Gospel + Culture
Conceived in 2005-06 as the “Christianity and Culture Seminars,” this program launched in 2008 as a partnership between the Nagel Institute and the Council for Christian College and Universities (CCCU). Between 2008 and 2018, the program organized and sponsored seven seminars in Asia, Africa, and Latin America for cross-cultural faculty development.
Each seminar is centered on an important topic that will help reorient current and rising leaders among Christian college and university professors to the new reality of Christianity as a global, non-Western religion.The approximately two-week-long seminars take an immersive approach—engage first, then reflect. Scholarly and artistic production is to follow after the conclusion of the seminar.
Why is This Important?
The religious landscape has experienced dramatic changes in an era of globalization. Christianity has emerged as a worldwide religion, engaging a third of the planet’s people in every region of the globe. Nearly two-thirds of the world’s Christians now live outside of Europe and North America. Christianity’s new position in the world poses many questions about faith and learning, and gospel and culture that CCCU institutions must address in fresh ways.
Project Process
These seminars pair CCCU professors with Christian intellectuals from the seminar site in order to learn from each other and to produce a collaborative project. Some of our past collaborative projects have included the following:
- Indonesia’s seminar on the visual arts produced Charis, a three-year traveling art exhibit and a catalog featuring forty new works of art.
- The first South Africa seminar culminated in Walking Together: Christian Thinking and Public Life in South Africa (ACU Press, 2012).
- China’s seminar resulted in Christianity in Chinese Public Life: Religion, Society and the Rule of Law (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014).
- The second South Africa seminar produced Between the Shadow and the Light, a traveling art exhibit completing its second year of travel and a catalog.
- The Brazil seminar has a book under production, a workshop for chapter authors conducted in Recife in August 2015. Publication plans are underway.
- The third exhibit of its kind, Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition launched a collection of artworks that engage the great diversity of issues it raises and a range of perspectives on them in June 2018.
Project Goals
These seminars are designed to reorient current and rising leaders among CCCU professors to this new reality by engaging them with Christian thinkers from the global South and East and the issues they face. To date, there have been six of these seminars: in Indonesia (2008), South Africa (2009, 2013), China (2011), Brazil (2013), and India (2015).
More About Gospel + Culture
Past Seminars
- CHRISTIANITY IN INDONESIA, June 8-23, 2008
- SOUTH AFRICA, June 2-16, 2009
- RELIGION, SOCIETY, AND THE RULE OF LAW, June 3-16. 2011
- JUSTICE: THEORY MEETS PRACTICE IN HONDURAS, June 18-29, 2012
- R5: A VISUAL ARTS SEMINAR AND STUDIO IN SOUTH AFRICA, May 31-June 15, 2013
- EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN BRAZIL, July 8-22, 2013
- SOCIAL CHANGE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA, 2015
