Is Western Culture More Christian Than Other Cultures?

One of my delights each year is to unpack and display my large collection of Nativity sets. I have gathered them from around the world, and part of the fun is to see how this story is interpreted through each culture.

A painted screen from Haiti pictures one of the Magi bringing an enormous bunch of bananas. A clay set from Peru displays a woman coming with fresh bread. One from the Zuni people of New Mexico tucks the Holy Family into the lower level of a terraced adobe home. Each representation reminds me that while the story of Christmas took place within a particular cultural context, people in every country where the story is told uses their own touches to make it their own.

This is a true gift to me, a person reared within Western Christianity. Most Christmas songs or holiday displays reflect my own Christmas experience (by referencing snow, for example), but my Nativity sets remind me that the experience of the gospel is global. The story of Jesus first spread through the Middle East and Europe, so these regions had a head start on Christian worship, theology, and practice. But in the centuries since, the entire world has contributed to our shared understanding of who Jesus was, how to worship him, and how to live as his followers in our own contexts and cultures.

At Calvin University, where I am privileged to serve as chaplain, there are Christian students, staff, and faculty members from all over the world who come and teach us their songs, their ways of praying, and their theological perspectives. In our chapel services we worship in different languages, styles, and traditions. The result is that all of us are stretched to try new things and reminded that our way of following Jesus isn’t the only way.

This is such a crucial part of following Jesus. Christianity isn’t American or Ghanaian or Chinese. Christianity is a global religion in which the core truths of the gospel are learned and then celebrated in many different ways. For those of us who can experience the luxury of international travel, worshiping with Christians around the world is a reminder that we don’t know everything about faith, church, or discipleship. We can learn so much from believers from other places, especially about suffering, perseverance, spiritual life, obedience, or theology.

I had a great conversation with a student who grew up in a Pentecostal tradition in a country in West Africa. She was taught that to be a Christian required speaking in tongues, and she was concerned because that hadn’t yet been part of her faith experience. When I gently told her that a majority of global Christians (Catholic and Protestant) don’t actually believe that speaking in tongues is a requirement of faith, she laughed out loud in delighted surprise. She then told me that in her context, there was no debate about women as preachers or leaders because they believed so strongly in the gifts of the Spirit—if God had given someone a gift, you celebrated the gift. It was my turn to laugh with delight.

When our gospel worldview is narrowed down to our experience, or when we believe that our own experience of the gospel, church, Scripture, or theology is superior, we miss out on the richness of the global kingdom of God. We miss out on commentaries written in Kenya or hymns from South Africa or art from Chile. The kingdom of God is expansive—and growing richer and more beautiful every day. Thanks be to God.