Reference
- Ecumenical MovementOn an international scale the ecumenical movement really began with the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910. This led to the establishment (1921) of the International Missionary Council, which fostered cooperation in mission activity and among the younger churches. Other landmarks in the development of the movement were the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work (Stockholm, 1925), inspired by Nathan Söderblom of Sweden; the World Conference on Faith and Order (Lausanne, 1927); and the first assembly of the World Council of Churches (Amsterdam, 1948). The World Council, bringing together Protestant, Orthodox Eastern (including the Russian Orthodox Church), and Old Catholic bodies, is now the chief instrument of ecumenicity; in 1961 it united with the International Missionary Council.
Progress has also been made in mergers between individual churches; notable examples include the Church of South India (see South India, Church of), established in 1947, the first union between episcopal and nonepiscopal churches, and in the United States, where there have been many mergers, the United Church of Christ. A proposal was made in 1960 to bring together the American Methodist, Episcopal, United Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ denominations; this led to the establishment (1962) of the Consultation on Church Union, whose discussions continued into the 1970s. A proposed merger between the English Methodists and the Church of England was rejected by the Methodists in 1969. The Anglicans did, however, reach several doctrinal accords with the Roman Catholic Church in the early 1970s. Several American Lutheran churchs united to form the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988, which agreed in 1997 on a full communion (an arrangement by which churches fully accept each other's members and sacraments) with the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, and the Reformed Church in America. The Lutheran group reached a similar agreement with the Episcopal Church and the Moravian Church in 1999. Under the terms of the full communion, the churches involved can hold joint worship services, exchange clergy members, and collaborate on social service projects.
The Vatican did not give formal recognition to the existence of the ecumenical movement until 1960, when it established the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity. Protestant and Orthodox Eastern observers were invited to the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), and the Decree on Ecumenism (1964) promulgated by that council encouraged new dialogues with Protestant and Orthodox churches. In 1969, Pope Paul VI visited the headquarters of the World Council of Churches in Geneva; the Catholic Church now sends observers to the World Council and is a full member of some of its committees. In 1995, in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint, Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Roman Catholic commitment to Christian ecumenism; in 1999, he became the first pope to visit Orthodox nations. Catholics and Lutherans signed a joint declaration in 1999 on the doctrine of justification that resolved some of the issues that led to the Reformation in 1517. - PentecostalismWorldwide 20th–21st-century Christian movement that emphasizes the experience of Spirit baptism, generally evidenced by speaking in tongues (glossolalia). The name derives from Pentecost, the Greek name for the Jewish Feast of Weeks, which falls on the fiftieth day after Passover. On this day the Holy Spirit descended upon the first Christians enabling them to “speak in other tongues” (see Acts 2:1–4). Besides glossolalia, Pentecostals promote other gifts of the Spirit (charismata), including faith healing, prophecy, and exorcism. Ecstatic experience remains the unifying element of the movement. Pentecostals in America are generally conservative evangelical in their beliefs (see fundamentalism), but no unified stance on matters of doctrine and polity exists among adherents. Pentecostal churches are also strong in Indonesia, sub-Saharan Africa, and parts of Latin America and Europe. Pentecostal churches around the world cooperate through the Pentecostal World Conference, first held in Sweden (1939). The American counterpart to the conference is the Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches of North America; it is not a policy-setting organization.
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Perspectives
The Bible in the Contemporary World
A crucial responsibility for Christian interpreters of Scripture, says Richard Bauckham, is to understand our contemporary context and to explore the Bible's relevance to it in ways that reflect serious critical engagement with that context. In this book Bauckham models how this task can be carried out. Bauckham calls for our reading of Scripture to lead us to greater engagement with critical issues in today's world, including globalization, environmental degradation, and widespread poverty. He works to bring biblical texts to bear on these contemporary realities through the Bible's metanarrative of God and the world, according to which God's purpose takes effect in the blessing and salvation and fulfillment of the world as his cherished creation.
Homespun Gospel
In popular evangelical literature, God is loving and friendly, described in heartfelt, often saccharine language that evokes nostalgia, comfortable domesticity, and familial love. This emotional style has been widely adopted by the writers most popular among American evangelicals, including such celebrity pastors as Max Lucado, Rick Warren, and Joel Osteen. Todd M. Brenneman provides groundbreaking insight into the phenomenon of evangelical sentimentality: an emotional appeal to readers' feelings about familial relationships, which can in turn be used as the basis for a relationship with God. Brenneman shows how evangelicals use tropes of God as father, human beings as children, and nostalgia for an imagined idyllic home life to provide alternate sources of social authority, intended to help evangelicals survive a culture that is philosophically at odds with conservative Christianity. Yet Brenneman also demonstrates that the sentimental focus on individual emotion and experience can undermine the evangelical agenda. Sentimentality is an effective means of achieving individual conversions, but it also promotes a narcissism that blinds evangelicals to larger social forces and impedes their ability to bring about the change they seek. Homespun Gospel offers a compelling perspective on an unexplored but vital aspect of American evangelical identity.
Emerging Churches
The "emerging church" movement is perhaps the most significant church trend of our day. The emerging church offers and encourages a new way of doing and being the church. While it largely resonates with an eighteen-to-thirty-four-year-old audience--the first fully postmodern generation--it is also gaining popularity with older Christians and encompasses a broad array of traditional and contemporary churches. Emerging Churches explores this movement and provides insight into its success. Filled with the latest research and interesting, anecdotal testimonies from those on the cutting edge of ministry, this book provides pastors, church leaders, and interested readers with an insightful glimpse into the thriving churches of today--and tomorrow.
A Conspiracy of Goodness
"A beguiling image for the mission of the Church in our time. It combines the Samaritan parable's deceptive simplicity with a realism about what the Church is up against in this world."--Mark Trotter, Pastor, First United Methodist, San Diego.After describing the biblical mandates for the mission of ministry, Dr. Messer calls church leaders to:-understand the world as God's body-live as a covenant of global gardeners-work as bridge builders-form a company of star-throwers and peacemakers-embrace a community of fence movers
Is the Reformation Over?
Mark A Noll and Carolyn Nystrom examines post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism with suggestions for thinking about this new religious landscape.
Political Visions and Illusions
Named Best Book (Culture) in the 2004 Word Guild Canadian Writing Awards!The end of the Cold War has brought about more than the triumph of some political ideologies and the disappearance of others. In fact, the collapse of communism has created a vacuum quickly being filled by various alternative visions, ranging from ethnic nationalism to individualistic liberalism.But political ideologies are not merely a matter of governmental efficacy. Rather, political ideologies are intrinsically and inescapably religious--each carries certain assumptions about the nature of reality, individuals and society, as well as a particular vision for the common good. These fundamental beliefs transcend the political sphere, and the astute Christian observer should thus discern the subtle ways in which ideologies are rooted in idolatrous worldviews.In this comprehensive study, political scientist David Koyzis surveys the key political ideologies of our era, including liberalism, conservatism, nationalism, democracy and socialism. Each philosophy is given careful analysis and fair critique, unpacking the worldview issues inherent to each and pointing out essential strengths and weaknesses. Koyzis concludes by proposing alternative models that flow out of Christianity's historic engagement with the public square, retrieving approaches that hold promise for the complex political realities of the twenty-first century.Writing with broad, international perspective and keen analytical insight, Koyzis offers a sound guide for Christians working in the public square, culture watchers, political pundits and all students of modern political thought.
Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns
Changes in music have affected the way we think, the way we worship-even the way we are able to worship. We are steeped in a culture of pop music that makes other genres seem strangely foreign and unhelpful. Worship has become a conflict are, rather than a source of unity. Book jacket.
Secularism and the Death of God
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For Western Christians, the 20th century seemed to bring growing secularization. Professor Worthen unpacks this term and places it in the historical context of the 1950s and 1960s. See how religion has increasingly become a private business, one worldview among many, and theologians proclaimed the death of God - despite Billy Graham's booming revivals.
The Challenge of 21st-Century Christianity
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowIn this final lecture, consider three challenges for Christians in the 21st century: their encounters with the world of Islam, their attitude toward global capitalism, and their reaction to the forces of secularization. Discover how understanding the past 500 years of history can help us better understand these challenges today - and how to prepare for the future.
Vatican II and Global Renewal
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowIn 1962, thousands of bishops gathered in Rome to convene the Second Vatican Council. Here, they debated how the church should respond to the challenges of modernity. Explore the high drama of these debates and see how Catholic reforms in worship, church authority, and doctrines of sexuality made real-life impact everywhere from America to the Philippines
Reference
- PostmodernismPostmodern themes were discussed within architecture, literary criticism, and sociology in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. French philosophers addressed postmodernity during the 1970s. Jean-Francois Lyotard has analyzed the status of knowledge in a postmodern age, in particular with respect to legitimation; Michael Foucault has addressed the webs of power and knowledge in historical studies; Jean Baudrillard focused on fascination, seduction, and the media’s creating of a hyperreality of simulacra; Jacques Derrida has addressed language and deconstruction; and Jacques Lacan has reinterpreted the psychoanalytic unconscious. In the United States, Jameson has analyzed postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism, and Rorty has developed a neopragmatic approach to postmodernity.
Postmodernity refers to an age that has lost the Enlightenment belief in progress and emancipation through more knowledge and scientific research. There is a change from a mechanical, metallurgic production to an information industry, and from production to consumption as the main focus of the economy. It is an age in which the multiple perspectives of the new media tend to dissolve any sharp line between reality and fantasy, undermining belief in an objective reality.
Postmodern thought replaces a conception of a reality independent of the observer with notions of language as actually constituting the structures of a perspectival social reality. The modern dichotomy of an objective reality distinct from subjective images is breaking down, and being replaced by a hyperreality of self-referential signs. There is a critique of the modernist search for foundational forms and belief in a linear progress through the acquisition of knowledge.
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Culture Wars and the Christian Right
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowAlong with secularization and changes in Christian faith and practice, the second half of the 20th century also witnessed the eruption of today's "culture wars" - the clash between traditional religious morality and secular pluralism. Explore this tension in American society and politics, and then see how the culture war is a global phenomenon, playing out in religious debates around the world.