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Showing posts from September, 2020

Adoption and Postmodern Tribalism

  Perhaps you have been following the story about President Donald Trump’s recent choice for the Supreme Court in the United States of America.  And perhaps you have heard the opposition to his pick of Amy Coney Barrett because of her adoption of black, Haitian children.   How can this be a bad thing?  To understand this reasoning, one has to understand the changing worldview in the West from Modernity to early Postmodernity to late Postmodern tribalism.   We need to understand that all the talk about ‘Postmodernity’ is unhelpful if we do not recognize the changes from early to late Postmodernity.   Modernity could say, 'All lives matter' because of its belief in nature and science and truth--essentially still agreeing with pre-Modernity and religious faith on such issues as objective truth and the fundamental reality of nature/Creation.  Modernity did not always oppose racism and could even end up with Apartheid and eugenics!  But an opposition to racism during Modernity was

Identity Ecclesiology: Regarding Willie James Jennings’ ‘Can ‘White’ People be Saved?’, and a Positive Alternative in a Biblical Theology and Ethic of Unity

  Introduction In a previous discussion, I suggested that our Western tribalism [1] in late Postmodernity has entered Christian studies in the form of ‘identity ecclesiology’. [2]   The notion of the ‘multicultural church’ refashions Christian identity around racial categories.   Rather than removing ethnic classifications from our concept and practice of Christian community, this notion—like racism itself—reintroduces them.   There is, however, a much more sinister notion of identity ecclesiology than multiculturalism.   The latter, at least, does not denounce some ethnicity or ethnically related identity.   It might celebrate ethnic diversity per se rather than focus identity in Christ, but it cannot be said to be itself racist.   The new form of identity ecclesiology, vociferously denying the accusation, is itself racist. [3]   One author pressing this view is Willie James Jennings in his ‘Can White People be Saved?   Reflections on the Relationship of Missions and Whiteness.’ [

The Misuse of Matthew 18.15-17 for Conflict Management, Airing Personal Grievances, and Institutional Control

Introduction   In Matthew 18.15-17, Jesus says, 15 If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. 16 But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.  17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector (ESV). Is this passage about conflict management, airing personal grievances, and ultimately about institutional control, or is it about addressing sin, pastoral care of sinners, and a Christian community's purity? The Text is about Dealing with Sin, Not about Conflict Resolution This passage is used, rightly, to address a progressive approach to deal with a sinner’s sin in the church, mentioned in verse 17.  The progression presents an ethic of care for the sinner in which care is taken to s