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The current buzz word used by Catholics for the process of adapting the Christian message to local traditions is "inculturation." The idea is not new. Four centuries ago, Father Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary in China, tried to incorporate the Confucian reverence for ancestors into Catholic ritual. The Vatican quashed the experiment. Says one Catholic official in Rome who works with missionaries: "Inculturation is a difficult thing and sometimes I would say a dangerous thing. Leaving your own culture and adopting that of the people among whom you work may lead you to go too far, toward animism perhaps." At the moment, the first black archbishop in Zambia, Emmanuel Milingo, is in Rome for a period of "reflection" because he carried on a ministry of exorcism and faith healing, complete with such tribal accoutrements as fly whisks and animal skins.
The new sensitivity toward local cultures has led even conservative Protestants to treat tribal religion with respect. Missionaries try to banish belief in, and fear of, evil spirits; yet they also plumb the animist religions for concepts of eternal life or of a remote "high god" or primordial creator that might be used to inspire belief in the one God of the Bible. After all, the missionaries point out, Christmas was originally a pagan rite that ancient preachers turned to good advantage.
Indeed, there are missionaries who believe that conversion is fundamentally irrelevant to their true task. Says Father Walbert Buhlmann, the Rome-based mission secretary of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin: "In the past, we had the so-called motive of saving souls. We were convinced that if not baptized, people in the masses would go to hell. Now, thanks be to God, we believe that all people and all religions are already living in the grace and love of God and will be saved by God's mercy."
The Christian churches may differ in doctrine and in their basic convictions about what mission work is all about, but one factor tends to unite liberals and conservatives, Protestants and Catholics: they are all reaching out to the poor. By and large, the unevangelized populations of the world are those stricken by poverty and threatened by rapid change in their societies. All these conflicting patterns and tensions converge in Latin America, which has more U.S. missionaries than any other part of the world: some 9,250 Protestants and 2,180 Catholics. With a few notable exceptions, Catholic missionaries in the 17th and 18th centuries preached subservience to Spanish and Portuguese rule, while promising the natives a better life in the hereafter. Protestant missionaries, who began arriving in force in the 19th century, condemned the rich Catholic landowners and military elites, and were severely persecuted. As recently as the decade ending in 1958, there were 126 Protestants killed, 279 schools closed and 60 churches destroyed in Colombia alone. After Pope John XXIII took office in 1958, attacks on Latin America's Protestants abated. Today, by contrast, Catholic missionaries have strongly aligned themselves with the poor, encouraging them to fight for social justice. Pope John Paul II has supported his priests in this cause, as long as they do not become directly engaged in politics. Some Protestant missionaries share the radical views of the Catholic