Hello Friends, I hope you are having a joyful and restful Christmas season. I thought I would share the following link with you. Some friends and I have been working on a Hutterite Christmas video, featuring Hutterites from all over. Look forward to an evening of choirs, small groups, solos, instrumental pieces, as well as … Continue reading Friends and Neighbours Evening 2022
In this chapter Taylor looks at the phenomenon of conversion in a Secular age, those people who “broke out of the immanent frame” into a larger perspective of Transcendence. These are people who come to recognize—perhaps through a conversion experience or via some other path—that there is more, that the immanent frame is insufficient. Taylor … Continue reading Chapter 20: Conversions
In this chapter, Taylor is beginning to develop his own secularization theory, while critiquing some of the mainstream secularization theories. Secularization theory seeks to explain the decline of religion in the west and holds that: “…“modernity” (in some sense) tends to repress or reduce religion” (in some sense)”. Taylor broadly agrees with the general claim … Continue reading Chapter 12: The Age of Mobilization
In this chapter, Taylor starts to describe the process by which we move from and enchanted to a disenchanted world and describes how the movement of "Reform" takes us into the modern, disciplinary society. He begins by asking how to explain the rise in the interest in nature for its own sake in the late … Continue reading Chapter 2: The Rise of the Disciplinary Society
For those of you feeling intimidated by my 21 part series on A Secular Age, this shorter summary could help you get a sense of the argument Taylor is making. I've organized this shorter summary into 11 different sections and added some links to the corresponding chapter summary that each section is drawn from. At … Continue reading A Secular Age: Shorter Summary
In the increasingly hot climate of the culture wars in the United States, and with some of that animosity creeping across the border into our own communities, I would like to put forward six thesis for a Christian politics. In doing this, I’m not trying to change anyone’s political views (though that might follow as … Continue reading 6 Theses for Christian Politics
I was planing to get this piece published when I first wrote it back in April. When that fell through, I decided to make some changes and repost it here.
Having summarized the broad outlines of an Anabaptist political theology, I will now draw out the epistemological implications of this stance. Some broad definitions might be helpful before we proceed. When I speak of “Anabaptism,” I am thinking of two particular, closely connected views. First, there is the commitment to Christian nonviolence or pacifism, the … Continue reading Towards an Anabaptist Epistemology: A Non Violent Way of Knowing
This piece is the first of a series of posts I intend to write on the topic of Anabaptist Epistemology. This piece will focus on political theology, the second on implications and the third on the positive outlines of an Anabaptist Epistemology.
Alan Kreider begins his marvellously titled book, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, with some striking observations about mission in the early church. Kreider notes that while the early Christians produced three texts on patience (Tertulian, Cyprian, Augustine), they did not produce a single text on evangelism. Furthermore, early Christians did not encourage their … Continue reading The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: A Summary
Coffee with Kierkegaard 