Responding to Dr. Metzger’s feedback, Todd Billings states the both he and Metzger agree that the term “incarnational ministry” can be problematic if the definition is not fully understood. Billings states that where he and Metzger disagree is on using the term at all. He goes on to say that by changing a noun (“Incarnation”) into an adjective describing a ministry (“incarnational ministry”) an entirely unique act in history is made to seem like something we are to imitate today. Believing that it is rare for someone using the term to have Metzger’s depth of understanding and study, Billings considers it most prudent to describe one’s ministry as a “union with Christ” and avoid using the term “incarnational ministry” altogether.
The American Experience of a Darkening and Receding Providence: The Civil War and the Unmaking of an American Religious Synthesis
Recent studies of religion during the Civil War period have revealed an underlying theme: a widespread belief in both North and South in a particular and deterministic divine providence. In this essay, and drawing especially upon George C. Rable’s God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War, Dr. Bender outlines the details of this doctrine and argues that its intrinsic weaknesses and problems played a part in the unraveling of a Christian understanding of history in the post-war period in America. The Civil War thus stands as an important marker and event in the history of the secularization of American culture and the receding of Christian witness within and influence upon it.
Concepts of Gender and the Global Abuse of Women
Throughout human history, violence against women has been one of the greatest moral and social problems faced by societies around the world. This continues to be true today. In North America, where most women enjoy strong social empowerment and legal protection, male perpetrated abuse of females continues to be an enormous problem. In much of the majority world, violence against women is even more prevalent. God designed human gender to reflect his own image, particularly his relationality. Our gender was furthermore designed to reflect equality and to produce intimacy, joy, and life. But in our current fallen world, conceptions and experiences of gender are confused and broken and have led to various types of destructive sin, including abuse. Such distorted views of gender, particularly ones that militate against gender equality, are leading factors in the widespread global abuse of women.
Divided by Gender: How Sociology Can Help
Gender ideology and practice are perennial sources of contention within American Christian culture. We seek to apply a sociological analysis to the changes in and conflicts over gender in order to help the church engage these issues with greater clarity and insight. Building on the critical differences between the concepts of sex and gender, we show that gender ideals have changed significantly over time, within and across cultures. If culture changes, but biblical truth does not, gender ideals in the church should have remained stable over time. Utilizing the tools of sociological analysis, however, we find that the opposite has been true; Christians in different times and places have taken their cues on gender ideals and practices from their host culture, rather than from Scripture. Our hope is that recognizing this tendency toward “gender cultural relativism” will help Christians to question the assumptions about gender in both the culture and the church, re-examine Jesus’ teaching and practice, and heal the divide within the church caused by the “gender wars.”
Relative Grit: Masculinity in Flux on Film
In the 1969 and 2010 film adaptations of Charles Portis’ True Grit a girl named Mattie Ross infiltrates the male-dominated territory of the Wild West and by her resilient aggressiveness in search of justice earns the respect of the grittiest of cowboys—a Fort Smith US Marshall named Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn and a Texas Ranger named Mr. LaBoeuf—thereby not only calling into question the gender norms and boundaries of the time but also calling to life otherwise dormant aspects of the masculinity that they had made themselves. In the first film the self-made man of the western genre emerges rather vindicated, but in the latter there are indications of a new man emerging in that old country: one who finds himself in self-giving and fellowship instead. This narrative interplay serves as a modern parable not only of the shifting perspectives of American culture but also of the dynamics at play when persons aim to operate within the gender norms of their cultural contexts but not necessarily according to them. It is accessible case studies like these that may be most helpful for those aiming to break their interpretive gridlocks and speak about the practical ramifications of the gospel by which they mean to live.