I have never really used the term “Inculturation” before. I was editing a doctoral paper of a friend of mine and saw he was using that term and was getting ready to correct him. He was, however, using the term correctly and I wasn’t. Therefore, I am going to put this post here for my sake, even if it benefits no one but me.

All of the above terms have to do with gaining cultural competency, or “fitting in” to a particular culture.

Enculturation is the normal and natural process of a human being going from being born without culture (“tabula rosa”) and acquiring ‘nativeness’ as an insider of a culture.

Acculturation is the process of a human acquiring a new culture, or cultural competency, in addition to the one he or she already had (through enculturation). Acculturation is more intentional than enculturation. Enculturation ‘just happens’ while acculturation does involve some level of self-training.

Inculturation is the process of a religion adapting in practices or structure to harmonize better, or be more relevant/resonant to a new culture. In some sense, Inculturation is acculturation for a religion.

I really haven’t used “inculturation” before because I always used contextualization or accommodation. Contextualization was originally a term developed for religions in a new culture, but is now often used for secular things as well, and may be broader in terms of context. After all, context can vary for many reasons, not just in terms of human culture. Accommodation essentially is contextualization but is more often used by Catholics.

Obviously, there is room for greater nuance. For example, Louis Luzbetak, describes in detail differences between Accommodation and Inculturation (The Church and Cultures: New Perspective in Missiological Anthropology, 82-84). However, I don’t see the differences as being great. One clear difference may be that Accommodation is presumed to be the work of the outsider. One may look to the guidance that Pope Gregory the Great gave to Mellitus in 601AD in doing mission work in Great Britain. Guidance is given in how Mellitus can modify how the church is so as to adjust itself to the culture. (See the quote in my post, https://munsonmissions.org/2017/11/01/blame-it-on-gregory/). Inculturation is seen as more integrative. The missionary works with the developing church to. It is ultimately the local church that understands how the church is localized in that culture.

I also like to think in terms of Internationalization. This is the process of removing characteristics that make something (a video game, a non-fiction book, a religion) feel local and be fully comprehensible (only) in Culture A so it can later go through Localization, making it feel local and comprehensible in Culture B.