Showing papers in "Transformation in 2007"

‘Inculturation: historical background, theological foundations and contemporary questions’

Abstract: Events so welded Christianity and the West together, and the domestication of Christianity in the West was so complete, the process of acculturation there so successful, that the faith seemed inseparable from the categories of European life and thought.1 What to the insider can look like remarkably creative and successful inculturation, to the outsider can look like domestication of the faith or

‘When the Poor are Fired Up’: The Role of Pneumatology in Pentecostal-charismatic Mission

Abstract: Introduction During the one-hundred years of the modern Pentecostal-charismatic movement, it has made many impacts on Christianity in general, but its role in mission is extremely significant. The explosive growth of churches, particularly in the non-western continents, is but one example. As discussed below, there are several important roles of the Holy Sprit that are evident in the mission practices of Pentecostal-charismatic believers. However, before we take this journey of discovery, it will be helpful to clarify several issues. The first is the complexity of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity in the world today. Many have argued that the ‘fountainhead’ of the movement is found in North America at the turn of the twentieth century, especially at the Azusa Street Mission (1906-1909) under the leadership of the AfricanAmerican preacher William J. Seymour. However, more evidence has been presented to contest this theory, with India and Korea being examples. Also, the stunning ‘discoveries’ of the so-called ‘indigenous Pentecostals’ from Africa and Asia appear to support the theory of ‘multiple fountainheads’ for the origin of Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity.2 In fact, we may be arriving at the notion that ‘the church is charismatic’ after all, from its inception. As I try to represent this fastest-growing segment of Christendom, I do so with evident limitations. First, Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity is not homogenous. It encompasses classical (or denominational) Pentecostals, Charismatic (or Neo-) Pentecostals, and indigenous (or Neo-Charismatic) Pentecostals. The last category is particularly problematic because of its diversity and also because some groups in this classification advocate questionable doctrines with which orthodox Christians are not comfortable. This gives rise to the possibility of having groups that may be ‘more Pentecostal, but less Christian.’ Second, the pneumatology of groups broadly classified as Pentecostal or Charismatic is not ‘standardized.’ For example, while Classical Pentecostals feature a unique experience called ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit,’ many other groups may not necessarily subscribe to such a doctrinal statement but are, nonetheless, open to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. The rapid growth and vast diversity of this movement also poses a challenge in defining the parameters of the movement; but, as I attempt to represent this loosely identified group of Christians all over the world, here is a minimal working definition for our discussion: ‘Segments of Christianity which believe and experience the dynamic work of the Holy Spirit, including supernatural demonstrations of God’s power and spiritual gifts, with consequent dynamic and participatory worship and zeal for evangelism.’3 My reflection comes with two main points: Pentecostal-charismatics represent the ‘poor,’ for whom poverty and sickness are a part of their lives, and the core of Pentecostal-charismatic pneumatology is ‘empowerment’ for witness.

From flâneur to web surfer: Videoblogging, photo sharing and Walter Benjamin @ the Web 2.0

Abstract: From flâneur to web surfer : Videoblogging, photo sharing and Walter Benjamin @ the Web 2.0

Aura as productive loss

Abstract: This paper argues that Walter Benjamin’s concept of aura should be understood as something that actively produces loss in the technological mediation of the past and the present. The production of loss occurs in the disjuncture between the past and the present when looking at one photograph through another in which the past is experienced in the present as a spark of contingency, the future in its anteriority as potential to be rediscovered. By following the trace of technical mediation inscribed in the images, we uncover the archival future of technological becoming of media objects in which one technology supplements, competes with, and overthrows another in the struggle for hegemony in the phantasmagoria of industrialized capitalism.

Cybersurgery and surgical (dis)embodiment: technology, science, art and the body

Abstract: This paper re-examines Benjamin’s understanding of the technological mediation of reality, as presented in his Work of Art essay, in relation to the surgical mediation of the body and to conceptions of embodiment. Through a focus upon the history of surgery in Britain in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and its relationship to current (cyber)surgical practices, the paper demonstrates Benjamin’s continuing relevancy in understanding the contemporary mediation of the body through the lens of surgical technologies. Firstly, it calls attention to the historical role of the surgeon in the formation of an anatomical conception of the body, mediated through imaging and surgical technologies. Secondly, it shows how this anatomically fragmented view of the body is articulated in current surgical practices, reliant upon the digitised image of the body for the practice of surgery. The effects of the digital penetration of the body are that in attempting to bring the body closer to the surgeon, the body becomes even more fragmented and disembodied; an image on a flat screen, rather than a whole, three- dimensional, material body

‘A Mode of Training’: A Baptist Seminary's Missional Vision

Abstract: In 2003, Darrell Guder wrote about mission and theological education in an article, 'From Mission and Theology to Missionai Theology'. In this illuminating piece he traced the way in which thinking within Princeton Theological Seminary in the USA had developed in the area of mission and theological education from the nineteenth century to the present. Guder stated: 'When we describe theology as missionai, then we do imply that the work of theology is not an end in itself but is related to God's mission in the world.'1

Tillers of the soil/Travelling journeymen: modes of the virtual

Abstract: As virtual technologies increasingly mediate and redefine our experiences of the everyday, they also open up different ones. Exchanges between participants in virtual technologies take place through interconnections in manifold networks, no longer only between locally embodied selves or others. A similar combination of specific instantiation and networked relationships (as well as a formal affinity with aspects of hypertext) has frequently been observed about Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project (Dubow; Featherstone; McLaughlin). Further, Benjamin had an ongoing concern with key terms and concepts clustering around virtuality – “translatability, legibility, reproducibility, cognizability” (McLaughlin 192).

Accidental Participation in Control, in the Small of Society

Abstract: This paper draws from a longitudinal ethnographic research project in telephone call centres (Winiecki “Technology-Mediated”; Winiecki Discipline and Governmentality) to detail and describe how planned constraints and abstract potentials in the workplace are taken up and translated into other areas of life by actors such that they actually participate in the production of pieces of what might be called “control society.” In so doing, this paper attempts to approach an empirical bridge between the high level and abstract reports of “control” across and between social institutions and microand meso-sociological accounts of social action, where participation in “control” is as much an accidental doing by subjects “in the small” of society as it may be a characteristic, if abstract, feature of late modernity.