By: Lynda Gittens on February 23, 2017
Cavanaugh states, “In the ideology of the free market, freedom is conceived as the absence of interference from others.” (Cavanaugh, Kindle, Location 81) Cavanaugh says, “Augustine’s view of freedom is more complex: freedom is not simply a negative freedom from, but freedom for, a capacity to achieve certain worthwhile goals. All of those goals are…
By: Phil Goldsberry on February 23, 2017
Introduction My Part I was concerned about the sacred becoming secular. But greater was finding the “map” to navigate the secular back to sacred. Taylor then challenged me again with semantics. I had heard years ago if you want to change the culture, change the language; Taylor proved that to be true. Taylor states that,…
By: Marc Andresen on February 23, 2017
Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age, could easily serve as a textbook for a college course on “Western Civilization,” tracing history along the thread of secularization: the difficult journey during which there has been a shift in the modern age from a social imaginary wherein unbelief was unimaginable to a time when belief is unthinkable. Through…
By: Claire Appiah on February 23, 2017
Charles Margrave Taylor—Secular Age Introduction Canadian born Charles Margrave Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at McGill University and the author of several books. He is highly esteemed in the academic community for his intellectual endeavors pertaining to philosophy in the political, social science, historical, and intellectual arenas. He is the recipient of various awards…
By: Jim Sabella on February 23, 2017
This week we are discussing two books both by William T. Cavanaugh. The first book is titled, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ; the second is titled, Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire. Several themes run through both books. Some of the major themes are oppression, power, freedom, and the individual. Another is Cavanaugh’s…
By: Aaron Peterson on February 23, 2017
I have marriage on the brain this week. This weekend Lisa and I will lead our annual marriage retreat at the Eagle’s Nest Bed & Breakfast in beautiful Big Bear, California. In fact, as soon as I post this blog we will start the over-2-hour trek from the San Fernando Valley up through the San…
By: Jason Kennedy on February 23, 2017
This week I ran across a story of a couple that became Christian in a heavily Islamic country. Within two weeks of the man’s conversion, he was arrested, tortured, and starving in a cell. His story is so remarkable to me because he described his pre-Christian world and culture as being closed. Their country controlled…
By: Jennifer Dean-Hill on February 22, 2017
If the Eucharist is an act of defiance and a way to re-member the body of Christ back together, then torture is the antithesis of this, as it is breaks down the person and dismembers the community. When people start to “disappear” from the shameful experiences and choices made, the church threatens to “disappear” if…
By: Katy Drage Lines on February 22, 2017
Appetizers This weekend, I visited the Museum of Man in San Diego, and explored the Cannibal exhibit. Occasionally, cannibalism occurs in dire survival situations; more often though, cannibalism is ritually or medicinally practiced in order for the partaker to consume the power of the partaken. English royalty drank skull powder for health, and Richard the…
By: Rose Anding on February 22, 2017
The conclusion of the Secular Question The Shift… A big part of the shift is that the condition of belief have changed. Therefore. whatever we believe is detestable or contestable. Nature is what has changed…Secularism Taylor’s Book, Secular Age, Plays Out in the British Court Foster parent ban: ‘this is a secular state’, say…
By: Mary Walker on February 21, 2017
The future Kingdom of God is brought into the present to bring the world’s time under the rule of Divine Providence, and thus create spaces of resistance where bodies belong to God, not the state.[1] … Christians themselves are called to create concrete alternative practices that open up a different kind of economic space…
By: Julie Dodge on February 20, 2017
I am not perhaps the typical candidate for a Doctor of Ministry program. While I completed my undergraduate degree in Christian Education, and started a career in ministry, God led me to the field of social work, where I completed my Master’s degree, have worked in the field for 25 years, and now am an…
By: Garfield Harvey on February 19, 2017
In the 1930s, 98% of Jamaica (my birth country) subscribed to a Christian culture because most of those people were descendants of slaves. However, in that same era, the Rastafarian movement arose as this new group started to worship Haile Selassie (born Tafari Makonnen Woldemikael), the emperor of Ethiopia. The Rastafarians worshiped him as the…
By: Kevin Norwood on February 18, 2017
To believe or not to believe? Life is full of opportunities to believe or not to believe. We face it every day. If you open social media or if you follow news sources, there is a constant struggle to know where to put your trust for information. James Smith in his book,…
By: Mary Walker on February 18, 2017
“One of the goals of the sensory ethnographer is to seek to know places in other people’s worlds that are similar to how they are known by those people. In doing so we aim to come closer to understanding how other people experience, remember and imagine.”[1]
By: Marc Andresen on February 17, 2017
For over a year we have been traveling Further Up and Further In. Our travels don’t take us deeper into the New Narnia as in The Chronicles, [1] but our further in has taken us deeper into the world of Global Leadership in cross-cultural environs.
By: Pablo Morales on February 17, 2017
In The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Stephen recently interviewed British comedian and TV producer Ricky Gervais to discuss his religious views. As an atheist, Ricky concludes, “You take any holy book or any fiction and destroy it. In a 1000 year time that wouldn’t come back the way it was but if you take…
By: Jason Kennedy on February 17, 2017
James K. A. Smith’s enlightening book, How Not to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor is a fascinating book. Smith’s aim is to synthesize the exhaustive work of Charles Taylors nine-hundred plus manuscript dealing with the secular age. Smith makes Taylor’s deep mind approachable. For Smith, Taylor is a cartographer of this present age or rather…
By: Chip Stapleton on February 17, 2017
In the thoroughly engaging, if very dense, Consuming Religion: Christian Faith and Practice in a Consumer Culture Vincent Miller frames consumer culture ‘not as a deformation of belief but as a particular way of engaging religious beliefs that divorces them from practice.’ (Miller, 12) This provides the reader with a lens for engaging our consumer society…
By: Geoff Lee on February 17, 2017
Consumer or consumed? Consuming Religion – Miller “Parish glamorization is ecclesiastical pornography — taking photographs (skilfully airbrushed) or drawing pictures of congregations that are without spot or wrinkle, the shapes that a few parishes have for a few short years. These provocatively posed pictures are devoid of personal relationships. The pictures excite a…
