Monday, November 12, 2007

A preface of sorts for "Nurturing the Best Love of Children in a Globalizing World"

A few weeks back, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen sent me an as-yet unpublished chapter draft she's contributing to an upcoming book. For those few who have waded through all my recent posts (or even just MSVL's articles that I've posted) you will recognize a few threads of the ongoing obsession I have over women's "place" in society and the Church. But of course I discovered that Ms. Van Leeuwen's scholarship is better than mine (duh, Trott?!).

Beyond that, however, is the growing excitement I have over not just MSVL's contributions to this discussion but also other sources of wisdom I've recently been tapping into. For instance, I'm using a book by John Peck and Charles Strohmer called "Uncommon Sense." It is, to put it in slightly archaic parlance, a "worldview" book. And in some spots, one might even say it is a bit "anti" worldview, in that their ideas are geared toward interacting with the world rather than warring against world, the latter being a more traditional pathway for evangelical apologists.

Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen is a wonderful example of how to interact with good science (in her case, Social Science) and find in that scholarly pursuit a tremendously encouraging resource for the Gospel. In particular, she parallels Peck and Strohmer's emphasis on "sphere sovereignty," a concept I for one am still treating gingerly but am also finding helpful as (to my shock!) a tool of female and male liberation rather than traditionalist patriarchal bondage.

That is part of the reason I continue to post very long articles on BlueChristian, despite the fact that blogs aren't always the best venue for such lengthy works. I encourage anyone interested in women, children, men, and (esp.) the Gospel's influence over that human community of communities, to delve into at least the below article by Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen.

Blessings,
Jon Trott

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5 comments:

Whisky Prajer said...

I tend to copy and paste your longer postings into Open Office, then print it out and read it. Works well for me, but I wonder if they couldn't be linked to as PDF files? Just a thought. Keep posting 'em, please.

Jon Trott said...

First, good on you for using Open Office! Open Source software rules. Hehehehe.

Second, I have been pondering that problem myself, and now you've pushed me over the line toward action. I'm doing a sermon this week, but very soon I will try to PDF the latest article from Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen and post it on bluechristian.com's articles section.

Anonymous said...

Well, I'll wait and see how far into sphere sovereignty you get. It's cool that MSVL is interacting with UN documents, but engaging with the UN takes a lot more than engaging with sociological surveys. If you know that she's part of committees or otherwise politically engaged please let us know. Also, wanna walk today?

--Chris

illustrationISM.... said...

Hello Jon Trott! - I saw an interesting coincidence between 'Scene Beyond Dreams' and BRMC! Check it out on my blog site

http://illustrationism.blogspot.com/

take care,
God Bless,
Mark Jaquette
JPUSA Alumni '87-'91

Jon Trott said...

Mark,

Great to hear from you, and I enjoyed reading the stuff on Michael Been on your blog. But I was a little confused as to where you chose to post, since you weren't responding to my posts. What's the big idea? Just for that, you are hereby required to read every post on bluechristian, and respond to all of them as well. Get hopping! (hehehehehe)

Blessings,
Jon