{"id":1453,"date":"2007-06-13T00:34:41","date_gmt":"2007-06-13T00:34:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/begging-to-differ.html"},"modified":"2007-06-13T00:34:41","modified_gmt":"2007-06-13T00:34:41","slug":"begging-to-differ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/begging-to-differ.html","title":{"rendered":"Begging to differ"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at Intentional Disciples, Sherry Weddell looks at recent discussions of Asian Christianity at the recent CTSA meeting.<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Kingdom Without the King, notice.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Like Phan, Chia said that the FABC\u2019s emphasis is on mission in an overwhelmingly non-Christian context. He cited the example of the theme of the 1998 Synod for Asia, which was chosen by the Vatican: \u201cJesus Christ the Savior and His Mission of Love and Service in Asia.\u201d When the FABC organized its plenary meeting in 2000, the bishops decided they wanted to continue the discussions from the synod. They did so with the theme, \u201cA Mission of Love and Service.\u201d In other words, they deleted the specific reference to Jesus.<\/p>\n

Chia described the choice as an \u201cinstinctive sense\u201d of what would communicate best in Asia, rather than the result of any \u201cgrand vision.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Simply stupifying. Where do I begin?<\/p>\n

How about that the fact that the number of Christians<\/em> in Asia is nearly three times larger than Phan states? (Catholics<\/em> makes up 3% of Asia according both to FIDES and the World Christian Database. All Christians<\/em> together make up nearly 9%.)<\/p>\n

How about the fact that Christians<\/em> were already 2.3%<\/em> of the Asian population in 1900 <\/em>and their share of the continent’s population is 400% larger as of 2005. <\/p>\n

To substitute "Catholic" numbers alone for "Christian" stats as a whole and then use that as a justification for a theological position is just about the sloppiest, most unprofessional, disengenious position possible for an academic. And what’s amazing is that Catholic academics and bishops are sitting still for it when a huge volume of information to the contrary is available in a 60 second Google search.<\/p>\n

How about that Asian Christianity<\/em> has seen large scale growth in the last half of the 20th century because of passionate lay proclamation of Christ from nearly 22 million (2.3% of the population) to 345 million (8.8%). In places like Nepal where Christianity was brought on foot by lay evangelists from India and where the "church fathers and mothers" of the underground church of the 70’s were teenagers. And in places like China and South Korea. No one told them that "our concern is not to increase the number of Christians in Asia." Phan and company clearly have massive catechetical work ahead of them. <\/p>\n

More<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at Intentional Disciples, Sherry Weddell looks at recent discussions of Asian Christianity at the recent CTSA meeting. The Kingdom Without the King, notice. Like Phan, Chia said that the FABC\u2019s emphasis is on mission in an overwhelmingly non-Christian context. He cited the example of the theme of the 1998 Synod for Asia, which was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBegging to differ - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/06\/begging-to-differ.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Begging to differ - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over at Intentional Disciples, Sherry Weddell looks at recent discussions of Asian Christianity at the recent CTSA meeting. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}