Category: faith and culture

Sexual Abuse Sends out Wide Ripples of Hurt: Bruxy Cavey’s Meeting House Wreckage

November 2, 2022

when leaders go off the rails, it is not only the celebrities and their victims who crash and burn in the brush. They take with them a whole trainload of unsuspecting people who trusted them, and many who bet their lives on the leader’s integrity and vision. How does this happen in a place driven to be a balm in a bruised world? … More Sexual Abuse Sends out Wide Ripples of Hurt: Bruxy Cavey’s Meeting House Wreckage

Brain Drain in African Higher Education: Motivations and Methods for Bolstering African Educational Opportunities

October 3, 2022

Brain drain is typically understood as the growing trend of educated, emerging leaders from developing countries emigrating to foreign nations that offer better vocational opportunities, higher pay, and more desirable living conditions. This essay argues that a flourishing African continent requires students to invest in their homeland, and that methods need to keep motivations in mind. … More Brain Drain in African Higher Education: Motivations and Methods for Bolstering African Educational Opportunities

On Learnedness: A September Meditation in Light of the Queen’s Reign

September 22, 2022

Publications, appointments, awards and prizes, scholarships, bursaries and residencies may be the proofs of proficiencies in our worldly academic domains, but the gifts of good judgement, thoughtful restraint, humble presence, the seeking of truth, compromise, self-sacrifice, perseverance and mutual respect in the clamouring – at times, now contentious – hallways of the academy are still the most tangible ways we can share God.  … More On Learnedness: A September Meditation in Light of the Queen’s Reign

Grace Happens: Reconciliation in a Post-Colonial Age as the New Paradigm for Christian Mission

September 8, 2022

Reconciliation is not new to the faith, but as a paradigm for mission, it is being put in a position of greater urgency in Christian practise. Christian mission has been focused on growth, expansion, translation, transformation, and renewal. But now reconciliation must take centre stage. Reconciliation is when conflicting parties come to make amends, ideally turning to friendly relations, and right now the Church is one of the offending parties. … More Grace Happens: Reconciliation in a Post-Colonial Age as the New Paradigm for Christian Mission

Why I Changed My Mind: The Perils of Highway Charisma and the Megachurch

June 7, 2022

News of pastor Bruxy Cavey’s arrest, which comes after other sad news of his sexual transgressions, prompts me to take a more critical look on the liabilities of megachurch charisma. “Highway charisma” is my new term for the runaway power of personality fostered by megachurches and the technology that built them. … More Why I Changed My Mind: The Perils of Highway Charisma and the Megachurch

“She Supposed He Was the Gardener”: Misidentifying Jesus, An Eastertide Meditation

May 4, 2022

Mary Magdalene supposed the resurrected Jesus was the local gardener. Mary’s mistake can be our corrective, and a rich creation theology can keep us from the self-centred and earth-destroying idea that Jesus is all about the Big Me that has become the focus of our modern consumeristic world. Jesus was resurrected in his body, and that was as the first fruit of all creation. This is theology for a choking planet. … More “She Supposed He Was the Gardener”: Misidentifying Jesus, An Eastertide Meditation

Russia: Putin, Political Culture and the Weakness of Institutions

April 19, 2022

Guest blog from Dr. David Koyzis demonstrates that “a constitution will succeed only if it reflects the wishes of the people for whom it is written.” Read some background here to Putin’s autocratic regime, and note the role of traditions in constitutional development. … More Russia: Putin, Political Culture and the Weakness of Institutions