Clouds of Witnesses: A Review

Noll

Historian Mark Noll is typically noted for his work in American religious history. In 2011, however, he broke pattern with Clouds of Witnesses, a book about missions. Co-written with Carolyn Nystrom, they survey seventeen, lesser-known missionaries from Africa, India, Korea, and China.

In exploring these missionaries, Noll and Nystrom challenge American readers’ conceptions of what missions looks like and how it’s done. Although this book is written with missions in mind, even those who don’t feel called to vocational missions will benefit from reading it.

Why? Because many of the principles that apply to missions work also apply more broadly to evangelism at large. As all Christians engage in evangelistic work of some kind, they too can learn from the examples of these missionaries.

As we read through Noll and Nystrom’s book, at least three themes emerge from these missionaries’ ministries: Gospel, culture, and government.

Missions Work Begins with the Gospel

As different as these seventeen missionaries are in many respects, they are unified by their emphasis on the Gospel. All Christian missions work must include this key component. Without it, it is not Christian. While Noll and Nystrom explore many sub-points under this theme, two of the more prominent are (1) the preaching of biblical Gospel, and (2) the interplay between biblical integrity and cultural distinctives.

First, through these missionaries, Noll and Nystrom remind missionaries, missions agencies, and lay Christians everywhere to proclaim the pure, unadulterated Gospel of Scripture: Jesus Christ crucified and resurrected for sinners. We see this especially in these missionaries’ struggles against Protestant Liberalism. In their words, it watered down the Gospel and created stumbling blocks for those to whom they were ministering. “Stop sending modernist missionaries,” implored China’s Dora Yu (1873-1931) at the International Missionary Meeting of the 1927 Keswick Convention [1]. Byang Kato (1936-1975), who fostered higher theological education in Africa, expressed similar concerns. Without the Gospel, Christianity is reduced to good works, self-help, and/or societal improvement.

Even assuming that we’re preaching the pure Gospel, what does its application look like in culture? Two missionary selections from Africa and India demonstrate the tensions created by culture. One is the barefoot, Elijah-like, white-robe-and-turban wearing, gourd-rattle carrying William Wadé Harris (c. 1865-c. 1929), and the other is the Sikh-turned-Christian, charismatic, traveling, and mysterious Sundar Singh (1889-c. 1929). By these descriptions alone, they are certainly not what Westerners typically envision when they hear “Christian.” Yet their inclusion in Noll and Nystrom’s book raises tough questions for mission agencies, missionaries, and lay Christians.

How do we maintain biblical integrity to the pure Gospel, while affording sensitivity to cultural differences? What does that look like? Are Harris’s and Singh’s examples good ones, or does their examples raise problems? Add to this the fact that some non-Westerners have criticized (rightly or wrongly) the cultural dogmatism with which some Westerners have proclaimed the Gospel, and the whole question proves rather sticky to wade through. While Noll and Nystrom don’t provide final answers to these questions, they nevertheless leave readers with some challenging and even surprising implications through these missionaries.

Missions Work Challenges Cultures and Societies Too

Whereas Christianity is reduced to good works without the biblical Gospel, it is reduced to philosophy without cultural and societal engagement. Such engagement should be inevitable. Like the concentric circles extending from the pebble thrown into water, engagement with the culture, society, and/or political order will result from Gospel that is proclaimed within a given culture. Biblical Gospel provides both spiritual and physical answers. What precisely this looks like is a difficult, oft-debated question. If anything, Noll and Nystrom’s presentation of these missionaries illustrates that it will likely look different in different cultures with different people experiencing different problems. But whatever it looks like, it will challenge societal conventions and social norms that are inconsistent with Scripture.

For example, Bernard Mizeki (c. 1861-1896) settled as a cross-cultural missionary among the Shona people in modern-day Zimbabwe in Africa. He preached the Gospel to the local villagers. But seeing their economic poverty, he also taught them about agriculture and economic sustainability. He taught them how to grow gardens, offered them hospitality, and cared for their physical needs. In similar fashion, China’s Mary Stone (1873-1954) served her society through medicine. She founded the Elizabeth Skelton Danforth Memorial Hospital (1900). She even created a curriculum to train local women into nurses, which included medical training, Bible, and evangelism.

Over in India, missionaries like Pandita Ramabai challenged their cultures too. Through her traveling, lecturing, and writing, Ramabai (1858-1922) fought against a culture and religion that did not treat women with dignity or respect. She stood against the oppressions of child brides, child marriages, and child widows; infanticide; “uncelebrated births”; and much more. She founded the American Ramabai Association and Mukti Mission too.

In some cases, cultural engagement may even overlap with political engagement, whether employment for, confrontation with, or even persecution by governing authorities. Tragically, this often means standing against ruling authorities and political norms—especially outside of America, but increasingly in America too. One notable example is Janani Luwum (1922-1977). So convinced was he of his Christian calling as a call to oppose political injustice that he advocated against an Idi Amin-occupied Uganda in the ‘70s. He confronted the administration’s arbitrary killings, economic collapse, excessive power, random violence, and unexplained disappearances of people by drafting protest letters, seeking audience with Amin, and even expressing his criticisms on the radio. Ultimately, Luwum was martyred (murdered!).

In Korea, Sun Chu Kil (1869-1935) exerted influence in the public square by helping found Pyongyang’s Independence Club, signing a Declaration of Korean Independence against Japan, and more. Ultimately, he was jailed for his political activities. In China, Christians like Wang Mingdao (1900-1991) and Ignatius Cardinal Kung (1901-2000) were also persecuted and jailed for their commitments to biblical Christianity—in their case by communism. In Africa, Albert Luthuli (1898-1967) advocated for non-violent political activism, for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize (1960).

Though other missionaries in Noll and Nystrom’s book offer further example, their point is that missions work doesn’t stop at the pulpit—as if it were that easy. That’s just the beginning. By extension, neither does Gospel work. Rather, it often also means providing on-the-ground hospitality in Christian love, fighting economic poverty through agriculture or medicine, opposing unjust social structures through godly activism, and more. Faith must produce action. In some cases, this will even mean challenging governing authorities too: be it by working through the governing orders that God has set in place, or standing against political administrations and structures—a call that may result in persecution and even death (cf. Jn. 15:20) (and has for many).

“I Don’t Believe I’m Called to Vocational Missions. Is This Book For Me?”

Noll and Nystrom have much to say through their book, not only for Christians called to vocational missions work, but for others too. As mentioned before, many of the principles that apply to missions work also apply more broadly to evangelistic work, and all Christians are doing evangelistic work of some kind.

Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert point out some important distinctions on this topic in their recent book, What Is the Mission of the Church? In no way should social aspects of cultural engagement be conflated with the message of Jesus Christ. The Church’s great commission (Mt. 28:18-20), as an institution, is to preach the Gospel of the cross. Why? Even without the Church, other groups will work toward societal and cultural improvements. However, no one will preach the Gospel of the cross, if not the Church.

Be that as it may, Christians must still live in a way that communicates that Gospel—as an example of what it means to love our neighbors if nothing else (Mt. 22:39). Certainly, Noll and Nystrom’s seventeen missionaries illustrate that Christianity is not an isolated religion, but a both/and affair touching upon every sphere of life. In addition, these missionaries challenge modern conceptions of evangelism.

What we learn is that there aren’t necessarily any simple formulas or uniform, fixed, cookie-cutter approaches to Gospel work. Cultural, economic, national, personal, political, religious, and social considerations factor heavily into the way we pursue our Christian callings. While these missionaries’ examples are tough to swallow in some cases, they challenge us. Gospel work is not limited to proclamation. It gets its hands dirty. It happens in gardens and town squares. It questions local, pagan traditions. It challenges unjust societal structures and political regimes.

If there is a weakness of Noll and Nystorm’s book, it is this: By simply presenting the lives of seventeen, less familiar missionaries in a purely biographical manner, they raise many questions without necessarily giving clear answers. This gets especially tricky as we wonder whether certain missionaries’ actions are simply wrong (though we hope they meant well). On the other hand, their purpose wasn’t necessarily to provide answers, but simply to let these missionaries speak for themselves. Despite these objections, Clouds of Witnesses is a challenging, yet insightful read for believers of all stripes.

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[1] Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystrom, Clouds of Witnesses: Christian Voices from Africa to Asia (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2011), 198.

Author: Matthew Steven Bracey

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