Evangelism and the World
The paper given at the Lausanne congress of 1974 by René Padilla, a Latin American student worker based in Buenos Aires. It criticises the identification of the Gospel with a culture, the North American way of life in particular.
The headnote describes Padilla as associate general secretary for Latin America of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, with headquarters in Buenos Aires. The paper studies the word “world” in the New Testament and draws consequences for evangelism. Under the heading “culture Christianity” it argues that the Gospel has repeatedly been identified with a culture: with Spanish Catholic culture in the conquest of Latin America, with European colonialism in the nineteenth century, and in his own day with the “American Way of Life”, which turns the Gospel into a product offered at the least possible cost (pp. 125–126). It goes on to say that repentance has a social dimension and that where there is no concrete obedience there is no repentance (p. 128). It rejects two opposite errors: a salvation confined to this life, for which it names the Latin American theology of liberation, and a salvation of the soul alone that withdraws from the problems of society (p. 129).
It is one speaker’s paper, and its sharpest pages are aimed at fellow evangelicals. The file is a scan without a text layer. See the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization.
Cited in
- 16–25 July 1974, firm date