Workshop for postgraduate students

Today I am speaking at a workshop, "Surviving or thriving as a postgraduate student", organised by my church. The workshop was particularly oriented at international students who face the additional challenges of living, studying, and working in a different culture.

Here are the slides from my presentation which was interspersed with participants completing and discussing a worksheet.

False predictions of science killing God

Almost fifty years ago the anthropologist Anthony Wallace pronounced in an undergraduate textbook:

the evolutionary future of religion is extinction. Belief in supernatural beings and in supernatural forces that affect nature without obeying nature’s laws will erode and become only an interesting historical memory ... [As] a cultural trait, belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge ... the process is inevitable.

Wallace, F.C., Religion: An Anthropological View, Random House, New York (1966) pages 264-265.

Yet this has not been fulfilled. It did not deter the atheist and philosopher Daniel Dennett stating in 2007:

I’m so optimistic that I expect to live to see the evaporation of the powerful mystique of religion. I think that in about twenty-five years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe it does today.

I first heard these quotations in the introduction that Peter Harrison gave to his excellent seminar last week on "Science and Secularization."

Refusing to hear the Word of the LORD

⁸ And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, ⁹ “Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, ¹⁰ do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” ¹¹ But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. ¹² They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets.

Zechariah 7:8-12

A limited role for Westerners in the global church

Last night my wife and I attended the annual supporters dinner for TEAR in Queensland. CB Samuel, an Indian church leader, spoke about the role of Westerners in the global church. A few things he emphasized are below

Referring to the work of Philip Jenkins, the composition of the global church is dramatically different from one hundred years ago, when it was Western, white, and wealthy. Now it is predominantly, non-white and poor. These people read the Bible differently from Westerners. Samuel only elaborated briefly on this when asked. He said Westerner's tend not to believe it, particularly with regards to promises about prayer and miraculous healing. I would also be interested to know if he thinks Westerners largely filter out the texts about social justice, poverty, and the idolatry of wealth.
Australians seem quite comfortable accepting Biblical interpretations coming from the USA and Europe, but not from Asia, Africa, or Latin America. People will say to CB Samuel, "You have an interesting Indian perspective." But he doubts anyone said to John Stott, "Well that is an interesting English perspective."

India is rapidly changing. There is little reverence for the state. People has a sense that they have rights that they are demanding they be met. Many young people are becoming followers of Christ through informal networks and interactions in secular urban workplaces. The established church is playing a minor role.

There is a limited role for Westerners to play. They are more willing to take risks than others and to play a pioneering role. But they need to be quicker to hand over leadership and control to the indigenous leadership. There are certain areas where Westerners have competence they can contribute. These areas were not specified, except for documentation. [My guess would be higher education and medicine would be two others.] But they need to come with a servant attitude, come along side local workers, listen, learn, and equip. Competence does not give the right to control.

Short term missions are not effective and sometimes laughed at by locals. Direct church to church partnerships which ignore the expertise of established organisations are of limited effectiveness. [This same point was made by Ralph Winter in a paper discussed in an earlier post].

Who invented the secular?

Was it modern atheists?

Well where did the concept of sacred and secular come from?
Perhaps from Jesus who said

“So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

The idea of the secular was arguably also developed and promoted by more by Luther with his notion of "two kingdoms" and by Augustine in The City of God.

These thoughts and observations were prompted by attending some of a seminar series last year at the Centre for History of European Discourses at UQ. I wished I had got around to blogging about those I attended.

I am looking forward to the next series, Narratives of Secularisation which begins tomorrow with Peter Harrison speaking on "Science and Secularisation."

The bitterness of injustice

I have been reading through the Old Testament Book of Amos. The main theme is God's judgement (both present and forthcoming) on Israel for the injustice endemic to the society. This is very challenging today.

As an aside (which is hopefully not just an intellectual distraction) two particular verses got my attention (Amos 5:7 and 6:12):

⁷ O you who turn justice to wormwood
    and cast down righteousness to the earth!

But you have turned justice into poison
    and the fruit of righteousness into wormwood

I found these verses interesting because of the issues raised in an old post about "wormwood" in the Book of Revelation. The wormwood [just like locusts, fire, a plumbline, ...] may be an allusion to Amos.

This supports the view that Revelation is not about predicting specific events in a chronological sequence leading to the return of Jesus. Rather, it a call to Christians to perserve in living out their faith in a world full of injustice and suffering.

How can we help the poor?

Why do the poor remain poor? Are they trapped?
What is the most effective way to help them?
Why do many well-intentioned aid programs fail?

My son and I have started reading Poor Economics: a radical rethinking of the way to fight global poverty by two MIT economists.

It is very helpful and challenging. The emphasis is on finding strategies that have actually been proven to work, rather than programs Westerners think should work. The authors are also very compassionate pointing out how many of the mistakes and bad choices that the poor make are not that different to those of us in the affluent West make. For example, we often make choices (e.g. lack of exercise and poor diet) that are not in our best long term interests, even though we know what is the best thing to do.

The book emphasizes the complexity of the problem. Even simple ideas, such as getting families to use bed nets to reduce the chance of getting malaria from mosquitoes, can face significant cultural, psychological, and economic obstacles. To me, this underscores the effectiveness of holistic, indigenous led, and community based programs such as run by Compassion.