Titus: epistle of religious revitalization

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Winter, 2000 by Kenneth D. Tollefson

Third, in the "organization" phase, the visionary appoints leaders and organizes the followers into an effective social movement to implement the proposed changes. This is followed by a fourth or "adaptation" phase, in which the new organization devises strategies to counter internal resistance from those who feel threatened by the sweeping changes or external confrontations from powerful groups who are hostile to the changes. In the fifth phase, referred to as "cultural transformation," the vision of the reformer becomes "owned" by the membership and transformed into the daily behavior of the people. Since many of these changes do not come easily, the leadership needs to monitor and encourage the followers to complete the process by integrating the new values, beliefs, and behavior into the cultural norms of the people in the sixth or "routinization" phase. Over a period of time, these movements generally evolve into a "new steady state period" characterized by a new period of relative social tranquillity and thus the process continues in another cycle of adaptation and change. Linton (230) suggests that while "all societies unconsciously seek to perpetuate their own culture," this process may become an explicit endeavor "when a society becomes conscious that there are cultures other than its own and that the existence of its own culture is threatened." Cohn (2) notes that urbanization forces people to form organizations and to manipulate their cultural values in order to compete for scarce resources. Royce (7) states that "no ethnic group can maintain a believable (viable) identity without signs, symbols, and underlying values that point to a distinctive identity." The Epistle of Titus describes the religious revitalization process among the Cretan believers engaged in the task of perpetuating their faith in a hostile environment.

Biblical Examples of Revitalization

Two biblical examples of a revitalization movement are Nehemiah's in the fifth century BCE and the apostles' in the first century CE. The Book of Nehemiah is essentially the story of a man with a vision of a restored community of God--a man who both organized the people to reconstruct a wall and gates around Jerusalem to secure the community and restored the Mosaic Law as the dominant cultural force in society. Subjugated by the imperial rule of Persia and surrounded by hostile nations (Neh 4:1-23), Nehemiah rallied the community of Jerusalem to assert their elements of cultural distinctiveness, to reorganize their society to conform with their historic identity, and to restore their religious faith (Tollefson 1987; Tollefson 1989; Tollefson & Williamson). In the process, the community of Jerusalem unfroze their old world-view (Neh 8:1-18), modified it to better conform to the principles of the Torah (Neh 9:1-37), and froze the revised world-view for posterity (Neh 9:38-10:39). This new ethos essentially persisted until the coming of Jesus Christ contributed to radical changes in the community of God.