Calvin Announces First Project for New Nagel Institute

March 27, 2006 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Calvin College provost Joel Carpenter, slated to step away from that post this summer, is the first director of the new Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin. The Institute was established at Calvin this year for reflection, research and communication regarding Christianity in the global south and east.

This week the Nagel Institute announced a project it will fund which will examine primal religions as the substructure for Christianity.

"The investigators plan to look at primal religions, sometimes called traditional religions," Carpenter says, "and look at how those religions interact with the Christian faith. During all periods of Christian history the majority of those peoples who have embraced the Christian faith were previously adherents of religious traditions that are now called primal. So the Nagel Institute will convene scholars from around the world to examine this topic and then convene a seminar on campus next summer."

Carpenter says the Nagel Institute will encourage scholars in the north to reorient their scholarly work to the global south and east, and will examine the role of the diaspora Christian communities: northern diaspora faith communities such as African American churches, U.S. Latino evangélicos and Catholic renewal movements, Caribbean congregations in Canada, African Christians in Europe, and Asian American churches.

He notes that Christianity has experienced a seismic shift in its place among the people and religions of the world. In 1900, even after a century of missionary mobilization and pioneering, Christianity was still overwhelmingly represented among the people of Europe and North America, where 80% of all professing Christians resided.

Today, the situation is vastly different. Only 40% of the world's Christians now live in the North Atlantic quadrant, and the faith is declining numerically in that region. About 60% of the world's Christians reside elsewhere, in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific.

Carpenter says that these developments, which have been happening beneath the radar for over three decades, have led to a critical moment for institutions such as Calvin College.

"We seem to be at a moment that cries out for a renewal of Christian scholarship," he says. "Christian inquiry is a strategic response to the 'now what?' question for post-Western world Christianity, as churches now face the broader and longer-term issues of cultural discipleship, the teaching of nations."

For the full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2005_06/nagel_institute.htm
Contact Carpenter at 616-526-6102 or jcarpent@calvin.edu

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Received on Mon Mar 27 09:24:02 2006