Journeys In Between

An Evangelical Manifesto

I have finished reading An Evangelical Manifesto and am pleased to say I found it refreshingly moderate. It positions evangelicalism between opposing Protestant tendencies towards liberal revisionism and conservative fundamentalism, has some very interesting things to say about the public square and engagement with other religions, and overall does a good job at clarifying evangelical Christian identity. This is a declaration I would put my name to. If you are not a Christian, read it, be informed. Actually, if you are a Christian, read it too.

Christianity in China

News of note. Christianity Today recently featured an extended article on the house church movement in China called Great Leap Forward.

Two comments struck me as ones I would particularly like to work through further.

Firstly, in response to this comment...

Yet the West has achieved and sustained a greater degree of liberty than any other culture. Hsu wondered what the West had that China didn't. "Before freedom comes, you have to have a foundation. In the West that foundation is Christianity."

How true do you think his reading of history is? Are there any signs that alternative religions or secular bodies are creating new institutions promoting justice and liberty? Do alternative religions or secular bodies truly provide a less adequate foundation for justice?

Secondly, in response to this comment...

I see the young leaders from the house church in China planting churches in southern Europe, western Europe, and Calgary and Toronto. I see them everywhere. So it's now the era of ministry from China.

Could it be that Asian, African and South American missionaries may have the more significant long term impact to Christianity in the West than the emerging church?

Christian Strangeness

The book that has really got me thinking and reflecting at the moment is “Evangelism after Christendom” by Bryan Stone. Here's just one on the quotes I have been chewing on:

“Where “apostolic” evangelism is right, of course, is its insistence that the strangeness of Christianity should not be the strangeness of Bach in a hip-hop culture. But the presumption that one can remove the “culture barrier” between the church and secular people without challenging the intrinsically individualist, consumerist, and ultimately violent presumptions of secular culture represents a blindness to the subversive, cultural and corporately embodied dimensions of Christian faith itself.” (Stone, 2007,150)

What Bryan is alluding to here, though in somewhat different language, is the crucial distinction between contextualized Christianity and syncretistic Christianity. And you know what, I am finding it deeply challenging because the deeper my awareness becomes the more I realize how truly insidious these idols of individualism, consumerism and secularism are. Yet because of the resurrection I know their time is limited, they will not have the last word. 

The book that has really got me thinking and reflecting at the moment is “Evangelism after Christendom” by Bryan Stone. Here's just one on the quotes I have been chewing on:

“Where “apostolic” evangelism is right, of course, is its insistence that the strangeness of Christianity should not be the strangeness of Bach in a hip-hop culture. But the presumption that one can remove the “culture barrier” between the church and secular people without challenging the intrinsically individualist, consumerist, and ultimately violent presumptions of secular culture represents a blindness to the subversive, cultural and corporately embodied dimensions of Christian faith itself.” (Stone, 2007,150)

What Bryan is alluding to here, though in somewhat different language, is the crucial distinction between contextualized Christianity and syncretistic Christianity. And you know what, I am finding it deeply challenging because the deeper my awareness becomes the more I realize how truly insidious these idols of individualism, consumerism and secularism are. Yet because of the resurrection I know their time is limited, they will not have the last word.