Download Dr - Tony Campolo

Christianity: Modern and Post Modern
National Youth Workers Convention
Nashville, TN
November 22, 2008
Dr. Tony Campolo
National Youth Workers Convention
Nashville, TN
2:00 PM
November 22, 2008
1. Defining post-modernism and modernism, secular thought
2. Post Modernism can’t be defined. It isn’t Modernism
3. Secular Modernism- marked by four categories:
 temporality (everything is temporal)
 contingency (everything has a natural cause/characteristics)
 autonomy (we define ourselves, there is no God to define usexistentialism)
 relativity (all values are relative)
4. First heresy- Questioning Jesus’ humanity
5. Socially constructed racism
6. The body is evil, the spirit is good
7. Sartre said that “the self is not an essence waiting to be created or discovered
through introspection. There is no pre existent essential self. We did not pre
exist, you were simply born.”
8. “The self rather than an essence waiting to be discovered through
introspection, trying to come to grips with your preexistent self, the self is
something waiting to be created through commitment. If you do not commit
you do not have an essential self.”
9. You are defined by your commitments not by any pre existence.
10. Who you are is what you commit yourself to. Are you ready to commit
yourself to Jesus?
11. To be a Christian is to be committed to Christ
12. Defining concepts of “right” and “wrong”
13. There are certain values that transcends every culture
Christianity: Modern and Post Modern
National Youth Workers Convention
Nashville, TN
November 22, 2008
14. Proving Einstein’s theories and contingency
15. Modernity is marked by rationality and empirical reality.
16. Logical thought and logical theology and its decreasing popularity (Calvinism
vs. Wesleyan theology)
17. The Pentecostal movement
18. Story about Tony visiting a Pentecostal church
19. Targeting youths – they desire an experience, not apologetics/intellectual
arguments
20. Focusing on the Holy Spirit, gaining strength from the Spirit
21. Centering Prayer- Focusing on the Holy Spirit and surrendering to Him
22. You won’t be able to live out the “red letters” if you don’t have the living
presence of the Spirit empowering you to do it.
23. Freud’s impact on youth work/counseling and straying from reconciliation to
focusing on the individual
24. Youth and romance- (Example: Romeo and Juliet)
25. Expectations of marriage and romance
26. Joke: You know your old when your wife says “lets go upstairs and have sex”
and you say “I can’t do both.”
27. God brought you into this world. You are a miracle.
28. Darwin’s theory of evolution and Niche’s understanding of it
29. There is a difference between a Biological Darwinist and a Social Darwinist.
Don’t become a Social Darwinist.
30. The church should be responding to the needs of the poor, not the
government.
31. God works His will through whatever means is available. The state has to do
what the Church isn’t doing because someone has to do it.
32. The methodology of Sociology and Laissez-faire
Christianity: Modern and Post Modern
National Youth Workers Convention
Nashville, TN
November 22, 2008
33. Marx did not invent communism, he critiques capitalism.
34. There is always a struggle between the rich and the powerful and the poor and
the oppressed
35. You can’t bring good news to the poor without bringing bad news to the rich
36. God calls us to respond to one another’s needs
37. Every class reads the Bible differently
38. Story about the first time Tony went to a black church and the reading of the
Magnificat
39. When we come to the Bible we come to social class biases
40. Suppose God reveals truth not to the intellectuals but to those that the world
calls nothing
41. Those who are wealthy have to listen to those that are poor
42. The Modern era said that truth comes from the top down, the Post Modern era
says that truth comes from the bottom up.
Tags: modernism, post modernism, secular thought, temporality, contingency, autonomy,
relativity, heresy, racism, Sartre, essential self, commitment, right, wrong, values,
Einstein, Calvin, Wesley, Pentecostal, youth, centering prayer, Freud, romance, marriage,
Romeo and Juliet, Darwin, Niche, Biological Darwinist, Social Darwinist, Church,
government, Sociology, Laissez Faire, Marx, nigger, poor, oppressed, class, Magnificat