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Taiwan Church News 3044 Edition June 28~July 4, 2010
Editorial: A mission for Taiwanese churches
Translated by Lydia Ma
Latin was used in Europe during the Middle Ages whenever people discussed philosophy or attended church services. It seemed people who didn’t understand Latin then couldn’t learn or engage with others about theology and spirituality.
Despite this phenomenon, many women used their native language to write about their unique spiritual experiences and their testimonies written in their own mother languages were always filled with energy and life.
During the Christian Reformation, Martin Luther translated the Bible into his mother tongue so that people could read God’s life-giving words. His translation of the German Bible later became an important milestone in the standardization of the German language.
When missionaries first came to Taiwan about 145 years ago, they used Taiwan’s common language at the time – Taiwanese – to explain the gospel and later translated the Bible into Romanized Taiwanese. Since then, the PCT has grown used to using Taiwanese to share the gospel and discuss theology.
As result, Taiwanese hymnals and Bibles have not only fostered a special spiritual environment in Taiwan, but have also played important roles in the spiritual formation of Taiwanese people for generations.
To facilitate communication between people in this age of multiculturalism, mother tongues have slowly been abandoned in Taiwan in favor of a common language. This trend inevitably threatens the survival of mother tongues and many of them are now on the verge of extinction in Taiwan.
What we must note is that the extinction of a language isn’t merely about the disappearance of a way of expression – their disappearance also threatens our unique spiritual formation and our sense of identity. To protect these, we must protect and pass on our mother languages to future generations.
Churches should become shelters that protect mother languages against the storms of globalization and Sinicization as Christians wait for God’s appointed time.
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