A brief survey of the Political-Ecumenical Landscape...
The United Religions joins a rapidly growing community of interfaith organizations. Leaders and practioners are putting their faith into action for global good. Interfaith is a way to organize, a way to connect, commit and create community among people from different faith traditions. Its practioners are diverse and approaches to actualizing interfaith range from gathering World Leaders to mobilizing grassroots communities.
“If the nations of the world are working together for peace through the UN, then where are the religions of the world? From this inspiration, a vision took shape to create an organization whereby people of diverse faiths and from all sectors of society would cooperate for peace and justice for all."
Pope Benedict XVI seems to speak the same language ... dialogue, community, peace, social justice. Both seem to be willing to embrace any religion that acknowledges a greater universal spiritualism for the benefit of mankind. The Vatican also participates in the United Nations in the form of a Permanent Observer.
Robert Schuller's Rethink Conference
Robert Schuller once said: "Standing before a crowd of devout Muslims with the Grand Mufti, I know that we're all doing God's work together. Standing on the edge of a new millennium, we're laboring hand in hand to repair the breach." He made that statement in his 2001 biography, My Journey (p. 501 ), and today he has taken a giant step forward in seeing his dream of an all all-inclusive spiritual body come true. What's more, Christian leaders and organizations are helping to bring it to pass."I met once more with the Grand Mufti (a Muslim), truly one of the great Christ-honoring leaders of faith. ... I'm dreaming a bold impossible dream: that positive-thinking believers in God will rise above the illusions that our sectarian religions have imposed on the world, and that leaders of the major faiths will rise above doctrinal idiosyncrasies, choosing not to focus on disagreements, but rather to transcend divisive dogmas to work together to bring peace and prosperity and hope to the world...." (p. 502).
Rick Warren's P.E.A.C.E. Plan match the five points in The UN Millennium Development Goals
Pastor [Warren] lays out a global vision "In the 21st century we are going global and mobilizing the American church to help internationally. ... President Kagame will welcome us to Rwanda for a joint project among the government, business and the church....
Q: How will Saddleback tackle these huge problems? A: With our PEACE plan.... P is for plant a church or partner with an existing one in every village. We'll work with everyone who wants to help. I'll work with an atheist who wants to stop AIDS. E - equip local leaders. A - assist the poor. C - care for the sick. And E - educate the next generation. ...
Q: What is your greatest hope for all this? A: A second Reformation. The first one was about belief. This one will be about deeds. It is about what the church should be doing in the world....
"...we will lay all this out for our people. Purpose. Community. World."
From Red Letter Christian notable Tony Campolo"...we want to unite Christians who are concerned about what is happening in America. We are evangelicals who are troubled by what is happening to poor people in America; who are disturbed over environmental policies that are contributing to global warming" "...in the hour of suffering there is a commonality. And that's where we meet. It's in mystical spirituality and in communal mutuality that's where we come together... In a mystical relationship with God, there is a coming together of people where theology is left behind and in this spirituality they found a commonality... if we are looking for common ground, can we find it in mystical spirituality, even if we cannot theologically agree, Can we pray together in such a way that we connect with a God that transcends our theological differences?"
From the Red Letter Christians website: Campolo states "Our mission is to articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world."
The New Baptist Covenant: Featuring Dr. Tony Campolo, Former President Jimmy Carter Former President Bill Clinton, Former Vice President Al Gore. Representatives of these Baptist organizations have reaffirmed traditional Baptist values, including sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ and its implications for public and private morality, as well as fulfill the biblical mandate to promote peace with justice, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and the marginalized, and promote religious liberty and respect for religious diversity. President Carter is hoping to demonstrate Baptist unity through social causes such as poverty and AIDS.
The NBC Special Interest Sessions include: Can We All Get Along? Finding Common Ground with Other Faiths, Engaging the Criminal Justice System, Breaking Cycles of Poverty, Peacemaking: Warfare exists in communities and countries. How can churches and people be forces for peace in our world? The HIV/AIDS Pandemic, Faith and Public Policy
Brian McLaren's book Everything Must Change- Jesus, Global Crisis and a Revolution of Hope: 'Everything Must Change' is a manifesto...the best way that I could condense and describe McLaren's ideas is that he has created a hybrid of Theism and Neo-Utopian Marxism. McLaren's 'new religion' is globally pragmatic and re-imagines Jesus' life and message so that they can be applied to solving the Earth's most pressing problems (as identified by the United Nations). In order to do this, McLaren completely retools the Biblical message and Jesus' life in particular in terms of social, political and economic struggles and injustices.
From McLaren's Deep Shift Conference website: Deep Shift was created to provide spiritual guidance for organizations. We work with leaders, inviting them to discover where the gifts of their people and God’s purposes in the world meet. Deep Shift provides support as leaders make their own personal deep shift and guide their organizations through the transition and transformation necessary to ignite the loving energy of people to work for the good of the world. As guides, we provide coaching, consulting, and resources for people leading in deep shift — faith community and church leaders, nonprofit leaders, ethical business leaders and others.
From Emergent Leader Scot McNight: To be missional means to embrace a holistic gospel – it is for the whole person (heart, soul, mind, and strength), for the whole society (politics, economy, culture, environment), and for the whole world......the community emphasis is a community that seeks to blend with the local community into a harmonious effort to realize the ideals of the Kingdom of God....a local church community of faith incarnating the kingdom vision of Jesus in its local community for the good of the world.
Editor's Note: The focus of the global religion is the physical good of the world and mankind...not truth, sin, salvation or judgement. It seems the world is just one global crisis away from uniting under a One World Religious System.
See related post The Global Peace Plan for a Global People , The CFR, The Social Gospel, & The Peace Plan , Purpose Driven Peace Plan & The Vatican sending the same message ?
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Hello Watcher’s Lamp
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting that you are studying global spirituality trends also. I have been watching them from a distance for awhile and seeing patterns developing. Here is a study I did on “emergence / emergent behavior”. It may be of help to you also if you are studying global spirituality. I am going to share with you my observations on “emergent behavior” from the scientific perspective. In this study, I applied well documented “emergent concepts” that have been theorized since the middle 1,800’s to a hypothetical organization to see what one might look like. Here is a good scientific explanation I found of “emergent concept and behaviour”. http://www.answers.com/topic/emergence-1 . You would do well to read it after you have read this. It may clear away some of the mystery surrounding “emergent behaviour” and give you some insight.
“An emergent concept (EC) is a slight variation on consensus reality that is accepted as plausible. The hallmarks of an emergent concept, as opposed to some categories of memes (urban myths, or viruses of the mind) are that EC are increasingly accepted as truth or possibility, based upon other empirical or anecdotal evidence in the mind of the believer or society (in its subsets) as a whole. EC can be viewed as fad, or common causal reality building. EC have no relationship to truth or fact, but are simply engines bringing individual concepts of truth into the mainstream.”
For example, if a group of “social engineers” applied “emergent concepts” to an organization of people, that organization would not have any real need or desire to understand truth, search for truth, defend truth, or embrace truth because the “emergent model” is designed to “create” truth. This is similar to consensus reality where multiple views on something like religion are all tossed together in a conversation and discussed until what is agreed upon finally as “reality” by the organization or group becomes the new “truth”. The consensus is easily accepted by everyone in the group as “plausible truth” because all members had a hand in creating it. If you are on the outside studying organizations applying “emergent concepts” it is interesting to watch, but to someone inside that organization it would be almost impossible for them to see what was being done to them. You could give them the impression that “emergence” that they are a part of is actually a representation of a little fresh budding leaf of beautiful new growth. They would be like happy, busy laboratory rats in some big social engineering experiment working through a maze. All they would know is that every time something “changes” or “shifts” in the paradigm then there is a new “truth” to be discovered and then they start looking forward to constantly changing “truths” with new “truths” constantly being discovered. This could theoretically go on indefinitely, as long as everything is constantly kept changing and shifting. A whole new paradigm could result.
Here is another scientific explanation of “emergent behaviour” from the same site: http://www.answers.com/topic/emergence-1
“An emergent behaviour or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities (agents) operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is usually a causal relation across different scales. In other words there is often a form of top-down feedback in systems with emergent properties. The processes from which emergent properties result may occur in either the observed or observing system, and can commonly be identified by their patterns of accumulating change, most generally called 'growth'. Why emergent behaviours occur include: intricate causal relations across different scales and feedback, known as interconnectivity. The emergent property itself may be either very predictable or unpredictable and unprecedented, and represent a new level of the system's evolution. The complex behaviour or properties are not a property of any single such entity, nor can they easily be predicted or deduced from behaviour in the lower-level entities: they are irreducible. No physical property of an individual molecule of air would lead one to think that a large collection of them will transmit sound.“
As with the air molecule analogy, one individual with one mind set and purpose could only do so much on their own, but just imagine a whole world that was driven to one “purpose” and vision like one big global brain thinking the same thoughts.
“ According to an emergent perspective, intelligence emerges from the connections between neurons, and from this perspective it is not necessary to propose a "soul" to account for the fact that brains can be intelligent, even though the individual neurons of which they are made are not.”
By applying the concept of “emergence” to all of humanity, humankind theoretically could “emerge” into a whole new “reality”. Possibly a new world order, or even an attempt to bring Heaven to earth? (Genesis 11:4-7 KJV). I know that sounds very unrealistic, because to achieve something like that, you would have to teach all humanity a new way to “think” in terms of groups (i.e. group think). Someone once said: “I would like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony”. To be of maximum effectiveness, you would have to teach all in the emergent organization how to focus and center their thoughts and prayers the most effectively. Think of the possibilities. The Bible says that nothing would be restrained from man if all mankind could imagine it.
And the Lord said, Behold, the people is ONE, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now NOTHING will be restrained from them, which they IMAGINED to do (Genesis 11:6 KJV).
I personally though believe that consensus reality as it has been used in history has been shown to be a flawed way to come to a clear concept of the “reality” to be embraced by society. Example: All the great scholars have reached a consensus; we believe that in reality, the earth is “flat”! Sir Isaac Newton is a heretic and a madman that must be hunted down and killed because he thinks the earth is round!
For “emergent behaviour” to manifest in the organization, you would first need to create unity and drive in the organization with a single purpose and vision. Then you would have to drive out all that are not in unity and at the same time shield the target organization from the dissenters until the desired behaviour has time to “emerge”. You can then go back and deal with the resistors later, after the emergent behaviour has begun manifesting. You could reach out and offer them one last chance to join you.
“On the other hand, merely having a large number of interactions is not enough by itself to guarantee emergent behaviour; many of the interactions may be negligible or irrelevant, or may cancel each other out. In some cases, a large number of interactions can in fact work against the emergence of interesting behaviour, by creating a lot of "noise" to drown out any emerging "signal"; the emergent behaviour may need to be temporarily isolated from other interactions before it reaches enough critical mass to be self-supporting.”
One unique thing about “emergent behaviour”, is it can be observed in small groups also, without a centralized structure and command.
“Thus it is not just the sheer number of connections between components which encourages emergence; it is also how these connections are organised. A hierarchical organisation is one example that can generate emergent behaviour (a bureaucracy may behave in a way quite different to that of the individual humans in that bureaucracy); but perhaps more interestingly, emergent behaviour can also arise from more decentralized organisational structures, such as a marketplace. In some cases, the system has to reach a combined threshold of diversity (all faiths), organization (small groups), and connectivity (love, social justice, environment, etc.) before emergent behaviour appears.”
I have seen really no one discuss “emergent concepts and behaviours” on any blogs from a scientific perspective.
F Whittenburg
http://www.christiannewbirth.com/whenfaithcame.html