By: Andrea Lathrop on January 30, 2020
I am three days into the Context, Culture and Mission intensive course with Dr. Len Sweet at Southeastern University. I would be lying if I did not admit that my brain is hurting. Several years ago I had a conversation with Dr. Sweet where he remarked that Jesus did not come to make us more…
By: Harry Edwards on January 30, 2020
The year was 2004. The Olympics were held in Athens, Greece where a total of 10,625 athletes from 201 countries competed in 301 sporting events. NASA successfully landed the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) on Mars. U.S. President George W. Bush beats John Kerry in the elections garnering him a second term. His political platform was…
By: Steve Wingate on January 30, 2020
If I am doing well in business, then God’s love will shine on me. Is that true? Or is God’s love predestined for a select. The proverb, “Do you see a man skillful in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men” [1] would seem to confirm the above questions. However,…
By: Greg Reich on January 29, 2020
Max Weber a German sociologist and political economist in his book The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism was looking into the foundational ideas that created the perfect storm for Capitalism to thrive. To Weber these ideas came from Protestantism, specifically from Luther’s concept of calling and Calvinism’s view of Predestination.[1] Weber noticed a…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on January 29, 2020
The germination story of Christianity is a marriage of two cultures and the theological struggle holding them both in tension. On the one hand we have the Hebrew culture, the culture that originated in a nomadic, tribal people; whose history consisted of grand stories of Exodus and Exile. The people rarely had autonomous political power…
By: Jer Swigart on January 28, 2020
Observing that many of the most successful and well-educated business people of his day were Protestants, Max Weber, in his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, sought to answer the question: what is the connection between Protestantism and the emergence of the capitalism of his day? Drafted less as an economic expose,…
By: Dylan Branson on January 28, 2020
Reading through Weber’s The Protestant Ethic raised a lot of questions and contained a lot of thought provoking ideas. I can honestly say that the notion that Calvinism serves as one of the roots of Capitalism has never crossed my mind, so this was a deep dive into new territory. As I was reading, one…
By: Darcy Hansen on January 28, 2020
There is a deep hunger within each person, a wondering, a longing for a grounded Presence. For millennia, we’ve been searching. We want to know there’s more to this life then what is visible. So, we look about for the Divine, the God of Creation, Who spoke and all we see came to be.…
By: Shawn Cramer on January 27, 2020
Capitalism at is worst develops suffocating monopolies. The field of innovation is currently monopolized by the Mammonic grip of the evolving spirit of capitalism. Furthermore, innovation has been taken hostage by the Protestant ethic, and “the common good” requires innovation to be rescued from its inclusion as an agent of perpetual commodification and resituated as…
By: Karen Rouggly on January 26, 2020
*Please note, this blog was written while in the middle of the flu. Not just any flu, THE flu. The one that hit hard this week, spiking my fever to 103 and then took my entire body down to the depths of depravity with it. While I have been fever-free for 24 hours, it’s only…
By: John Muhanji on January 26, 2020
The title of the book threw me out of the balance “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” I am coming from an evangelical tradition of the Friends church in Africa, and this title was scared for sure. The church in Africa was established by evangelical movement from North America beginning from the 19th and 20th…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on January 26, 2020
Learning to grow into one’s faith can be a tricky journey. Growing up as a Catholic, I knew that I was in the “right” religion. As Catholics, we always understood that we were “number 1” in God’s book. We had beautiful Bibles, which were large and ornate, and we polished them every week to keep…
By: Wallace Kamau on January 25, 2020
Having resources, position or knowledge is one thing and maximizing their usage for better results is quite another thing. Leadership is about mobilizing people and other resources to achieve the set objectives and maximizing the results. The measure of one’s leadership ability is the results that you produce. Mark Knoll, in analyzing the Evangelical churches,…
By: Digby Wilkinson on January 25, 2020
Good grief I am getting old. I have the 1994 edition of Mark Noll’s Scandal of the Evangelical Mind sitting on my shelf which I read in 1995.[1] On first reading, I remember thinking it was a rather harsh experience, but once I realised it was mainly about Americans, I felt so much better. However,…
By: Mary Mims on January 24, 2020
The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is a fascinating work by Mark A. Noll of the study of the evangelical mind, and how evangelicals, especially modern American evangelicals, “have failed notably in sustaining serious intellectual life.”[1] Noll is a prolific writer and research professor of history at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, specializing in…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on January 24, 2020
John Fea describes Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind as continuing to serve as a guiding light, an intellectual road map, and a source of inspiration decades later for many of Noll’s readers. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind convinced Fea that the life of the mind was a legitimate calling despite his…
By: Tammy Dunahoo on January 24, 2020
In John’s account of Jesus before Pilate there is an interesting exchange that I reflected on while reading this week: Jesus answered, “For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world— to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate asked, “What is truth?”[1]…
By: Jenn Burnett on January 24, 2020
I fell in love with academia by accident. In fact I would not have even stumbled upon my love of learning without the requirements of the church for ministry. While I grew up in a mainline denomination that fully affirmed academia, I have always been drawn to the inclusive nature of Jesus. The incarnation points…
By: Rhonda Davis on January 24, 2020
I understand where Noll is coming from in his, albeit harsh, critique of the “innovative theologies” of the Pentecostal and Holiness movements.[1] The eschatology formed from the revivalist movement, which taught believers to forego thinking and education for the sake of evangelism due to the imminent return of Christ, did cause many Pentecostals to diminish…
By: John Muhanji on January 24, 2020
It is fascinating to read what Taylor’s thesis on secularism in our society during this 21st century. He believes that what is wrong with enlightenment quest of progress is what is coming out as secularization that lies behind the enlightenment, what comes to me with controversial issues and asking specific questions from the Africa perspectives.…
