Haase_UZ_x007E_DTh (2).pdf - South African Theological Seminary

Christianity is often considered a Western religion, it is much more, having come from
Middle Eastern [Oriental] cultural origins, now rooted in a multiplicity of non-Western
cultures (e.g., African). While Christianity is often thought [historically] to be Western,
the faith has always been an important presence in Oriental cultures via the Orthodox
streams (e.g., Russian, Syrian) of the faith. All Christians are not Westerners, nor are all
Westerners Christians. This is quite confusing to Muslims, for example, who most often
blur distinctions between national and religious convictions. For instance, to be Turkish
is to be Muslim and so forth. For this very reason many around the world simply do not
understand that in Western culture in particular, there is a real distinction between
national and religious allegiance. Gress further suggests that:
Modernity dissolves all existing civilizations
and creates a matrix for future civilizations that
do not yet exist. It is not Westernization, but a
universal change in the fundamental conditions
of any and all civilizations. A fully modern
world may have as many, or more, civilizations
as did the premodern world because a
civilization is not just a matter of democracy,
science, and capitalism, but of ritual, manners,
literature, pedagogy, family structure, and a
particular way of coming to terms with what
Christians call the four last things: death,
judgment, heaven, and hell. Modernity will
not change or remove the basic human
condition, to which each culture provides its
own distinct answers (Gress, 1997).
Just one example of this are the growing modernizing - counter modernizing tensions
within the broader Islamic community. A counter modernizing movement like the one
led by the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the pro-modernizing and pro-Western Iranian
government in 1979. In fact, the situation in present-day Iran is a postcolonial reaction to
Western neo-colonialism. The Ayatollah Khomeini consequently established a
government re-established in traditional Islamic and Iranian culture. Yet, contemporary
Iran, like other Islamic states, is a religio-cultural paradox, with one foot in nationalist-
Muslim traditions and the other ever more firmly planted in modernity. Traditionalist
Iranian leaders staunchly resist Westernization, yet are obviously working hard to
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University of Zululand, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa