Home » Resources » Honor-Shame Culture on Christian Mission

Honor-Shame Culture on Christian Mission

In this article “The Data on Global Culture Types” presented the study on three types of global cultures:

  1. Guilt-Innocent Culture
  2. Honor-Shame Culture
  3. Fear-Power Culture

And showed some collected data on the study. The results indicated the Eastern Culture is mostly Honor-Shame while the Western Culture is mostly Guilt-Innocent (see below graph).

Eastern-Western Cultures

The following bar graph breaks down the results by global regions.

Bar Graph

Shame is a major source of sin, in the form of violence, anger, terrorism, abuse, oppression, depression, etc..

Quoted from ” How Shame Breeds Sin ­ HonorShame“.

The author further argued: “The cross fixes not merely the penalty of sin, but the power of sin – the mangling, shame-induced dynamic power in humans that triggers sinful actions.  Jesus bore that shame.  Throughout the Bible, one component of God’s shaloming mission has been covering and removing human’s shame.”

Thus, when we preached the Gospel in “Honor-Shame” society, a different approach from Guilt-Innocent centered culture will be a better route.

Here is an introduction to the dynamics of Honor-Shame in Bible:


Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *