‘I might be wrong’

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-119
Author(s):  
Rein Brouwer

For about ten years (1998-2008), Kester Brewin was one of the principal instigators of the Vaux community, a ‘vehicle for exploring radical theological thought and practice’. From these experiences and events, he wrote The Complex Christ: Signs of Emergence in the Urban Church (2004). Since then he moved on as a blogger, columnist, tedx-er, and writer. In 2016 he published Getting High: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the Dream of Flight with Vaux Publishing. Getting High is a fascinating reflection on an era dominated by the flight of technology (from the 1960s on), substituting for the eternal longing for the ultimate. But it is also a moving introspection into Brewin’s own life. Being the son of a preacher man, he was getting high on evangelical ecstasy as a young adult, before he became one of the influential figures in the emerging church movement. He ended up, however, ‘outside of what would be taken as orthodox belief.’ This paper discusses Kester Brewin’s ‘piratic’ thoughts on the church, based on his books, blogs, and columns. How did his ‘theological’ thinking evolve, and what does it mean for ecclesiology?

2008 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 450-461
Author(s):  
Jeff Keuss

AbstractWhat has ‘emerged’ in the ‘emerging church’ movement, through writers such as Brian McLaren, is merely a new form of correlational theology – or what I will term ‘neo-correlational theology’. This ‘emergent’ movement aligns itself with Paul Tillich's systematic presentation of what he termed a ‘theology of culture’ addressed in his 1919 lecture ‘Über die Idee einer Theologie der Kultur’ and is deeply rooted in theological essentialisms aligned with Friedrich Schleiermacher and Don Browning. While many adherents of the Emergent movement have recently attempted to catalogue its theological legacy, this article will address three key emphases which haunt the corners of its discourse yet remain largely unacknowledged. First, the heritage of Schleiermacher's notion of ‘feeling’ as an authentic categorical form of knowledge forged through radical reflexivity which is the proper domain for authenticity in the Emergent movement. Second, as underscored in Tillich's Theology of Culture, the church as ‘emergent’ is profoundly imminent and therefore necessarily social, positivistic and historical. Third, theological anthropology is understood primarily through our freedom over and (at times) against the necessity of redemption. The question this article will address is whether or not such an approach reimagined as ‘neo-correlational theology’ and actualised through the ‘emerging church’ movement tacitly relies upon a more traditional theology which it explicitly rejects.


Author(s):  
Rocco Buttiglione

The Theology of the People (teología del pueblo) emerged in Argentina in the 1960s. It was conceived as Catholics awakened to the problem of poverty in the Global South. The immediate sources of inspiration can be seen in Vatican II’s Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, and in Paul VI’s encyclical Populorum progressio and in his Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi. Poverty has been a universal human phenomenon throughout history. But the phenomenon takes on new meaning in an age in which humanity has acquired the technical means to feed and shelter all its members decently. If poverty is not eradicated, there must be something wrong in the organization of human societies. Poverty becomes a moral problem and not only for individuals but for society at large. This will lead later to the concept of social sin or sinful social structures. The other source of the shift in theological thought is the acquisition in the Church of the logics of democracy. The Church has always addressed the problems of social injustice, but she had directed her teachings to the rulers of the nations. Now the Council addressed the peoples, who, in a democratic order, are supposed to be sovereign. The problem of social justice acquires a subjective dimension: that of the constitution of the subject of social change and of the liberation of the poor. The poor are called to become the subjects of their own liberation.


Author(s):  
Sam Brewitt-Taylor

This chapter outlines three examples of how secular theology was put into practice in the 1960s: Nick Stacey’s innovations in the parish of Woolwich; the radicalization of the ‘Parish and People’ organization; and the radicalization of Britain’s Student Christian Movement, which during the 1950s was the largest student religious organization in the country. The chapter argues that secular theology contained an inherent dynamic of ever-increasing radicalization, which irresistibly propelled its adherents from the ecclesiastical radicalism of the early 1960s to the more secular Christian radicalism of the late 1960s. Secular theology promised that the reunification of the church and the world would produce nothing less than the transformative healing of society. As the 1960s went on, this vision pushed radical Christian leaders to sacrifice more and more of their ecclesiastical culture as they pursued their goal of social transformation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 158-169
Author(s):  
João Luís Marques

Since the 1960s, the artistic and architectural interventions carried out in the church of Santa Isabel and Rato Chapel, in Lisbon, brought to the debate the overlap of different narratives in these two different spaces of worship: the first, is a parish church preserved by the earthquake of Lisbon (1755), which had its liturgical space redesigned before the Second Vatican Council; the second, is a private chapel annexed to a 18th century palace that became a symbolic worship space for students and engaged young professionals since the 1970s. Enriched with the work of either well-known artists or, sometimes, anonymous architects, the two case studies show us the life of monuments, where Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture participate in preserving and enhancing their cultural value. At the same time, the liturgical and pastoral activities are shown to be the engine behind successive interventions.


2008 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 354-364
Author(s):  
Andrew Atherstone

The twenty-five theological colleges of the Church of England entered the 1960s in buoyant mood. Rooms were full, finances were steadily improving, expansion seemed inevitable. For four years in succession, from 1961 to 1964, ordinations exceeded six hundred a year, for the first time since before the First World War, and the peak was expected to rise still higher. In a famously misleading report, the sociologist Leslie Paul predicted that at a ‘conservative estimate’ there would be more than eight hundred ordinations a year by the 1970s. In fact, the opposite occurred. The boom was followed by bust, and the early 1970s saw ordinations dip below four hundred. The dramatic plunge in the number of candidates offering themselves for Anglican ministry devastated the theological colleges. Many began running at a loss and faced imminent bankruptcy. In desperation the central Church authorities set about closing or merging colleges, but even their ruthless cutbacks could not keep pace with the fall in ordinands.


Author(s):  
Mark Newman

Recollections from former students often present a positive appreciation of black Catholic schools primarily for their educational quality but also, in many cases, for their emphasis on self-worth and also, occasionally, on black culture and heritage. African American Catholics valued black schools and churches as religious and community institutions. Prelates generally sought to achieve desegregation by closing or downgrading black Catholic institutions. African American Catholics differed in their response. While some black Catholics reluctantly accepted such action as a necessary price for desegregation, others opposed these measures, upset by the one-sided nature of Catholic desegregation and inspired by the rise of black con consciousness in the second half of the 1960s. Some disillusioned African Americans, especially younger Catholics, left the church.


2019 ◽  
pp. 173-195
Author(s):  
Kathleen Garces-Foley

Drawn from ethnographic observation in the Washington, D.C., area, this chapter explores how racially diverse, highly educated, and highly involved young adult Catholics in the region of Washington, D.C., relate to parishes. The Catholic scene, for young adults in this locale, is constructed through the efforts of parish-based young adult groups, diocesan offices for Young Adult Ministry, and parachurch organizations. Consequently, this group relates to parishes in three distinct but overlapping ways: parish as home, parish as hub, and parish as sacrament-station. This chapter suggests that scholars rethink the centrality and functions of the parish in American Catholicism. Using the D.C. region in this study, it would be a mistake to assume that young adults who are “loosely tethered” to D.C. parishes are disengaged from the church.


2018 ◽  
pp. 95-124
Author(s):  
Donald Westbrook

This chapter introduces features of Scientology’s systematic theology as developed in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1959, L. Ron Hubbard established a headquarters at Saint Hill Manor in East Grinstead, England. This location became the international base of Scientology until the founding of the Sea Organization in 1967. The Saint Hill period was instrumental in the intellectual development of Scientology. During these years, Hubbard systematized Scientology’s educational methodology (Study Technology), theology of sin (overts and withholds), theology of evil (suppressive persons), and standards of orthodoxy and orthopraxy (“Keeping Scientology Working” or KSW). KSW serves to legitimate Dianetics and Scientology within the church because it self-referentially dictates that Hubbard’s “technologies” provide mental and spiritual benefits only insofar as they are uniformly understood, applied, and perpetuated by others.


Author(s):  
Mary J. Henold

The Epilogue considers recent attempts to affirm the importance of Catholic laywomen in the church and extend their participation in decision making, while upholding Catholic teaching on gender essentialism and complementarity. Such limited efforts must be placed in the context of the 1960s and 1970s, when Catholic women’s leadership was also affirmed, and yet these women were still limited to prescribed roles and excluded from power. The work that Catholic laywomen did in these years to challenge Catholic teaching on gender roles, and remake laywomen’s identity, has been largely ignored and forgotten. As a result, the church, and particularly Pope Francis, continue to give lip service to laywomen’s dignity while failing to listen to their voices or give them genuine authority.


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