先日の記事の中で、ある姉妹が、教会の主日礼拝で催される賛美フラのあり方に良心のつまずきを覚え、苦悶しておられる旨をみなさんに共有しました。
その後も私は、「元々異教女神に捧げられていたフラダンスをキリスト教礼拝の中に取り入れる」という発想の源流（ルーツ）を追い求めてリサーチを続けていました。
そこで行きついたのがハワイのニューホープ・クリスチャン・フェローシップのウェイン・コディロ牧師の「文化」に対する思想および神学でした。ホノルルにある教会のHPを読むと、"New Hope is known for redeeming the arts and technology."と書いてあります。
つまり、ここには、「私たちクリスチャンは、芸術やアート、テクノロジーといった文化一般をredeem（贖う）ことができるんだ」という前提があるわけです。そしてこの前提を土台に、元々異教女神に捧げるダンスであった「フラ」という世俗文化・芸能をredeemして、イエス・キリストへの礼拝と賛美のために、そして宣教のために用いようと、そのように考えておられるのだなということが分かりました。
もともと異教神が祀ってあったカーバ神殿
こういった「異教文化をredeemする」という発想に関し、私は数年前に、非常に興味深い会話を耳にしました。
キリスト者の伝道者とイスラム教徒の方が「カーバ神殿」の起源について熱く議論していたのです。ご存知のようにイスラーム以前、メッカにあるカーバ（カアバ）神殿は元々多神教の祀ってある偶像礼拝の宮でした。
カアバの歴史は非常に古く、イスラーム以前の時代にはアラビア人の信仰していた多神教の神々の神殿として使われ、アニミズム時代（ジャーヒリーヤ、無明時代）には、360もの神々の聖像が置かれていた。当時のカアバ神殿に祭祀されていた360の神々の最高神はアッラーフであり、救済を司る神として崇められていた。
また、アッラート、マナート、アル・ウッザーという三女神の父とされていた。アッラーフを除いた神々の中での最高神が月の女神であるアッラートであり、月経を司る五穀豊穣の老婆の女神であった。（引用元）
そして、このキリスト教伝道者は、「あなたの信じる神がまことの神なら、その神は、そもそもなぜ偶像礼拝の宮をわざわざ『聖別し』『リフォームし』、ご自分の聖なる宮とする必要性があったのでしょうか？
神は全能なる方であり、無から有をお造りになる方です。そして神は聖なる方であり、偶像崇拝を忌み嫌われます。ですから、全能であり聖なる神は、異教宮を『リフォーム』するのではなく、むしろ全く新しい場所に、ご自分のための聖なる宮をお造りになることができたのではないでしょうか？」と相手のイスラム教徒にチャレンジしていました。
そうすると、このイスラム教徒の方は言葉に詰まり、「うーん、そういえば確かに、なぜ神はそうされなかったのだろう？」と再考している風でした。
イマージング・チャーチ・ムーブメントと文化宣教
またさらにリサーチを進めていく中で、ウェイン・コディロ牧師が、イマージング・チャーチ運動からの影響を受けておられることを知るに至りました。
例えば、２００８年４月１－３日に開かれたAwaken2008というイマージング系のカンファレンスに、コディロ師は、有名なイマージング指導者リー・ストロベル（Lee Strobel）やウィロー・クリークのビル・ハイベルズ氏などと共に参加しておられます。（ここを参照ください。）また、この検証記事を読んでも、それが根拠のない噂ではないことが分かります。（＊このサイトでECと付記してある人々が、「イマージング系の指導者」という意味です。）
兄弟姉妹へのメッセージ
私自身も異文化の人々への宣教に重荷を持つ者として、「なんとかして一人でも多くの魂にイエス様の福音を伝えたい」という兄弟姉妹の純粋な愛やそこから流れ出る創意工夫に敬意を払っています。
しかし、いや、それだからこそ、私は同じ重荷を共有する同胞として、みなさんに一つの問いかけをしたいと思います。私たちの聖書の神は、本当にフラダンスという異教芸能を私たちがredeemし、それをキリストが礼拝される宮で上演することを正しいあり方だとみなしておられるのでしょうか。
そして、もしそれが正しいのなら、その根拠はどこにあるのでしょうか。神の属性である聖（holiness）と、この宣教メソッドとの間に摩擦はないでしょうか。クリスチャンは異教的なものや、偶像礼拝に対し、それに対峙（confront）するべきでしょうか。それとも、それをredeemし、リフォームして用いても差し支えないのでしょうか。
関連記事：
追加資料
Reasons to Reject the “World Christian Gathering on Indigenous People” Movement by Sandy Simpson, Apologetics Coordination Team, March 2006より「ゴスペルフラ検証」の部分を抜粋。
(4) The “Indigenous People” (hereafter IPM) leaders teach that God can be worshipped using cultural methods heretofore used to worship other gods.
..Daniel Kikawa also defends the use of the hula in Christian worship.
Daniel Kikawa:
“...well again it’s a cultural thing. Now we talk about the, the hip swiveling of the hula, y'know in the Muslim world there's, there's a lot of countries that uh, uh, a well known muslim saying that when a woman walks the devil is moving her hips and y’knowI’ve seen a woman walk and if she wants to really be sexy and sensual she can be just with her walk.
It’s true- but its just like the Hula, you can see the hula done in Waikiki when they want to be sensual and sexual and so on and it can be.
And you can see it being used to worship Pele the volcano god and everything and sense the presence of that God there. Because that’s what their worshipping.
It depends on whom your worshipping with it y’know . and when y’know, we all know in Hawaii now, we’ve seen it over and over again…
we estimate now over 200 groups worshipping God with hula… he just dwells within the praises of his people. The anointing of God is there when these dances are used to worship God. And it immediately tells to the Hawaiian people he’s Hawaiian who loves the Hawaiian people…
We need to understand y’know in Acts again, it does not prohibit the, the native dances. And what we need to do since Satan is not a creator, see if we say you can’t do this dance because Satan dirtied it, okay, well we can’t use the western guitar because it’s used to worship Satan, and so is the western piano.
In fact so are our voices, people worship Satan with our voices.
So are we gonna say now that people shouldn’t talk because some people swear. You see then Satan steals everything.
And were just giving it to him. Pretty soon we have nothing left. We need to take what Satan has stolen back and put it where God created it which is to worship Him.（傍線は著者によるものです。）
Danny Lehmann:
We used the same logic, nobody would tell someone that if you used to use your house for crack house and you get saved you need to burn that house down, because you become a Christian, no!
You can say a couple of prayers and have a Bible study in a house that used to sell crack in it and we don’t think a thing about it in the western world.
But you have a hula or you have a dance or you have a smoke house among the, what do they call the houses among the native Americans- sweat lodge, where they smoke a pipe or something in there or whatever, we have all these non-believing, non-Christian cultural taboos.26（傍線は著者によるものです。）
There are a number of false, diaprax type assumptions in this teaching.
(1) If Kikawa says he can feel an “anointing” when the hula dance is done for Pele, what distinguishes that “anointing” from the one when the hula is used to worship YHWH?
The fact is that the idea of feeling an “anointing” and knowing it is from God is subjective and no proof of the activity of the Holy Spirit. There is only one Anointing (1 John 2:20) and that Anointing we share if we are “in Christ”, the Anointed One of God (Ps. 2:2, Acts 4:2)
Who is King of Kings. God is the One Who gives the Anointing (2 Cor. 1:21-22). When a person is born again he is anointed by the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 1:21-22, Eph. 1:13); foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified (Rom. 8:29-30).
No one can or should try to transfer the Holy Spirit to another person as the Anointing is the Person of the Holy Spirit (Luke 4:18, Titus 3:5). The Anointing is the indwelling Holy Spirit, and He gives us various gifts (1 Cor. 12:4) so that we can minister in the Church and preach the Gospel to the world. God is not in the business of giving out free massages, thrill rides and ecstatic experiences.
He does not want His people to play around, acting like or thinking they have some kind of higher revelation of the supernatural, going around claiming there is an “anointing” or assigning “anointings” to things in ways the Bible does not. He expects us to act in an orderly fashion in the congregation of the saints (1 Cor. 14:33).
I'm sorry if this is offensive to modern Hawaiians, but the older islanders rejected hula in the churches for the very reason that it caused men to lust and was a dance dedicated to their former gods. Why is it so hard for men like Daniel Kikawa to understand this?
All he has to do is read the historical accounts of mission work here, both by islanders and Western missionaries, to comprehend that what he is promoting is an affront to his own culture as a “Christian”.
(2) God is a Hawaiian god? No. God is God. He is the one and only God of the universe. He is the great I AM.
(3) That Acts does not prohibit dancing is an argument from silence. The Bible also does not prohibit trans-sexuality either. Does that make it okay for Christians?
(4) Satan did not steal the hula. The hula was invented by people to worship Pele and other Hawaiian false satanic gods. Here is what Titus Coan, one of the early missionaries to Hawaii, and probably the greatest evangelist of his time in the Hawaiian islands, said about the hula in regard to Polynesian cultures, which covers Hawaiian culture as well:
“...the hula or dance. -- The actresses undergo long previous training, during which time their persons are sacred to the gods.”27
What other types of activities did the Hawaiian gods require?
“On the coast of Kawaihar I have seen and measured the last great heiau, or heathen temple, of the renowned Kamehameha I., where human sacrifices were offered to the gods that can not save or destroy.
I have also visited other heathen temples in Kona, Puna, Hilo, on Molokai and in other places.”28
The hula is a dance dedicated to a false god. The movements of the lower parts of the female body in this dance are very suggestive to island people and do not help them escape from sin, but rather give the enemy a foothold.
The fact the Kikawa can “feel” an anointing from hula, for whatever reason it is performed, should give you a clue as to how the hula affects island peoples. You cannot sanitize something that has been offered to false gods. Some practices are neutral. This one is not.
Let me try to be helpful by suggesting what COULD be done with the hula.
(1) Take out the religious references to the false gods of Hawaii like ‘Io and Pele. (2) Take out the suggestive movements the tourists and island males love so well.(3) Rename it something else. Then it may be useful as a way to tell the story of the Gospel in a cultural form.
(5) Lehmann makes yet another in a long line of bad analogies by trying to equate the issue of using the hula with the use of a house. Of course Christians can use houses formerly used for drugs or pot smoking (in the case of the Indians).
But they do not continue to do drugs and smoke pot anymore! That's the point Lehmann misses. Hula is not a house. Hula is a spiritual dance dedicated for centuries to false gods.
To take that dance and make it a large part of the Hawaiian Christian experience is to deny the dreadful and shameful use of hula in the past. Why not uplift other cultural activities not tied to worship of the demonic?
Isn't the idea to make a clean break from our past when we accept Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord?
Phil. 3:7-9: “ But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ— the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.”
If Paul considered the Jewish culture and its activities “dung” in view of the cause of Christ, how much more should we as Gentiles consider our cultures double “dung”? The fact is that what Kikawa and Lehmann are promoting is the direct 180 degree opposite of what Paul believed, lived and taught with regard to culture.
