Divining the Past: Dialogues between Christianity and history

A Call for Papers

Over at Faith and Place Meredith has launched a conference hosted by the Evangelical History Association:

"Divining the Past is a conference dedicated to the exploration of relationships between Christianity and History. How has the Christian tradition informed the theory and practice of history? How important is history to the belief and expression of Christianity? And how have Christian people, groups, movements, ideas and experiences been significant in past centuries? The conference aims to bring together a variety of perspectives on these questions. It is open to scholars associated with theological colleges as well as universities. Students doing original research in history are especially encouraged to participate.

The EHA invites proposals for papers on any aspect of the relationship between Christianity and History. We particularly welcome papers with an historiographical or theoretical focus, or that engage with the following topics:

• Religion and politics
• The church in society
• Evangelicalism in Australia
• Christianity in ancient history
• Christianity and universities
  

The program will feature a panel on the theoretical and methodological links between Christianity and the discipline of history.

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to Dr Meredith Lake - meredithelake[at]gmail[dot]com - by 31 March 2010."

Gen Y and the Failures of the Church

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters:^* not many of you were wise by human standards, ^* not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’" 1 Corinthians 1.26-31^272829303"

At work this week, we spent some time thinking about how to reach how to reach Gen Y with the gospel (for the purposes of this post Gen Y is anyone born between 1980-1995). We want to reach this generation in an appropriate way. As I've mentioned elsewhere, there are three main issues that concern this postmodern (in practice if not in thought) generation: authenticity, community, justice.

These are three itches which I think the church can scratch. But before we get there, we need to remind ourselves that 'the Church' has a significant image problem with Gen Y. The image of the church that Gen Y knows is either something resembling Philip Pullman's Magisterium, or the daggy American evangelical straw man who sings kumbaya and has eight children. In the short lifetime of Gen Y, several major denominations have been caught up in significant scandals that became front page news in Australia and overseas. Beginning in the 1980's with the revelation that child abuse had been happening the church, Gen Y has been exposed to stories of Christian leaders marriage infidelities (or in the Roman church, headlines of Catholic priests and bishops fathering children), which was soon followed by stories of financial indiscretions. A new genre emerged that argues that the truth about Jesus and early Christianity had been covered up by the church. And faith increasingly mixed with politics, especially (but not exclusively) in America with the alliance between conservative Christians and the GOP.

In the 25 years of my life, the church has been presented as irrelevant, anti-intellectual, medieval, chauvinistic and homophobic. According to the new atheists, it is dangerous for you. It is increasingly portrayed in newspapers such as the SMH as being run by reactionary, self-interested grey-haired men. This is the image that the average non-Christian first year starting university this year will have in their mind.

How do you evangelize someone who thinks of Christianity like this? I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Asylum

Four friends on the illegal refugee situation in Australia:

Michael Jensen - Sink or swim? What to do with boat people

Meredith Lake -A home for the persecuted and the poor? and Boat people: a challenge to Australian sovereignty?

Alison Moffitt - Two cents on Asylum Seekers

Jeremy Smith -Christmas Island – have a read!

Lo, I Am With You Always

"For some centuries the idea of the Holy Roman Empire enthralled the minds of men. For a still longer period the idea of the Holy Roman See held undisturbed sway over Western Christendom. To those who take a comprehensive view of the progress of Christianity, even these more lasting obscurations to the truth will present no serious difficult. They will not suffer themselves to be blinded thereby to the true nobility of Ecclesiastical History; they will not fail to see that, even in the seasons of her deepest degradation, the Church was still the regenerator of society, the upholder of right principle against selfish interest, the visible witness of the Invisible God; they will thankfully confess that, notwithstanding the pride and selfishness and dishonour of individual rulers, notwithstanding the imperfections and errors of special institutions and developments, yet in her continuous history the Divine promise has been signally realised 'Lo I am with you always even unto the end of the world.'" - J.B. Lightfoot, The Christian Ministry.

God, in his 'foolishness', shamed the wisdom of the wise in his crucified Son and Messiah. And he continues to work through weak and broken agents like us to bring everything under the lordship of Christ. Even at it's worst "the Church was still the regenerator of society, the upholder of right principle against selfish interest, the visible witness of the Invisible God".The church exists not for its own sake, but as the assembly of God, is the pillar and bulwark of truth. And as the assembly of God, Christ is with us always, "even unto the end of the world"