Comments on: For Such a Time as This

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 23:09:54 +0000

My blogsite is renewingthemind.blogstream.com
I came home last night and apparently a couple of people were having a conversation on my site without me. Mormon v. Christian. I'm bored of the topic. If I have the time I'll post something new tonight. Back to Hebrew…
Shalom,
Chong

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 23:03:56 +0000

Thanks for that great summary Chong! I can see how much of the later talks were built on what he said in that first lecture. Sadly, I haven't heard Dr. Rae lecture yet.
It was great meeting you, be sure you post a link to your blog!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 22:09:56 +0000

Roger,
I thoroughly enjoyed the conference. And it was great to spend time chatting with you and the others.
During the first lecture, Dr. White spoke briefly of the historical context for the current post-modern era (after Renaissance Humanism and the Enlightenment). Most of the lecture was devoted to discussing the three trends in society, namely, secularization, privatization, and pluralization. Secularization describes the divorce between religion and all other areas of life (faith no longer informs our thinking and decision-making). Dr. White mentioned how people have adopted a functional atheism where the world functions independently of anything transcendent (not anti-God, ignoring God altogether). Instead, the media, the courts (legal), and the academy (education) are the three controlling institutions that define reality and inform our decisions. Privatization describes the division between our inner faith and our outer day-to-day existence. Personal faith has become socially irrelevant and even unwelcome or illegal outside the realm of private feelings and experience. Pluralization is the