The last two weeks, I’ve written to raise the question of what the basis for Christian unity is. I’ve talked about it mainly on a broad level, looking at Christianity as a whole, though I’ve indicated that this is a question for individual denominations as well. Starting this week, and for the next several weeks, […]
July 22, 2011 at 11:52 am
Last week, I wrote a post in which I encouraged Christians to think about what binds us together. What binds us together is different, however, than what we have in common, and I hope to demonstrate that in this week’s post by using the work of the great missiologist Andrew Walls. I think Walls has […]
In the old hymn, Christians petition God to “bind us together with cords that cannot be broken”. The song then goes on to ask God to “bind us together with love”. It is a worthwhile question for Christians to ask ourselves what the nature is of the cords that bind us together. This question is […]
Last post, I examined two different definitions of pluralism: one which describes a state of society characterized by cultural, religious, ethnic, and other forms of diversity and one which embraces such a state of society. I then tried to distinguish the second definition from relativism. This post, I’d like to return to that first definition […]
June 24, 2011 at 12:53 pm
I read an article earlier this week (“Theorizing Religion in the Global Age: A Typological Analysis” by Martin Geoffrey, who, like me, has two first names) in which the author laid out a typology between four different types of religion in our modern, global world. Among these four were pluralist and relativist. I found Geoffrey’s […]
June 17, 2011 at 12:15 pm
My last several posts have dealt with the relationship between American and non-Western Christianies, and this post will conclude that vein of posts for a while. In it, I’d like to reflect on some things that American Christians can learn from non-Western Christians. When most people talk about things we can learn from non-Western Christians, […]
June 10, 2011 at 12:03 pm
Last week, I wrote about the extent to which postmodernity was a Western phenomenon, and the post before that, I wrote about the numbers problem in The United Methodist Church. This week’s post sort of combines those two thoughts. As acknowledged, The United Methodist Church has some problems – problems with membership numbers, finances, structures, […]
After a week and a half’s hiatus (ah, the start of summer!), we’re back and blogging. Today, I’d like to talk about a topic that I think will weave together some threads from the last three or four posts, and that’s the relationship between postmodernity, the West, and the Majority World. It’s generally acknowledged that […]
My adviser, Dana Robert, and I recently wrote an article (which is available for free online – check it out) comparing growth rates of United Methodism to related denominations around the world. We conclude that United Methodism is often growing slower than related denominations, and that this indicates a problem. We suggest some possible explanations […]
I agreed to give a lecture on postmodernity for the class I TA last week. But as I was planning this lecture, I thought it would be not very postmodern and more than a little boring of me to just stand and talk about postmodernity. So instead, I designed a participatory lecture. I wrote down […]