The Future of Asian Pentecostal Theology

Abstract

"The recent three-volumed Asian Christian Theologies documents Unit the varieties of Christian inculturation or contextualization in Asia has produced a diversity of theologies forged in dialogue with the many historical, social, cultural, political, philosophical, and religious movements nnd traditions of Asia.1 So there are Aotearean theologies developed in lenns of Maori, Samoan, and Pacific Islander categories of thought; Indian Iheologies responding to and interacting with the long history of religious pluralism of the Indian subcontinent; Burmese theologies influenced by ilie pervasiveness of folk Buddhism; Indonesian theologies shaped (almost lilerally) by its island topography and geography, somehow nourishing a certain mystical religiousness and consciousness; Filipino theologies informed by the quest for political independence, and by animistic and Muslim undercurrents; Thai theologies articulated as apologetic efforts against the Theravada Buddhist tradition; Vietnamese theologies absorbing mill yet reacting to the Confucian-Buddhist synthesis and the recent history of Communism; Chinese theologies that have been more creation-centered, perhaps under the influence of the Confucian-Daoist worldview; I long Kong theologies shaped under the long history of British colonization; Japanese theologies emergent from a long history of Confucian-Buddhist-Nhinto convergence, and from the traumas inflicted on the national consciousness by the end of the second World War; and so on."