Worldviews that are Christian--Thoughts from Teaching Cultural Anthropology

I think Charles Kraft is on to something. It's something I've been thinking about and now teaching from the time when I took cultural anthropology from Bill Selvidge at Nazarene Theological Seminary in the fall of 2002.  

I began thinking in Kraft's way of talking about culture. So, I'm not sure there is a Christian "worldview." Why? It's how he and I define worldview. It is not just an idea or some set of beliefs about the world that can be easily changed but some way of learning, filtering, engaging, experiencing, remembering, living in and through the world. It's a structure to life that is something that was there before I arrived and there long after I'm gone. I use the example of a system of interstate highways that started as game pathways long ago. So, there's an American worldview, a Western European worldview, a southeast Asian worldview, a Latin American worldview, etc. Within these types there are variations, but enough in common to make interaction between people possible.  A worldview as such is no intertwined with who one is that it really cannot be extracted from who a person is.

Brian Howell, who teaches anthropology at Wheaton, has concluded the use of worldview is so misused and abused that the term itself no longer has any meaning. There's a long history to the development of worldview that i include in my course of Cultural Anthropology.  Since it's a term that is still in use, I believe for now that it also in need of be well defined.

That being said, I think the beliefs and practices of Christianity can radically transform an American worldview, Western worldview, southeast Asian worldview, Latin American worldview. So, an American that becomes Christian is still an American, African, Latino/a, Asian, European, etc. They might even be better at who they are (still within their worldvidw) now that they know and live and exist in the transformative power of Jesus Christ. And, it means that an African that becomes Christian does not have to add some culturally understood ways of being an American Christian in order to be orthodox.