By: Shawn Cramer on February 11, 2020
The imagination is a powerful spiritual faculty. It allows humans to evaluate what is and envision what could be. Alternate future realities (what could be) exist only in and because of our prophetic imaginations. Furthermore, imaginations provide individual identity and construct social connection, communities, and orient our spiritual formation. For CS Lewis, the imagination is…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on February 10, 2020
Stephen Ronald Craig Hicks (born August 19, 1960) is a Canadian-American philosopher. He is a Professor of Philosophy at Rockford University, Illinois. Hicks is the author of four books and a documentary. His Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault argues that postmodernism is best understood as a rhetorical strategy of intellectuals and academics on the far-left of the political…
By: Dylan Branson on February 10, 2020
At the beginning of his dissertation, Evangelicalism and Capitalism, Dr. Jason Clark asks this question: “Has my church, and my Evangelical kin, become captive to a mode of ‘dispensing religious goods and services’ to consuming participants?”[1] Recently I have had several conversations with my housemates about what we have been studying in regards to capitalism…
By: Steve Wingate on February 10, 2020
Dr. Clark’s project provides a critical thesis that “deployed its own ‘map-making method as a kind of heuristic concept map to trace correspondence between church acts and beliefs. This ‘map-making’ ensures that the thesis provides evaluation and resourcing for deployment to current and related Evangelical contexts. Second, the thesis proposes that, contrary to methodological worries…
By: John Muhanji on February 10, 2020
Human life is about history, and every generation has a point of reference from where they have come from and where they are going. It has said several times that if we do not know our history, then we cannot connect from where we are coming from hence the difficulty to focus on where we…
By: Mary Mims on February 9, 2020
Much of my memory of college is a blur. I remember the campus at Michigan State University and how cold it was during the winter. One of the things I remember is walking across a section of campus nicknamed the Frozen Tundra to get to humanities class on the south campus. I do not remember…
By: Chris Pollock on February 9, 2020
“Is it possible to overcome Western, white cultural captivity and pursue a biblical model of economic justice?” Soong-Chan Rah, [1]. $20. This is the amount gas that I put in my gas tank every time I stop at the station, whatever amount buys $20 worth. I do this for two reasons. The first is that…
By: Wallace Kamau on February 9, 2020
This quote has been attributed to bill Gates, “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they cannot loose”. Humility is a great virtue that enables leaders to learn from failures and make corrective measures but pride is a great source of failure in leadership. Our egoistic pursuit of success can easily…
By: Digby Wilkinson on February 9, 2020
In the early 2000’s I had a lengthy conversation with a returned missionary who was ‘reconfiguring’ her faith. At the root of that reconfiguration was her study on Heideggerian Hermeneutics. The mere title was enough to get me very excited; I mean who doesn’t go all gooey at the thought of Martin Heidegger. I was…
By: Jenn Burnett on February 8, 2020
Up front let me acknowledge that I am a middle-aged, caucasian, female, Christian from Canada. This is inescapably the subjective space from which I encounter the world. I recognize that I have inherited privilege and power because of these identities. These details don’t solely define me and there are many more that would offer more…
By: Karen Rouggly on February 7, 2020
This week’s reading, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault has been a struggle. While I understand how this book can be helpful and useful in certain contexts, I struggled to relate to this book on a personal, academic, or professional level. From reading reviews, it seems as though I am not the…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on February 7, 2020
Reading philosophy tends to make this student reflective with more questions than answers. This was certainly the case this week while reading Hicks’ Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault. Stephen R.C. Hicks is professor of philosophy at Rockford University, where he is also Executive Director of the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship.…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on February 7, 2020
Volunteering as a Chaplain in jail ministry once a month at our local Kalamazoo jail has certainly been an eye opener at times. Guilt and shame have a powerful hold on many of the inmates along with anger and blame. Uncovering the “story behind the story” as I meet with these individuals is often the…
By: Sean Dean on February 6, 2020
I have become quite fond of a show on Netflix called The Repair Shop, which originally aired on the BBC in the UK. The Repair Shop exists on the property of the Weald and Downland Living Museum in West Sussex,i where a group of craftspeople have come together to fix treasured antiques of all sorts.…
By: Andrea Lathrop on February 6, 2020
In Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rosseau to Foucault, Dr. Hicks wants his reader to understand the dangers of postmodern thought and of its ends being nihilism, socialism and chaos, to name a few.[1] Here I thought I was more postmodern than modern because of my Generation X affiliation, my love for the coffee scene…
By: Harry Edwards on February 6, 2020
As I was scanning my notes in preparation for writing this blog post I realized the dizzying array of options available to me. I thought it was comforting and reassuring that I’d get this piece quickly written, given the wealth of source material available in Stephen R.C. Hicks’ Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau…
By: Rhonda Davis on February 6, 2020
In my second year of graduate school (the early 2000s), I took a course titled, Ministry in Emerging Culture. It was full of mostly potential church planters who were preparing to plant churches in various contexts within the US. The “emerging church” movement was brand new, and discussion centered around what ministry would look like…
By: Chris Pollock on February 6, 2020
Talking doesn’t come easy for me. Thinking, at times, can be quite overwhelming and attaching spontaneous vocalizations to thoughts has never been less than a challenge. When I observe or experience an injustice, I want to say something, I just don’t know how or what to say. The feelings (immensity of emotion) are there, as…
By: Greg Reich on February 6, 2020
Vincent Miller in his book Consuming Religion writes a “Consumer culture is best diagnosed not as a deformation of belief but as a particular way of engaging religious beliefs that divorces them from practice.”[1] Miller is not anti capitalism but is more concerned on what the affects a consumer culture has on religion and how…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on February 6, 2020
Another week, another Canadian! Stephen Hicks, who teaches at Rockford University has put together a dense and highly critiqued tome Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, which argues that postmodernism is a rhetorical strategy, created and kept aflame mainly by academics and elites on the far left, in response to the downfall…
