Conclusion

2018 ◽  
pp. 204-210
Author(s):  
Donald Westbrook
Keyword(s):  
Academic Work ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Religious History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Independent Field ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Church ◽  
Field Of Inquiry ◽  
Academic Study

This conclusion offers reflections on the future of Scientology and its academic study. As the Church of Scientology advances further into the twenty-first century, it is likely that scholars of Dianetics and Scientology will include both insiders and outsiders, a trend that is also discernible in “older” and “newer” religious history. The rise and success of Mormon studies is taken up as one instructive example. In much the same way, Scientology studies may in the coming decades become an independent field of inquiry on the religious studies landscape, in which case there will be ample room for academic work along various disciplinary lines. Open areas of research are suggested, including an academic biography of Hubbard, forms of Dianetics and Scientology practiced outside the church, and fuller investigation of Scientology’s origins, theology, and practices.

Leaders for the Liturgical People: Shaping Students for Ministry in the Twenty-First Century

2005 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-252
Author(s):  
Rowena Roppelt
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
First Year ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Undergraduate Studies ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

In my first year of undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, I enrolled in a course entitled “The Christian Imagination.” It introduced the students to Christian art across the ages, and it was taught by a very clever and energetic woman with a French accent. It was a mind-bending experience. In the course of the semester, Dr Langan showed us hundreds of slides of sculpture, painting and architecture. Quite apart from the incredible amount of material, it was the challenge to appreciate the great variety of expressions of the Christian experience that took my breath away. At the end of the semester, I vowed never to take another course in the Christianity and Culture program. It was just too stressful. Yet the next semester I found myself signing up for more of the same and after four years graduated with a major in the program. I have reflected upon what it was about this program which caught and held me. I believe that I was fascinated by the challenge to see Christianity from new and varying perspectives, to understand and evaluate the ways in which the Christian faith has been and continues to be lived in differing situations, and to imagine how the church might faithfully and creatively live the faith in the future. It was this fascination that brought me to the study of liturgy and which I dream of passing on to others.

Defining the Center—Finding the Boundaries: The Challenge of Re-Visioning the Church in North America for the Twenty-First Century

1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-337
Author(s):  
Craig Van Gelder
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
North American ◽  
American Culture ◽  
First Century ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Mission Field ◽  
The Church

It is becoming increasingly clear that we are experiencing a shift in North American culture that requires the church to think of North America as mission field. The thesis of this article is that the church will need to develop a new paradigm of mission to accomplish this. This article identifies 18 issues which such a paradigm of mission will need to address. These issues are discussed in terms of three aspects: (1) the context in which we live, (2) the gospel we seek to proclaim, and (3) the church which seeks to proclaim this gospel.

Pietro Basso,Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Livesin the Twenty-first Century. London: Verso, 2003. pp. 275. $27.00 cloth.

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Gerd-Rainer Horn
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Working Time ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

For some time now, sociologists, economists and assorted futurologists have flooded the pages of learned journals and the shelves of libraries with analyses of the continuing decline of industrial and other forms of labor. In proportion to the decline of working time, those social scientists proclaim, the forward march of leisure has become an irresistible trend of the most recent past, the present and, most definitely, the future. Those of us living on planet earth have on occasion wondered about the veracity of such claims which, quite often, appear to stand in flat contradiction to our experiences in everyday life. The work of the Italian sociologist Pietro Basso is thus long overdue and proves to be a welcome refutation of this genre of, to paraphrase Basso, obfuscating hallucinations.

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