Taken together, Renewalists grew nearly four times faster than both the Christian population and the world population from 1910 to 2010. As a result, Renewalists at the time of this writing made up between 25 and 30 percent of all Christians. In 2010 Latin America had the largest number of Renewalists in the world (especially Brazil), but Africa was close behind and may soon take the lead. The region in which Renewalists were growing the fastest was Asia. The five countries with the most Renewalists were Brazil, the United States, China, Nigeria, and the Philippines.
Liberation theology was a theological framework that systematized the preferential option for the poor and, in some cases, borrowed from the political vision of Marxism. As incompatible as they may be in other ways, both post–Vatican II Roman Catholicism and Marxism recognized that governments and societies are often organized to privilege a certain class or subgroup of citizens, leaving others on the margins without resources.
For liberationists, this meant that God’s care for the poor should be reflected in social changes that granted not only spiritual blessings but also greater access to material resources. In this way liberation theology viewed social equality and human flourishing in the temporal world as a visible sign of Christian salvation.
Reklam
"Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options. This describes Americans today. In middle school, we’re encouraged to start hoarding “extracurricular activities.” In high school, ambitious students compete even harder to appear omnicompetent. By the time a student
gets to college, he’s spent a decade curating a bewilderingly diverse résumé to prepare for
a completely unknowable future. Come what may, he’s ready—for nothing in particular.
A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “well-roundedness,” a definite person determines the one best
thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive—to be a monopoly of one. This is not what young people do today, because everyone around them has long since lost faith in a definite world. No one gets into Stanford by excelling at just one thing, unless that thing happens to involve throwing or catching a leather ball."
"The ugly and the stupid have the best of it in this world. They can sit quietly and gape at the play. If they know nothing of victory, they are at least spared the knowledge of the defeat."
Sayfa 7 - MK Publications
Luther believed that the human will was enslaved, totally unable, apart from grace, to love or serve God. But Erasmus considered this a dangerous doctrine since it threatened to relieve a person of his moral responsibility. What Luther regarded basic to biblical religion, Erasmus dismissed as inhumane.
The differences in the Reformation and the Renaissance lie right there, in the view of humanity. The Reformers preached the original sin of humanity and looked upon the world as fallen and under God’s curse. The Renaissance had a positive estimate of human nature and the universe itself.
This denominational view of the church found only limited acceptance in England, where the Church of England retained a favored position, even after the Act of Toleration in 1689 recognized the rights of Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers to worship freely. In the English colonies of America, however, the denominational theory gained increasing acceptance. It seemed to be God’s answer for the multiplying faiths in the New World.
Reklam
Reklam