Gendered Space

This chapter considers the meeting place of the Therapeutae, described in Philo of Alexandria’s De Vita Contemplativa, as represented by Eusebius of Caesarea. Since Eusebius read Philo’s treatise as indicating an early Christian community, he sees a church here, with gendered space, affirming this is Christian practice. The ministries of Christian women overall then need then to be considered within a gendered construct of space and movement. While the appropriate ‘place’ for women in the earliest congregations depends on how meeting spaces are configured (for meals, charity, teaching, healing, and prayer), the recent work of Edward Adams has contested the ubiquitous house-church model and allowed for more cognitive templates for how gendered space was constructed. The third-century ‘Megiddo church’ seems to suggest a divided dining hall for women and men, in line with gendered dining as a Hellenistic norm, with centralized ritual space.

Women Office Holders in Montanism

The volume then moves to the evidence of the Montanists in Phrygia. This chapter explores the role of women as invested with religious authority, leaders, prophets, ordained, and objects of reverence in Montanist communities, in the light both of literary sources and epigraphic evidence. It considers key issues, for example whether the designation presbytera on the tombstone of Ammion in ancient Temenothyrai, now Uşak, Turkey, means ‘elderly woman’, ‘the wife of a presbyter (or bishop)’, or a ‘female presbyter’. In the latter case, was this title simply honorific or involve holding of an actual office? It decides ultimately this was an actual office for a woman that functioned in an entirely Catholic community, perhaps in a proto-Catholic house-church at Temenothyrai, influenced by the attested practices of the Montanists. The Montanists, founding their gender theory on Paul’s assertion in Gal. 3:28 (so Epiphanius, Panarion 49.2.5), rejected the dichotomy of public and private spheres for the ministry of men and women, and women were included as office holders serving both.

From Liberties to Liberty

This chapter studies how liberty in the law evolved from being attached to a collective, metaphorical body—the medieval corporation—to being rooted instead in the individual body across a range of practices in seventeenth century Europe. It analyses the early modern forms of toleration that developed from the ground-up in Protestant Europe (Holland and Germany in particular), including the practices of ‘walking out’ (auslauf) to worship one’s God, and the house church (schuilkerk). These practices were key to delinking liberty from place, and thus to paving the way to attaching it instead to territory and the state. The chapter also considers the first common law of naturalisation, known as Calvin’s Case (1608), which wrote into the law the process of becoming an English subject—of subjection. This law decisively rooted the state-subject relation in the bodies of monarch and subject coextensively. Both of these bodies were deeply implicated in the process of territorialisation that begat the modern state in seventeenth-century England, and in shifting the political bond from local authorities to the sovereign. The chapter then examines the corporeal processes underwriting the centralisation of authority, and shows how the subject’s body also became—via an increasingly important habeas corpus—the centre point of the legal revolution that yielded the natural rights of the modern political subject. Edward Coke plays a central role in the chapter.

Inside and out: Knowing Chinese and US models of ministry

Increasing numbers of US millennial missionaries are working alongside Chinese house church pastors in China, and conflicts between the two groups have been noted. To date, a majority of scholarly works have explored each of these group’s more surface-level needs, values, and preferences. This basic qualitative study seeks to describe differences in their tacitly held working models of ministry. Working models of ministry have been defined as taken-for-granted assumptions about what it means to be a minister. Analysis of qualitative data yielded from 16 semi-structured interviews resulted in a description of how each of these two groups have conceptualized ministry. In responding to different social contexts, each model has had a different structure, mechanism, and movement. Metaphorically, Chinese participants have been ministering as shepherds by establishing in-group boundaries, embodying clear direction, and taking responsibility for their flock’s growth. In contrast, millennial participants have been ministering as Sherpas by coming alongside those whom they are discipling, walking with them, and sharing burdens during the journey. This study recommends Chinese house church pastors adopt certain aspects of the US model as they lead millennial missionaries. This study also recommends millennial missionaries adopt certain aspects of the Chinese model as they disciple Chinese Christians.

RESPON GEREJA ATAS PANDEMIK CORONA VIRUS DESEASE 2019 DAN IBADAH DI RUMAH

The church is present on earth as an extension of the presence of the kingdom of God among humanity. The church is always present to respond to the conditions and situations of the times in a variety of challenges and temptations. But the church always sided with God's sovereignty and will govern and control everything, including the pandemics experienced by humans on this earth. The Church, currently dealing directly with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has worldwide, and its spread is so massive, and its impact is so wide in various sectors of life. The church was sent to bring the peace of Christ in truth and love. That is why the church responds to the appeal of the Government and health protocols from WHO by carrying out church services at home. Worship at home is not an attempt to establish a house church as a new institution. Worship at home is a form of faith that is responsible for the lives of fellow humans, and at the same time as an expression of love for others. Home worship is a service that is held based on the worship and liturgy of a church institution, where the congregation is part of its members. Principles and mechanisms of worship at home are regulated in such a way that using all available and available digital equipment and technology. The important and most important thing in conducting worship at home is that the congregation continues to truly worship the Triune God, sing praises to God, pray, and the peak and center is to listen to the word of God through preaching live (live streaming) or in recorded form or in printed form.

Menstimulasi Praktik Gereja Rumah di tengah Pandemi Covid-19

This paper is an analysis of various collective resources to consider the current practice of churches in Indonesia in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic. Government regulations have restricted social gatherings, including worship in churches, to break the chain of the spread of this deadly plague. Finally, worship was held online by adopting internet-based technology to carry out worship in their respective homes. This paper is qualitative research litera-ture to analyze the Covid-19 phenomenon from the perspective of Christian theology. As a conclusion, the church must see the pandemic outbreak as an opportunity to stimulate the rise of house churches through the government's social restriction policy regarding religious worship. The house church is typical of the church carried out by the early church in the Acts. Abstrak Paper ini adalah analisis berbagai sumber daya kolektif untuk mem-pertimbangkan praktik gereja-gereja di Indonesia saat ini sehubungan dengan pandemi Covid-19. Peraturan pemerintah telah membatasi pertemuan sosial, termasuk ibadah di gereja demi memutus rantai penyebaran wabah yang mematikan ini. Akhirnya, ibadah pun diadakan secara online dengan mengadopsi teknologi berbasis internet untuk melaksanakan ibadah di rumah masing-masing. Paper ini merupakan penelitian kualitatif literatur untuk menganalisis fenomena Covid-19 ini dari perspektif teologi Kristen. Sebagai kesimpulannya, gereja harus melihat peristiwa wabah pandemi ini sebagai kesempatan untuk menstimulasi bangkitnya gereja rumah melalui kebijakan pembatasan sosial dari pemerintah terkait ibadah keagamaan. Gereja rumah merupakan tipikal gereja yang dilakukan oleh gereja mula-mula di dalam Kisah Para Rasul.

The Rise of Calvinist Christianity in Urbanising China

Over the past decade, Reformed Christianity, broadly based on the theology of Calvinism, has spread widely in China, especially by appealing to Chinese ‘intellectuals’ who constitute most of the house church leaders in urban areas. It draws its moral guidance from a so-called rational or intellectual focus on biblical theology, reinforced by theological training in special seminaries. It consequently rejects the ‘heresy’ of the older Pentecostal Christianity, with its emphasis on charisma, miracles, and theology based on emotional ‘feeling’. This Reformed theology and its further elaboration have been introduced into China in two main ways. The first is through overseas Chinese, especially via theological seminaries in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. For instance, preachings of the famous Reformed pastor Stephen Tong (唐崇荣) have been widely disseminated online and among Chinese Christians. Second, Korean missionaries have established theological seminaries mainly in cities in northern China. This has resulted in more and more Chinese church leaders becoming advocates of Calvinism and converting their churches to Reformed status. This paper asks why Calvinism attracts Chinese Christians, what Calvinism means for the so-called house churches of a Christian community in a northern Chinese city, and what kinds of change the importation of Reformed theology has brought to Chinese house churches. Various significant accounts have addressed this development in China generally. My analysis complements these accounts by focusing on a small number of interconnected house churches in one city, and uses this case study to highlight interpersonal and organizational issues arising from the Calvinist approach.