Theological News On-Line

Issue 38    June 2005	'Promoting Biblical Truth by Networking Theologians'

Published by Theological Commission of the World Evangelical Alliance

Editor: David Parker dparker@pacific.net.au
email distribution: Dr.Paul C. Murdoch Murdoch@ead.de

Welcome to WEA Theological News On-Line - this is the on-line version of our printed quarterly, WEA Theological News (ISSN 0260-3705). WEA TN On-Line is issued approximately monthly. The content of the printed and on-line versions overlap but are not identical. We also publish Evangelical Review of Theology. For more information, visit our website www.worldevangelical.org/tcpubs.html#ert

We welcome news reports on theological matters for both versions - they can cover theological institutions, conferences, publications, faculty, trends and developments, etc. of interest to evangelical theologians around the world.

For more information on the work of the Theological Commission, contact the Executive Chair, Dr Rolf Hille at r.hille@bengelhaus.de

In this issue:

•  TC Member Cameo - Per D Pedersen
•  Pattaya Forum Papers Published On-Line
•  'Grass Roots Theology on the Move'
•  Book Review: On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism
•  Theological Commission releases new book on its 30 year History
•  Theological News now available on CD-ROM

Cameo of New TC Member - Per D Pedersen

The WEA TC welcomed some new members to its panel at the last annual planning and strategy meeting. In this issue we feature the last cameo introducing them. Pastor Per Damgaard Pedersen serves with the Church of Denmark in its Mission in Armenia. Per was born 1967, and undertook theological studies in Aarhus, Denmark (The Lutheran School of Theology in Aarhus and Aarhus University) and Tübingen, Germany (Albrecht-Bengel-Haus and Eberhard-Karls-Universität), gaining the Master of Theology degree. From 2000 to 2004 he conducted theological research at the Lutheran School of Theology, Aarhus, Denmark, and is at present doctor-grade student at the Norwegian Lutheran School of Theology in Oslo, Norway. Since 2004, he has been living with his family in Yerevan, Armenia, since 2004, where he studies the Armenian language and theology, and prepares for his work as teacher at the theological faculty of the Armenian Church (Gevorkean Theological University, Holy Etchmiadzin). He is a theological advisor to the head of the Armenian Church, Karekin II. The TC warmly welcomes Per and commends his strategic work to the prayerful support of its friends.

LCWE Pattaya 2004 Forum Reports now Published On-line

Nearly all of the new Lausanne Occasional Papers generated by Issue Groups from the 2004 Forum for World Evangelization are now available online at www.lausanne.org All LOPs and other documents from the 2004 Forum are being placed in an LOP Compendium, being produced by William Carey Library. The Compendium is scheduled for completion by this fall. Please be praying for the team doing the final editing and formatting of the LOPS for the Compendium. Forum Issue Group 8, Transformation of Cities, is making their LOP available now in print: Towards the Transformation of Our City-Regions. Forum Issue Group 30, Business as Mission, is making resources available at www.businessasmission.com. There you may read and download, among other items: " Business as Mission Report/Paper (Lausanne Occasional Paper); " Business as Mission Manifesto in several different languages (more to be added); " An extensive Resource Directory on Business as Mission.

Naomi A. Frizzell, Lausanne ENewsletter, May 2005 communications@lausanne.org 

Editor's Note: WEA Theological Commission members participated actively in the following Issue Groups

• IG2 - THE UNIQUENESS OF CHRIST IN A POSTMODERN WORLD AND THE CHALLENGE OF WORLD RELIGIONS (Dr R Hille, Convenor; Dr C Schwambach, Theologian; Per D Pedersen; Dr G Vandervelde)
• IG14 - THE REALITIES OF THE CHANGING EXPRESSIONS OF THE CHURCH (Dr D Parker, Theologian)
• IG22 - RECONCILIATION AS THE MISSION OF GOD: Faithful Christian Witness in a World of Destructive Conflicts and Divisions (Dr K Gnanakan, Leadership team)
• IG29 - BIOETHICS: Obstacle or Opportunity for the Gospel? (Dr B Edgar)

Grass Roots Theology on the Move

by Mr. Jim Harries, Interim Academic Dean of Kima International School of Theology, Kenya, and coordinator of Yala Theological Centre, Kenya.

Evangelical theology being firmly rooted in the post-reformation and modern world meets one of its most difficult challenges when crossing language and cultural barriers. What happens to theology when 'Holy Spirit' is translated into the language of a people who regularly interact with many 'spirits' and whose lives are oriented to benefiting from the manipulation of powers of the universe? What happens to the interpretation of Paul's teaching's on law when shared with a people who are daily struggling to know how to respond to ancestral laws that threaten to engulf their whole lives? How are Jesus' activities interpreted by those who do not pass quietly over the fact that he was frequently involved in exorcisms, but take that as the core of his mission?

These questions are faced head-on by theological teaching programmes working in the non-western world at grass-roots level in local languages. One such programme is Yala Theological Centre in Western Kenya which is now 11 years old and has reached an estimated 1000+ students through extension teaching to villages in the vicinity of Yala. Theological challenge is constantly heightened through the efforts of the above centre to reach indigenous churches (AIC's). Members of indigenous churches are strongly attracted to evangelical teaching due to its live and radical character but struggle with its close engagement with modernity.

Of necessity low-budget so as to mingle and merge with a poor community at grass roots level, Yala extends its teaching into the surrounding community using teachers who are themselves students of theology part-time at residential colleges. Lack of academic credentials are more than made up for by a high degree of cultural relevance and the penetration that such enables to teachers travelling by bicycle and on foot to meet church leaders on a weekly basis in their home areas. Classes are discussion based culminating in a small test and last for two hours.

A challenging recent development is the so-far encouraging welcome given to the Yala leadership in its seeking to open a similar centre in the nearby (25 miles distant) town of Siaya. Although capital to an administrative district, Siaya is also in the heart of a very poor region of Kenya relatively untouched by missions due to its low-lying, unpleasantly hot and hostile climatic conditions. The people of this region are renowned for their continuing strong adherence to ancient traditional legal systems rooted in the fear of ghost-revenge and taboo avoidance. It is hoped that teaching at this newly initiated centre will begin in January 2005. The new Centre will continue to relate closely with Yala for advice, guidance and at least initially teachers.

Siaya - why low budget?

An expectation that a white man coming to set something up would be expected to have funds set aside for the purpose requires that the starting up of a project be widely known, so that no-one later accuses the initiator of it of keeping the white man to himself and thus denying others access to his budget. Our contact man in Siaya was confused, because in our first meeting I did not hand over one penny, or mention having any funds set aside for this initiative. He wanted to know more of what exactly we were planning to do before publicising our meeting.

Our Director eventually went to see him, the Tuesday after the day of our originally intended meeting. He was able to explain to him that we had no budget for the Siaya programme. This now resulted in another dilemma. Calling people for a meeting with a white man means calling them to money. Inviting them to a meeting with a white man who had no money, is confusing! Any committee appointed as a result of such a meeting could easily be short-lived, as committee members would not persist without payment.

On the other hand, not publicising our programme could reduce participation in its opening. The decision made was not to call another meeting, but rather simply to publicise the beginning of teaching, that was for 15th January 2005. It is planned initially to have one three hour class from 10.00am to 1.00pm every Saturday in Siaya. Students will pay an annual fee of £5.50 to participate in these classes. This seems to be a good solution.

There is a lot of 'poverty' in Siaya. I am hearing that now hunger is biting deeply. This 'poverty' must be understood in context. African religion is strongly oriented to the dead. Elaborate funerals and memorial services on behalf of the dead continue in the midst of 'poverty'. Our message is: knowing God is more important than pleasing the dead. We can only really know that this message has been accepted if or when people are happy to divert funds set aside for looking after the dead, into the studying of God's Word. In other words, the current hunger does not only mean that there is no money available, but that other things take priority over business and food production. Freedom from allegiance to the dead does hold promise in this world as well as the next!

Such a level of 'poverty' means that people will participate in anything that promises funds, even should that amount of funds be very small in British terms. In the African culture it is appropriate to please a visitor, and to avoid confrontation at all costs. This makes it extremely difficult to get realistic feedback from students. Hence one can have a class full of students saying that what they are learning is wonderful, even when it is irrelevant, as long as material reward is in view. This leaves the teacher in ignorance, and this ignorance in turn prevents him from addressing biting issues, such as the rule of the dead mentioned above. Not offering material award, and requiring a fee, leaves students free to be honest about what they are to be taught, and to vote with their feet.

Operating in this way does not give the foreigner an unfair competitive edge. Paying my students to listen to me means that no local person could do what I am doing, and of course should I leave everything quickly collapses. This is already a big problem here in Kenya - indiscernible foreign teaching of no relevance and help is worthwhile because it comes cheap, free, or even with food thrown in. Meanwhile any accumulation of local and meaningful Christian knowledge is despised.

This also means that we do not expect an easy ride. As also in Yala, after 11 years we still struggle. Many people express great interest in our programme, but then never put that interest into practice. This has become normal for us. So in Siaya we are likely to face much opposition, but by the grace of God and in the course of time a love for God's word can be planted deeply in peoples' hearts.

Book Review

On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism: The Postwar Evangelical Coalition. By Jon R. Stone. 1997; paperback ed., New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. x + 229 pp. Paper $18.95.

A revised and expanded version of a 1990 University of California at Berkeley Ph.D. dissertation, this volume's primary contribution lies in its application of boundary formation theory to understanding the major spokesmen (in this case, the gendered noun is intentional) for North American evangelicalism. Building on the work of anthropologists Fredrik Barth, Mary Douglas and Arthur Cohen, Stone explores the social structural dynamics at work in this select segment of evangelicalism's perennial attempts to clearly demarcate its boundaries vis-à-vis developments in twentieth century modernity.

He charts this quest beginning with the fundamentalist reaction to turn-of-the-century liberalism (Chap. 3); continuing through the emergence of the "new" evangelicalism from the 1940s through 1960s which reacted to the fundamentalist rejection of the modern world on the one hand even while struggling to check the leftward drift toward liberalism-symbolized by the ecumenical movement, social involvement, and neo-orthodox theology-on the other (Chap. 4); and concluding with the fragmentation of the evangelical coalition since the 1960s evidenced by in-house debates over inerrancy in the 70s and the emergence of progressivism within the evangelical movement in the 80s (Chap. 5). (I would also note that evangelicalism's concerns with open theism in the 90s further confirms the author's hypotheses about the movement). Throughout, Stone's displays a deft handling of his sources, both primary and secondary, excellent judgment regarding the importance of the various issues, incidents, and persons relative to his argument, and expert sensitivity to the subtleties and nuances of evangelical rhetoric and polemics.

Stone's conclusion that there is no such thing as "evangelicalism"-since there are, in fact, a variety of evangelicalisms - should not be surprising to scholars of religion. Yet insofar as studies of evangelicalism conducted by evangelicals have neglected to focus on the ideological factors at work in establishing social, theological, and ecclesiastic identity, this volume alerts evangelical researchers themselves to the complexity of the movements quests for boundaries. As important for readers of this journal are the suggestive lines of inquiry for the larger academic study of religion in general and new religious movements (NRMs) in particular. Certainly, the nature of sectarian and alternative religious movements has meant that scholarly work on NRMs inevitably confronts the question of the relationship between NRMs and modernity.

Stone's work, however, throws into sharp relief the fact that this relationship is itself embedded in a dynamic social matrix which manifests a continuously shifting spectrum of mediating positions. Thus the ideological web of discourse reveals the unpredictable movement of boundary lines since former "enemies" can become partners and former "friendships" can become strained as new cultural situations emerge. Arguably, this boundary approach to particular NRMs along with their histories would both illuminate "insider" perspectives on their relationships with those "outside," and provide further strategies to religious studies scholars for assessing the cultural and religious locations of such groups.

My only suggestion regarding Stone's method would be to enlarge the net to include more explicit attention to how religious practices and symbols function as boundary markers. Throughout the book, for example, the observation is made that evangelicals were clearly conscious of the differing responses to social action available to them between the sectarianism of fundamentalism on their right and the "accommodationism" of liberalism on the left. Here, discussion of distinctively evangelical social practices and sociopolitical actions would have highlighted particular efforts to construct and maintain boundaries. Another case in point concerns evangelical ecumenism. Here again, anti-ecumenical rhetoric did not always fall in line with evangelical activities and relationships. So the boundaries were definitely blurred by evangelically motivated ecumenism, yet the particularly ecumenical practices were themselves constitutive of evangelical understandings of such boundaries.

Finally, what about symbolic markers? Stone's book hints at various places about the important place of the Bible in the evangelical consciousness. Other symbolically charged items might include hymnals, stained glass windows, and conceptions of "the world". More explicit attention to how such symbols function as boundaries would have enhanced this analysis. And it seems self-evident that the assessment of symbols, practices, and ideology together would advance current research on NRMs as well.

Reviewed by Amos Yong, Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota

Theological Commission releases new book on its 30 year History

The WEA Theological Commission has released a book telling the story of its ministry, which began officially thirty years ago but had a pre-history commencing in 1968. Written by Dr David Parker, Director of Publications for the TC, the 140 page book titled Discerning the Obedience of Faith: a short history of the WEA Theological Commission, and is an updated and expanded edition of articles first published in the Evangelical Review of Theology during the 30th anniversary year, 2004. It contains 24 photos illustrating most of the key leaders and events, a list of TC publications and an appendix with its main activities and events. It has been published for the TC by Theological Book Trust, Bangalore, India, and is available for purchase at a cost of US $5 plus postage from India or from the TC Office in Australia (see contact details elsewhere in this page).

In 1968 Dr Bruce Nicholls, serving on the faculty of Union Biblical Seminary, Yeotmal, India, was appointed Theological Coordinator for the World Evangelical Fellowship (WEF), and with the assistance of Mr John Langlois, began the Theological Assistance Programme (TAP). In 1969, they began publishing WEA Theological News. This work developed rapidly and in 1974, the WEF developed the TAP by establishing it as a Commission. Dr Bruce Nicholls served as Executive Director until 1986. He was succeeded by Dr Sunand Sumithra, Dr Bong Rin Ro, and then Dr James Stamoolis. Currently, Dr Rolf Hille of Germany serves in the dual role as Executive Director and Chair of the TC.

Theological News now available on CD-ROM

All issues of the TC newsletter, WEA Theological News since its inception in 1969 up to the end of 2004 are now available on CD-ROM. The CD which is available from the TC's Australian office (see contact details elsewhere in this page) is fully searchable and also presents each page of the newsletter in its original format in PDF for easy reading. The CD costs US $35 including postage. WEA TN has been issued quarterly but there have been some occasions when it was not published.

During the 35 year period included on this CD, a wide range of news of evangelical theology and theological education has been covered, as well as information about the work of the TC itself. It therefore provides an invaluable easily accessible record of global activity. It will enable libraries and others who have not been able to receive the newsletter from the beginning to have the information it contains available to their readers.

WEA Theological News On-line

This is an electronic edition of WEA Theological News (ISSN 0260-3705) published by World Evangelical Fellowship Theological Commission; Chair: Dr Rolf Hille http://www.worldevangelical.org/theology.html 

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WEA Theological News

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