Theology and Cultures.

Theology (discourse about God) is the understanding and experience of God that takes place within history and culture of each nation. The Bible gives examples of inculturation, especially in the early Church, when it was confronted with different Hebrew cultures where it set aside the Jews´ fundamental faith practices such as circumcision and the conceptance of legal purity. In so doing various nations were converted to Christianity, taking with them their native languages and traditions to the church. In such way it should be today for Christianity when it inculturates with people who has different tradition, values, and who has a belief enough for them to practice. These beliefs are those that form the wealth of mankind, but for the Amerindians many of them superficially labeled as superstition and paganism, were destroyed during the colonial occupation. Today, as we rediscover these religious and cultural traditions in Indigenous peoples, we cannot repeat the mistakes of the past, when evangelization was often confused with westernization.

It became unacceptable to African people, Asian and the natives of the Americas who had to renounce their cultural roots if they wanted to be Christians. Catholic priest and a Zapotec Indian, Eleazar Lopes, describes the complexity and made an appeal: "We, the indigenous religious, we are internally divided by two loves: we love our people and believe in their culture, and at the time we also love the Church and believed in its plan of salvation.”

“We believe that it’s possible and worthwhile to reconcile the division because we know that there is no insurmountable contradiction between the key proposals of the Church, which are the same Christ, and the theological presuppositions of our people ... the differences are only in the form of praising the Divine, while the vision is the same to  the one God . Moreover, most of these examples are best expressed in the culture of our people by the simple purity of heart and in that sense, we believe that the theological dialogue will revert the benefit not only for indigenous peoples, but will be enriching for the Church, in which through Amerindians it will be reunited with the purest of the Gospel message and Christian tradition” " (Lopes Eleazar, 1992).