In 2009 I completed a mural-scaled painting under the spell of the recent INSAP conference in Ven... more In 2009 I completed a mural-scaled painting under the spell of the recent INSAP conference in Venice and a visit to the mosaics of Ravenna. Molecular Delirium responds to an array of scientific images based on astronomical research, in particular, computer models of the complex physics controlling star formation in our galaxy. My paper briefly examines these influences. Also, fundamental to this artwork are the perceptual and philosophical implications of artistically imaging the fragmentary and incomplete, sensations of energy in continuous transformation, and the anxiety and exhilaration of perpetual genesis through which we glimpse the unfathomable infinite.
International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 1987
R elief and development are critically important aspects of Christian mission tod ay. Yet concept... more R elief and development are critically important aspects of Christian mission tod ay. Yet concepts of these task s are being pressed upon us by forces outside th e church. Th e church in mission must take care lest con sciou sly or unconsciously we adopt criteria regarding relief and development that are alien or antithetical to the church's mission. Indeed, we mu st reexamine the faith d ynamic for Chri stian mission in order to fill these con cepts with that distinctive content which will mor e ad equately express why and how we engage in relief and development as aspects of mission. The year 1945 punctuated the history of the world, brin ging World War II to a screechi ng halt and initiating th e nuclear age. The end of the war found many nations prostrate in devastation. The United States stood almost alone in having been spared the destruction of its ow n land and resources, though the loss of hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters in armed service left lasting scars. But in the aftermath of war, the United State s undertook a task unprecedented in human history: to rebuild not Good News for Subscribers in U. K. Effective from January 1987 onwards, Paternoster Press in England will be the subscription agents in the United Kingdom for the International Bulletin of Missionary Re search. All renewals and new subscriptions for persons in the U. K. should be sent with payment to: Paternoster Press Ltd., Paternoster House, 3 Mount Radford Crescent, Exeter, U. K. EX24JW. Subscription rates in the United Kingdom are: £11.00 for one year, £19.00 for two years,and £26.00 for three years. only tho se nations with which it had been allied during the war, but also those nations that had been its enemies. Going beyond relief, the United States took on a ma ssive and dramatic effort for the recon struction of postwar Western Europe under the Mar shall Plan. At its height, the United States directed almost 3 per cent of its Gross National Product to meet human need and to rebuild the badl y damaged European economies. The plan was highly successfu l, at the same time that it opened the way for United States investments and provided a check on the advance of communism. With the beginning of the recovery of Europe, the focus be gan to shift to other area s of the world, which had suffered equal devastation. With President Truman's Point IV Program intro duced in 1949, emphasis increasingly was placed on technical and capital assistance to strengthen the economies of other wartorn nations in Asia and Africa. With the coming of the 1960s, the vision expanded. The
The Jiangyin Mission Station: An American Missionary Community in China, 1895 1951 By Lawrence D.... more The Jiangyin Mission Station: An American Missionary Community in China, 1895 1951 By Lawrence D. Kessler Chapel Hill, NC: University ofNorth Carolina Press 1996, xiv, 212 pp., paper, $24.95 Reviewed by Ralph R. Covell Many books have been written in the past 50 years on the Protestant missionary enterprise in China. This book by a Professor of History at the University ofNorth Carolina is unique in that it examines in detail the myriad activities of a missionary community in China and its relationships within the larger political and social context. These extend from the local Chinese community, to the emerging Chinese church, and to the principal supporting local American church in Wilmington, North Carolina. By this methodology the author is able to explore ChineseAmerican cultural interaction in the first half of the twentieth century. Jiangyin ("river-shade" in Chinese), a medium-sized city on the south bank of the Yangtze River about 100 miles upriver from Shanghai, became a mission site for the Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS) in 1895. Missionaries continued their work there through many political vicissitudes until 1951. During this period they engaged in evangelism, social welfare, education, medicine, anti-opium campaigns, and local peacekeeping efforts at the time of the Japanese occupation and guerrilla activities. While depending on secondary sources for the broader context of China, Kessler makes extensive use of China archives housed at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, of Presbyterian records in Montreat, North Carolina, of varied church materials in Wilmington, North Carolina, and of both English and Chinese periodicals. The book is well indexed with an adequate bibliography. One of Kessler's major observations is that "the Protestant missionary movement in twentieth-century China was most successful when it proved itself useful in secular ways" (2). This is undoubtedly true if he restricts it to the Han Chinese contest. Much less is it true of Christianity among numerous nonHan minorities in China. The author's perception that "exorcism of demons" by rural Chinese Christians is a "superstitious practice" might be tempered by reading Demon Possession by John Nevius, who was also a Presbyterian missionary, first in China and then in Korea, during the latter half of the nineteenth century (102). This excellent book is indispensable for an understanding of missionary-promoted Christianity in China during the half century preceding the advent of the People's Republic in 1949. The author is to be commended for his thorough research and articulate writing style.
i.e., one which had sacramental dispensation as its focus. Women missionaries, not involved insti... more i.e., one which had sacramental dispensation as its focus. Women missionaries, not involved institutionally with this dimension, often displayed tremendous resourcefulness and adaptation in meeting the physical, social, and psychological needs of those they served, as this book indicates. These writings provide a further asset for examining the relationship between religion and the civic community because these women frequently responded to critical medical and social crises in cities and towns before government structures were in place to meet these needs. The book does leave us wondering about a few things. With so much action happening, especially in the frontier conditions related in these annals, how is contemplation achieved? Does the editorship of the early annals by Mother Austin Carroll in 1881 (from which a number of Healy's accounts are taken) say more about the uniformity which might have settled in and her desire to restore some of the original fervor of the Mercy foundations? Reference is made to the help ofthe Mercy women in Belize in 1886after an epidemic of yellow fever (82-83). Did American Mercy Sisters themselves aid the sick there and stay on to found a mission? As few American Catholics were abroad as missionaries at this time, the answer could supply further information on early Roman Catholic missions overseas from the United States. The strength of the book lies in making available primary sources for the study of women, mission, and evangelization in nineteenth-century North America.
Edited by Frederick Ferre and Rita H. Mataragnon New York: Paragon House 198.5. ix. 214pp. Review... more Edited by Frederick Ferre and Rita H. Mataragnon New York: Paragon House 198.5. ix. 214pp. Reviewed by James A. Cogswell This book is composed of a series of essays by "scholars of philosophy, religion, and social sciences from distant places and representing major religions" gathered at the
In 2009 I completed a mural-scaled painting under the spell of the recent INSAP conference in Ven... more In 2009 I completed a mural-scaled painting under the spell of the recent INSAP conference in Venice and a visit to the mosaics of Ravenna. Molecular Delirium responds to an array of scientific images based on astronomical research, in particular, computer models of the complex physics controlling star formation in our galaxy. My paper briefly examines these influences. Also, fundamental to this artwork are the perceptual and philosophical implications of artistically imaging the fragmentary and incomplete, sensations of energy in continuous transformation, and the anxiety and exhilaration of perpetual genesis through which we glimpse the unfathomable infinite.
International Bulletin of Missionary Research, 1987
R elief and development are critically important aspects of Christian mission tod ay. Yet concept... more R elief and development are critically important aspects of Christian mission tod ay. Yet concepts of these task s are being pressed upon us by forces outside th e church. Th e church in mission must take care lest con sciou sly or unconsciously we adopt criteria regarding relief and development that are alien or antithetical to the church's mission. Indeed, we mu st reexamine the faith d ynamic for Chri stian mission in order to fill these con cepts with that distinctive content which will mor e ad equately express why and how we engage in relief and development as aspects of mission. The year 1945 punctuated the history of the world, brin ging World War II to a screechi ng halt and initiating th e nuclear age. The end of the war found many nations prostrate in devastation. The United States stood almost alone in having been spared the destruction of its ow n land and resources, though the loss of hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters in armed service left lasting scars. But in the aftermath of war, the United State s undertook a task unprecedented in human history: to rebuild not Good News for Subscribers in U. K. Effective from January 1987 onwards, Paternoster Press in England will be the subscription agents in the United Kingdom for the International Bulletin of Missionary Re search. All renewals and new subscriptions for persons in the U. K. should be sent with payment to: Paternoster Press Ltd., Paternoster House, 3 Mount Radford Crescent, Exeter, U. K. EX24JW. Subscription rates in the United Kingdom are: £11.00 for one year, £19.00 for two years,and £26.00 for three years. only tho se nations with which it had been allied during the war, but also those nations that had been its enemies. Going beyond relief, the United States took on a ma ssive and dramatic effort for the recon struction of postwar Western Europe under the Mar shall Plan. At its height, the United States directed almost 3 per cent of its Gross National Product to meet human need and to rebuild the badl y damaged European economies. The plan was highly successfu l, at the same time that it opened the way for United States investments and provided a check on the advance of communism. With the beginning of the recovery of Europe, the focus be gan to shift to other area s of the world, which had suffered equal devastation. With President Truman's Point IV Program intro duced in 1949, emphasis increasingly was placed on technical and capital assistance to strengthen the economies of other wartorn nations in Asia and Africa. With the coming of the 1960s, the vision expanded. The
The Jiangyin Mission Station: An American Missionary Community in China, 1895 1951 By Lawrence D.... more The Jiangyin Mission Station: An American Missionary Community in China, 1895 1951 By Lawrence D. Kessler Chapel Hill, NC: University ofNorth Carolina Press 1996, xiv, 212 pp., paper, $24.95 Reviewed by Ralph R. Covell Many books have been written in the past 50 years on the Protestant missionary enterprise in China. This book by a Professor of History at the University ofNorth Carolina is unique in that it examines in detail the myriad activities of a missionary community in China and its relationships within the larger political and social context. These extend from the local Chinese community, to the emerging Chinese church, and to the principal supporting local American church in Wilmington, North Carolina. By this methodology the author is able to explore ChineseAmerican cultural interaction in the first half of the twentieth century. Jiangyin ("river-shade" in Chinese), a medium-sized city on the south bank of the Yangtze River about 100 miles upriver from Shanghai, became a mission site for the Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS) in 1895. Missionaries continued their work there through many political vicissitudes until 1951. During this period they engaged in evangelism, social welfare, education, medicine, anti-opium campaigns, and local peacekeeping efforts at the time of the Japanese occupation and guerrilla activities. While depending on secondary sources for the broader context of China, Kessler makes extensive use of China archives housed at the University of North Carolina and Duke University, of Presbyterian records in Montreat, North Carolina, of varied church materials in Wilmington, North Carolina, and of both English and Chinese periodicals. The book is well indexed with an adequate bibliography. One of Kessler's major observations is that "the Protestant missionary movement in twentieth-century China was most successful when it proved itself useful in secular ways" (2). This is undoubtedly true if he restricts it to the Han Chinese contest. Much less is it true of Christianity among numerous nonHan minorities in China. The author's perception that "exorcism of demons" by rural Chinese Christians is a "superstitious practice" might be tempered by reading Demon Possession by John Nevius, who was also a Presbyterian missionary, first in China and then in Korea, during the latter half of the nineteenth century (102). This excellent book is indispensable for an understanding of missionary-promoted Christianity in China during the half century preceding the advent of the People's Republic in 1949. The author is to be commended for his thorough research and articulate writing style.
i.e., one which had sacramental dispensation as its focus. Women missionaries, not involved insti... more i.e., one which had sacramental dispensation as its focus. Women missionaries, not involved institutionally with this dimension, often displayed tremendous resourcefulness and adaptation in meeting the physical, social, and psychological needs of those they served, as this book indicates. These writings provide a further asset for examining the relationship between religion and the civic community because these women frequently responded to critical medical and social crises in cities and towns before government structures were in place to meet these needs. The book does leave us wondering about a few things. With so much action happening, especially in the frontier conditions related in these annals, how is contemplation achieved? Does the editorship of the early annals by Mother Austin Carroll in 1881 (from which a number of Healy's accounts are taken) say more about the uniformity which might have settled in and her desire to restore some of the original fervor of the Mercy foundations? Reference is made to the help ofthe Mercy women in Belize in 1886after an epidemic of yellow fever (82-83). Did American Mercy Sisters themselves aid the sick there and stay on to found a mission? As few American Catholics were abroad as missionaries at this time, the answer could supply further information on early Roman Catholic missions overseas from the United States. The strength of the book lies in making available primary sources for the study of women, mission, and evangelization in nineteenth-century North America.
Edited by Frederick Ferre and Rita H. Mataragnon New York: Paragon House 198.5. ix. 214pp. Review... more Edited by Frederick Ferre and Rita H. Mataragnon New York: Paragon House 198.5. ix. 214pp. Reviewed by James A. Cogswell This book is composed of a series of essays by "scholars of philosophy, religion, and social sciences from distant places and representing major religions" gathered at the
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