scholarly journals An Evaluation of the Implementation of Natural Church Development Within Seventh-day Adventist Churches in the United States and the Resulting Church Growth

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Mills
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Church Growth ◽  
The United States ◽  
Seventh Day Adventist ◽  
Church Development ◽  
Natural Church Development

Neopentecostalism, Marketing, and New Technologies of Self

2021 ◽  
pp. 191-236
Author(s):  
Virginia Garrard
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Church Growth ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Prosperity Gospel ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Spanish Speaking

Chapter 5 explores the instrumentality of South America’s megachurches, with particular emphasis on how they have translated global Pentecostal doctrines, most notably the near-magical tropes of church growth and of prosperity gospel, to address culturally specific concerns within the larger context of late modernity and neoliberalism. The churches’ tropes of evangelization, church growth, education, improved family dynamics, and other capacity-building techniques, often framed in religious language and methods, can and often do provide believers with what I call “new technologies of self” that help them cope in a secular world that they philosophically abjure. In particular, the Brazilian megadenomination Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus uses modern R&D strategies to position itself in a given spiritual marketplace, as evinced here by a case study in the church’s work among Spanish-speaking immigrants in the United States.

“Ye Shall Know Them By Their Fruits”: Evolution, Eschatology, and the Anticommunist Politics of George McCready Price

2014 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 684-722
Author(s):  
Carl R. Weinberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Christian Right ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Context ◽  
Seventh Day Adventist ◽  
Creation Science ◽  
Early Experiences ◽  
New Christian Right ◽  
The Impact

George McCready Price (1870–1963) is best known as the Canadian-born Seventh-day Adventist amateur geologist who pioneered the idea of a young earth in the early twentieth century. Price laid the foundation for modern “creation science,” which took off decades later, with the publication of Henry Morris and John Whitcomb Jr.'sThe Genesis Floodin 1961. Despite his extensive writings on the details of geology, however, Price admitted that his main objections to evolution were not scientific but “moral” and “philosophical”—the “fruits” of the “corrupt tree” of evolution. Historians have almost entirely neglected this aspect of Price's opus; yet, Price authored a series of works from 1902 to 1925 that, in increasingly alarming tones, blamed evolution for socialism and communism. This article analyzes these works by examining Price's Adventist background, his early experiences working and living in the United States, and the broader political context in which he wrote. It also assesses the impact of Price's political writings on subsequent generations of creationists and conservative evangelicals. Price should be seen as part of the long process by which a New Christian Right was forged from materials including creationism and anticommunism. He was not only a geologist but also a creationist politician.

scholarly journals Identity through style : the transatlantic dissemination of Anglican and Episcopalian neo-Gothic church architecture

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kate M. Kocyba
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Church Architecture ◽  
Church Development ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Oxford Movement ◽  
Gothic Revival ◽  
High Church ◽  
Protestant Denominations

In the nineteenth century the Episcopalians used Gothic Revival architecture for dogmatic purposes to define their status among Protestant denominations and secure their place in the United States of America. The discussion of neo-Gothic churches in America usually begins after the arrival of the English theological Oxford Movement in the 1830s. I claim the political changes that occurred with the American Revolution along with early nineteenth century American tensions between low and high church Episcopalians fostered a distinct American Episcopalian neo-Gothic church development. Through exchanges of ideas between English and American clergy and architects, American Episcopal High Church architecture developed and spread throughout the United States. By examining specific churches, including those by Frank Wills and Richard Upjohn, in context of Anglican and Episcopalian doctrine, its liturgical practices, and publications by architects and English and American ecclesiological societies, I show how and why neo-Gothic churches became solidified as a signifier of and reinforced the Episcopal faith.

The Legacy of Elisabeth Maria Redelstein, RN

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 291-301
Author(s):  
Chigemezi-Nnadozie Wogu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Seventh Day Adventist ◽  
Social Intervention ◽  
World War ◽  
Health Empowerment ◽  
Women's Emancipation ◽  
Educating Nurses ◽  
Second World

Popularly known as “the China Nurse,” Elisabeth Redelstein was one of the most influential missionary nurses the Seventh-day Adventist Church ever had. Her life of service included her caring for patients in the United States, China, and Taiwan. Her devotion to work led her into friendship with the ruling family of China in the 1930s. Her zeal for health empowerment, including educating nurses in China and Taiwan, arose from her passion for women’s emancipation. Her commitment to the gospel and evangelization led her to engage in relief, social intervention, and rehabilitation efforts in Germany following the Second World War.

White Evangelicals as a “People”: The Church Growth Movement from India to the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-146
Author(s):  
Jesse Curtis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Church Growth ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
White Evangelicals ◽  
Church Growth Movement ◽  
Growth Movement ◽  
The Church

ABSTRACTThis article begins with a simple question: How did white evangelicals respond to the civil rights movement? Traditional answers are overwhelmingly political. As the story goes, white evangelicals became Republicans. In contrast, this article finds racial meaning in the places white evangelicals, themselves, insisted were most important: their churches. The task of evangelization did not stop for a racial revolution. What white evangelicals did with race as they tried to grow their churches is the subject of this article. Using the archives of the leading evangelical church growth theorists, this article traces the emergence and transformation of the Church Growth Movement (CGM). It shows how evangelistic strategies created in caste-conscious India in the 1930s came to be deployed in American metropolitan areas decades later. After first resisting efforts to bring these missionary approaches to the United States, CGM founder Donald McGavran embraced their use in the wake of the civil rights movement. During the 1970s, the CGM defined white Americans as “a people” akin to castes or tribes in the Global South. Drawing on the revival of white ethnic identities in American culture, church growth leaders imagined whiteness as pluralism rather than hierarchy. Embracing a culture of consumption, they sought to sell an appealing brand of evangelicalism to the white American middle class. The CGM story illuminates the transnational movement of people and ideas in evangelicalism, the often-creative tension between evangelical practices and American culture, and the ways in which racism inflected white evangelicals’ most basic theological commitments.

Is Church Development ‘Natural’?

Ecclesiology ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-336
Author(s):  
Lars Råmunddal
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Church Growth ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Growth Theory ◽  
Church Development ◽  
Natural Church Development ◽  
The Church ◽  
Development Practice

The aim of this article is to give a theologically and scientifically based answer to the question whether church development is ‘natural’ in the sense that Christian A. Schwarz describes in his book Natural Church Development. Giving a reasonable answer to this question requires, first of all, that an analysis and assessment be done on how Schwarz’s biotic church growth paradigm is constructed and what kind of historical and theological factors have formed Schwartz’s thinking. Part of this theoretical analysis is also to find out what kind of epistemology and ecclesiological ontology seem to be the theoretical basis for Schwarz’s theory. Finally, I will contribute to the debate on the function of biotic growth theory in church development practice. Here I argue mostly out of my own previous empirical research. My conclusion will be that I cannot find any theologically and scientifically sound arguments to support the theory that church growth is natural – or biotic – as Schwarz claims. From a practical viewpoint, I conclude that there is no plausible connection between biotic theory and the church development practices recommended by Schwarz.

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