Monthly Archives: April 2011

The southward shift in Christianity

I gave a lecture yesterday in the class for which I’m a teaching assistant on the southern shift of Christianity.  I’m now mining that for two blog posts – this one describing the shift southward and another soon to come one on how that relates to modernity and postmodernity. For those of you who aren’t […]

Is the Internet better for Christ or for cats?

While the title of this blog post may seem flippant, I do mean it to raise serious questions about how well Christians are using new modes of communication.  Also, please don’t hate me for posting seemingly flippant things on Good Friday.  I hope all Christian readers of this blog have a solemn and meaningful end […]

Periodizing the History of Christianity and Methodological Pluralism

I’m a historian of Christianity.  One of the things historians like to do is divide history into periods.  If you’ve been reading this blog, you’ve probably gotten a sense of the periodization of history I’ve been using, but I thought I’d summarize it here and then share some reflections on the process of periodizing church […]

Christendom, Modernity, Postmodernity, and What Comes Next, Part 2

On Tuesday, I posted the first half of a description of how I would characterize a periodization of history broken into Christendom, modernity, postmodernity, and what comes next.  This post completes that description. Let me reiterate my three caveats: 1. All of my answers for “what comes next” are just guesses.  Since it comes next, […]

Christendom, Modernity, Postmodernity, and What Comes Next, Part 1

I’ve promised you loyal readers some elaboration on what I think are the characteristics of postmodernity.  I’m going to structure part of this answer by comparing Christendom, modernity, postmodernity, and what comes next (one possible periodization of the last 1000 years of Christian history; I’ll write a post on periodizing church history later).  I’ve structured […]

Education in the world that’s coming next

A friend recently sent me this video: http://edupln.com/video/tedxnyed-will-richardson It’s 15 minutes, but well worth a view.  The presenter, Will Richardson, argues that the American educational system is set up around an old (I might say modernist) model of doing things: the point of our current educational system is to impart a large body of knowledge […]