"The split between the Gospel and culture is without doubt the drama of our time," wrote Paul VI in 1975. Since that time there has been an increasingly urgent awareness that inculturation is an indispensable task of the church. But inculturation, the dialogue between church and cultures, demands first of all that we who would enter into the dialogue understand what "culture" itself means and what dialogue entails. To that end, cultural anthropologist Fr. Gerald Arbuckle gives us this important volume.<BR><BR>"Combining his immense learning in anthropolgy and theology with his deep concern for the Christian faith Arbuckle again puts all of us scholars and church leaders in his debt with this splendid volume. With his characteristically limpid prose and thought-provoking insights our prolific author forces us to rethink entirely the relation between faith and culture in our postmodern age. This is a landmark book, and the future of Christianity and Christian mission may well depend on how its proposals are taken seriously and put into practice."