A Quiet Revolution

The gospel is universal, but Christian life is always local. For decades, missionaries and church leaders have used the word « contextualization » to describe how Christianity puts down roots among different cultures. This book argues that the word has been largely misunderstood.

In A Quiet Revolution, theologian and missiologist Duane Alexander Miller returns to the work of Shoki Coe and recovers a forgotten vision of contextualization: not as something done for local Christians by outside experts, but as theology created by local churches wrestling with their own realities in the light of Scripture. It is what he calls « organic contextualization. »

Through vivid case studies ranging from Nicaea and the Book of Common Prayer to Muslim-background believers and the depopulated villages of Spain, Miller develops a practical framework for evaluating faithful contextualization. This book will help readers ask three crucial questions: Who are the agents of contextualization? Is the response genuinely local and enduring? Does it emerge from a faithful dialogue between God’s word and God’s world? Provocative, practical, and deeply rooted in church history, this book offers a fresh vision for how Christian communities can faithfully embody and live out the good news in times of jarring cultural change.