By: Mitch Arbelaez on May 14, 2015
Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission, to explore strange new worlds. To seek out new life and new civilizations. To boldly go where no one has gone before.” Queue theme music. As a Trekkie, I could not resist. Valentine is not referring to this kind of…
By: Liz Linssen on May 14, 2015
Last Sunday towards the end of preaching my sermon, one man, Martin, raised his hand and declared that he wanted to give his life to God, right there and then. I hadn’t even reached the end of the message, but so desperate was this young man, that he couldn’t wait. Before the service had begun,…
By: Nick Martineau on May 14, 2015
I just so happen to be writing this from Starbucks. Starbucks claims their goal is to become the Third Place in our daily lives. (i.e. Home, Work and Starbucks) “We want to provide all the comforts of your home and office. You can sit in a nice chair, talk on your phone, look out the…
By: Jon Spellman on May 14, 2015
Otherness Human Geographers are interested in understanding how people occupy space together. How do we get along? Difficulties arise anytime people of different backgrounds (racial, ethnic, religious, financial, etc.) are called upon to share finite space, role definition becomes important pretty quickly! Hierarchies (pecking order), equitable division of resources, friendships, enemies, etc. are all important. …
By: Ashley Goad on May 14, 2015
I was born in South Carolina. Soon after, my parents moved our family back to their home state of North Carolina. Three years later, we moved to Savannah, Georgia. Five years after, we packed up and returned to North Carolina. My parents divorced almost immediately upon arrival, and for the next ten years, I ping-ponged…
By: Deve Persad on May 14, 2015
I grew up watching the sitcom, “Cheers!” – you may remember: the place “where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came.” A regular group of people who came in from different work places and went off to different homes, but while they were together they shared the ups, downs and nothingness of…
By: Phillip Struckmeyer on May 14, 2015
Gill Valentine, in her book “Social Geographies: Space and Society”, reorients the field of social geography around “space”. With the orientation set on space, a new look at what has traditionally been viewed as physical and fixed characteristics of our society becomes open to more fluid boundaries to the characteristics traditionally viewed as constructing and…
By: Travis Biglow on May 13, 2015
Social Stereotypes in Real Time May 13, 15 This reading was really profound. Gill Valentine is really out there I guess that’s why purchasing the book was so expensive. But in the reading some of the issues I have faced as an African American stood out to me. I liked the reading of Social Geographies:…
By: Mary Pandiani on May 13, 2015
Ten years ago, I reluctantly watched a movie that I loved and hated at the same time. Even now, the reality of Crash (2004) feels too overwhelming: “Los Angeles with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss, and redemption.” (http://www.imdb. com/title/tt0375679/) As characters happen upon each other in work, play and society,…
By: Dave Young on May 12, 2015
As I began to read “Social Geographies” [1] I wondered what would a book on eight different spaces where society intersects life offer my church-centered research? Next came the rather simple question: “Where is the church?” What societal space does it fill? What space should it fill? Also in the back of my mind was…
By: Travis Biglow on May 10, 2015
Thinking the faith in Asian contexts May 10, 15 Many of the concepts that I read in the Grassroots Asian Theology were not too surprising. I have always believed that Asian Christianity was not that different from how we as Westerners perceive it. As the book said, “a genuine development in new contexts must…
By: John Woodward on May 10, 2015
I was delighted that we were assigned a book on Asian theology in light of our up and coming trip to Hong Kong. Upon reading Grassroots Asian Theology, I had two immediate insights: First, I realized that I remembered very little of my “Indian Traditions” class of 40 years ago (though I remembered my professor,…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on May 9, 2015
The main focus of Simon Chan’s book Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith From the Ground Up is how theology ought to be done, within the Asian culture as well as other cultures.[1] As I am reading more and more on the subject of contextualization I am learning that this ought to be the objective…
By: Richard Volzke on May 9, 2015
This week’s reading, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up, by Simon Chan was packed with a lot of information. The book focuses on the Asian church and how it understands God within the cultural setting. But, what I enjoyed most was the theological insights on Christianity and church history that Chin…
By: rhbaker275 on May 9, 2015
In the preface to Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the faith from the ground up, Simon Chan heightens one’s reading expectations. Although the title implies a study on Asian theology, Chan holds out the spectra of developing an “authentic” and “vibrant” theology “that will yield a better theology for the Asian church and perhaps the global…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on May 8, 2015
A couple of years ago two of my coworkers went to visit a new small church in a village. Upon arriving, they asked the villagers what they knew about the community that meets there. The villagers told them that they were Protestant Christians. They come on Sundays, they dance and they go home. The villagers…
By: Dawnel Volzke on May 8, 2015
Simon Chan’s book, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up, draws the reader into a discovery of authentic faith in relation to cultural expression. While Chan’s book focuses on Asian theology, we can observe religion within this cultural context to better understand the dynamics in the relationships between people and theology. In the…
By: Carol McLaughlin on May 7, 2015
I am influenced by my geography, the culture and context of the Pacific Northwest. Stephen Bevans identifies contextual theology as a way of doing theology that involves two realities, “The first of these is experience of the past, recorded in Scripture and preserved and defended in the church’s tradition. The second is the experience of…
By: Julie Dodge on May 7, 2015
Theology. David Ford suggests that “(t)heology at its broadest is thinking about questions raised by and about the religions.” [1] Grenz and Olson narrow that definition down to “any reflection on the ultimate questions of life that point toward God.” [2] I might narrow it further to be man’s attempt to understand God. That definition…
By: Ashley Goad on May 7, 2015
Under the Mango Tree… The Next Chapter I will freely admit, I know very little about Asia, Asians, or religion in Asia. In fact, I have never even been curious. That is one part of the world that has never captured my wanderlust. While I studied a bit on Zen Buddhism throughout seminary, I never…
