Quick post before writing;
Eighty percent of the intensive is done, MP 520: Contemporary Culture in a Missional Perspective, and the reading list may very well be the best I've had at Fuller. Today was Douglas John Hall's The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity, and while I'll post my thoughts later (when I don't have a novel review due in nine hours), I'll just say that I found myself agreeing more often with Hall than with the person who had left their comments in the margins (my reaction to their visceral reaction was, well, visceral). In synopsis, Hall calls for the church to disestablish itself in the west, suggesting that the establishment that has taken place in the United States and Canada is more de facto content-based than de jure form-based, as was the case in Europe. Here, the refusal of a formal establishment of religion has blinded the American church to the informal patterns and the unconscious combination of the substance of the faith and dominant cultural mores.
Hall suggests that when the church disestablishes itself, it will in the process recover its mission and its identity as a prophetic minority which can then speak to the world, being in, yet not of the world. Unlike others who make similar arguments, Hall argues that distancing is not the main goal, but that when the content of the faith is articulated, the church can then engage society at the levels of moral authenticity, meaningful community, transcendence and mystery, and meaning.
More to say from him and about him, but will cut short due to time constraints. Peace love and pitbulls (on that note, anyone know when Andreas is due back in CA?)
Eighty percent of the intensive is done, MP 520: Contemporary Culture in a Missional Perspective, and the reading list may very well be the best I've had at Fuller. Today was Douglas John Hall's The End of Christendom and the Future of Christianity, and while I'll post my thoughts later (when I don't have a novel review due in nine hours), I'll just say that I found myself agreeing more often with Hall than with the person who had left their comments in the margins (my reaction to their visceral reaction was, well, visceral). In synopsis, Hall calls for the church to disestablish itself in the west, suggesting that the establishment that has taken place in the United States and Canada is more de facto content-based than de jure form-based, as was the case in Europe. Here, the refusal of a formal establishment of religion has blinded the American church to the informal patterns and the unconscious combination of the substance of the faith and dominant cultural mores.
Hall suggests that when the church disestablishes itself, it will in the process recover its mission and its identity as a prophetic minority which can then speak to the world, being in, yet not of the world. Unlike others who make similar arguments, Hall argues that distancing is not the main goal, but that when the content of the faith is articulated, the church can then engage society at the levels of moral authenticity, meaningful community, transcendence and mystery, and meaning.
More to say from him and about him, but will cut short due to time constraints. Peace love and pitbulls (on that note, anyone know when Andreas is due back in CA?)
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