Primal Religion at Calvin

June 20, 2007 == MEDIA ADVISORY

Summary: Calvin will host a seminar and two public lectures in July on primal religions.

Full story see http://www.calvin.edu/news/releases/2006-07/primal-religions.htm

A pair of lectures by world-renowned scholars next month at Calvin College will address what Calvin's Joel Carpenter calls a sleeper topic in the study of the history of Christianity.

First Kwame Bediako of the Akrofi-Chistaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture in Akropong, Ghana will speak on Thursday, July 19 at 7:30 pm in the Meeter Center Lecture Hall and then on Wednesday, July 25, also at 7:30 pm in the Meeter Center Lecture Hall, Andrew Walls of the University of Edinburgh will speak.

Both talks will be on the importance of primal religions as the substructure of Christianity.

Or, as Carpenter says: "Primal worldviews have been dismissed as primitive or as mere superstition in the West. Yet the primal outlook has been shown to have affinity with the biblical worldview and this is a major reason for the massive accession to Christian faith among peoples of a primal faiths."

Bediako and Walls will be at Calvin most of July as they head up a month-long gathering of scholars and theologians studying primal religions. The seminar is sponsored by the Nagel Institute for the Study of World Christianity at Calvin, which Carpenter serves as director.

The 15 participants represent a wide range of theological traditions and countries. They will convene at Calvin from Ghana, the Philippines, Nigeria, Taiwan, Peru, South Africa, India, Bolivia, Scotland and the U.S. And for a month they will discuss and debate the Christian history of peoples whose cultures have been shaped by primal religions and the issues currently arising in church life among these peoples.

Walls believes that the quality of 21st century Christianity as a whole will depend on the quality of its interaction with the cultures of Africa, Asia and Latin America, noting too that primal worldviews are not dying out but indeed persist among Christians even while they participate in the activities of modernity.

Contact Carpenter at 616-526-7155

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Received on Wed Jun 20 14:19:19 2007