Contextualization Quotes

“Separate text from context and all that remains is a con.”
― Stewart Stafford

“When ideas are detached from the media used to transmit them, they are also cut off from the historical circumstances that shape them, and it becomes difficult to perceive the changing context within which they must be viewed.”
― Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

“All overt and covert emotions would shrivel without the beam of contrast and comparison to supply context and implication. We need the value of counterpoise to recognize and distinguish between similar and dissimilar concepts. How do we identify the importance of hope if we never felt despair? How do we appreciate the value of society and companionship until we experience solitude and loneliness? What would any relationship be unless draped with the boughs of thoughts and feelings, without the ongoing interaction between conscientious action and unreserved devotion, without endless empathy fused with boundless love? In the ring of time, without the verve supplied by both the real and the imaginary, life would be bland, insipid, and lackluster.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“God values the mother tongue, even for people who may know other languages.”
― Harriet Hill

“Not only were people to be liberated from socio-political and economic oppression, but from theological oppression as well.”
― James A. Maxey

“It is often out encounter with culture that first reveals to us our own culture.”
― Tim Chester, Unreached

“A fruitful ministry will not abandon the gospel by overcontextualizing to its place and culture, nor will it privatize the gospel by undercontextualizing to his place and culture.”
― Stephen Witmer, A Big Gospel in Small Places: Why Ministry in Forgotten Communities Matters

“Where religious doctrines exist, for example, they can only become real to the extent that there exist concrete semiotic practices by which they can be enacted, embodied, experienced, and transmitted. But those practices will be subject to such factors as logistics, aesthetics, economics, or prior history, that are independent of the logical, political, or emotional demands of and constraints on doctrine itself. [...] Even textual forms as relatively autonomous, portable, and durable as written scriptures depend for their persistence and power on social dynamics surrounding contextualization and entextualization.”
― Webb Keane