv]

Fourth, we should adhere to the words of our society’s “thinkers” including “storytellers (history), critical analysts (sociologists, political scientists, and economists.)”

Fifth and sixth, the text of the Scriptures and the “normative wisdom of the churches (tradition, teachings, wisdom of the saints and martyrs)”.[xlvi] Or as helpfully Hall asks, “How do the pursuits and values of our society compare with the images of the human in our authoritive sources?”[xlvii] And seventh, we should not only listen to our local Christian faith communities, but to “the wisdom of the churches throughout the world, and other faiths.”[xlviii]

I look forward to attempting to paying attention to all these voices, and fleshing out what doing contextual theology looks like here in 21^st century Canada in the few next papers of this class.

(Stay tuned for future blog posts.)

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[i] Mary Jo Leddy, Lecture 1, “Doing Theology in the Canadian Context”, Regis College, Sept 14, 2017.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Robert J. Schreiter, The New Catholicity: Theology Between the Global and the Local (Mary Knoll, NY, Orbis Books, 1997), p. 1.

[iv] Douglas John Hall, “The Meaning of Contextuality in Christian Thought”, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis, MN, Augsberg Fortess, 1989),

p. 69.

[v] Lord Bishop of Durham as quoted in Hall, p. 70.

[vi] Hall, 69, 93.

[vii] Schreiter, 2-3.

[viii] Hall, 76.

[ix] Hall 85-86.

[x] Schreiter, 1.

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Ibid.

[xiii] As quoted in Hall, 98.

[xiv] Hall, 97.

[xv] Ibid.

[xvi] Hall 77.

[xix] Hall, 81.

[xx] Tillich as quoted in Hall, 81.

[xxi] Hall, 82.

[xxii] Hall, 83.

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Hall, 84.

[xxv] Clemens Sedmak, “Fifty Theses for Doing Local Theology”, Doing Local Theology: A Guide for Artisans of a New Humanity (Mary Knoll, NY, Orbis, 2003), p. 162.

[xxvi] Hall, 89.

[xxvii] Hall, 90.

[xxviii] Ibid

[xxix] Hall, 91.

[xxx] Hall, 101.

[xxxi] Hall, 92.

[xxxii] Ibid.

[xxxiii] Hall, 111.

[xxxiv] Hall, 115.

[xxxv] Sedmak, 163.

[xxxvi] Hall, 117.

[xxxvii] Hall, 118-119.

[xxxviii] Hall, 119.

[xxxix] Hall, 120.

[xl] Hall, 122.

[xli] Hall, 134.

[xlii] Leddy, Lecture 1.

[xliii] Hall, 134.

[xliv] Leddy, Lecture 1.

[xlv] Ibid.

[xlvi] Ibid.

[xlvii] Hall, 134.

[xlviii] Leddy, Lecture 1.