“You Can’t Make Me Sing”

Chapter 6 introduces Wayfarers Collective, an “emerging church” that decries what it perceives as the superficiality and entertainment-centeredness of mainstream evangelicalism. The Collective meets in a temporary rental spaces, eschews categories of formal membership, and brands itself as a “last stop” for people who are considering leaving the church forever. The Collective faces significant evangelistic hurdles: residents of the Pacific Northwest tend to be fiercely independent, and hostile towards institutions that seek to limit their personal freedom, creativity, or identity. The Collective’s anti-authoritarian ethos both helps and hinders its practices of corporate worship. Positively speaking, sermons at the Collective are a back-and-forth conversation between preacher and congregation: all participants are on equal ground. Musical worship—where the congregation must follow the directions of an authority figure—is more problematic.

Evangelikalismen utfordret

The article analyses the implicit epistemology of James K.A. Smith in his book Who’s Afraid of Post- modernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard and Foucault to Church (2006). The analysis concentrates on Smith’s interpretation of three French postmodern philosophers: J. Derrida, J.F. Lyotard and M. Fou- cault, but includes also a yearlong discussion between Smith and D.A. Carson, rendered in the book and in Carson’s books Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (2005) and Christ & Culture Revisited (2008). Carson defends the evangelical movement which today is criticized and challenged by several post-evangelical writers, among them Smith, who claims that faith is the sole bridge be- tween reality and knowledge. He calls his view confessional realism. The aim is to present and con- structively evaluate Smith’s epistemology and its relation to issues like rationality, truth, objectivity and reality. The theoretical basis for the assessment of Smith’s presentation of Radical Orthodoxy andits epistemology is what M. Stenmark calls “The everyday life epistemology upgraded” (Vardagslivets kunskapsteori uppgraderat (VKU). Stenmark argues that we may know the truth, but nobody own the truth. Based on VKU, the article critiques Smith’s epistemology and his theology of incarnation, as partly built on a local language game, partly on his intrabiblical understanding of reality, and partly for the risk of ending up in fideism. VKU is also the basis for a critical assessment of the epistemology ofevangelicalism and Carson’s arguments for the biblical “non-negotiables”. The article defends a criti- cal realism which allows a view of revelation that the triune God is able to transcend the limitations of human sin and subjectivity, and that God the Creator is able to communicate his plan of salvation to rational men. Human rationality never replaces faith, but rationality is able to give good grounds for faith among people endorsing modernity or postmodernity.

Ecclesiological Renewal for a Relevant Ministry and Church Polity, with reference to UCCSA and UPCSA in Zimbabwe

This article is a critique of Reformed Ecclesiology, particularly as regarding ministry and church polity. It is argued herein that a static ecclesiology results in church ministry that is seemingly deficient in responding to the context. This is seen in the current church polities and ways in which different denominations explain and carry out their ministry in the face of the new religious environment of the 21st century. This critique demands imperatives from the church, especially now in the advent of the emerging church, virtual ministry and such pandemics as Covid-19. The church cannot afford to remain ambivalent; her relevance is at stake. This article deals with Reformed Ecclesiology and polity in the context of Zimbabwe, with a special focus on the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa (UCCSA) and the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa (UPCSA) in Zimbabwe. These two denominations are in a “prolonged” engagement for church unity. From a strategic perspective, a possible ecclesiology will be proposed that can facilitate this renewal in the context of a Calvinistic ecclesiology. It is argued that a change in ecclesiology will result in a refined church ministry and polity. This is done by investigating the “church as epiphany.”

Give Them Christ: Native Agency in the Evangelization of Puerto Rico, 1900 to 1917

The scholarship on the history of Protestant missions to Puerto Rico after the Spanish– tendencies of the missionaries in the construction of the new Puerto Rican. There is no doubt that the main missionary motif during the 1890s was indeed civilization. Even though the Americanizing motif was part of the evangelistic efforts of some missionaries, new evidence shows that a minority of missionaries, among them Presbyterians James A. McAllister and Judson Underwood, had a clear vision of indigenization/contextualization for the emerging church based on language (Spanish) and culture (Puerto Rican). The spread of Christianity was successful not only because of the missionaries but also because native agents took up the task of evangelizing their own people; they were not passive spectators but active agents translating and processing the message of the gospel to fulfill their own people’s needs based on their own individual cultural assumptions. This article problematizes the past divisions of such evangelizing activities between the history of Christianity, mission history, and theology by analyzing the native ministries of Adela Sousa (a Bible woman) and Miguel Martinez in light of the teachings of the American missionaries. The investigation claims that because of Puerto Rican agents’ roles in the process of evangelization, a new fusion between the history of Christianity, mission history, and theology emerged as soon as new converts embraced and began to preach the gospel.

Space, Multiplicity, and De/Reconstructing Resonance

Congregational singing has become problematized within the emerging-church movement. This movement is a self-consciously postmodern expression of Christianity that brings into question not only ideas of group singing but also of the congregation itself, intentionally deconstructing the boundaries, patterns, and norms that have typically served to define the congregational group. Nevertheless, music and sound remain important, if contested, components of emerging-church practices. Through fieldwork undertaken in a number of emerging-church groups, this chapter investigates the ways in which sonic material is deployed in nontraditional settings, and the different patterns of interaction that are set up between agents, spaces, and objects in these environments. In particular, this chapter draws attention to a move away from totalizing patterns of high-intensity resonant union, toward models that, in a variety of different ways, offer space for individuals to experience their own micro-resonant interactions as they engage in a range of different devotional activities.

The Tribes and Their Comparative Strengths

Chapter 3 identifies and details the other tribes of American Evangelicalism against which the Reformed resurgence is said to be resurging. These are mainstream American Evangelicalism, neo-Anabaptist Evangelicalism, and progressive or Emergent Evangelicalism. Next, this chapter clarifies a possible confusion about how these three alternatives and the New Calvinism relate to the Emerging Church, and then it briefly acknowledges some intermixing and blurring between these four tribes. The latter half of the chapter employs the limited data available to address these tribes’ comparative sizes and sociological strengths. The findings suggest that the New Calvinism enjoys strength and prominence disproportionate to its numerical following and sets the stage for an explanatory model of institutional religious strength that relies more on the strategic and conflictual actions of religious leaders to gain symbolic power in and over their field than on simple additive growth.