This week our friends at Patheos are hosting a symposium on the future of evangelicalism. There are a number of noteworthy contributors—Mark Noll, Marvin Olasky , Andy Crouch, William Lane Craig, Rodney Stark—and a few of lesser interest (namely, me). Along with my submission (“Our Unevenly Distributed Future“), you can find essays by our Evangel bloggers Matthew Anderson (“New Life in Ancient Sources“), and Justin Taylor (“The Evangelical Reformed Movement: A Comeback“).
And in case you missed them, you can catch up on the symposiums on the future of Catholicism and Mainline Protestantism.
August 3rd, 2010 | 11:25 am
One interesting aspect of those symposiums is the list of speakers. Look at the speakers/speeches for the evangelicalism symposium and compare that with the speakers/speeches for the Catholicism symposium..the former is much more representative than the latter. Therein lies a tale…
August 3rd, 2010 | 3:42 pm
Thank you, Joe, for this warm introduction to the series. But I wanted to respond to the first comment and assure you that the “tale” behind the different scopes of the Evangelical and Catholic weeks is just that we (Patheos) only hired a Catholic Portal Manager a few weeks before the symposium on Catholicism. I could see why you might imagine a different tale,’but in this case it was just that simple. Thanks!
August 3rd, 2010 | 3:47 pm
thomas – you want to know what the “tale” is? The “tale” is that Patheos only got a (part-time) Catholic staff member on July 1 (that would be me) and the Future of Catholicism week began on July 19th. Considering it took a few days to come to speed–and that the Evangelical manager at Patheos is a full-time manager who appears to know virtually everyone and has perfected the art of Living Without Sleep–I think the Catholic portal did a respectable job of showcasing a variety of Catholic thinking on rather short notice.
Not sure about what you call “representative,” though. Is Fr. Barron “representative” but Fr. Martin “not representative?” Is J. Peter Nixon “representative” but Shu-Fy Pongnon “not representative?”
My experience of Catholicism is that the church is alive with all sorts of people, from all sorts of backgrounds, who dare to think, debate, disagree and still manage to worship Almighty God together. That’s the only “tale” I am interested in, but perhaps you have another? :-)
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