School: February 2005 Archives

Tomorrow morning, I'll be hopping in a 15-passenger van with several other Goshen College folks to drive approximately 800 miles to Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, for the annual Intercollegiate Peace Fellowship (ICPF) gathering. This year's theme is "Reaching Across Boundaries Through Dialogue" and the keynote speaker is Sojourner's editor Jim Wallis.

The conference hopes to specifically address domestic divisions, making Mr. Wallis an ideal choice. His recent book, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, deals with a popular topic for Wallis, namely getting the left and right in the United States to work together in an effort to protect and provide necessities for the poor and dispossessed.

While I'm looking forward to the conference, I have to admit that I'm not too eager to travel 12-13 hours in a van (both tomorrow and Sunday). I love ground travel (particularly when I'm driving), but vans and buses don't sit well with me. My travel companions should make the trip easier to stomach, though.

My presentation on Saturday went well and, as a result, I've been asked to write a series of columns for Goshen College's newspaper, The Record, on cultural engagement. I'm excited for the opportunity, but I think I should tone down the explicit Neocalvinist rhetoric while still getting across the strengths of the tradition.

I've posted the entire paper below; I hope I've accurately represented both Neocalvinism and Wink.

Tomorrow, I'll be presenting a paper titled "Engaging the World: The Intersection of Neocalvinism and Walter Wink" at Goshen College's undergraduate research symposium. The presentation is based on a comparative book review I wrote last semester comparing and contrasting Walter Wink's Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination with the the Neocalvinist theology of creation, fall and redemption.

Wink uses a creation, fall, redemption model in his analysis of the Powers, which he identifies as "the spirituality of institutions" and "their outer manifestations." Having so defined principlaties and powers--instead of as merely disembodied spirits, ala Frank Peretti--Wink holds that structures and systems rebelling against their divine vocations is evidence of the demonic. He uses the term "Domination System" to describe what happens "when an entire network of Powers becomes integrated around idolatrous values." He goes on to argue:

Any attempt to transform a social system without addressing both its spirituality and its outer forms is doomed to failure. Only by confronting the spirituality of an institution and its concretions can the total entity be transformed, and that requires a kind of spiritual discernment and praxis that the materialistic ethos in which we live knows nothing about.

His primary thesis, then, is that the Powers are good, the Powers are fallen and the Powers must be redeemed.

In their different approaches to creation, fall, redemption, Walter Wink and Neocalvinists bring different theological strengths to the table. I'll be exploring these in my paper (which I still need to finish!) and posting them here when available.