The Aporetic Witness

The opportunity that this shift from modernity to postmodernity may have opened for faith to speak to reason has not gone unnoticed by theologians. Indeed a number of what we might call poshnodern theologians have advocated various ways that Christians ought to wihless in their contemporary context. However, because these theologians have tended to mistake our postmodern world for a pluralistic world, they also have tended to write theologies that promote cultural security over faithful witness

Nonviolence, Anabaptism, and the Impossible in Communication

In a sense, the discipline of communication is all about peace. This is so because the discipline seeks to explain the relationship between communication and understanding as well as to promote better understanding through instruction in effective communication practices. Thus, all sub-disciplines of communication-from organizational communication to public address to health communication-address both theoretical and practical questions about how communication assists or frustrates human understanding. To the extent that an understanding serves as an antidote to human conflict, then, communication seeks to promote peace

Selling the Amish: The Tourism of Nostalgia

In this book, I address these and related question. Although I talk about the Amish, my primary goal is not to describe them. Many others have offered excellent accounts of the Amish, and references to their books and articles can be found in this book\u27s bibliography. Instead, my purpose is to understand Amish Country tourism and, specifically, how it attracts and sustains the interest of millions of visitors each year. The purveyors of Amish Country tourism use a variety of strategies to draw tourists in and give them pleasure during their stay, and I explore those techniques. I focus especially on the role the Amish play, wittingly or unwittingly, in providing visitors with satisfying experiences

A Genealogy of the Confession of Faith in Mennonite Perspective

This essay offers a genealogy, in the Foucauldian sense, of the Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective. Thus, it provides an account of the origins of the document and its uses over time with attention given to the politics of both. The essay argues that the Confession was critical for the merger of the General Conference Mennonite Church and the Mennonite Church especially as it took on the function of the teaching position of the church. By way of a case study, the essay explores recent uses to which the Confession has been put. The essay concludes by discussing an inherent tension in Anabaptist confessions between the desire to fix a set of common beliefs and convictions, on the one hand, and the necessity for a discursive shift both in meaning and use amid a changing context, on the other

The Bible and Creationism

Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) marked a significant challenge to traditional understandings of the Bible and Christian theology. Darwin’s theory of organic evolution stood in sharp contrast with the Genesis account of creation, with its six days, separate creations of life forms, and special creation of human beings. More than this, Darwin’s ideas raised enormous theological questions about God’s role in creation (e.g., is there a role for God in organic evolution?) and about the nature of human beings (e.g., what does it mean to talk about original sin without a historic Adam and Eve?) Of course, what really made Darwin so challenging was that by the late nineteenth century his theory of organic evolution was the scientific consensus. That is to say, American Protestants had no choice but to reckon with Darwinism. For many Protestant intellectuals, clergy, and laypersons, this was not an enormous obstacle. That is, and in keeping with previous Christian responses to scientific developments, many Protestants adjusted their understanding of the Bible and their theology to accommodate Darwin’s ideas

Righting America at the Creation Museum

On May 28, 2007, the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky. Aimed at scientifically demonstrating that the universe was created less than ten thousand years ago by a Judeo-Christian god, the museum is hugely popular, attracting millions of visitors over the past eight years. Surrounded by themed topiary gardens and a petting zoo with camel rides, the site conjures up images of a religious Disneyland. Inside, visitors are met by dinosaurs at every turn and by a replica of the Garden of Eden that features the Tree of Life, the serpent, and Adam and Eve. In Righting America at the Creation Museum, Susan L. Trollinger and William Vance Trollinger, Jr., take readers on a fascinating tour of the museum. The Trollingers vividly describe and analyze its vast array of exhibits, placards, dioramas, and videos, from the Culture in Crisis Room, where videos depict sinful characters watching pornography or considering abortion, to the Natural Selection Room, where placards argue that natural selection doesn’t lead to evolution. The book also traces the rise of creationism and the history of fundamentalism in America. This compelling book reveals that the Creation Museum is a remarkably complex phenomenon, at once a “natural history” museum at odds with contemporary science, an extended brief for the Bible as the literally true and errorless word of God, and a powerful and unflinching argument on behalf of the Christian right

Feminist Criticism of Classical Rhetoric Texts: A Case Study of Gorgias\u27 Helen

Despite the diversity of claims feminist scholars of antiquity advance, they share at least one preoccupation: the critique of patriarchy. That is, they challenge the manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women (Lerner 239) enacted in primary and secondary texts. The particular methods by which they make their critiques of women\u27s subjugation vary as much as their claims, but most can be classified into one of two categories according to their broad interests in woman as a reader or as a writer of classical texts. Using Elaine Showalter\u27s classifications, for example, we can group most of this scholarship under one of two headings: feminist criticism or gynocritics (128). Essays that concern themselves with woman as the consumer of male-produced literature, and with the way in which the hypothesis of a female reader changes our apprehension of a given text, awakening us to the significance of sexual codes (128) could fall under feminist criticism. On the other hand, studies that pertain to woman as the producer of textual meaning, with the history, themes, genres, and structures of literature by women (128) better fit in the category of gynocriticism. Both types of scholarship help to dismantle patriarchy\u27s hold on us, the former by showing how primary texts produced or perpetuated domination by men, the latter by recovering the significant contributions women made to ancient societies. Yet neither type of criticism suffices to critique patriarchy from within the Western rhetorical tradition

Response: Are American Christians Persecuted?

With an eye toward reuniting the church and the academy, this book focuses on the role that scholarship can play in making good preachers into really great preachers. This is the bridge between scholarly and popular writing that informs the sermon and makes it more powerful and meaningful for the people who regularly listen to sermons. Preachers are challenged to raise the level of their commitment to scholarship as well as overcome any pre-existing prejudices with scholarship. The preacher as scholar is the perfect way for the pulpit to respond to the challenges of a secular, post-modern world that often wonders if smart people can even believe in God

Heritage versus History: Amish Tourism in Two Ohio Towns

Judging from the relative number of tourists who visit these two sorts of towns, tourists appear to prefer views of the Amish that are provided by more rather than less touristy venues. In this essay, I compare the views of Amish offered by two towns in Ohio\u27s Amish Country. One town, Walnut Creek, is very popular among tourists; the other town, Mount Hope, is significantly less popular. Ultimately, I argue that Mount Hope is less popular than Walnut Creek largely because its representation of the Amish constitutes the tourist in ways that are less reassuring for middle Americans. But before I offer my readings of Walnut Creek and Mount Hope, I turn first to some theoretical work on tourism that addresses the question of authenticity, which is the apparent draw among tourists to the Amish

The Visible Church in a Visual Culture

We live in a visual culture. To say that is to say, in the most obvious sense, that we live in a culture that is saturated by images. They are everywhere. We see them in the expected places: on our television and computer screens, in newspapers and magazines, on billboards, in our scrapbooks and photo albums, in picture frames and coffee table books. Increasingly, we see them in unexpected places. They show up on the floors of grocery stores, the backs of ATM receipts, the sides of tractor trailers and school buses, and even on the otherwise bare stomachs of college football cheerleaders. In addition to appearing everywhere, images are available all the time and in ever increasing numbers. It\u27s worth remembering that just three decades ago, a major city like Chicago had access only to four television channels that, believe it or not, went off the air every night at midnight. Today, cable companies and satellite television services offer hundreds of channels. Each channel sends out a constant stream of images from around the world twenty-four hours a day. In addition, the World Wide Web gives us access to literally countless sites offering everything from multi-angle photographs of consumer products, to satellite images of the planet, to virtual tours of college campuses, to web cam video of someone\u27s daily life, to pornography. But to say that we live in a visual culture is not only to say that we live in a culture that is saturated by images. It is also to say that in our culture, the image is central. The image gives us access to our world. For most of us, we know our world to the extent that we see it on TV. The image shapes our choices. For most of us, we buy products and even select politicians based on their packaging or on the way in which they are presented to us largely through images. The image is key to our pleasure. For most of us, when it\u27s time to relax or have fun, we play a computer game, pop in a DVD, surf the web, or flip through the channels. The image is how we know who we are. For most of us, who we are is shaped by how our image compares to the images presented to us through our commercial culture. Thus, images are not simply ubiquitous. Increasingly, they are a central mode through which we live our very lives