By Jim Memory, Evangelical Focus. (Photo: Léonard Cotte/Unsplash)
The origin story of the church in Europe is a story of the “translation” of the Christian gospel into Europe’s indigenous cultures.
Indigeneity was an important principle at the genesis of the Protestant Missionary Movement: the idea that the gospel of Jesus Christ could and should indwell every culture and be expressed in forms that were meaningful to the peoples that received it.
Facing the challenge of communicating the Christian gospel to a largely secularised and multi-religious Europe, is it not time to frame the challenge of reaching Europeans as a missionary task, and to draw on the principles of indigeneity in doing so?
This article will explore the contested meaning of indigeneity and review its historical importance as a principle in Christian mission.
It will then consider the implications of applying indigenous principles to mission in today’s Europe where native Europeans and Christians from the Majority World are working together to reach all those who call Europe home.
Indigenous: A brief history of a definition
The word indigenous— taken from the Latin indigena, meaning “native” or “sprung from the land”—has been used in English since at least 1588, when a diplomat referred to Samoyed peoples in Siberia as “Indigenæ, or people bred upon that very soyle.” The word was used not just for the people but for the flora and fauna as well. [1]
Europe’s native or indigenous peoples, often classified as Germanic, Romance, Slavic, Celtic, and others, are those who migrated and first settled in the westernmost part of the Eurasian landmass over many previous millennia.
Whether we call them old-stock Europeans, autochthonous Europeans, or use any other phrase, these peoples have particular ethnicities and a cultural, linguistic, and historical background that distinguishes them from people from other parts of the world.