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A few weeks ago I did the first in series about the bible, giving an introduction to how the bible was put together. We have long standing christians, and new christians in our church community, and most seem to have no idea how the bible was put together, and how to approach it with any confidence.
Whilst keeping my eyes pealed for items to help turn this into a series, I came across this book by Eugene Peterson. I plan to take this on holiday, and from dipping into it so far, it seems to be a wonderful induction tino how to read the bible, beyond a congnitive propostiional approach. The book aspires to help us bring our whole selves to the process of reading scripture.
It seems to be a challenging book that does not offer a 10 steps to making the bible easy to understand, but offers the challenge of taking the bible seriously. In what I have read so far I think Peterson is suggesting that for many of us who think we have taken the bible seriously, we may not have taken it seriously at all, in terms of the depths of approach to scripture that are possible.
This is a challenging book, if you want a challenge, that would have us let the bible read us.
I think many of us need to rediscover a confidence in the bible, and how to engage with it as communities and individuals, which is probably the task of every new generation of christians. This book might be a huge help if you are wanting some of that.
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Browse the bible by Tags. eBible.com is web 2.0 using all the main tag technology. If you want a free trial invite, drop me a comment, I have 15 to give away.
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Research from the book: “The spiritual revolution”, Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead, £16.99
When sociological surveys are made of people religious affiliation it is usually delineated on the basis of denomination. This research in Kendal, was undertaken with a very different typology. From a population of 26,000 people they found 7% of people were involved in organised church religion, and they delineated the types of churches as follows:
1. Religion as Difference: (devotional)
- God separate from us
- God mediated through his church, and scriptures
- Authority is external to us
- Worshipping the transcendent God
- Morality: is about the differences between us and God
- Stresses reality of sin and need for redemption
- Community: sees itself set apart, as the redeemed, tending towards separation.2. Religion of Humanity: (social)
- God approaches humanity, through incarnation, human reason and feeling.
- Suspicious of authority, measuring it against human experience, and reason.
- It looks around, with ethical concerns, into the poor, politics etc.
- It tends to talk about the goodness of the world, even though it acknowledges sin.
- It wants to embrace people in inclusivity
- Goodness of work etc.3. Spirituality of Life: (personal)
- God is sought within, and all persons, and within nature
- Notions of a higher self and better self
- Authority is not in texts, but within your personal experience, and it’s authenticity
- Looking for spirituality that is at heart of all religions
- Need to be liberated from your lower self, self liberation, shaped by culture with DIY groupsIn terms of who was in which kind of church, they found that:
Religion of Difference: 18%
Religion of Humanity: 55%
Religion of Experiential Difference (this is a combination of 1&3): 21%
Religion of Experiential Humanity ( a combination of 1&2): 6%Whilst the overall picture was of decline, the one section of churches that were growing significantly where those of ‘Experiential Difference’, which are the predominantly conservative charismatic churches. They were/are combining moral spirituality with an experiential spirituality.
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This is the theory that country that emerges into modernity will secularise, and turn away from religion. It remained largely un challenged until the 1980’s.
In the modern world some key themes that made secularisation happen:
Knowledge: appeal to reason and control over nature, and autonomy of the individual is basis for final knowledge.
Scientific: world discovered not mediated
Industrial: new social classes, fragmented urban living, diversity
Democratic: decentralised, toppled hierarchies, participation etc.We see the church resisting modernity, then embracing it, along with the rise of the Nation Sate. Eventually in it’s response, the church had accommodated to modernity.
Yet here were are today in a world that is far from secularized, with a high percentage of people still connected to organized religion or other forms of spirituality.
But largely in the UK people have delegated functions to churches – of marking life cycles, moments of national significance, times of tragedy etc.
Modern societies corrode collective memory, we are an amnesiac society in the UK. Maybe the church has a role for vicarious memory and for providing an understanding of the future from the memory we have.
And as we emerge into a post scientific, post-industrial, post nation state world, the post-secular is growing.
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Thoughts from my afternoon seminar on Sacred Space and Pilgrimage
A typology of Pilgrimage:
Aims of pilgrimage are to:
• Ordering: Pilgrimage is about ordering the space and time for something in particular, the encounter
• Imagine community: we become aware that we are aware of a group for a time, that we are in community with. We imagine we are part of a greater community than we have been
• Communicate, with the divine or transcendent: Lourds, a lot of the sick go there and die peacefully, people from all over the world worshipping, a transcendent experience with so many other people and with something you aren’t sure of, of the Divine. People who go say they are touched by something
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Highlights and some of my thoughts from yesterdays seminar on Decline of the Church
In no particular order:1. Are secularization theorist correct, that modernity is dismantling and replacing the need for religion?
2. Two key different approaches to assessment, sociological(quantitative data etc, anthropological (ethnographic studies etc)
3. Sociological approaches often offer data (church is in decline etc) but little by way of interpretation, the ‘why?’, ‘how does it feel?’ etc.
4. The increasing place for Empirical Theology in these assessments (i.e Alan James etc)
5. Surveys on church attendance in UK show: 1979 – 12%, 1989 – 10%, 1998 – 7.5%. The trend is downards
6. Anecdotally, the figure is much much lower in urban places, maybe 1%, and sometimes higher in rural areas with low population densities.
7. Reminded me again of how different the UK is the USA. The UK is secular, the US is a religious nation (over 40% attendance/connection to church)Technorati Tags: Decline of Church
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Well it took me three hours of trekking in the heat and humidity on the trains across london, but I made it to Christ Church, Oxford.
I lived in Oxford in 1992-93, and never visited any of the Colleges, and never had any interest in the history of the place. Looking back, I think my low church background, and my upbringing on a council estate/public housing, made me suspcious of the city.
After several years of retrieving tradtions in my church experience and ecclessiology, being a older and less prejudiced, Oxford seems intriguing. I hope the history and traditions here stimulate my understanding and research.
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Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate, by Robin A. Parry (Editor), Christopher H. Partridge (Editor)
UK – £14.67
USA – $17.01With the volume of traffic and comments on the Evangelical Universalist, I thought you might want some resources for further reading.
Seems D.W.Congdon has a superb blog post listing over 30 current blog discussions on this topic, as well as ton of books and other related resources.
As for a book to read, I found this edited by Robin Parry, who is a superb writer and editor. You can take a look inside the book here. It seems to offer a variety of views from the bible and theology in comparison.
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I start my next doctorate (doctor of philosophy) at Hogwarts…I mean Christ Church,Oxford with a two week residency on monday 24th July. My reading list is below for the seminars I have elected. Each day as I get internet access I’ll blog some of the things I have been learning and the seminar topics.
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A great deal of academic theology and thought explains how the modern church has lost touch with culture due to the influence of postmodernity, and it’s enculturation to modernity. In other words the modern church mistakes some of what is thinks as biblical and theological, for cultural accomodations, as has been the case with every other form of church in history. And when culture changes, the church is left disconnected from people.
Most of this rethinking of the nature of Christianity, however, is disconnected from those actually involved in the day-to-day activities of the local church. In effect is the rethinking of church an mission causing those involved in that process to loose connection to the Church Catholic? Again I think we see this as a pattern in church history.
As you may have noticed, from my posts on deep church, positive church, and generous orthodoxy, I am most excited by and anticipating what will happen when the rethinking of church and mission re-connects to the church Catholic, and we see real missional engagement through existing and new forms of church, and the restoration of belief and confidence in Church again.
