RECLAIMING THE IMAGO DEI THROUGH THE TURBULENT SEAS OF COVID-19 AND WHITE PRIVILEGE
I was asked by Bangkok Forum (Bangkok Forum is the name of the annual consultation of Korean mission leaders to evaluate and suggest ways forward in improving Korean mission effort) to write a paper on how COVID-19 impacts and alters the Korean mission movement. Seeing COVID-19 as an opportunity to change, my angle was to reexamine and question foundational and systemic ways of doing missions. As I began to work on the paper, George Floyd’s brutal killing took place on May 25.
I see COVID-19 decelerating and perhaps forever altering the shape of the globalization drive, which I say in my paper is synonymous with dewesternization. Westernization is based on white privilege and supremacy. It is designed to perpetuate and maintain the status quo of white dominance. Yes, the missions arena is no exception. This process of dewesternization is a welcome change. To be sure, the idea of dewesternization is not new, but the root of systemic white privilege and supremacy has not been adequately exposed and transformed. Thus, dewesternization can be viewed as one of the least common denominators for both COVID-19 and the impact of the death of George Floyd. If this is true or close to being true, then we stand before a historic opportunity and call to reclaim the concept of imago dei (the image of God) which Richard Rohr calls “the original blessing.” I will be sharing this paper with you in 4 part series.
Thank you for reading and reflecting!
BANGKOK FORUM PAPER | ENTRY 1 OF 4
COVID-19 is like a colossal and unpredictable hurricane that is wreaking havoc on countless lives, and systems and consequential ideologies both on societal and global levels. It is unlike we have ever seen in anybody’s lifetime. One area that has been dealt a significant blow is how people “do their religions.”
There has been enough distance both physically and mentally (and should I also say fundamentally) from regular religious activities for the last several months that many are asking what their religious participation really means for them in their everyday life. This period of quiescence and pause is doing us a service of creating sparks of epiphany for many to realize that their religiosity and spirituality do not necessarily mean the same thing. What COVID 19 has accelerated is this spiritual awakening that is independent of one’s religious affiliation or level of religiosity. This is not to deny that there are not also others who see greater value and attraction to their religion. Some choose to be spiritual without being religious while some choose to be spiritual while being religious.
The phenomenon of pursuing spirituality without being religious (or beyond religion) is not new. It can no longer be seen as a dawning movement, but perhaps that of a bright mid-morning reality. Brian McLaren’s book published in 2016, The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World’s Largest Religion is Seeking a Better Way to be Christian, deals with this topic head on. I’ve also personally witnessed and dialogued with pockets of people and leaders who are in this migratory journey globally and thus are familiar and agree with McLaren’s assertions. My only disagreement with McLaren is his usage of the term, Christian. It is no longer a movement of a Christian kind. It is fundamentally another reformation in the making, potentially as disruptive and hopeful as was the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago. I published a paper on this topic, “Another Reformation on the Horizon,” from a missiological perspective in 2006.[1] What I failed to see lucidly at the time was a reformation from within Christianity. These streams of genuine followers of Jesus from Islam, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions and followers of Jesus outside of traditional Christianity are converging like no other time in history, at the least blurring or perhaps even effectively dismantling the known and accepted boundaries of religions.
To be human is to be spiritual and to be spiritual is to be human. Whether to be religious or not is secondary. Jesus was a spiritual person. He did not fit into any one religious category of His time. He did not choose Judaism over other religions in His time. (He would not place Christianity over other religions in our time!) That was what drove the devout religious Jews piping-mad toward Jesus. Jesus could not and would not be confined within Judaism. Jesus both affirmed and rejected certain aspects of Judaism. Jesus was impelled to transform the religion from within to be as close to the “Kingdom spirituality,” like the parable of mustard seed. He refused to play the game of favoritism and presented Himself as the Savior and Messiah for all, regardless of their cultural and religious traditions.
This spiritual drive originates from the truth that all human beings are created in the image and the likeness of the Triune God. From the “community of producers” of God, each of us were created in the image and the likeness of God. The end of spiritual journey is to be in union with God (transformed into the likeness of God), thus fulfilling the vision of imago dei. The Gospel of John confirms the narrative this vision unlike any other book of the Bible, highlighted by Jesus’ prayer of union at Gethsemane.
For more info, you can go to https://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/23_1_PDFs/17-19%20Chong%20Kim.pdf.