Andrew F. Walls

“In ancient times, Southern and Eastern Christianity developed vernacular Christian literatures such as the Coptic and Slavonic; for the most part, Northern Christianity did not. Liturgy and Scriptures remained in Latin. The concept of a universal interconnected Christian body was thus strengthened, but at the risk of sacred language becoming exotic. The fact that Celt and Saxon alike used Latin may have helped to heal the breach between the Saxons missionized from Rome and the Celtic Christians whom the fathers of the missionized Saxons had suppressed. To Christianize was to Latinize, to bring people within the sphere of classical culture. In modern times, the Christianizing process in preliterate societies in the southern continents has similarly brought its recipients within the sphere of literary culture and international communication. But, in principle anyway, it has favoured the growth of vernacular literature. Original expectations that Latin, or some Western language, would serve for most important sacred purposes gave way to a recognition that Scripture and liturgy belonged to the vernacular, that the language of prayer is most properly the language of the home. The cultural effects of this are obvious; there are many instances of cultural renaissance caused by the growth of vernacular writing.3 The specifically Christian “sacred” use of the vernacular has given some primal cultures a resilience against the solvent of rapid change leading to loss of identity, and enabled a preservation of part of the local focus in the very act of producing a broader identity. There are also theological side effects. The explanation and elucidation of the Christian faith in one’s own vernacular, in dialogue with other vernacular speakers, is a wholly different matter from its recapitulation in an alien language of learned discourse, however correctly acquired.”
― Andrew F. Walls, Missionary Movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of Faith