Missionary Anthropology

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Missionary Anthropology
Worldviews
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African Worldview
God
Ancestral Realm
Material World
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African Spiritual Worldview

• Ancestral spirits influence everyday life
• God is obscure to humanity
• At death one joins the ancestral spirits
• Circular history through children
• Distant God or gods

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Hindu Worldview
gods
Brahman
Material World
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Hindu Internal Worldview

• Gods are primarily powers of nature
• Gods are not separate from creation
• Brahman (universal spirit) exists in the world
• Cyclical history, life, death, reincarnation, new
  existence
• Multiple gods

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Deistic Worldview
God
Material World
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Deistic Natural Worldview

• God created the world and set it to run by
  natural law
• God does not intervene miraculously
• God is separate from the world
• Some of the founding fathers of America held this
  view
• Linear view of history
• Uninvolved God

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Secular Worldview
Big Bang
Material World
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Secular Atheistic Worldview

• Non-personal source for existence of world
• Accidental formation by explosion over time
• Basic elements combined, evolved and mutated to
  form current world
• World will rundown
• Linear history
• No God

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New Age Worldview
Mystical Realm
Material World Spiritual Aspects
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New Age Natural/Mystical Worldview

• World and God or gods are intertwined
• God(s) exist in all things and beings (pantheism)
• Each thing and person is a part of god(s)
• God(s) is the creation
• Mixture of eastern mysticism and western
  scientific speculation
• We are god(s)

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Christian Worldview
God Spiritual Realm
Material Realm
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Christian Relational Worldview

• World created by a personal God
• Purposeful creation
• God continues to interact with His creation
• God acts and people respond
• People exist in a relationship with God
• Linear material world to eternal existence
• God is I Am

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Worldview

• Definition Worldview is how a person perceives
  and interprets reality around him