Anthony J. Gittins - Living Mission Interculturally: Faith, Culture, and the Renewal of Praxis

Religious life has always had a prophetic role. In this book Gittins points out how it can maintain its prophetic edge by modelling how we can live fully and interculturally in an age of unprecedented migration. In almost every country we are in the birth pangs of a new way of being human. But migration and intercultural living are full of pain and possibilities. Living happily and productively in the future will involve learning not only how to respect cultural difference but the ability to enjoy living with difference. Gittins outlines the missionary and prophetic role religion can play and gives practical insights into culture, marginalization, and mission and the skills and attitudes required to live in such communities.

Noel Connolly, SSC
Columban Mission Institute

Living Mission Interculturally: Faith, Culture, and the Renewal of Praxis is a treasure and seminal work on intercultural living as an expression of mission, an actual participation in Gods mission. This book is essential reading for international congregations committed to intercultural living and willing to do the work necessary to make this a lived reality. The inclusion of questions for personal and communal reflection after each chapter and the appendices challenge the reader to move beyond the text and enter into a process that can lead to transformation. The freedom and openness to engage in a critique of culture is essential for the creation of a community of radical welcome. The actual formation of intercultural community is crucial for the unfolding of religious life in a global context. Gittins experience, wisdom, and profound insights are both gift and blessing for religious life and the Church. This is not reading for the fainthearted.

Joan Marie Steadman, CSC
Executive Director
Leadership Conference of Women Religious

In Living Mission Interculturally, Fr. Gittins provides the most comprehensive resource to date integrating the gifts from sociology, cultural anthropology (intercultural studies), and theology as they apply to religious communities. In his multidimensional approach to the topic, he guides his readers on a multifaceted journey with clarity of definitions, on the one hand, and landmarks for personal and community commitment and transformation, on the other. If the complexity of intercultural living is like a sphere, then each chapter of this book is like a slice of the sphere offering opportunities for deeper understanding and exploration of what it means and what it takes to be a faithful missional intercultural community.

Eric H. F. Law
Executive Director of the Kaleidoscope Institute
Author of The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb

I am a leader in an international congregation that is currently discerning just what interculturality can mean for us and for others. Ive participated in workshops by Gittins on this topic and I welcome this further study as an aid to deeper listening and more focused response to what the world needs today from international communities. In a clear and accessible way Gittins goes to great depth at each turn of this very timely topic. His mission-driven exploration of intercultural living is immensely practical, challenging, and solidly based on scholarship, lived commitment, wide dialogue, and prayerful reflection. Gittins has given us a great gift and incentive to live our unity in diversity from a stance of radical faith and heightened cultural awareness. I am eager to share this gift with my whole international community and all of our partners in mission.

Mary Ann Buckley, SHCJ
American Providence Leader, Society of the Holy Child Jesus

Many of us in religious communities, dioceses, and parishes are looking for advice and resources to address the growing challenges and opportunities of intercultural living today. Living Mission Interculturally is an excellent resource for practitioners. Drawing on his social-science background and in-depth knowledge of the actual situations of mission/ministry, Anthony Gittins provides a very fine tool with relevant information and practical exercises that can be used by groups and individuals. And he does this with an insightful, concise, and clear writing style that we know well and appreciate from his other writing. In his own words, Gittins attempts to offer ways of approaching the otherness of other people and to stimulate readers into remembering their own otherness in relation to those among whom they live and work (xix). He has achieved this goal and left us with an excellent resource to respond to real-life situations.

Roger Schroeder, SVD
Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD, Professor of Mission and Culture
Professor of Intercultural Studies and Ministry
Catholic Theological Union at Chicago

Living Mission Interculturally is a must-read for anyone who wants to live more fully and deeply our call as church and global citizens. Anthony Gittinss book comes out of years of engaging theologically and living practically the invitation, challenges, and possibilities of intercultural community living. Gittins explains with great examples the dimensions required to move us toward living mission interculturally, whether as religious congregations or as parish communities. He both gives us an understanding of what we mean by intercultural community and shows us how to open ourselves to growth in very pragmatic ways. In the midst of all this, he reminds us that thinking and acting differently require a radical conversion, which God longs to live in us. This book is for everyone who wants to participate in building the reign of God here and now!

Maria Cimperman, RSCJ, PhD
Director, Center for the Study of Consecrated Life
Associate Professor of Theological Ethics, Catholic Theological Union

A Michael Glazier Book published by Liturgical Press

Excerpts from the English translation of The Roman Missal 2010, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved.

Radical Welcome 2006 Stephanie Spellers. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY.

Effects of Culture Contact on Individuals and Community, adapted from Dawid Venter, Mending the Multi-Coloured Coat of a Rainbow Nation, Missionalia (1995): 31617. Used by permission.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

2015 by Order of Saint Benedict, Collegeville, Minnesota. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, microfilm, microfiche, mechanical recording, photocopying, translation, or by any other means, known or yet unknown, for any purpose except brief quotations in reviews, without the previous written permission of Liturgical Press, Saint Johns Abbey, PO Box 7500, Collegeville, Minnesota 56321-7500. Printed in the United States of America.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gittins, Anthony J., 1943

Living mission interculturally: faith, culture, and the renewal of praxis / Anthony Gittins, CSSp.

pages cm

A Michael Glazier book.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8146-8318-7 (print) ISBN 978-0-8146-8343-9 (ebook)

1. Catholic ChurchMissions. 2. Intercultural communication Religious aspectsCatholic Church. 3. Christianity and culture. I. Title.

BV2180. G579 2015
282.09'051dc23