Trinity Consultation on Post-Christendom Spiritualities: The New Unreached People Groups

Description: Trinity International University, in conjunction with the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization Issue Group 16, The Church and New Spiritualities, announces an international conference on Christianity and new religious movements hosted by the School of Biblical and Religious Studies at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois, USA on 16-19 October 2008. The conference will be a gathering of practitioners and scholars addressing the decline of Christianity in the West and the concomitant growth of new unreached people groups expressed in religions and spiritualities such as modern Paganism, New Age, and other alternative spiritualities. Plenary sessions and parallel workshops will address the topics of the future of religion in the West, the make up of the alternative religious marketplace and approaches in engaging adherents of alternative spiritualities.

Call for Papers: Practitioners and scholars working in the field of new religious movements are invited to submit a title and 400-word abstract along with a curriculum vita for consideration in the Post-Christendom Spiritualities conference. Special consideration will be given to papers addressing the academic study of new religious movements as well as the praxis of engaging these movements. Papers for the conference might include, but are not limited to, subjects such as the following:

The work of the Spirit in mission and New Spiritualities
Perspectives on contemporary spirituality from the sociology of religions
Missiology and contemporary spirituality in relation to Christian tradition in cross cultural mission and/or the study of world religions
Creation and redemption in Christian theology
Goddess spirituality and the theology of God
Inter-religious apologetics in post-modernity
The emerging church and emerging spiritualities
Science and new religions
The Christian and the paranormal
Christian approaches to complimentary medicine and energy healing

Papers should reflect the ideas expressed in the Lausanne Occasional Paper no. 45. Please submit a title, abstract and CV to mcooper@tiu.edu by 30 November 2007. A final decision of acceptance will be made 30 March 2008. The final program will be determined by 30 May 2008. If accepted, a paper must be submitted by 15 August 2008 for solicitation of responses from critical respondents.