Honor-Shame Presentations at EMS

Honor Restored: The Compelling Story of Creating an Honor-Shame App, by Chris Sneller, Bridges International, Houston Baptist University

This presentation explores how Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ) developed Honor Restored, a digital evangelistic tract for honor-shame contexts. In the 1950s Bill Bright, Cru’s founder, wrote the widely-used “Four Spiritual Laws.” The yellow tract focused on explaining the gospel from a guilt-innocence perspective. In recent years Cru created GodTools, an evangelistic app, which recently hit 500,000, downloads. Dr. Sneller will tell the story of the creation of these tools, focusing on Honor Restored, which was launched in December 2017.

Conviction and Elenctics: Bringing Shame upon an Honored Missiological Paradigm (Chris Flanders, Abilene Christian University)

Eminent Reformed theologian, Francis Turetin, and noted missiologists Herman Bavinck and David Hesselgrave are among those that helped create a sub-discipline of missiology known as “elenctics” (conviction). Such resulted from a strong reaction against liberal 19th and 20th-century theology that minimized the seriousness and personal awareness of individual sin, particularly in missionary proclamation. Recent honor-shame approaches to scripture highlight how this approach was based more on western legal notions, outdated anthropology, and individualistic psychology. This presentation highlights how the biblical notion of “convict” is much more closely related to the experience of shame and why this is important for evangelism and global missiology.

Shame and Secularization: A Collateral Rise in American Society, by Bud Simon, Asbury Theological Seminary

The twentieth century has seen the United States undergo major changes in cultural values. Secularization has risen as a process in society, which pushes the church to the margins as a determinant of values. This has diminished the role of organized religion as a factor in establishing morality. At the same time as secularization has occurred, shame has increasingly taken the place of guilt as a moral imperative, changing the way culture determines right and wrong. Scripture provides insights for how to express good news to those who primarily define their cultural orientation through honor-shame relationships. This duality in cultural transitions motivates the church to reexamine evangelism and how ‘good news’ is expressed in the twenty-first century. A related article, “Honor-Shame Cultural Theory: Antecedents and Origins,” was published earlier this month at www.globalmissiology.org

Secularization and Social Control in Alaskan Eskimo Culture: Shifting from Fear/Power to Honor/Shame, by John Ferch, Western Seminary

The American colonization of Alaska during the early 20th century brought rapid change to the Yupik and Inupiat cultures. As the shamans succumbed to disease and the supernatural realm was called into question by Western technology and economics, the ancient methods of regulating social behavior lost much of their relevance. This paper traces how secularization has influenced the Eskimo cultures to shift from a Fear/Power-based worldview towards greater emphasis on Honor/Shame, with a view towards helping the church maintain appropriate approaches to ministry in this context.

Panel Discussion: The Impact of Honor/Shame Issues on Mission and Evangelism, with Chris Flanders, Werner Mischke, Wayne Dye, Mark Harlan, Kurt Richardson, and John Ferch