By: Michael Badriaki on February 6, 2015
In Bevans’ introduction to his book Contextual theology, the author starts with a story about his time in Roman as a theology student in the late 1960. Consistent with his discussion of contextualization, Bevans shares about a past experience which involved the preparations for the liturgy of the Advent. Bevans writes: The central idea of…
By: Liz Linssen on February 5, 2015
“Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:7 In this bustling, dynamic, Asian city, the central water landscape passes through the city of 10 million inhabitants, with a further 10…
By: Ashley Goad on February 5, 2015
Though I never would have expected it, the triple play of books this week sent me on a journey down memory lane, and I was left with days of smiling. Context theology! Public theology! Practical theology! Oh My! If you’ll allow me (as if you had a choice), I would like to share my memories…
By: Deve Persad on February 5, 2015
“Who would want to live in that place?” or “Why would he give up all that he has for that place in that part of the city?” or “God would want you to have something left, to be comfortable with, wouldn’t He?” Those are questions that I imagine the people in a community might ask…
By: Miriam Mendez on February 3, 2015
As I read “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” I could not stop thinking of the following sentence: “If we want critical societies we must create them.”[1] Do you remember this sentence? It is the last sentence found in our first reading assignment, “The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools.” This short but…
By: Clint Baldwin on February 2, 2015
Noll’s 1994 Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and his subsequent 2011 Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind are a bit akin to a longitudinal qualitative study or two peas in a pod. Personally, I prefer folksier image (that’s the second one, in case you weren’t sure). Noll, now famously, starts off his earlier…
By: Julie Dodge on February 1, 2015
That little quote has always driven me nuts. It’s not that it isn’t necessarily true. It is the false attribution by far too many Christ followers about what God really said. All too often, we attribute our interpretation of what God said to be the actual fact without leaving any room for debate. Evangelical Christian…
By: Bill Dobrenen on January 31, 2015
I will never forget a talk I heard while at a summer camp when I was in junior high. The speaker’s name was Ron; I don’t remember his last name. He was teaching about who Jesus Christ was. “Jesus was God in a Bod.” Although I had heard that before in different terms, being raised…
By: Richard Volzke on January 31, 2015
Noll in his book, Jesus Christ And The Life Of The Mind, states that, “For Christian believers who pursue an academic vocation, Paul’s letter to the Colossians should be a central text, especially for how it expands upon the Christ-centered creation of the world.” [1] From this Scripture, we can model Paul’s example as one…
By: Mitch Arbelaez on January 30, 2015
Wisdom is the principal thing; Therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding. Though Noll wrote the book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind regarding the neglect of Evangelicals to intellectual discipline, I have lived it. Sitting around the table hearing statements that I knew were not logically, historically, or possibly not even scripturally sound. I…
By: John Woodward on January 30, 2015
The Church has always struggled with what question of how to be in the world but not of the world. The question might better be asked: How engaged should a Christian be in the things of this world? Throughout history, numerous responses have been given to this question, from one of extreme of total withdraw…
By: Telile Fikru Badecha on January 30, 2015
From its start, Ethiopian Evangelical Christianity has exhibited strong emphases on key characteristics of evangelicalism such as “the need for a supernatural new birth, profess faith in the Bible as a revelation from God, encourage spreading the gospel through missions and personal evangelism, and emphasize the saving character of Jesus’ death and resurrection”(p.9). Denominations who…
By: Michael Badriaki on January 30, 2015
In the opening of Noll book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, the author writes, “the scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”[1] This can seem offensive, if a person decides to be fixated on that sentence, the book would appear to be a negative critique of evangelicalism.…
By: Carol McLaughlin on January 30, 2015
Some years ago the dynamic duo of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler returned to Saturday Night Live,[1] their skit replicated an interview that Katie Couric had done w/ then Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. I could not stop laughing; it was (and remains) a classic comedy sketch. Tina Fey as Sarah Palin bounced from topic to…
By: Liz Linssen on January 29, 2015
I remember clearly the afternoon our son, Ben, came home after one science class enthusiastically telling us what he had learned that afternoon in high school: the wonder of the Bacterium Flagellum Motor, a motor that has to be magnified 50,000 times to become visible to the eye, complete with drive shaft, propeller, hook region…
By: Ashley Goad on January 29, 2015
When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began…
By: Deve Persad on January 29, 2015
“Evangelicals throughout the nineteenth century had not worked very self-consciously at thinking about the best ways, consistent with the Bible itself, to push thinking from the Scripture to modern situations and back again. That is, habits of patient study were far less well exercised than habits of quick quotation. Proof-texting did not cause great damage…
By: Clint Baldwin on January 26, 2015
MaryKate Morse’s A Guidebook to Prayer offers a multiplicity of windows into the character and the heart of the Triune God. What’s great about Morse’s work is that she well recognizes the simple truth that “one size doesn’t fit all.” And even if one size were to fit all people at one time or another,…
By: Stefania Tarasut on January 24, 2015
As I read through MaryKate Morse’s book “A Guidebook to Prayer: Twenty-Four Ways to Walk With God,” I realized two things. First, prayer should remind us of our humanity and second, prayer should remind us of God’s sovereignty. I think that these are the two things that we tend to forget the most. In a…
By: Miriam Mendez on January 24, 2015
A Guidebook to Prayer is a rich, spiritual guide that invites the reader to discover, grow and strengthen their prayer life. In her book, MaryKate Morse is masterful in teaching the reader to engage in twenty-four ways to walk with God by experiencing different ways of praying. This is not my first experience with this…
