By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on March 15, 2017
As I read through the pages of “Bad Religion”, a comment from our last chat haunted my thoughts. It was remarked how we as Christians can stand back and criticize without really making significant world changes. Ironically, this seemed to sum up “Bad Religion”, where the author lived up to his title. He seemed bent…
By: Katy Drage Lines on March 15, 2017
Ahh, where to begin in my exploration of Bad Religion? Perhaps in introducing a comparison between Ross Douthat’s text and James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World. Hunter introduced us to ways American Christians engage the world from the left (“relevance to the culture”), right (“defensive against”) and neo-Anabaptist.[1] Whereas Hunter introduces three (really, two)…
By: Mary Walker on March 15, 2017
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ Martin Luther King. For the last few weeks we have been discussing ways to change our culture. If we accept that “To be Christian is to be obliged to engage the world, pursuing God’s restorative purposes over all of…
By: Marc Andresen on March 15, 2017
In God, Sex, and Gender Adrian Thatcher covers a number of topics under the enormous umbrella of God, Sex, and Gender. He discusses “desire” in general and how it pertains to our sexuality and our desire for God. “You may have just agreed with me that desire has an object.” [1] Following Taylor and Luhrmann,…
By: Pablo Morales on March 11, 2017
One day a psychological anthropologist from Stanford University shows up at your church with a brilliant idea. She wants to spend two years attending your services and participating in your small groups in order to better understand how people experience their Christian faith. She attends Bible classes, church retreats, and everything that can help her…
By: Kevin Norwood on March 10, 2017
All leading to this thought, Does God still speak? How? God speaks through thoughts and we must learn to discern between our thoughts and His thoughts. The authors wrote about developing a “new theory of mind.”[2] This concept of hearing things that are perceived is a very clinical perspective of how God speaks. Learning to…
By: Kristin Hamilton on March 10, 2017
Anticipation. Excitement. Trepidation. Anxiety. These are a few of the things I felt when I boarded the plane headed to London to join my cohort of 10, two previous cohorts, professors, administrators, and our lead mentor for the Doctor of Ministry in Leadership and Global Perspectives England Advance 2016. That’s a huge title,…
By: Jason Kennedy on March 10, 2017
As a pastor with a Pentecostal persuasion, I cannot tell you how many times I get asked the question, does God speak to us today? I have been asked in a variety of different ways. Whether it is being asked the question directly or when people ask me to speak in tongues on command, people…
By: Christal Jenkins Tanks on March 9, 2017
“The big deal is we think the power is in us individually the power is in us collectively. It is in the church.” John M. Perkins [1] It appears that in our current American culture the church is divided. We are either siding with the “conservative right” or the “progressive left”. Depending on how one views…
By: Kristin Hamilton on March 9, 2017
About 50 times each week, I ask myself what the heck was I thinking when I gave up my career to go back to school. I mean, I know I did it out of a sense of calling and purpose, but can one middle-aged woman really make a difference in the world? After reading the…
By: Phil Goldsberry on March 9, 2017
Introduction Tanya Luhrmann’s work, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God, is one woman’s perspective and premise on, “How can sensible, educated people in an invisible being who has a real effect on their lives?”[1] My first objection is her broad use of the “American Evangelical” Church when her reality her…
By: Aaron Cole on March 9, 2017
When God Talks Back, Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God by T.M. Luhrmann is a compilation of stories, interviews, scientific data and research gathered and assembled from people of all walks of life and backgrounds. The pages are the result and assimilation of Luhrmann who is a an accomplished author and award winning psychological…
By: Aaron Peterson on March 9, 2017
Tanya Luhrmann shows how the Vineyard is attempting to create social imaginaries to break out of Charles Taylor’s immanent frame that was created as the secular solution to the problem of how humanity 500 years ago started the transition from not making sense of the world without talking about God and arrived at our current…
By: Stu Cocanougher on March 9, 2017
Hunter, James Davison. To change the world: the irony, tragedy, and possibility of Christianity today. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. To Change the World was a well-written text authored by an accomplished sociologist James David Hunter from the University of Virginia. The ironically titled book is a critique of modern Christianity’s assumption…
By: Marc Andresen on March 9, 2017
It is as if a secularist, who’s “immanence” world view can’t allow for the possibility of transcendence is trying to figure out how people claim a personal communication with the invisible Being who is transcendent. As such this books stands as a counterpoint to Taylor’s A Secular Age. [1] When God Talks Back: Understanding the…
By: Chip Stapleton on March 9, 2017
In his book, To Change the World: the irony, tragedy & possibility of Christianity in the late modern world James Davison Hunter gives us a quite a bit to chew on and work through. He levels powerful critiques against what he sees as the three dominant streams of Christian engagement with our culture: ‘Defense Against’, ‘Relevance…
By: Claire Appiah on March 9, 2017
Tanya Marie Luhrmann—When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God Introduction In his book, A Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor’s investigation seeks to answer the question, How did we become a society “in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the…
By: Lynda Gittens on March 9, 2017
This week my younger daughter and I were discussing the behavior of coworkers and how it affects you. I told her that I had to pray and ask God to help me in the way that I respond to them. I was the one reacting and stressing. I wanted them to change, and they weren’t.…
By: Jim Sabella on March 9, 2017
Hunter, James Davison. To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Summary: One way to state Hunter’s thesis is in the form of a report card for the American church. The professor has given the American church an A+ on impacting…
By: Geoff Lee on March 9, 2017
To change the world – James Davison Hunter “I would suggest that a theology of faithful presence first calls Christians to attend to the people and places that they experience directly….the call of faithful presence gives priority to what is right in front of us-the community, the neighbourhood, and the city, and the people…