The Culture Concept and the Mission of the Roman Catholic Church

Abstract

This essay examines how the Roman Catholic Church uses a version of the concept of culture in its evangelizing mission. The field of Christian evangelization is not commonly studied by anthropologists, but it represents a situation parallel to that of international and political development, which has similarly been informed by the anthropological concept of culture but translates that concept into action in ways that are not always consonant with anthropological theory. The great size and international reach of the Roman Catholic Church commend it to our attention insofar as it draws on a version of the anthropological perspective in its dealings with people in a multicultural society.