Intercultural Theology Competence for an Intercultural Faith Education

Abstract

The article begins with clarifying what an Intercultural Faith Education would mean in a global culture that seems to be growing more pronounced in its pluralistic nature. Taking for granted the evident fact that Intercultural theology is the bedrock for a faith education in an intercultural context, it seeks to enumerate certain specific Intercultural theology competences that can render the process of intercultural faith education possible, significant and feasible. From a catechetical or faith education point of view, it analyses the three perspectives of faith that intercultural theology should promote, namely, the dialogic personalisation of faith, the prophetic challenging of faith and the cohesive exchange of faith—corresponding to personal and interpersonal dimensions, communitarian and social dimensions and expressive and missionary dimensions of faith, respectively. Each of these three perspectives declinate themselves into at least three specific competences, amounting to nine practical competences in all: comparative understanding, critical interpretation, cultural collaboration, the recognition of power equations, the ratification of identity formation, the recommendation of theological bonum, equality of expression in faith, an eagerness to learn and empathy in engagement. Interpreting each of these competences and their distinctive contributions, the article configures the foundational framework of intercultural theology for intercultural faith education in terms of these competences.

1. Introduction

Catechesis, pronouncedly understood as a communicative and educational act (DC, nn. 136, 140)1—which is also referred to as “Faith Education”—is not merely about information to be passed on. It is essentially about growth and maturity that is to be effected in a person and in a community as a result of a pedagogico-communicative process. When such a catechetical pedagogy is formulated, keeping in mind the task of promoting a wholesome experience of interculturality for an individual, for the community and for the society at large, in which the particular community finds itself embedded, it would be termed Intercultural Catechetical Pedagogy (ICP)2—in other terms, Intercultural Faith Education (IFE). The present article intends to understand, from a Catholic point of view, the place of Intercultural Theology Competence within this IFE by first enumerating what could be identified as the four goals of IFE from a Catholic understanding today, laying out the understanding of Intercultural Theology within the Catholic theologising. From these two basic scaffoldings, then, the article delineates the Intercultural Theology Competence for IFE.

2. Intercultural Faith Education: The Four Goals from a Catholic Perspective

The current Directory for Catechesis calls this “Catechesis at the Service of the Inculturation of Faith” (DC 2020, nn. 394–408).3 In one of the articles (n. 396) which could be key to gathering the catechesis–inculturation link to which the catechetical document subscribes, there is an elucidation of the aim of such a process. Calling attention to the task of catechesis “to bring the power of the Gospel into the very heart of culture and cultures” (John Paul II 1979, n. 53; as cited in DC 2020, n. 396), four interim goals are outlined, in terms of which the aim of IFE can be understood and brought to its accomplishment. The goals mentioned are: understanding culture as the hermeneutic setting for receiving, personalising and sharing faith; enabling, in a practical sense, an experience of faith; sharing, in appropriate ways, the faith a person or the community has received and lives; and nurturing a life that becomes, in itself, a witness to faith.

2.1. Understanding and Interpreting Christian Faith in the Intercultural World

One of the primary goals of faith education, identified as such by the General Directory for Catechesis4 and inspired by Catechesi Tradendae, is reiterated in the DC too:

“at the centre of every process of catechesis is the living encounter with Christ […] Accordingly, the definitive aim of catechesis is to put people not only in touch but in communion, in intimacy, with Jesus Christ; only he can lead us to the love of the Father in the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity.”

(John Paul II 1979, n. 5.)

“Communion with Christ is the center of the Christian life, and as a result the center of catechetical action”.

(DC 2020, n. 75)

Encounters are the crux of IFE, and they should consist of creating opportunities, processes and means of promoting a profound experience of faith, without which “one would be deprived of a true encounter with God and with one’s brothers; the absence of content would block the maturation of faith, keeping one from finding meaning in the Church and living the encounter and exchange with others” (DC 2020, n. 80). This conviction of the Directory is affirmed and broadened by Pope Francis, who, in his recent encyclical, calls for promoting not merely events of encounters, but “a culture of encounter capable of transcending our differences and divisions […] where differences coexist, complementing, enriching and reciprocally illuminating one another even amid disagreements and reservations” (Francis 2020b, n. 215). Arriving at this complementing coexistence would not be possible, as the encyclical cautions, without being aware of the dangers of a false openness (Francis 2020b, n. 145) and narcissistic self-centralisation (Francis 2019, n. 146), moving towards a healthy openness that “never threatens one’s own identity” (Francis 2020b, n. 148).

The position of the Directory on catechetical pedagogy for a pluricultural context can be gleaned from two key articles: one states that “the goal of Revelation is the salvation of every person, which is realized through an original and efficacious pedagogy of God throughout history” (DC 2020, n. 158); and the other explains that “the specific contribution of catechesis to evangelisation is the attempt to enter into relationship with the experience of persons, with their ways of living and the processes of personal and community growth. Inculturation, is at its heart, aimed at the process of internalization of the experience of faith” (DC 2020, n. 396). Understanding and interpreting Christian faith experience as handed down, communicated and shared, and as lived by each person surrounded by his or her proper ambience, would be the incontestable goal of a faith education with an intercultural perspective.

Hence, one of the pronounced goals of IFE is empowering and enabling the believing persons and the faith community to understand and interpret Christian faith from an intercultural point of view. This perspective of life, without a doubt, needs to be translated into practical means of living the Christian faith.

2.2. Practical Means of Living Christian Faith in an Intercultural Mode

Interpreting and understanding Christian faith from an intercultural perspective, when done with genuine conviction, leads to a practice and a consequent way of life. As the Directory notes, “Catechesis makes the initial conversion ripen and helps Christians to give a complete meaning to their existence, educating them in a mentality of faith in keeping with the Gospel, to the point of gradually coming to feel, think and act like Christ” (DC 2020, n. 77). The mentality of faith—feeling, thinking and acting like Christ—consists of criteria for practically living out the Christian faith. In terms of such faith, “in ecumenical contexts and those of religious pluralism, care should be taken to familiarize catechists with the essential elements of the life and theology of the other Churches and Christian communities and of the other religions, so that, with respect for everyone’s identity, dialogue may be authentic and faithful” (DC 2020, n. 144). It is clear that the Directory envisions faith education as “pedagogy of faith in action, together with initiation, education and teaching, always having clear the unity between content and the way in which it is transmitted” (DC 2020, n. 166). The Directory further sets out that faith education should prepare persons in an ecumenical and intercultural situation towards an ability to explain clearly the doctrine of Catholic faith, without losing sight of the principle of the “hierarchy of truths”, to represent, in a correct manner, the teachings of the other Churches and to know precisely what divides and what amounts to one’s unique identity while living in contact with the persons of other confessions (DC 2020, n. 345).

The tasks thus outlined for catechesis as a means of rooting a believing person in a Christian community are: proclamation of the kerygma, enabling the faith community to become a true community of life and of faith, ensuring a basic knowledge of the Bible and the doctrines of faith, paying attention to symbols, gestures and ceremonies in the moments of liturgy and those of popular piety, caring for those who drift away from the community and paying attention to those who return to the community, making them feel welcomed and not judged and facilitating a joyful restoration and a compassionate reincorporation (DC 2020, n. 353). Faith Education, therefore, has the task of accompanying the faithful in every aspect of their practical living of faith, especially in contexts that are more complex and demanding.

In the recent magisterium, Pope Francis speaks of the importance of dialogue in the context of arriving at solidarity but underlines the need for an adequate preparation of the faithful for this process. He emphasises that “just as there can be no dialogue with ‘others’ without a sense of our own identity, so there can be no openness between peoples except on the basis of love for one’s own land, one’s own people, one’s own cultural roots” (Francis 2020b, n. 143). Evidently, one of the prominent tasks of Faith education is to strengthen that identity and reconcile it in practical ways with the process of living and sharing faith in a community and among communities. Living Christian faith in an intercultural mode is a special task for which the faith community needs to equip itself by pedagogical and theological means, understanding and owning their proper culture and respecting and appreciating the interacting cultures, along with taking their experience of faith seriously. The practical means used by the process of faith education and the practical ways of living one’s faith promoted by such a process aid in the achievement of another goal of IFE—that of sharing faith in an intercultural context.

2.3. Intercultural Approach to Sharing Faith

A discussion on the practical means of living one’s faith in any context, given the innate nature of Christian faith, invariably includes a discussion on the communitarian dimension of such a faith and its shared nature within the community of practice. It is with this background that the DC warns that faith education “cannot be reduced to the conveying of a message, but is first of all sharing the life that comes from God and communicating the joy of having met the Lord” (DC 2020, n. 68). Observing the contours of the present situation, the Directory states that “the co-existence of different faiths in schools, universities, and other areas of life, or the rise in the number of mixed marriages, urge the Church to reconsider her pastoral care and her catechetical initiatives in reference to the concrete situations that are being created” (DC 2020, n. 343). Amidst such reality, faith education has to “foster understanding and encounter [… as] appropriate means for avoiding superficial and harmful generalisations” (DC 2020, n. 351), which are highly possible given the pluralism that prevails. Faith education has to empower the believers to realise the potential of the Gospel “to unleash forces of true humanity, peace and justice” (DC 2020, n. 103), the forces that make Christian faith comprehensible, desirable and acceptable in the current scenario. The process of faith education has to adopt “the languages of peoples’ cultures, through which the faith is expressed in a characteristic way, and helps ecclesial communities to find new ones adapted to the hearers” (DC 2020, n. 206). This is an approach that is entirely open and ever-evolving, because the setting on its part is constantly changing. This approach, in fact, makes faith education “a setting for the inculturation of the faith” (DC 2020, n. 206). Much more than the terms such as proclamation, announcing or transmission, a term such as “sharing” faith, in all its simplicity, proves efficacious in a setting of interculturality owing to the fact that the elements of interiorisation and mutuality are enshrined within it, and that is what faith education is all about.

It is the same conviction that the encyclical Fratelli Tutti reiterates, proposing “dialogue” as that mentality of sharing: “Approaching, speaking, listening, looking at, coming to know and understand one another, and to find common ground: all these summed up in the one word, ‘dialogue’. If we want to encounter […] one another, we have to dialogue” (Francis 2020b, n. 198). Quoting Querida Amazonia (Francis 2020a, n. 108), Pope Francis exhorts that “in true spirit of dialogue, we grow in our ability to grasp the significance of what others say and do, even if we cannot accept it as our own conviction. In this way, it becomes possible to be frank and open about our beliefs while continuing to discuss, to seek points of contact, and above all, to work and struggle together” (Francis 2020b, n. 203). Dialogue is in no way a justification of relativism, as the magisterium itself points out specifically, but a seeking of both the light of reason and the light of faith, sharing what is known and experienced with each other (Francis 2020b, n. 185). IFE works on this framework—the framework of sharing faith with each other—as a means of entering into an encounter with persons as individuals and as communities of practice. Especially in contexts that are complex and diverse, the dimension of sharing faith makes sense on two broad levels—the intra-ecclesial level between the communities of Christian faith and the extra-ecclesial level towards the cultures and communities of other faith traditions. The National Catechetical Directory (NCD)5 of India, which affirms the above fact, says:

Our Christian communities in India are diverse and complex in reality. As members of the Body of Christ, His Church on earth, we are called to enter with respect and love into the life of the community to which we belong or are sent as ministers of the Word. Each community then is our community; each person in it is our sister or our brother. As fellow pilgrims, we journey together. We need each other, and finally we will be judged on the basis of our relationship to each other.

(NCD 2015, n. 214)

At the first level, it takes the form of faith education and prepares the members of the community for the second level, where it assumes the form of dialogue. Will this encounter of dialogue with another culture, or faith tradition or denomination, give rise to a risk—as that of being persuaded by the alternative or being “led away” from the person’s original stance? In fact, the encounter should create that risk (of even being persuaded to change positions) if the process of dialogue was true, sincere, healthy and authentic. However, a crucial task of a holistic faith education is to prepare persons for such encounters, enabling them towards a mature understanding of their faith stance. Such “mature” understanding consists of knowing one’s stance without being conditioned or fettered by it in the act of listening to the other during the encounter. The NCD therefore establishes the tasks of Catechesis in terms of the evangelising mission of the Church in a pluralistic society, an evangelisation that is characterised by four essential dimensions, namely, incarnational, dialogical, liberative and ecological dimensions. Accordingly, specific tasks such as interreligious dialogue, inculturation and intercultural dialogue, integral liberation and environmental sensitivity form integral parts of an IFE (NCD 2015, n. 284). The loftiest of the goals of faith education is witnessing one’s faith in and through one’s own life.

2.4. Witnessing Christian Faith in an Intercultural Setting

Faith Education, as a process of enabling the development of faith6 in a person and in a community of believers, has cumulative levels of growth indicators. Fowler (1981, pp. 115–213), in explaining the stages of the development of faith, indicates that, from the time the faith of a person or a community grows to be individuative and reflective, it is constantly challenged to grow to be conjunctive and universalising. At these stages, one indispensable indicator is the capacity of the person and the community to witness the message that they live and proclaim. Not merely those who have the care of the community and the faith educators who are involved in the process directly but every person being educated in faith and every believer is obliged to grow in his or her life of witness, in keeping with their state of life. As responsible and contributing citizens, as the Directory states, faith education “contributes to an organic formation of the personality of the believer [… and faith education seeks] to illustrate the noble significance of human engagement in the world; support Christian witness in the workplace; help the faithful to be a leaven of reconciliation in situations of conflict; encourage efforts for the humanisation of work; urge the defence of the rights of the weakest” (DC 2020, n. 393). The Directory presents the mentality of dialogue itself as an experience of witness, in a context where there are differences of opinions and ideologies. It says, “dialogue remains the only possible solution, even when faced with the denial of religious sentiment, with atheism and agnosticism” (DC 2020, n. 315). One of the specific attentions that an IFE should possess, as the Directory notes, is “to encourage in all believers a missionary impulse of witness to the faith; of collaboration in defence of human dignity; of affable and cordial dialogue, and where possible, of the explicit proclamation of the Gospel” (DC 2020, n. 350). Witness, in an intercultural context, “involves openness of heart, the capacity for dialogue and for relationships of reciprocity, the willingness to recognise the signs of goodness and of God’s presence in the people one meets” (DC 2020, n. 33) or encounters in day-to-day life. Faith education, therefore, is not something to carry out purely with doctrines and truths to be understood, memorised and believed in, but it is about living the right values, gradually becoming, as persons and communities, more and more prophetic, conforming to the image of Christ. It is here that Pope Francis collocates solidarity which, “as a moral virtue and social attitude born of personal conversion, calls for commitment on the part of those responsible for education and formation” (Francis 2020b, n. 114). The encyclical identifies the crucial role that the families, teachers and communicators have to play in the formation of persons and communities towards this aspect of witness, collaboration and common thinking and towards building up the entire humanity and the cosmos. Witnessing in a intercultural setting would also mean “combatting the structural causes of poverty, inequality, the lack of work, land and housing, the denial of social and labour rights […], confronting the destructive effects of the empire of money” (ibid., n. 116).

The cruciality of Christian witness becomes more intense in situations of a plurality of cultures, where, as the Indian directory notes,

proclamation must be made, above all else, by witness. A Christian or a group of Christians, in the midst of the community in which they live, must show that they are capable of understanding and accepting others and of cooperating with all those who are seeking to protect what is noble and good. They can radiate their faith spontaneously through values that transcend common values, hope in things which are unseen […]. By bearing such silent witness, Christians can inevitably arouse a spirit of enquiry in those who see their way of life. Witness of this kind constitutes in itself a proclamation of the Good News, silent, but strong and effective.

(NCD 2015, n. 91)

The above quoted directory places a noted emphasis on the responsibility of the faith education process in enabling the educand and the educator towards growing into and becoming an “effective witnesses” to the persons of other faiths and traditions, who look up to the Christian community for edification. This is essentially understood and explained as faith-fostering in a pluricultural setting (NCD 2015, n. 145).

The aim, therefore, of IFE is to orient faith education processes founded on sound intercultural theology, guided by a systematic intercultural pedagogy and empowered by a dynamic intercultural communication in order to enable the faithful and the community of faith towards understanding and interpreting the Christian faith from the perspective of the intercultural world, empowering them with a practical means of living Christian faith in such an ambience, with an approach of dialogical sharing and witnessing practice. IFE promotes the communion of persons and communities through Christians reaching out to each other and to the world, celebrating the differences and diversities that enrich existence and humanity. IFE empowers a believer to personalise the salvific message that Christ has offered to the whole of creation and witness it in every thought, word and choice of action. IFE acts as a locus in itself, as it brings together varied approaches within catechetical initiatives in a given setting, in the context of the family and the family of families—the faith community, which is concretely and competently aided by the institutions that serve as arms of the community of faith. The Christian, or a believer in Christ, is a concrete person in life, with context proper to him or her, who finds him/herself at a particular phase in life and in meaning making. The shepherds who have the care of this community and the faith educators who take this concrete praxis forward need to be formed with care and have to collaborate with each other in accomplishing this aim. In this article, we consider Intercultural Theology, which is one of the three componential disciplines just mentioned, the other two being Intercultural Pedagogy and Intercultural Communication

3. Intercultural Theology and the Evolving Face of the Church

Intercultural Theology, especially considering the consciousness of the world at large today, is inevitable as an approach. The reason for this is that intercultural theology “tries to integrate and bring together what belongs together within a common field of discourse. It explores the interconfessional, intercultural and interreligious dimensions of Christian faith” (Küster 2014, p. 171). It would by now be out of place to analyse the stance of the Catholic Church regarding intercultural theology, for it would sound redundant considering the openness with which the Church considers the three essential dimensions of intercultural theology: a deep interculturality, a deliberate interreligiosity and a dialogic interdenominationality. Hence, a Catholic-specific outlook of intercultural theology should be presented before the related specific competences for IFE are explored.

Within Catholic circles of theologising, intercultural theology “emerged as an attempt to secure a lasting position for the interrelated discipline of missiology, comparative religion and ecumenics”, observes Küster (2014, p. 171). Answering the question of whether the Catholic Church did recognize and engage in intercultural theology right from the beginning would much depend on what we mean by the “Church” and by the “beginning”—the former referring to the underlying ecclesiology and the latter to the implied missiology. This draws our attention to the paradigm shifts in the course of the history of the Catholic Church regarding the models of mission (Wijsen 2001). One of the initial paradigms was built on a conviction that the so-called pagans who were outside the church had no possibility of salvation and that they had to be brought in—the delirious efforts of proselytisation. What followed was a paradigm of church-planting, which was in reality a transplantation of the European Christianity in places—the establishment of the Christendom. Another model was that of the adaptation of Christianity by way of some externals such as the liturgical language, vestments and rituals, where the aim of planting the churches remained the same while the method changed, albeit the outcome was always that the non-Christians entered the church—the adaptation model. A later model was inspired by a recognition of Christ already present in the non-Christian cultures and the need to help the non-Christians discover this active presence in their lives—the “unknown Christ” and the “anonymous Christianity” models.7

Observing the evolving face of the Church in this regard, it could be noted from records that there has been a definitive shift in perspective in theology worldwide, which is finally beginning to recognize and acknowledge that “theologies being inherited from the older churches of the North Atlantic community did not fit well into […] quite different cultural circumstances” (Schreiter 1985, p. 1). Vatican Council II marked the beginning of an outspoken support for the view that there is a need to adapt theological reflection to the local circumstances, which was explicitly outlined in the decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity Ad Gentes (1965) and was followed by the missionary theology of Pope Paul VI in his address to the Bishops of Africa in 1969 and, in a very special way, in his Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi of 1975, which was an outcome of what he gathered from the Synod of Bishops, which discussed the evolving question of the mission of the Church. Historically, even as these shifts in perspective were taking place, in Latin America, there was another movement gathering momentum from the need of the times and circumstances, and it was referred to as the “theology of liberation”. The Catholic Bishops who gathered at Medellin in 1968, along with a publication by the Peruvian theologian Gustavo Guttiérez in 1973, A Theology of Liberation8, brought this approach to the attention of the whole world. Incidentally, liberation theology did not restrict itself to the Latin America, but the approach became a common denominator to what was going on in Africa and Asia—the attempts at experiencing, exploring and expressing Christian theology rooted in their specific circumstances, which were so different from those in Europe or North America. This shift was indispensable for three reasons: because there were new questions emerging in the circumstances that were so new and strange; because the old answers were found to be insufficient and unnecessarily foisted on persons and communities; and because a new kind of Christian identity was evolving with changing concrete contexts, needing prompted procedures and historical experiences (Schreiter 1985, pp. 1–3).

Precisely in this context, there was a shift of great importance offered by the thought of Joseph Blomjous, Bishop of Mwanza, who was considered an important spokesperson at Vatican Council II and its spirit post-event, inviting the missionaries to speak more of “interculturation” than of “inculturation,” because what is envisioned is not merely an interaction between the gospel and culture, as if they were two monolithic meaning systems, but an encounter between multiple cultural orientations (Wijsen 2001, p. 221). Robert Schreiter (1985, pp. 5–7) offers a map indicating the remarkable itinerary of the Church in this shifting perspective. He claims that one of the initial approaches the Church employed in this shift can be identified with the term indigenous theology, which highlights the fact that theology is done by the local people of a geographical area, as contrasted with “outsiders.” What stands out here is the integrity and the identity of the project as being against a universal and perennial theology. However, this term does not win the favour of everyone, not even a majority, due to a colonialist background to which it seems linked, be it in Africa, or in India or even elsewhere. As a replacement, some Protestant evangelical circles spoke of Ethnotheology (Tippet 1972; Luzbetak 1976), which focussed on the specificity of theology for a given cultural area and a given cultural group, depending heavily on cultural anthropology. The Catholic Church used the term inculturation as a combination of two fundamental principles from two different fields: the theological principle of incarnation and the social science process of enculturation. Though this term is so widely used in the recent Catholic epoch, evidently, this noun lacks an adjectival form that can qualify a theology. It hence had emerged as a readily accepted term, contextual theology placing a grave emphasis on the context from and in which theology was done. Local theology, Schreiter (1985) claims, comes the closest to the Vatican Council II’s parlance, ecclesia particularis—that is, the theology of the local church. This term resonates with the Vatican Council II’s position that the Universal Church exists in local or particular Churches (Lumen Gentium, n. 23).9 From a “translation” model, which is too prototypical, through an “adaptation” model, which is way ahead but still not sufficient, the Church has evolved enough to uphold local theology that takes a “contextual” model seriously, with either an ethnographic approach, which insists on integrity and continuity, or a liberation approach, which seeks change and discontinuity, as explained by Schreiter (1985, pp. 6–16) in his analysis. Though what Schreiter calls local theology is very close to the subject of prime interest of thought here (intercultural theology), it can conveniently be said that there is still something lacking. Notwithstanding this, most of the foundational elements that could be identified in the yet-to-be-defined intercultural theology can be found in the local theology, to which—and, in reality, beyond which—the Church is prepared to commit itself. There could be, however, a few elements that cause a considerable concern for the orthodoxy and integrity of the theology of the Catholic Church, which shall be addressed and clarified as and when they arise. With that background of the history and the evolving state of intercultural theology, it would be proper to discuss where we stand presently.

4. Intercultural Theology and Its Understanding Today

A direct understanding of intercultural theology could be perceiving it as “the theological reflection upon the process of interculturation. Intercultural theology is not a new theological discipline, but a new perspective and a new method in theology” (Wijsen 2001, p. 221). From the just-described history of the 1970s, there could be three plausible reasons identified for the rise of intercultural theology. The first is the demographical development: whereas, in the beginning of the twentieth century, two-thirds of all Christians lived in Europe and North America, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the same two-thirds are found in the global south, giving rise to new models of churches and newer local theologies. The second is a socio-philosophical development: that the erstwhile for-the-most-part unquestioned European theology was being questioned not only from outside of the region but also by secular philosophies from within—the most prominent of these tendencies being secularisation, which had by then pushed the Christian frame of reference to the society to its fringes. The third is a very Catholic development: the Second Vatican Council, which recognised and approved the shift that was happening and challenged churches everywhere, in and through the documents produced, to become self-reliant, mature and local in matters such as finance, personnel and theology (Wijsen 2001, pp. 221–22).

Hollenweger, as the pioneer of the field, had laid down some practical conditions that justify and give rise to intercultural theology. A recalling of those premises could help grasp the original sense of intercultural theology. The first of these premises is that all theologies are contextually conditioned and that there is nothing wrong with this. Another theology from another context might indicate how much one’s own theology is conditioned, parochial or ideologically captive, and one cannot ignore those signs and indications. However new or contextual, there is a common denominator—a point of convergence or contact—and that is the Scriptures.10 When various perspectives encounter each other, there is bound to be a creative tension, and it is precisely in this creative tension, with the “widest possible perspective”, that theologies appropriate to a situation are developed. When it comes to the Universal Church, the loyalty can never be to a nation, or a class or a culture. Such a disposition would provide the necessary context in which true creative theologising could take place (Hollenweger 1986, pp. 28–29).

These presuppositions lay down a fairly basic framework for what could be understood as intercultural theology, consolidating the experience. These propositions not only consolidate the field or sub-field of intercultural theology; they make us rethink the future of Christianity, or other religions or any faith for that matter. They do this by insisting on two important sets of data: “one, phenomenon of a global ‘cultural circulation’, and two, the problem of coping with irreducible ‘otherness’ in terms of society, culture and religion. Both sets of data meant that believers, any believers, were aliens to the world they knew, with a transitory model of interpretation in order to put their trust into what is not transitory” (Ustorf 2008, p. 12). That is why the focus on this approach to theology today, and its global acknowledgement definitely opens a new horizon of understanding something that has been going on for centuries but which hardly had the opportunity or the possibility of making it to the vanguard.

Another current understanding of interculturality in theological pursuits would be to look at it from the perspective of the secularisation theory of the postmodern world, which is characterised by functional differentiation11, which takes away the pro-society image of religious institutions, individualisation12, which sidelines the institutions in favour of the individuals, and rationalism13, the fruit of enlightenment that brings into question everything that goes beyond human reason. The secularisation theory, authors say, had predicted a progressive marginalisation of religion in society or even a disappearance of it, but it had gone wrong somewhere in its forecast. Observing the changes today, what could be said at most is that religion has been reinterpreted in the last three-to-four decades as it never has before (Giordan 2008). “Pluralism is the most relevant aspect, specifically denoting the socio-religious situation of the contemporary world, since it forces us to re-examine and rewrite the relationship between all the various religions as well as the beliefs, rites and moral convictions at the centre of traditional religions” (Giordan 2008, p. 204). If it is relationship to the sacred that religion is all about, then the evolving difference is as follows: while, in the traditional religion, the said relationship was based on obeying the authority of the religious institution, in the postmodern society, it begins with the heart of the subject who wills that relationship; there is no legitimation or approval from another agency that is considered necessary or even important anymore. This is, in crux, a shift from the religious dimension to the spiritual dimension. The emergence of the new understanding of the concept of spirituality—though spirituality is no new term to religion—is seen in the shift from the theological interpretation to a sociological usage of the term (Giordan 2008, pp. 203–6).

The primacy of spirituality seems to offer a totally new possibility for theological dialogue in intercultural perspective simply because it no longer starts from the exclusive defence of its patrimony of rites, beliefs and moral norms, thus stressing the differences and marking insurmountable borders between true and false, fair and unfair, appropriate and inappropriate; the spiritual perspective highlights dimensions of believing that encourage the different theological systems to confront one another and debate together.

(Giordan 2008, p. 208)

Theology, in an increasingly globalised and pluralist context, has to take into serious consideration the specific dimensions of spirituality today, such as personal yearning or searching, freedom of choice, individual experience, authenticity, vitality, simplicity, essentiality and universality (Toffanello 2000, pp. 7–24). These dimensions of openness are those which make theology develop a perspective such as interculturality. It needs to be reiterated in this context that intercultural theology “is a methodological rather than an ideological commitment and as such, can be practiced across the spectrum of theological opinion” (Cartledge and Cheetham 2011, p. 3). Being a methodology of theologising, intercultural theology comprises of, or amounts to, certain competences that are present or that can be developed.

5. Intercultural Theology Competence towards Intercultural Faith Education

Guided by the pioneering contributions of thinkers such as Hollenweger, Margull, Friedly and others who had laid the foundation for intercultural theology, those of scholars such as Küster, Schreiter, Wijsen and others who interpret intercultural theology for the new millennium and pastoral theologians such as F-V Anthony, Scheuerer and others who deepen the practical dimensions of intercultural theology for pastoral and missiological imperatives of the Church as a faith community, there can be a list of intercultural theology competences spelled out towards IFE. These competences, considered here, aim at enhancing the effectiveness of faith education interventions in an intercultural setting. Intercultural competences comprise three constituent elements: the cognitive facet of knowledge and the awareness of one’s culture, others’ cultures and cultural groups; the affective traits such as respect for one’s self and the other, openness to the other, curiosity towards new knowledge, acceptance of differences and appreciation of the same; and operative capabilities such as observing, understanding, interpreting, evaluating, relating, rethinking, challenging and reshaping (Anthony 2016, p. 710). Considering these constituent elements and corresponding to the three criteria that scholars propose for an intercultural competence, namely, “connecting people from other backgrounds, performing in achieving task-related goals and enjoying the pursuit of common goals in a culturally diverse environment” (Brinkmann and Weerdenburg 2014, p. 15), three intercultural theology competences for faith education that could be delineated here are: the dialogic personalisation of faith, the prophetic challenging of faith and the cohesive exchange of faith.

5.1. Dialogic Personalisation of Faith

Faith education, as a process of enabling a person and the community as a whole to mature in faith, has, for its core content, theology—faith seeking understanding and faith seeking a meaningful communication of itself to oneself and to the world around. In an intercultural setting, the process invariably takes on a dialogic dimension—a dimension that makes ample space for meaning making and mutual sharing, leading to “an intercultural conversation” (Toren 2015, p. 10) well beyond mere indoctrination. In fact, “intercultural theological dialogue is […] in principle a trialogue, a three-way conversation […] in which the third or rather the first voice is the voice of God who Himself in the Scriptures and through the Holy Spirit addresses His church” (Toren 2015, p. 14). The self-revelation of God in the Scriptures, in faith experiences and in daily events and encounters has to be recognised, received and personalised in the sense of a dialogic relationship with God. Such a competence by which to arrive at a dialogic personalisation of faith would comprise three constituent capacities.

The first of these is comparative understanding, pertaining to one of the rudimentary tools of intercultural theology: comparistics. Along with the capacity to understand one’s own faith and its expressions, intercultural theology competence would enable a person understand one’s faith in comparison to that of the other and understand one’s faith expression in comparison to the way another expresses his or her faith, which could be the same as or different from one’s own. The comparison and consideration of differences need not be always with an out-group component. This is evidenced by the insistence on intra-religious dialogue as a prerequisite for effective interreligious dialogue. This could be understood with the help of Panikkar’s diatopical hermeneutics, which “stands for the thematic consideration of understanding the other without assuming that the other has the same basic self-understanding and understanding as I have” (Panikkar 1979, p. 9; as cited in Chung 2009, p. 188).

The second constituent capacity within this competence would be critical interpretation, an intercultural hermeneutics that would refrain from making the entire attempt an individualistic enterprise but rather a community approach, without being overconcerned about harmonisation but being open and recognitive towards differentiation, making the process more relational than instrumental and focused on an existential understanding of faith rather than a purely theoretical and prepositional understanding (Bujo 1998; as cited in Ariarajah 2005, p. 94). By enabling persons and communities to look at oneself through the eyes of the other, in and through comparative understanding and a critical interpretation of one’s own world of faith, intercultural theology makes a difficult task possible: that of clearly perceiving our own tacit cultural presuppositions rather than others’. In this way, a critical self-understanding of believers and believing communities is achieved, contributing to a relevant IFE (Toren 2015, pp. 3–4).

The third constituent element would be a cultural collaboration, that is, the capacity of cultures and persons from different cultures to take up the task of arriving at common goals, a shared vision and a holistic growth plan. Intercultural theologians look with surprise at the attitudes of subtle or explicit superiority of the Christian consciousness over the so-called others. Be it the implicit insistence on the absolute finality of Christ and the uniqueness of the Christian religious position by the inclusivists, or the more gross expression of superiority by the exclusivists, there is something that does not correlate with the intercultural hermeneutic ideal. However, the historical developments and the global cultural changes constantly, and fortunately, keep challenging these attitudes and their rationale (Ariarajah 2005, p. 92).

The three capacities presented as constituents of the dialogic personalisation of faith competence could be analysed parallel to the three modalities proposed by Anthony towards intercultural dialogue effectuated by intercultural theology, namely, intercultural hermeneutics, intercultural critique and intercultural participation (Anthony 2013, pp. 95–97). Intercultural Catechesis, rendering specific the objective of a catechetical process, has to concentrate not merely on understanding one’s faith but on doing it in relation to others and in dialogue with the other(s), both intra- and extra-communities.

5.2. Prophetic Challenging of Faith

Holistic growth in faith would mean that one’s faith has been tested, challenged and reinforced proportionate to the individual’s personal, professional and public or interpersonal experiences in life. This forms an essential intercultural theology competence, as intercultural theology insists that one engage in “prophetic dialogue” (Toren 2015, p. 13),14 which, according to missiologists and intercultural theologians, could become an apt alternative to the understanding of the Mission of the Church in the world of this millennium. Identifying this prophetic dialogue as a foundational category for practical theology, Gerard Hall enumerates “witness and proclamation; liturgy, prayer, and contemplation; commitment to justice, peace, and the integrity of creation; interreligious dialogue; inculturation; and reconciliation” (Hall 2010, p. 35) as essential components of the mission in the present times. In the context of intercultural theology, this would primarily be a self-challenging aspect of faith and the aspect of faith challenging the “world.” The same becomes a specific competence when considered in terms of intercultural theology as the core content of IFE. The prophetic challenging of faith, as a competence, would consist of three constituent capacities.

The first is the capacity of the recognition of the existing power equations in the field of theology. Intercultural theology, by its fundamental instincts, remains aware of these dynamics in any process of theologising—from whose point of view the process is undertaken, who the theologising subject is and who the cultural “other” is, how the equation between these two is constructed, what the presuppositions that operate at the ground level within this process are and various such issues. Scholars would even go on to declare that “if we are equally welcoming to all voices, there is a danger that the voices of the strong will drown out the voices of the vulnerable and the weak” (Toren 2015, p. 12). Looking beyond the boundaries of the dominant forms of Western academic discourse, intercultural theology enables a much wider theological conversation by developing apt skills and an updated knowledge (Toren 2015, pp. 4, 8, 12). This would essentially be an awareness and a clarity that not everything is ideal and totally unbiased in the way faith and its expressions are handed down in practice. Without this capacity, the process of faith education, or the communication of faith, would be too naïve for an intercultural context.

However critical the person is, there is a need for the ratification of identity formation, based on the principles and convictions that are passed on, received and personalised as componential elements of Christian faith. This capacity for the ratification of identity formation has to be acquired by the person and the community involved, aware and conscious of the possible biases yet with freedom and dignity. As persons and communities, they realise that they have equal rights, possibilities and duties of making sense of their faith in terms of their personal identity, their identity in relation to the experience of God that they have and their identity in communion with the faith community within which they share the common faith. This happens in an interactive process between the individual and the community and between the local community and the global community. Hence, theology at this stage cannot be labelled merely as “local”, as it were, but it gets ratified as glocal, as “it has a local colour, but it is linked to global flows and networks” (Toren 2015, p. 4).

Recommendations of theological bonum, to oneself and to the other, are a sign that the previous two capacities have been achieved. Unless a person or a community has already worked through the power equations within a theological framework and has ratified one’s own identity in relation to the Other and the other(s), the person or the community would never come forward to propose or recommend a theological value or virtue or goodness (in a single term, bonum) to the other. This is an essential part of maturing in faith, where one’s theological convictions and ethico-spiritual principles are considered, judged and valued by the person or the community as worthy of being recommended to the other. The ultimate theological bonum is God, the person of God and the presence of God with the person or the community. When an intercultural conversation stops short of arriving at this point, addressing and defending values such as freedom, mutual respect, empowerment and others, it remains still non-theological. However, there are numerous values, in addition to the aforementioned, that bring the person and the community to the ultimate theological bonum, the chief of those being the Gospel and the Reign of God (Toren 2015, pp. 12–14).

The three capacities within the competence of the prophetic challenging of faith pay due attention to the multiplicity that is involved in the process of making sense of faith. It cannot be merely an individual person with God, or a community by itself in direct correspondence with God, where faith is experienced, expressed and espoused. The intra- and extra-personal and the intra- and extra-community conversation is the actual ground where this process takes place, hence the importance of the need for IFE to develop the competence of the prophetic challenging of faith, enabling individual persons and communities to understand and live their faith in an increasingly mature manner.

5.3. Cohesive Exchange of Faith

There exists a familiar charge that faith education, to a great extent, remains “silent in the field of human relationships concerning justice, freedom, and national and international sharing […] because of the view that Christian life is primarily a matter of individual sanctification and salvation. […] it avoids social analysis and its political implications” (Balasuriya 1984, pp. 226–27). This remark of a passionate faith-sharer is simply a call towards a socio-politically conscious faith education, which is informed and upgraded by various universal movements and thought processes that unceasingly call for more universal thinking and openness. These movements recommend “drawing up pedagogical methodologies for the young, tracing one rather obvious issue to its roots and its worldwide ramifications, If the search continues with openness and commitment to other issues, it can lead participants to a more global understanding of a local situation” (Balasuriya 1984, p. 238). This is exactly what intercultural theology, as content, can do to the process of faith education, pushing it to the limits where the person and the community are urged to share their faith towards creating a cosmic community. It is a specific competence that intercultural theology could bring into the process of the maturation in faith and its expression, a competence that could be noticed in three dispositions.

The first disposition is that of equality in the expression of faith. It could be a naïve system which requires that an individual accepts what another says, or a section of a community assents to what another holds true, without any critical thought to it. Equality in the expression of faith would require that every person and every community of faith feel the liberty and the necessity to make sense of the experience—both individual and communitarian and both personal and passed on—in one’s own way. This also requires that one respects the liberty and capacity of the other. As communities too, in spite of differences such as levels of socio-economic and intellectual sophistication and historical and temporal dominance, individual faith experiences and expressions have to be respected, listened to and affirmed for what they are and what they stand for. Critical intercultural theologians note the fact of the demographic shift of the “centre of global Christianity from Europe and North-America to Latin-America, Africa and Asia” (Jenkins 2002; as cited in Toren 2015, p. 4), calling for a greater disposition to look to the Global South for more current inspiration.

The second essential disposition is that of an eagerness to learn. The disposition of equality of expression does not in any way mean a relentless thrusting of individual ideas within a community or various communities on each other. It has to be accompanied by a sincere eagerness to learn from the other. At times, intercultural theology could be mistakenly reduced to finding a commonality, a common language and a common ground by which we would celebrate a convenient similarity. However, the arduous truth is that intercultural theology goes in search of those dissimilarities that are buried in the grand narratives (Chung 2009, p. 189), making one progressively vulnerable but intensely capable of learning from the other. Those adept for an intercultural theological process of growing in faith are those who, apart from knowing their faith deep, are open to understanding the perspective of the other with their heart and mind.

A third disposition, undeniably connected to the other two, is that of empathy in engagement. Intercultural theology needs to be a process, an experience and an encounter lived together; it cannot be a means, a strategy, a scheme or a diplomacy. Intercultural theology has to be a theological effort at encountering the other with empathy, which means not insisting that the other feels what one feels but rather striving as best as one can to feel what the other feels. This disposition can lead to mutual understanding, respect and, more importantly, appreciation towards the contribution made to each one’s growth and to the common growth as a community. IFE has to lead one to not merely share one’s faith but to enrich one’s own faith by the sharing of the other and by encountering the other with an empathetic spirit.

These dispositions, apart from building up the faith of the individual and that of the community, build the community itself. This, perceivably, is another core objective of a holistic faith education. The competence for the cohesive exchange of faith enables persons and communities to share their faith, share their lives and build the community on the faith and life that are shared by people of God.

6. The Six Dimensions of Faith Education Covered by Intercultural Theology Competence

The three competences explained above and the corresponding abilities enumerated cover, in fact, the six comprehensive dimensions in which faith education has to enable and empower a person to progress and develop (See

Table 1. Intercultural Theology Competences for Faith Education.

Competences		Abilities	Dimensions
1	DIALOGIC UNDERSTANDING OF FAITH	Comparative understanding	Personal	Interpersonal
		Critical interpretation
		Cultural collaboration
2	PROPHETIC CHALLENGE OF FAITH	Recognition of power equations	Communitarian	Social
		Ratification of identity formation
		Recommendation of theological bonum
3	COHESIVE EXCHANGE OF FAITH	Equality of expression in faith	Expressive	Missionary
		Eagerness to learn
		Empathy in engagement

). The dialogic understanding of faith makes the person grow in his or her personal faith conviction, in dialogue with those of the others, interpreting one’s own faith in relation to the faith experience of the other and critically ready to make sense for each other and to collaborate in initiatives for the common good. The prophetic challenge of faith enables a person to develop a sense of community with the healthy formation of identity and strong convictions of theological bonum, which make one capable of building one’s community and doing one’s best for the society at large. The cohesive exchange of faith prepares the person for exercising one’s own right to faith expression with an unassailable respect for the same right of the other. Both are willing to learn from each other and to empathise with each other, engaging in making the world a better place for everyone.

The General Directory for Catechesis, which had guided the catechetical ministry of the Church over the first two decades of this millennium and has just been replaced by a new version, in its fourth and fifth chapters,15 had outlined the project of opening up the education of the Christian faith to the concrete social, religious, anthropological and cultural situation. GDC affirmed that knowing in depth the culture of those who are being educated and the extent to which it has influenced them, recognising the inevitable “culture” dimension in the Gospel itself and its expression through the centuries, proclaiming the transformation that the Gospel can bring about in culture, witnessing the presence of the seeds of the Gospel in culture(s), promoting the new expression of the Gospel arising from the evangelised culture and maintaining the integrity of the content of faith without, at the same time, losing sight of the cultural and historical circumstances of those who are willing to grow in the faith are fundamental duties of faith education (GDC 1997, n. 204). These serve as a foundation for the intercultural faith education that is relevant for our times. Faith, theology as making sense of and communicating of that faith, pedagogy that determines the mode and means that communication needs to adopt and all related processes within this framework of communication construct (Anthony 1995, pp. 303–4) what has already been defined and termed as IFE.

With the emergence of intercultural theology in the so-called mainstream theologising circles, and keeping in mind the widening horizons of faith education as faith sharing, intercultural theology competences are indeed practical abilities to be developed in an individual and in faith communities as a not only tools for faith education but as the fundamental criteria and categories of faith education.