Category: Cultural Reflections

Persons with dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease, frequently are ignored in worship planning. Those who are institutionalized in healthcare facilities often are not even assumed to be able to worship. But with proper planning, multisensory worship can be remarkably meaningful to those with all levels of dementia. Pastor Barbara Schultze outlines some of the strategies that can incorporate persons with dementia more fully into the worshipping body of Christ.

In the African American tradition, preaching is central to the worship service, and black preaching distinguishes itself from other forms by using a style that is meant to move the listener to respond. Using techniques such as whooping and call and response, black preaching is about style, performance, and eliciting a feeling, and in its best form does more than entertain or use theatrics to conceal a lack of study. Though other groups may employ these techniques, they developed out of the African American contemporary experience and history and function as both calls of lament and cries for justice in light of the community’s struggles. The heritage and experience of black preaching calls for its continued and valuable use in the African American community.

Drawing on God’s call throughout Scripture to remember, Massey gives the reader three ways to find security in God and faith during our country’s current unstable economic situation. First, he calls us to remember God our Creator, who is near to us. We must remember our Creator as an act of obedience and honor in both good and bad times. Second, we must remember the grand examples of faith who have gone before us. This legacy of faith from Scripture and our own communities strengthens us to face our current problems. Third and most importantly, we must remember Jesus Christ, his life, death, and resurrection. In him we find our identity and share in his life despite our current situation. Remembering in these ways will sustain us in our faith.

Allelopathy in plants prevents the growth of other species in the same vicinity. The flamboyant and friendly sunflower exhibits this anti-social tendency. This article applies the condition of allelopathy found in sunflowers to mission and ministry settings.

In “Dates, Gatorade and Ramadan”, U.S. Army chaplains Gordon Groseclose and Steven Hokana, both Evangelicals, discuss the religious accommodations they and their colleagues have made for Muslim soldiers.  The article explains the unique Army chaplain doctrine of perform or provide, and how they joined it with their Evangelical faith in order to reach out to fellow soldiers of different faiths.  The authors also contrast duty to perform or provide with a description of the apprehension some chaplains may have with offering religious support to Muslims.  In response, the authors make the case that providing support to non-Christian soldiers is an honest expression of Christian hospitality, among the highest virtues listed in Scripture. “Dates, Gatorade and Ramadan” is not intended as an exhaustive discussion on ecumenism or encouraging synchronistic beliefs; rather, the article is meant to spur discussion among theology students and to be an entry point for laypeople to further our understanding of what it means to be Christian in a pluralistic society.

Chaplain Groseclose referred to giving Gatorade and dates to Muslim students during Ramadan within his panel remarks at the Association of Theological Schools’ consultation on Christian Hospitality & Pastoral Practices in a MultiFaith Society in September 2010.

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