This blog highlights
books from Ralph Winter’s Library and compares excerpts to Winter’s own
writings on one or more of the themes from his list of twelve “Frontiers of
Perspective.” (See the full list at the end of this blog.)
…
(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom
Sinclair, Maurice. 1980. Green finger of God. Exeter: Paternoster
Press.
Foreword by Samuel Escobar; includes practical stories from Latin America
interwoven in the chapters.
Chapter Titles:
Does God Believe in Development?
The effects of the fall. The Gospel and development. A
biblical corrective.
Educational Development
Economic Development
Community Development
Medicine and Development
Politics and Development
The Role of the Church in
Development
Gremillion, Joseph. 1978. Food/energy and the major faiths.
Maryknoll: Orbis.
From the Foreword:
Thirty-five participants were present for the first Interreligious Peace
Colloquim held in Bellagio, Italy, May 1975. The majority were religious
leaders from the five world faiths—Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims,
Christians. … Our purpose was to help believers of these five faiths, so often
in conflict, to work together on issues affecting the fate of the whole human
family—above all to work for peace. The food/energy crisis challenges peace and
justice and human rights—for what right takes precedence over the right to eat?
It raises questions about the value of life, social ethics, and the meaning of
the human person that are so basic that they call upon faith for adequate
response.
Division Titles:
The Facts of the Food/Energy Crisis
Impact of the Crisis on World Peace
and Social Justice
The Role of Religion in Politics and
Society
Strategies for Meeting the
Food/Energy Crisis
Some of Ralph Winter’s thinking that
relates to concern for world food and environment issues.
From
his elaboration on the 6th of his 12 “Frontiers of Perspective”:
It may today be the
distinctive heresy of the Evangelical that we have become specialists in merely
getting people happy and getting them into heaven. … The Bible does not talk so
much about how to get people into heaven as about how to get heaven into
people.
Latter day Evangelicals
have … made their “Gospel of salvation” a nearly total substitute for the
Gospel of the Kingdom. Why is this? Nineteenth century Evangelicals were very
socially conscious compared to Evangelicals in 20th century. … Christian
structures contribute very little to “Thy will be done on earth” as Jesus asked
us to pray. Missionaries are not normally trained nor well-equipped to take on
the social, commercial, medical, engineering, and political problems of Africa.
Neither are the national pastors. This vast array of problems is not part of
our Gospel of Salvation even though it is definitely part of the Gospel
of the Kingdom. We leave these problems to the “secular world.” In a
word, we think of ourselves as survivors
not soldiers.
From the 2006 FMF Principles Members Manual:
Another example, in view of our
“international development” approach to mission, is that we seek the goal of
effective land use and thus decry the excessive use of land for the production
of animal protein. We feel strongly that in the Western world, and in the U.S.
in particular, animal protein is commonly used in excess and not only tears
down health, but diverts a huge percentage of land that would otherwise be
available for the cultivation of more efficient foods. (The corn grown on a
given tract of land will feed ten times as many people as it will if fed first
to cattle which are then eaten as meat. The people of India could not support
their population if India were not mainly vegetarian!).
From an electronic document in Ralph Winter's files:
In Ralph Winter’s electronic files I
discovered a sermon by Greg Boyd, “A War-torn Creation,” that I later included
as a chapter in a book I edited with Scott Moreau, Evangelical and
Frontier Perspectives on the Global Progress of the Gospel, available from
William Carey Library:
http://missionbooks.org/williamcareylibrary/product.php?productid=717&cat=0&page=1ngelical
and Frontier Perspectives on the Global Progress of the Gospel.
A few excerpts:
“Creation is permeated with
spiritual warfare. It’s not just human beings who are sort of the plane of
spiritual warfare, but creation itself has been corrupted. … Colossians chapter
1: it says that “God was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in Christ,
and through him to reconcile to himself all things whether things on earth or
things in heaven by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.”
Know that you are doing spiritual warfare whenever you fight the evil
effects of nature. You are reclaiming nature, you are rebuking the curse.
We are doing spiritual warfare when we fight disease. Not just when we pray,
anything you do to push back the harmful effects of nature. When you fund
famine relief, you are doing spiritual warfare. When you support organizations
that help people that are suffering from a drought you are doing spiritual
warfare. When you go to build wells in villages you are doing spiritual
warfare. When you teach people better farming and irrigation skills, you are
doing spiritual warfare. When scientists do scientific engineering to develop
crops for people they are doing spiritual warfare. When they investigate new
ways to sanitize water, they are doing spiritual warfare. When they discover
ways to fight diseases, that is spiritual warfare. Anything you do to fight
poverty and hunger is spiritual warfare. In fact, having mercy on animals is a
form of spiritual warfare. Anything you do to reflect God’s ideal for creation
is a form of spiritual warfare. In fact, everything you do positive for the
earth is a form of spiritual warfare.
Ralph
Winter’s 12 “Frontiers of Perspective” represent major shifts in his thinking
that “profoundly modified and molded his perception of the mission task”:
(1) Unreached Peoples
(2) The Great Commission
and Abraham
(3) From the Unfinished
Task to the Finishable Task
(4) Failure with the Large
Groups and the Off-setting Trend to “Radical Contextualization”
(5) Reverse
Contextualization, the Recontextualization of Our Own Tradition
(6) The Reclaiming of the Gospel of the Kingdom
(7) Beyond Christianity
(8) A Different Type of
Recruitment
(9) A Trojan Horse
(10) Needed: a Revolution in Pastoral Training
(11) The Religion of
Science
(12) The Challenge of the
Evil One