INDIGENIZATION Introduction Christ's mission on earth was to reconcile all people to God. The Church continues this mission: "Go therefore and make disciples of all peoples" (Mk 16:15). Christ entrusted this mission to His church and it is a universal mission. It is assumed that the gospel must be brought to all people on earth, regardless of color, race, and culture. Therefore the Church is multicultural. He should feel at home and accept the culture of any place or country he is in. It is the process of Indigenization by which the Gospel can be made natural and known to a particular culture and region by making the Gospel relevant to them, as we will see in the definitions of Indigenization. The term Indigenisation derives from the term indigenous, which means innate, i.e. native to the place and not imported from it. The term Indigenization has been used to refer to a situation in which the Christian faith will be natural in a particular cultural context. To express the cultural growth of their local Churches, the African and Asian Bishops were the first to propose this particular term. However, it should be noted that this term was born as a consequence of the resentment of African theologians towards the European culture with which Christianity is clothed. . They argue that a Western form of Christianity is found in Africa and that it is not native to Africa. Christianity was brought to Africa through some missionaries who considered Western culture superior to African culture and simply transplanted Western Christianity into African soil, without any respect for African culture and tradition. So at that time some theologians and bishops felt the need to de-Westernize Christianity by taking...... middle of paper ......and all the jatis (Mt. 28, 18-20).Works CitedConn , Harvie M. “Indigenization,” Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions.Ed. by A. Scott Morian. Michigan: Baker Books, 2000.Das, R. C. Evangelical Prophet for Contextual Christianity. Delhi: ISPCK, 1995.Hargreaves, Cecil. Asian Christian thinkers. Delhi: ISPCK, 1979.Martin, Paul. The Missionary of the Indian Road. Bangalore: TBT, 1996. Moses, D. G. “Indigenization.” In Renewal for the Mission. Ed. by David Lyon and Albert Manuel. Madras: CSL, 1967. Nyoyoko, Vincent G. “The Biblical and Theological Foundations of Inculturation.” Mission today. 6/3 (July-September 2004).Sumithra, Sunand. Doing theology in context. Bangalore: TBT, 1992. Taylor, William D. ed. Global Missiology for the 21st Century. Michigan: Baker Academics, 2000.