By: Rhonda Davis on January 24, 2020
I understand where Noll is coming from in his, albeit harsh, critique of the “innovative theologies” of the Pentecostal and Holiness movements.[1] The eschatology formed from the revivalist movement, which taught believers to forego thinking and education for the sake of evangelism due to the imminent return of Christ, did cause many Pentecostals to diminish…
By: John Muhanji on January 24, 2020
It is fascinating to read what Taylor’s thesis on secularism in our society during this 21st century. He believes that what is wrong with enlightenment quest of progress is what is coming out as secularization that lies behind the enlightenment, what comes to me with controversial issues and asking specific questions from the Africa perspectives.…
By: Mario Hood on January 24, 2020
The other day, I was just in the gym getting ready to work out, and I walked up to a conversation between two people, and one turned to me and said, “explain to her the difference between North Carolina and South Carolina.” Without hesitation, I knew what she was inferring that South Carolina people are…
By: Harry Edwards on January 23, 2020
The scandal of the Evangelical mind, regrettably, is all around us. It is in popular media, social media, the public square, politics, universities and in other accessible spaces. Embarrassingly, we just cannot avoid it. To check my claim, I decided just now as I’m writing this, to turn on the radio and tune in to…
By: Andrea Lathrop on January 23, 2020
Some of my cohort mates may have missed it but I slipped in a confession in our discussion last week. I had quickly said that I have times when I feel slightly embarrassed by my faith tradition. This occasionally occurs when discussing doctrinal matters. subjects more intellectual in nature or when thinking of charismatic charicatures.…
By: Steve Wingate on January 23, 2020
We need government. We need to work from the Kingdom of God. And we need to seek to understand what our responsibilities are and how to be Christ-like within systems we often cannot control which are designed to maximize self-centered gain. We are not mere principles of use for complex systems of our societies. Scripture…
By: Rev Jacob Bolton on January 23, 2020
Mark Noll keeps the Canadian connection alive, as all of our authors so far this semester have strong ties to Jenn’s motherland. Mark Noll, former Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is current Professor of History at Regent College in Vancouver. A prolific author, and high achieving academic, perhaps his most impressive…
By: Sean Dean on January 23, 2020
In his book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind Mark Noll is quick to admit that the scandal is in fact the lack of an Evangelical mind.i Tracing much of the issue back to Evangelicalism’s fundamentalist roots he mourns the lack of desire to explore how the many facets of God relate to the world.…
By: Greg Reich on January 22, 2020
“Some people say a man is made outta mud A poor man’s made outta muscle and blood Muscle and blood and skin and bones A mind that’s a-weak and a back that’s strong You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don’t you call me…
By: Shawn Cramer on January 21, 2020
Innovation is inherently philosophical. Nearly every useful definition of innovation consists of two parts: a highlight of what is “new,” “novel” or “fresh,” and the second part nearly always points to “added value” to some group of people. When “value” is discussed, the conversation turns necessarily to philosophy – What is value? Value towards what…
By: Jer Swigart on January 21, 2020
It was a cold Minnesota Saturday and local Mohican faith leader, Jim Bear Jacobs, had joined a delegation that I was facilitating in order to challenge our dominant culture understanding of Scripture, Christian faithfulness, and restorative leadership. During the conversation, he brought up the commodification of land by white, European settlers. Referencing what some would…
By: Joe Castillo on January 20, 2020
The capitalist system A market is a social structure that brings together a buyer and a seller to agree on a price to exchange goods or services. … The nature of market is such that the market always tries to bring itself to equilibrium. The question I ask myself about the issue is capitalism. where does capitalism go? We may not know the…
By: Wallace Kamau on January 20, 2020
We live in a world where we have come to recognize that change is the only constant. This is so much so in what we have come to call “The secular world” or secular2 in Charles Taylor’s definition[1], change has become unpredictable because it happens too fast. In such an environment, and especially today when…
By: Shermika Harvey on January 19, 2020
Moving to the Bay Area in July 2019, was provocative and exhilarating. The accepted assignment to undertake was a role as Young Adults/Discipleship pastors within a 17–year church with a congregation of millennials full of hope and potential eager to evangelize to the people of their broken region. Of course, being an evangelist at heart,…
By: Chris Pollock on January 19, 2020
Hockey was big in my family, as was soccer (of course, I mean British Football). Tuesday and Thursday mornings every week my brother and I were up before school for hockey practise. In the evenings after school, when we weren’t at soccer practise, we were playing ball hockey and shooting pucks in our driveway. When…
By: Dylan Branson on January 19, 2020
In the Gospel of John, we read of a story that many of us are familiar with: The cleansing of the temple by Jesus. John writes: When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at…
By: Darcy Hansen on January 19, 2020
As I read through Polyani’s The Great Transformation, words shared by Lord Glasman during our London/Oxford Advance kept resurfacing in my mind. He shared these words as he tried to explain the circumstances that predicated Brexit in the UK: “You think you’re acting in an altruistic way, but it’s really about self-interest in the end.”…
By: Nancy VanderRoest on January 19, 2020
In a lot of ways, the secular world wants the same thing as the emergent Christian world. There is just a difference in finding the answer. A philosopher and out-spoken atheist, Richard Rorty, once wrote: “My sense of the holy is bound up with the hope that some day my remote descendants will live in…
By: Harry Fritzenschaft on January 18, 2020
Ted Smith describes Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age book as preeminently a reference book for the academy with prodigious references that can be understood only by people whose range of engaging philosophy, theology, sociology, and literature can match Taylor’s range and scope. Fortunately, James K.A. Smith has helped us all to engage Taylor’s work by…
By: Karen Rouggly on January 17, 2020
It’s hard to study the work of vocation without taking into consideration the deep fundamental shifts that took place during the Protestant Reformation. Luther, in his attempt to alter the “speeds”[1] or freedom[2] with which faith was exercised, ended up inspiring a reformation of faith. Luther succeeded at this Reformation while many before him had…
