More cultural challenges from the sub-continent

While in Trivandrum we had the opportunity to worship at one of the local corps. As ever it was great to worship with other Christians from a totally different context and to be reassured that for all that makes us different there is so much more that unites us.

But I came away challenged by a couple of things.

Firstly was how British, and 1950s British at that(!) the meeting (service) was. Apart from the fact that most of it was translated you could've been forgiven for thinking we'd been transported back to the UK and back a few decades in the process! Where were the sitars?!

Secondly I was challenged as to how and when, as Christians and as a church, we are called to challenge the prevailing culture. This thought was prompted by the fcat that when we worshipped we did so seperately - men on one side and women on the other. On one level this seemed a perfectly indigenous way to approach things. Yet the briefest of experience of Indian culture suggests a male dominance that is not always helpful. Indeed it would seem that as with any 'dominance' it is often built upon, and maintained by, oppression and abuse.

And so I was left wondering whether or not this offered the church and the Salvation Army in particular a counter-cultural opportunity to model the freedom found in Christ. I was left wondering how this prevailing culture would ever be challenged and changed (if indeed it should be) if the church did not step up. Of course given the miniscule number of Christians in India it could easily be argued that they would offer an inadequate challenge, but from where else will the prompt for change come? Experience would seem to suggest that however unlikely, cultural change (Civil Rights movement in the US, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe) is often instigated, amongst others, by Christians.

I also recognise that it would be easy to explain it away as a cultural norm, but I'm not sure how this sits with the fact that as Christians we believe 'there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.' (Galatians 3:28)As I say, I'm left considering how and when the Church is called to challenge the world around us? History suggests that where the church fails to assume the mantle of change-agents we can often be guilty of maintaing the status quo and perpetrating societies 'cultural' injustices (I'm thinking of segregated Corps in South Africa when apartheid was alive and abusing!)