Relations between Christians and Hindus appear to have been strained recently, as militant Hindus have accused Christians of making ungodly alliances with Maoists to weaken Hinduism. Dion Forster mentioned Christianity and Hinduism in a comment on my previous post, and I’d no sooner read that than I came across the following (hat-tip to egregores): U.S. [...]
Entries from September 2009
26 September 2009
Inculturation, indigenisation, syncretism and cultural appropriation
Big words in the title, but those words are quite often used by missiologists and other students of religion to refer to one religion borrowing beliefs or practices from another. I recently wrote a blog post about the new fashion in some Christian circles for observing the Muslim fast of Ramadan (Notes from underground: A [...]
24 September 2009
Child “witches” in Congo
In recent years there have been disturbing reports about children being accused of witchcraft in Central and West Africa. There have been even more disturbing reports that some Christian groups are not only not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.
Now at last there comes some good news of some Christian groups [...]
21 September 2009
Holy Places–Thin Places
Recently Bishop Seraphim Sigrist posted some pictures of Radonezh in Russia on his blog, and asked his readers to suggest what might be the spiritual heartland of their own country. Radonezh is where St Sergius of Radonezh established his monastery at the time that the Russians were resisting Tatar imperialism, and so it is of [...]
19 September 2009
The rise and fall of the charismatic renewal movement
A couple of years ago I embarked on a research project to try to chart the history of the charismatic renewal movement in southern African Christianity. It seemed to me that its influence and aftermath had been underplayed in much of the church history I had read, and that if it wern’t recorded, many things [...]
18 September 2009
Evangelicals and Hallowe’en
John Morehead in a blog post Morehead’s Musings: Suggestions for a More Careful Evangelical Assessment at Halloween notes that as October approaches evangelical blogs and websites tend to get their knickers in a knot about neopaganism and “the occult”. He suggests an antidote to this:
For an alternative treatment of this topic I recommend Philip Johnson [...]
16 September 2009
Tales from Dystopia II: Enemies of the State
A few years ago a shortlived South African newspaper, This Day, published a list of Enemies of the Apartheid State.
The South African archives had discovered and catalogued some of the files that the government kept on people they regarded as enemies of the state. This Day published the list in several successive issues, and I [...]
13 September 2009
Death and life
For Orthodox Christians today is the Forefeast of The Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross, or at least it is for those on the new calendar.
Crucifixion as a method of execution is not commonly used today, so it is easy to miss the paradox in these terms. We might recognise it more easily [...]
12 September 2009
Another blogger in the family
Our daughter Julia Bridget, who is studying theology at Athens University, has just started her own blog, Ikonographics, which is on Orthodox theology and ikonography and liturgy. She thought that instead of having her doctoral thesis gathering dust in the university library, she might as well share some of her research findings with a wider [...]
