Latin American Theology Fraternity

The introduction deals with the ideas of authority and perspective, and how they function properly in the process of Biblical interpretation. A key idea is that reading is a dialogue between the text and the reader. Both sides have a role to play. If we acknowledge this, then we must also acknowledge that the perspective of the reader has some significance in how the Bible is interpreted and exercises authority. This dialogical reading transcends the categories of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, and

Galindo analyzes that the fundamental “mission” of a congregation is the same as any other congregation that exists in any part of the world. He argues that though every congregation has a mission and a vision, at the same time, it shares a basic common mission. (43) This reminds me of my home church The First Church of Evanston and my Field Site, The Evanston Vineyard Church. Both churches have a common mission of welcoming people to the church, irrespective of their ethnic, cultural, racial, and economic and, gender backgrounds. The mission is to help people be received in the house of God with due and deserved Christian love so that they feel loved and welcomed. Both these churches encourage church attendees to attend the service and receive the Eucharist.

This semester, as a class, we have peeled away the layers of what evangelicalism and fundamentalism means throughout history, especially in our Western culture. I am intrigued with them both and their very presence in many of our modern-day congregations, as well as the secular parts of our society. After visiting Grace Covenant Church of Austin, Texas, many of the attributes that have been emphasized in books such as Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage by Donald Dayton and American Apocalypse by Matthew Sutton, I experienced while visiting Grace.

As we have peeled away the layers of what evangelicalism and fundamentalism means throughout history, especially in our Western culture I am intrigued as to both and their very intense presence in many of our modern-day congregations. “Yet, the vast majority of evangelicals around the world today hail from Holiness, Pentecostal, and charismatic congregations”. After visiting Grace Covenant Church of Austin Texas, much of those aforementioned ‘typical’ contributions that have been emphasized in books such as The American Evangelical Story by Douglas Sweeney and American Apocalypse by Matthew Sutton, I experienced ever present at Grace.

The overall purpose of the Roland Allen’s book is to convey the dramatic differences between the methods of modern day missionary organizations

“Dayton’s specific contribution to American religious historiography: popularizing and making accessible a tradition of evangelical social activism” (Dayton and Strong 19).The authors had discovered an evangelical social activism that had been buried and largely forgotten. “Indeed, this social-reform heritage represented the natural fruit of evangelical piety while the now-dominant post-fundamentalist forms of (neo-) evangelicalism represent a deflection from (and perhaps a hijacking of) authentic evangelical identity” (Dayton and Strong 20). Therefore, contemporary American evangelicalism were often portrayed as right wing and socially conservative. What surprise me in this book is that Dayton examines include: Jonathan Blanchard, Charles Finney, Theodore Weld, Arthur and Lewis Taipan, Orange Scott and Luther Lee. They are all from the Arminian end of the evangelical spectrum. If Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney can both be regarded as evangelicals - it raises the question as to how effective and/ or appropriate is the evangelical label? On the other hand, we can see the pattern of reform by Graham by saying, that, “I am convinced that God has called me to be a New Testament evangelist, not an Old Testament

Evangelism in Latin American has many differences because of their unique situations while the Latin America was impacted by the other evangelical approaches in the same way as “indigenization” of mission as Arias states. (384) Its unique situation is Spanish conquest with Catholic, which also brought evangelization, civilization, and colonization all together. (387) After the big movement, the Protestant evangelization impacted many sides of religious and social and economic structures by western missionaries. Later on, Pentecostal movements force them to change their nature of their life as “leave the world,” which was followed by effort to overcome the cultural contextualization with humanization and liberation. (397) This step would be

The arrival of the Jesuits in Mexico occurred after a failed attempt at the Florida Mission. Cushner describes the area of concentration of the Jesuits as the Four Rivers of Sinaloa (Cushner, 49). For the Spanish crown, conversion was the way to expand economic interests, not to mention the acquisition of new land. The Jesuits began working with the Chichimeca Indians, which led to a bloody, drawn-out conflict called the Chichimeca War of 1550 -1590 (Cushner, 50). According to William Bangert, In Mexico, by 1600, the Jesuits had contacted the Chichimeca Indians and were successful in transforming them from “migrants and warriors” into “villagers and farmers” (Bangert, 165). Bangert further asserts that it was Gonzalo de Tapia, described

Samuel Escobar gets most of his statements from the bible and other materials that is biblically oriented. I believe that this is a good document. Samuel Escobar speaks about the Gospel and what the Gospel is throughout his paper. He thanks all of the people that are helping to spread the Gospel; I believe that this document is really a biblical document, founded on biblical principles. He lets us know that the Church is God’s agent of evangelism. He tells us how the aim of his paper is to ask how the Bible presents the Church, and “what it means biblically to say the Church is God’s agent of evangelism. I also believe that The Social Responsibilities of Evangelization is scripturally based. George Hoffman believes that you have to spread the Gospel to everyone, even the poor. He tells us the responsibilities that come with Evangelization. He explains to bear one another’s burdens we must understand what it means share one another’s burdens. George Hoffman gives us good insight of the Gospel, and the responsibilities that come with it. I fully believe that this is a founded on biblical principles and is a wonderful

Today I attended Rios de Agua Viva Christian Pentecostal Church to say this church was different from mine would be an understatement. It was nothing like what I had anticipated and was everything I was hoping not to experience. Like every church it had its good and it’s bad. All in all it was perfect for those who go to church there. Being that it was not my religion, I felt extremely uncomfortable and out of place. I did however feel that what they were doing was making a difference for those few people in attendance. They were talking about God and that for me was great.

Evangelicalism did not evolve or operate in a space. It is essential to consider the ways in which members of this group participated in and changed their culture, and, conversely, to assess how its social context provided both the ideas which evangelicalism adopted or transformed and those which it actively rejected or resisted. As movements that came of age during the first half of the nineteenth century, Evangelical Protestantism can be understood most clearly in the political, economic, and religious contexts of post-revolutionary American society. Although the movement would come to effect profound changes in its society it was very much in a sense that the culture had grown ripe for its emergence. The tension between

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century the nature and authority of scripture have been issues regarding the Christian Faith. Throughout this paper the nature and authority of scripture will be surveyed in reference to three theological movements: Evangelical, Liberal, and Neo-Orthodox. All three theological movements will be explored by examining the issues, implications, and analysis and application of the Evangelical, Liberal, and Neo-Orthodox movements.

Escobar understood that evolving cultures may not always be in line with traditional Christian beliefs. Missionary work needs to investigate each new situation for the best possible outcome of all involved. Escobar proposed a missionary work that assigns the bond faith with in its tasks. He hails the success of spiritual works as integral to a mission. The overall effort must bring forth the involvement of each person who desires to share their faith socially. The projected outcome would be a church able to combine its mission objective with the desire to share its faith with others.

In class we discussed various meanings for what it means to be a missionary. Overall we came to the general conclusion on the first day of class 09/07/2016 that a missionary is someone who goes to a different community to help fulfill some sort of purpose. The words italicized is what we as a class decided are integral parts of the identity and mission of a missionary. In addition to this baseline definition we also discussed possible reasons in which one may feeled compelled to take on a mission. Some of the ideas brainstormed include: taking on the mission to fulfill a calling, for gratification, or for religious and ideological agendas. The reading I will be focusing on is from Albert Schweitzer 's The Primeval Forest specifically the chapter titled “The Mission”. The reading fits into this definition quite well. Specifically the chapter shows a lot about Schnitzer 's purpose and reasons for embarking on a mission trip in the Ogowe.

Jesus commanded the whole church to evangelize, and He expected that the disciples would obey.