Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category
On Pryor and Pop Culture: A Response
Sunday, February 23rd, 2014 by Dale M. Coulter
My Regent colleague Scott Pryor has graciously offered two responses (here and here) to my post at First Thoughts on evangelicals and pop culture. I am always appreciative for the way in which Pryor engages me in the spirit of “iron sharpening iron.” I should state at the outset that I consider blog posts to be more ad hoc explorations of various ideas and themes in relationship to issues being discussed. My posts are no different and thus they do not represent a fully-developed position on these issues. A complete response to Pryor would, it seems to me, require a more substantial piece than the medium of blogging allows. Having said that, there are some areas in which I think Pryor has misunderstood what I was attempting to do.
‘Chile,’ We Don’t Even Know the Half!: A Reflection on African American History — The Soul of American History
Tuesday, February 4th, 2014 by Antipas Harris
Fall 2013, I was blessed at the invitation of Archbishop Idem Ikon of Revival Valley Ministries International to travel Nigeria for the first time! The experience was another life-changing one. In the picture to the lower right, I stood in a beautiful garden just off of the shores of a river in Cross River.
This could be my ancestor’s home – I don’t know! That very area where I stood, gazing into the beautiful greenery is where, during the late 18th–early 19th centuries, many African people were forced to board slave ships to begin a 6 month (or more) journey to the Americas. Read the rest of this entry »
Pentecostalism, Politics, and the Prophetic: Renewing the Public Square II?
Friday, December 27th, 2013 by Amos Yong
In my previous blog on “Prayer, Pentecostalism, and the Political,” I suggested that the anticipated growth of global pentecostal-charismatic Christianity in the 21st century had the potential to impact, even transform, the public square as these Christians take their faith from out of their private and ecclesial lives into the political domain, broadly considered. Here I want to reflect further on how such convergence might unfold, and how pentecostal-charismatic spirituality might register its commitments within a public arena that is both post-secular on the one hand and yet post-Christendom on the other. In particular I wonder if pentecostals prayer might move them to a more prophetic form of interface with the sociopolitical? Read the rest of this entry »
Salvific Motifs of Renewal Theology
Tuesday, December 17th, 2013 by Monte Lee Rice
A notable feature of renewal theology within the ongoing development of Pentecostal scholarship is its construal of Pentecost and pneumatic experience as an epistemological resource that initiates and informs engagement with the human and natural sciences. In doing so, renewal theology can generate innovative responses to an array of challenges that threaten human and planetary flourishing and in manners filial to the Christian vision of God’s mission within history and towards creation. But given its methodological nuance on the Spirit’s immanence within creation, frequent criticism raised against renewal theology concern the strength of this fidelity. Simon Chan for instance, consistently argues that all ideas of Creator Spiritus “must be subsumed under the Spirit of the Church.”[1] Renewal theology would generally deem Chan’s limiting of the Spirit to ecclesial loci unnecessarily restrictive. Yet, while we may find Chan’s church-bounded pneumatology utilitarian pr anachronistic, might not the “pneumatological imagination” also prompt us towards recalibrating such Tradition- and ecclesial-centered methods of theology towards the multi-disciplinary aims of renewal theology?
This question calls to mind the Chinese proverb, “When you drink the water, remember the source.” I find Chan’s insistence helpful as it prods us to foster a mutually empowering interface between the epistemic resources (e.g., the “pneumatological imagination”) that renewal theology generates towards the sciences, and how we might find these resources a priori generated via the ecclesial-shaped contexts of spiritual encounter and formation. In what follows, I shall briefly suggest three theological motifs I find beneficial towards fostering this interface. Read the rest of this entry »
Revitalization-Reformation-Restoration: W(h)ither Global Renewal in a Post-Christendom World?
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013 by Amos Yong
It has been said that, and many have wondered if, Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal movements rely on an established Christianity – some would say “Christendom” – since historically both are believed to have fed off a languishing Protestantism (in the Euro-American West) and ritualized Catholicism (across Latin America). But in a post-Christendom context, w(h)ither renewal movements in so far as they may have little or nothing to renew in a globalizing, transnationalizing, and dynamic religious marketplace? With historic, established, and tradition forms of institutional Christianity on the wane (some critics aver), what is left for renewal movements to do? Read the rest of this entry »
Prayer, Pentecostalism, and the Political: Renewing the Public Square?
Thursday, October 3rd, 2013 by Amos Yong
What does Pentecostalism have to do with the public square or the political? One might think, initially, perhaps not much: classical Pentecostals have by and large been apolitical, although more often than not, such postures have been nurtured less by pentecostal spirituality and commitments than by eschatological ideas derived from dispensationalist theologies otherwise inimical, ironically, to the idea that the Holy Spirit’s charismatic and miraculous work has continued unabated after the age of the apostles. But as people of the book, Pentecostals do adhere to the New Testament injunctions to pray for their governments and political leaders. In political environments in which they are a minority, often this takes on the form of urging divine intervention that makes possible ongoing pentecostal mission and especially local evangelism. In liberal democratic societies, however, especially those which at least in theory support the freedom of religion, pentecostal growth has precipitated other political possibilities and aspirations, and hence also nurtured other types of prayer regarding the public domain. Read the rest of this entry »
