By: Jay Forseth on February 1, 2018
Is it against Portland Seminary academic standards to mainly use Scripture to discuss the economic ideas by Karl Polanyi in The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time? Please forgive me if it is! My worldview is unabashedly Christian, so the framework I attempt to begin every thought with is the Bible. I will…
By: Chris Pritchett on February 1, 2018
The main thesis of Polanyi’s seminal work on the transformation of societies from traditional to market economies is that the “Industrial Revolution was merely the beginning of a revolution” that marked the end of an era that seemed to protect human dignity and relationships in a way that Polanyi assumed would be lost in the…
By: Shawn Hart on February 1, 2018
“Polanyi created a way of thinking about economies and societies that has had substantial impact on economic history, anthropology, and the study of the ancient Mediterranean. The Great Transformation remains important as a highly original contribution to the understanding of the Western past; it has been and is important in methodological debates in the social sciences.”[1] This…
By: Katy Drage Lines on February 1, 2018
As I read through these essays curated by Donald Lewis and Richard Pierard, I grappled with mixed feelings. Each of the ten essays approached the topic of evangelicalism in their context differently. In following the work of a dozen authors, I offer some reflections, though primarily focusing on the late Ogbu Kalu’s essay on Africa,…
By: Jennifer Williamson on February 1, 2018
As a missionary, I manufacture nothing, sell nothing, purchase next to nothing, and employ no one. My biggest contribution to the global economy is the spending of my monthly income (which fluctuates based on the exchange rate) on commodities such as rent, groceries, and my son’s college tuitions. I’m not an economist, and I don’t…
By: Greg on February 1, 2018
“In China, doing business is hard; living a Christian life is harder; doing business while maintaining Christian faith is the hardest of all.”[1] For several thousands of years, the Chinese feudal system has taught its citizens to despise business people; seeing them as distrustful. In recent decades, there have been campaigns for greater financial and…
By: Mike on February 1, 2018
Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, first published in 1944, was an evolutionary roadmap for economic sociology. Polanyi’s predictive inquiry asks how society responds to phenomenon’s such as globalization and market failure.[1] Known today as the originator of substantivism, a cultural approach to economics, Polanyi’s visionary narrative leaves behind a legacy that continues to influence economists…
By: Jake Dean-Hill on January 31, 2018
The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time by Karl Polanyi was an educational and interesting read. Polanyi’s dissection of market economy and the connection he made to social relationships and the role human beings play in society was especially of interest to me. Polanyi states, “Our thesis is that the idea…
By: Dan Kreiss on January 31, 2018
A complicated, yet powerful text that provides historical antecedents for the free market driven economy that has captivated the developed world, Karl Polanyi’s ‘The Great Transformation’ is an important read for anyone desiring to understand the causes and effects of this economic ideology. From the perspective of the 21st Century it is almost impossible to…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on January 31, 2018
Evangelicalism is difficult to define since it has no permanent roots or central gathering place like the Catholic church with the pope in Rome. Additionally, there are many kinds of evangelicalism: Pentecostal, fundamental, charismatic… as well as the numerous denominations represented. Interestingly, “The word denomination was first used in English to describe those Christians who…
By: Mary Walker on January 31, 2018
Many evangelicals themselves have little understanding of their own historical roots and little appreciation of the movement’s diversity across many cultures and nations.[1] Global Evangelicalism is a fairly recent book that provides a general introduction to evangelicalism and a global survey of the topic. Dedicated to Dr. Ogbu U. Kalu (1942-2009) the book is…
By: Jim Sabella on January 30, 2018
Don’t we just love to define things—music, food, people, ideas? One of the more popular ways people begin a public speech is with the words, “Webster defines X as A, B, C and even sometimes Q, but never W or R. Let us begin with A.” And off they go. With a definition in hand,…
By: Kyle Chalko on January 26, 2018
Dominic Erdozain’s, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx was one of the books I was most excited to read when I first saw the reading list for this semester. Anything that helps engage Christians to be more critically minded and to embrace difficulties in faith, is right up…
By: Chip Stapleton on January 26, 2018
In his insightful and engaging book, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx Dominic Erdozain takes a look at some of the great ‘doubters’ of history, the situations they arose from and the religious, philosophical and spiritual thoughts and movements they were responding to. As I was reading this week,…
By: Kristin Hamilton on January 26, 2018
Last week we were assigned Charles Taylor’s 700+ opus text, A Secular Age, which I quickly realized would take me the better part of a decade to digest. When I saw this week’s text, The Soul of Doubt, by Dominic Erdozain, I looked forward to quickly reading the 266 pages and getting my post written…
By: Trisha Welstad on January 25, 2018
Historian, Dominic Erdozain’s, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx focuses on the roots of secularism that arise from seeds of doubt within Christendom from the era of the Reformation and grow into the modern era. “The ‘religious roots’ that I consider fundamental to modern cultures of unbelief are…
By: Jean Ollis on January 25, 2018
I feel a little star struck. It was a joy to interact with the author himself, Dominic Erdozain, on our Cape Town advance. It’s even more intimidating to prepare for a synchronous discussion where I need to sound informed. Just as Dominic’s children pleaded after his time intensive writing efforts (“JUST PLAY WITH US!) I,…
By: Mark Petersen on January 25, 2018
Dominic Erdozain, in his remarkable book, The Soul of Doubt: The Religious Roots of Unbelief from Luther to Marx, takes conventional wisdom and flips it on its head. While most would claim that doubt is a child of secularity, finding its source in the abandonment of faith, Erdozain demonstrates that an outcome of the Reformation…
By: Mike on January 25, 2018
Dominic Erdozain’s The Soul of Doubt cuts a wide theological swath through the Reformation, Enlightenment, and into the Modernistic era of the 21st Century. He asks why was there so much religious violence when the command for Christians was to love one another. His hypothesis, drawing from a historical-religious analysis from Luther to Marx, concludes…
By: Stu Cocanougher on January 25, 2018
And if there’s life on other planets Then I’m sure that He must know And He’s been there once already And has died to save their souls (Unidentified Flying Object, Larry Norman, 1971) As a teen, growing up in the 1980s in Nashville, Tennessee, I was fascinated by the music of the Jesus…
