By: Nancy Blackman on February 1, 2024
I don’t consider myself a hero, but this book reminds me of some people who have been heroes in my life. I think about my eldest aunt on my mother’s side (이모 – imo – pronounced “eemo”). For the longest time, Korean women were not allowed to get an education beyond 8th grade, but my…
By: Jenny Dooley on February 1, 2024
Most political conflicts have little to do with politics. They are rooted in more fundamental disputes about moral values, moral knowledge, the definition of the human being, and even metaphysics.[1] Matthew Petrusek Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture, by Matthew R. Petrusek, is not a quick how to guide…
By: Russell Chun on February 1, 2024
Jasné body na obzore, Bright Spots on the Horizon (Slovakian) Introduction Part 1: What my peers are saying Part 2: Impact on my NPO Epilogue Introduction – Ukrainian War, Israeli War, and war with Iran? Syria? Yemen? The world’s crisis’s have been impinging on my mind. The Bosnian war, Iraq 1 and Iraq 2 …
By: Pam Lau on January 31, 2024
“Most socio-political disagreements are not about different laws or policies; rather, they are about competing theories of justice (morality and applied morality), knowledge, human nature, and the nature of existence”.[1] Last week, while working in Phoenix, Arizona, I attended a large mega church in Scottsdale for their Sunday morning worship. The woman sitting next to…
By: Diane Tuttle on January 31, 2024
My takeaways from this week’s reading feel complexed. At first, I thought Campbell’s book was a study of the similarities of world religions and I was excited to dive into it. However, while A Hero With A Thousand Faces was thought provoking, I bristled at what appeared to be reducing the life, death, resurrection, and…
By: Scott Dickie on January 31, 2024
Oil and water. Some things just don’t go very well together. Another example: Matthew Petrusek’s Evangelization and Ideology (1) and 6 days to read it. This long book (463 pages) is filled with philosophical content endorsing Catholic social thought and doctrine as a better foundation for a sociopolitical framework than the secular alternatives (2). These…
By: Chris Blackman on January 31, 2024
What a fascinating way to reflect on our personal life journey through the eyes of mythology and the journey of the hero (or the monomyth). I’ve never been into mythology, maybe because I don’t think I really understood it. But from the get-go, on the first page of the forward, it states, “Campbell was fascinated…
By: Joel Zantingh on January 31, 2024
As I read “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” this week, I was struck with how the gaps far outweigh any structural unity. The book’s purpose shows in its legacy, leaving many readers to use it to produce even more heroic tales and modern myths [1]. I am left without any further clarity on shared…
By: Debbie Owen on January 31, 2024
We were driving in the car when my friend asked me to tell her about the classes I’d participated in that morning. I explained some of the coaching ideas I’d just heard about in my early morning coach-training class: Our search for meaning causes a lot of worry, anxiety, and fear When we feel out…
By: Christy on January 31, 2024
Joseph Campbell’s The Hero of a Thousand Faces[1] can be troublesome for someone crossing the threshold of understanding. He discusses important threshold topics, namely that the Bible follows a typical hero literary pattern, not dissimilar to other hero literary patterns throughout history and cultures. Examples range from Greek mythology on Medusa, to Buddha, Moses, and…
By: Erica Briggs on January 30, 2024
If I had to choose between fairy tales and myths, I’d go with fairies – supernatural elementals that wear just the right amount of glitter, and hypnotize with the hope of magic. The stories I am most drawn to are those that take me out of myself, away from the realities of living in my…
By: Graham English on January 30, 2024
Joseph Campbell’s, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, is a book about comparative mythology that reveals all great heroic tales share a common narrative arc that has shaped stories across space and time. Once you see it, it will be hard to unsee. As I reflect on the stories that have been told in my…
By: Shela Sullivan on January 30, 2024
Although “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” has had a substantial impact, and I recognize its significance for my assignment, I must admit that I did not find the book personally engaging. Campbell employed his own understanding for analyzing limited diverse cultural narratives, a perspective I struggled to fully comprehend. This does not mean that…
By: Adam Cheney on January 30, 2024
While living among a people group who both adhered to a strict form of Islam as well as followed Africa Traditional Religion, I encountered many myths. For a while, I simply shrugged off all the stories and myths as simple stories told throughout the generations around a campfire. As one missiologist stated, “Whatever could not…
By: Esther Edwards on January 29, 2024
“Evangelizing always requires going to where the people are, and where many people are today is stuck in a morass of increasingly aggressive political ideologies, each one seducing its adherents down varied paths to the same dead end: moral, spiritual, and yes, political futility.”[1] This is the societal landscape that we, as Christ followers,…
By: Tim Clark on January 29, 2024
In his recent book Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture Matthew Petrusek uses the foundation of Catholic Social Thought to offer keys for arguing against dominant political ideologies that are at work in our culture. During an interview about the book, he admits he wrote it after spending ten…
By: Jennifer Vernam on January 29, 2024
This week, I started reading Russell Moore’s new book Losing Our Religion[1].In the first chapter, he reflects on a crisis that he had earlier in life when he recognized the failings of his faith community. He states that this crisis surfaced “a deep dread… that Christianity might just be [a] southern culture of politics, with…
By: Travis Vaughn on January 29, 2024
In Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond To The Political Culture[1] Matthew Petrusek wants to equip “evangelists” to be able to engage the political realm as he believes “the evangelist’s work includes evangelizing the political culture.”[2] He wants his readers to have the right methodological tools[3] to address what he calls “secular political…
By: Jeff Styer on January 29, 2024
There were many directions that I could go in writing my post this week. I saw the role of the leader in Joseph Campbell’s work, for example, “The Call to Adventure” and “Supernatural Aid.”[1]. I also cannot watch television or movies in the same way due to looking for these concepts imbedded within. However, there…
By: Kally Elliott on January 29, 2024
“If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Corinthians 13:1) I couldn’t help but think of this verse when reading Matthew Petrusek’s book, Evangelization and Ideology: How to Understand and Respond to the Political Culture. In his…
