Categories: uncategorized
Date: 27 August 2005 20:55:05
Been to an interesting seminar I feel I should comment on, about the Post-Evangelical Debate 10 years on. It was an interesting seminar, with an outstanding panel: Robert Beckford (author of Jesus is Dread, amongst others), Maggie Dawn (blogg is of same name and well worth checking out - see my links), Dave Tomlinson (author of The Post-Evangelical) and Elaine Storkey (author of What's Right With Feminism amongst other things), which sought to (re)clarify Dave Tomlinsons work 10 years after it was first published. With the nature of the panel Storkey was put in a somewhat defensive position as the token evangelical, but it was a fairly balanced debate.
There were a few issues I had, such as the fact they did not differentiate between British and US evangelicals and evangelical subcultures (which was a shame, because there are very important cultural differences between the two) and so, as Storkey pointed out, somewhat stereotype and generalise (particularly about Baptists - I didn't know we were that bad, infact having listened to Roy Searle earlier was convinced we weren't).
There were many valid points made about it (evangelicalism) being a subculture which has dominant interpretations, and fitting in as a "respectable" evangelical can in somecases , become or feel oppressive.
It was a pity there was no real discussion on how The Post-Evangelical relates into the emergent church and churchless faith debates which have developed since the original publication of the book. As I say though, v.interesting.