Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Continuing my Research

I need to prepare a few paper proposals this week. One is actually a panel I would participate in and the other is for Congress 2009. I'm already doing work at that conference with the Canadian Theological Society so it makes sense to try and get a paper accepted as well. I want to tie it into my Master's research on the North American Evangelical Emerging Church as well as some work I'm doing for a book on Micro-Missional Faith Communities (co-authoring with Brad Culver). I think I found a niche in looking at the formation of ecclesial identity within such communities. I can root it in the theological insights of James Cochrane (incipient theology) and hopefully introduce a dialogue that has some hope of connecting local theological innovation with formal theological discussion. We'll see.

Had my first class yesterday, Methods and Approaches in Contemporary Ethics, with Ken Melchin. The course will focus on religion in the public space and dig into the thinking of Charles Taylor and Bernard Lonergan. I'm more interested in Taylor's thinking but I should get my head around Lonergan as well. We have a class of 8 students, that is not a bad size. I think they have a smaller masters programme this year. I'm the only PhD student in the class and I'm thinking the course as is will be good. We are starting with an intro to the conversation via Rawls and Habermas, now that will be a bit insane.

1 comment:

Uncle Les said...

This is really encouraging. I'm looking forward to the unfolding of your research.

Keep up the good work, my friend. You are a huge encouragement to me.