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.

The Scientific Calling of the Church: Herman Bavinck's Exhortation for the Churches in Mainland China

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-169
Author(s):  
Ximian Xu
Keyword(s):  
Mainland China ◽  
First Century ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church ◽  
Scientific Life

Herman Bavinck (1854–1921) describes the twofold scientific calling of the Church. First, the Church needs to read the historic Reformed confessions contextually and distill the Reformed principles to meet its contemporary needs. Second, the Church should pursue a scientific ( wetenschappelijke) life, particularly in the university. Bavinck's twofold theological insight can be applied to the churches in mainland China. The first reminds Chinese Reformed churches of the necessity of composing a Sino-Reformed confession. The second insight exhorts churches to develop scientific life publicly. In this sense, the scientific calling of the church, which Bavinck envisaged more than a century before, can be fulfilled in the twenty-first-century mainland China. 1

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.

Coda: Inhabiting Institutions

2019 ◽  
pp. 211-215
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Realist Novels ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The University

The coda clarifies the political stakes of this book’s argument. Reflecting on the gap between people’s lived experiences of the university and public defenses of it, it argues that nineteenth-century realist novels provide strategies for inhabiting the twenty-first century university. We, too, can find political inspiration in anachronisms. The coda shows that postcolonial and queer theory’s untimely presence in the academy resist the impulse to define the future as merely an extension of the present.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 357-366
Author(s):  
Brian Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Church ◽  
Northern And Southern Hemispheres

This concluding chapter argues that the twentieth century was indeed a period of extraordinary and sustained Christian growth in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. Yet it also witnessed a serious recession from Christian faith in most of Europe, Australasia, and parts of North America; the continuance and even intensification of serious obstacles to the progress of Christianity in the Islamic world and in most of India; and an accelerating and tragic exodus of Christians from those parts of West Asia and the Middle East that had once constituted the heartlands of Christianity. In some of its manifestations that have become increasingly prominent since the 1980s, the fabric of Christian doctrine and spirituality has been so fundamentally redesigned in the interests of the pursuit of individual material prosperity that the question becomes whether Christianity has converted indigenous religionists or whether indigenous religious and cultural perspectives have succeeded in converting Christianity. The Christian history of the twenty-first century may provide an answer. If the gravest challenge faced by Christianity in the twentieth century was the repeated subversion of Christian ethics by a series of tragic compromises between Christianity and ideologies of racial supremacy, the most serious challenge confronting the religion in the twenty-first century looks likely to be the preparedness of some sections of the church in both northern and southern hemispheres to accommodate the faith to ideologies of individual enrichment.

scholarly journals Mission as breaking down walls, opening gates and empowering traders: From contextualisation to deep contextualisation

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelius J.P. Niemandt
Keyword(s):  
Trade Flow ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
First Century ◽  
University Of Pretoria ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church ◽  
Breaking Work

The research addressed the issue of symbolic walls that divide, segregate, preserve and institutionalise. The way in which institutions and especially the Faculty of Theology at the University of Pretoria facilitated symbolic ‘walls’ was discussed in the overview of the Department of Science of Religion and Missiology in the first century of the Faculty of Theology. The concepts of ‘gatekeepers’ and ‘traders’ were then applied because walls, paradoxically, need gates to facilitate control, movement and, eventually, life. Gatekeepers were described as the guardians of the status quo, and traders as agents who, in one way or another, facilitate movement, trade, flow and life in the midst of the shadows of walls. Missionaries are, by the very nature of the missionary enterprise, more traders than gatekeepers. Here, the work of Bosch – specifically his ground-breaking work on mission as contextualisation – provides an explanation of the art of mission as breaking down walls, opening gates and empowering traders. That is precisely why Missiology is particularly well suited to assist the church and theology in the art of breaking down walls. The theological imperative of contextualisation means that the life of the church, theology, and  thus theological training, cannot do without Missiology. The concept of ‘deep contextualisation’ was discussed as a particularly relevant approach to include a post-anthropomorphic discourse in Missiology. It can assist with the reorientation of the history of mission on the whole of history and, thus, also deep history. The concept also provides a way to address the discourses on colonialisation and includes a reorientation on the future and embracing hope.

Buddhist, a Christian, and an Atheist Walk into a Classroom

2013 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Ken Derry
Keyword(s):  
First Year ◽  
Specific Relation ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The University

Although none of the articles in this issue on the topic of religion and humor are explicitly about teaching, in many ways all of them in fact share this central focus. In the examples discussed by the four authors, humor is used to deconstruct the category of religion; to comment on the distance between orthodoxy and praxis; to censure religion; and to enrich traditions in ways that can be quite self-critical. My response to these articles addresses each of the above lessons in specific relation to experiences I have had in, and strategies I have developed for, teaching a first-year introductory religion course at the University of Toronto.

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