Earlier this year Trinity Graduate School hosted a conference co-sponsored by the Lausanne Movement on Post-Christendom Spiritualities. During the consultation participants heard from, among others, Dr. Gordon Melton (Institute for the Study of American Religion) on changes in the “New Age” or New Spiritualities; Dr. James Beverley (Tyndale Seminary) on the emerging church movement; Dr. Ross Clifford (Morling College) on the significance of the new religions in popular culture and the importance of combining a pastoral approach with a subjective evidential apologetic for post-Christendom spiritualities; and Dr. Gerald McDermott (Roanoke College) who discussed the church’s earliest theologians and apologists and how they responded to the religious movements of their culture in the first centuries of the Christian era.
McDermott’s essay in No Other Gods Before Me? made quite an impact on my theology of religions, tying insights from Jonathan Edwards to the revelation of God in other religions. Although I don’t agree with McDermott on everything, if the rest of the other speakers were anywhere close to his forward thinking, this will be some audio to get.