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THY573Outreach Ministry in Context

THE CULTURAL ONION


I. THE LAYERS OF THE CULTURAL ONION:

The culture of each person in the Bunkowske model has seven physical, mental and spiritual layers that are used in organizing that persons reality and life. These layers are holistic and integrated as they operate back and forth and forth and back from the core to the outside of the onion: Artifacts, Behavior, Feelings, Values, Beliefs, Worldview, Ultimate Allegiance

Figure 1: The Cultural Onion

[Eugene Bunkowske, Ph.D., developed the Cultural Onion Diagram during his early years as Graduate Professor of Biblical Missiology at Concordia Theological Seminary.]

The outer layers of the cultural onion, artifacts and behaviors, are immediately apparent and accessible. In-depth linkages are only available as credible connections are made with the core layers of worldview and ultimate allegiance in a persons culture. Developing these kind of in-depth relationships normally takes a good deal of time and effort.

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Artifacts are the physical characteristics of a person, the things or objects that are connected with that person. Artifacts are what people collect. Behaviors are what a person does. Feelings are the emotional evaluations and conclusions about the experiences of every day life on a scale of, for instance calm to angry, happy to sad, and love to hate. Values are mental evaluations and conclusions about the experiences of every day life on a scale of good to bad. Beliefs are mental Figure 2: Layers Defined evaluations and conclusions about the experiences of every day life on a scale of true to false.

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Worldview is the organized arrangement, the managing perspective, the internal gyro at the center of human and societal reality. Worldview provides a mental map of what is understood to be real. Ultimate Allegiance is the beating heart, the starting point, the trigger and grounding reality that gives basic direction, cohesion and structure to the underlying stories, mental mappings, meta-narratives and perspectives in a persons worldview.
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II.

THE LEVELS OF THE CULTURAL ONION:

The seven layers of culture can be further designated in terms of three structural levels. These three levels integrate the culture from the core of the onion to the outer surface of the onion. These levels, from core to surface, are the foundational, the evaluating, and the actualizing level. The foundational level of culture is the starting point for everything. It supplies an understanding of how we think the world should be. It provides the perceptual basis and the mental mapping for the other levels of culture. It is the meta-story out of which people live and move and have their being. It opens the way for unspoken thinking and decision making patterns. This level is the beating heart that activates beliefs, values, feelings, and behaviors as well as the mental and physical impulses for accumulating and manipulating artifacts. Scripture says, As a person thinks in his heart so he is (Proverbs 23:7). The foundational level made up of worldview and ultimate allegiance is the most hidden and implicit level of culture. It is not immediately available for analysis and evaluation. The evaluating level of culture provides an Figure 3: Layers Defined in Terms automatic system for of Levels examining and judging the experiences of life. At the evaluating level ideas are measured against the foundational mental mappings of the culture in worldview and ultimate allegiance to see if they are true, good or to be enjoyed. The layers of the evaluating level of culture develop and provide secondary programmed-mapping patterns that reflexively examine
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and negotiates the many important decisions and conclusions of life. These secondary programmed patterns for drawing conclusions about feelings, values and beliefs proceed out of the mental mappings and the programmed evaluating patterns of the layers below them in the cultural onion, that is feelings from values, values from beliefs, beliefs from worldview and worldview from ultimate allegiance. The evaluating level with its layers of beliefs, values and feelings is not as deeply embedded in the cultural onion as the foundational level of worldview and ultimate allegiance. So beliefs, values and feelings are not as unconscious and implicit as the foundational layers of ultimate allegiance and worldview. That is to say, beliefs, values and feelings are more accessible than worldview and ultimate allegiance but not nearly as accessible for observation and manipulation as behaviors and artifacts in the actualizing level of human culture. The actualizing level acts on and lives out the reality, fundamental mental mappings and the perceptions about that reality through the actualizing and foundational layers of culture. It responds to these mental mappings and perceived realities by actualizing them. This actualization takes place in the external dimensions of every day life. This happens not primarily by deliberate choice but automatically or at least semi-automatically in response to internal mental programming. In this way the functions of doing and collecting routinely occur as concrete contact is made with people and things. The result may be either positive, neutral or negative as contact between people and people and people and objects in the physical, mental and spiritual realm occur. The actualizing level acts out the choices that people make when they interact with God, with gods, with each other, and with the world. The actualizing level is openly accessible as people come in contact with other people and things and intentionally bring their culture into contact with the cultures of other people in their own society and in other societies of people. III. THE CULTURAL ONION IN SUMMARY:

In summary we can say that the cultural onion pictures the various internal levels and layers of culture that are part of every person or society.

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The foundational level of the cultural onion is the mental map, the metanarrative and the basis for thinking that organizes a society's entire perspective on reality. Ultimate allegiance is the heart, the starting point and the trigger at the foundational level of each culture. Ultimate allegiance serves as the spiritual and mental dynamic for worldview that in turn serves as the internal gyro, the managing center for everything that a person thinks, is and does. The evaluating level with the layers of beliefs, values and feelings provides a system for evaluating and drawing conclusions about the experiences of life in terms of true and false, good and bad, and a calibrated scale of emotions. The actualizing level receives the perceived realities and the evaluations concerning those perceived realities from the internal operations of the culture, makes appropriate choices on the basis of those perceived realities and responds to those choices with a life of activities in the external world. All of this grounding, managing, evaluating and acting out of perceived reality happens in a stepby-step, back-and-forth process, from the foundational inner-core layers of culture to the actualizing exterior layers of culture, from ultimate allegiance to artifacts. When necessary, the process can move back again to the inner layers of worldview and ultimate allegiance for reformation, reinterpretation or conformation and more complete integration.
Copyright 2002 Eugene W. Bunkowske PHD EWB\MS\MCCC\0205693.The Cultural Onion Defined

Figure 4: Levels and Layers Summarized

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