By: Ryan Thorson on February 1, 2024
As I read the Campbell’s book this week (even though it was a reread from my English Literature days in my undergraduate studies) it was hard not to see connections in my everyday life as a husband, father and pastor. Last night in particular our older kids and my wife and I gathered around the…
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: Cathy Glei on January 31, 2024
It was said of Author Matthew R. Petrusek, “Within the Church, Petrusek takes a “back to basic” approach to catechesis in an effort to recover an orthodox, pastorally-nimble yet intellectually-robust approach to faith formation and evangelization, using Scripture, the Catechism, and the great minds of the Church’s tradition as a foundation. His ultimate goal is…
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: Jonita Fair-Payton on January 30, 2024
I watched Matthew Petrusek’s entire 10- part Video Seminar before I cracked the spine of the book. After I completed the viewing over the course of a couple of days, I found it fairly easy to determine which chapter and topic that I would write about. Chapter 8, The God of my Tribe: Progressivism…
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: Kim Sanford on January 29, 2024
I’ve prayed the Lord’s prayer since childhood. Along with “Now I lay me down to sleep” it was probably one of the only prayers I had learned by heart. Simple and theologically rich at the same time, it deserves to be prayed again and again across denominational boundaries. It even bridges the Catholic-Protestant divide…although let…
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…
