The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective

The New Testament in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Author: Richard L. Rohrbaugh
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2006-10-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1597528277

The Bible is not a Western book, and the world of the New Testament is not our world. The New Testament world was preindustrial, Mediterranean, and populated mostly by nonliterate peasants who depended on hearing these writings read aloud. Only a few of the literate elite were part of the Jesus movement, and they knew nothing of either modernity or the Western culture we inhabit today. This means that for all North Americans, reading the New Testament is always an exercise in cross-cultural communication. Travelers, diplomats, and exchange students take great pains to bridge the cultural gaps that cloud mutual understanding. But North American readers habitually suspend cross-cultural awareness when encountering the Bible. The result is that we unwittingly project our own cultural understandings onto the pages of the New Testament. Rohrbaugh argues that to whatever degree we can bridge cultural gaps between ourselves and New Testament writers, we learn to value their intentions rather than the meanings we create from their words. Rohrbaugh's insightful interpretations of Gospel passages go a long way toward helping to span distances between the New Testament world and the present.

American Cultural Patterns

American Cultural Patterns
Author: Edward C. Stewart
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2011-06-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0983955832

A fully revised edition of the seminal classic This classic study was originally written by Edward Stewart in 1972 and has become a seminal work in the field of intercultural relations. In this edition, Stewart and Milton J. Bennett have greatly expanded the analysis of American cultural patterns by introducing new cross-cultural comparisons and drawing on recent reseach on value systems, perception psychology, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication. Beginning with a discussion of the issues relative to contact between people of different cultures, the authors examine the nature of cultural assumptions and values as a framework for cross-cultural analysis. They then analyze the human perceptual process, consider the influence of language on culture, and discuss nonverbal behavior. Central to the book is an analysis of American culture constructed along four dimentions: form of activity, form of social relations, perceptions of the world, and perception of the self. American cultural traits are isolated out, analyzed, and compared with parallel characteristics of other cultures. Finally, the cultural dimentions of communication and their implications for cross-cultural interaction are examined.

Crossing Cultures in Scripture

Crossing Cultures in Scripture
Author: Marvin J. Newell
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2016-10-02
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830873333

Missionary and missions professor Marvin Newell provides a biblical theology of culture and mission, mining the depths of Scripture to tease out missiological insights and crosscultural perspectives. Organized canonically from Genesis to Revelation, this text reveals how the whole of Scripture speaks to contemporary mission realities.

Cross-Cultural Connections

Cross-Cultural Connections
Author: Duane Elmer
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2009-08-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830874828

Duane Elmer offers the tools needed to reduce apprehension, communicate effectively and establish genuine trust and acceptance between cultures while demonstrating how we can avoid being cultural imperialists and instead become authentic ambassadors for Christ.

Introducing Cultural Anthropology

Introducing Cultural Anthropology
Author: Brian M. Howell
Publisher: Baker Academic
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-06-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1493418068

What is the role of culture in human experience? This concise yet solid introduction to cultural anthropology helps readers explore and understand this crucial issue from a Christian perspective. Now revised and updated throughout, this new edition of a successful textbook covers standard cultural anthropology topics with special attention given to cultural relativism, evolution, and missions. It also includes a new chapter on medical anthropology. Plentiful figures, photos, and sidebars are sprinkled throughout the text, and updated ancillary support materials and teaching aids are available through Baker Academic's Textbook eSources.

Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology
Author: Stephen A. Grunlan
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2016-11-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310535867

This volume on cultural anthropology presents a Christian perspective for Bible school students of conservative evangelical backgrounds. The hope is that a sympathetic approach to the problems of cultural diversity throughout the world will help young people overcome typical North American cultural biases and bring understanding and appreciation for the diversities of behavior and thought that exist in a culturally heterogeneous world. Grunlan and Mayers take the position of "functional creationism"; and though they discuss some of the problems implied in traditional interpretations of the age of the world and especially of the creation of the human race, they do not attempt to deal with either physical anthropology or the origins of man. They do, however, attempt to deal meaningfully with the problems posed by biblical absolutism and cultural relativism, and their practice. Concluding chapters with a series of thought-provoking questions should prove to be of real help to both the professional and nonprofessional teacher of anthropology.

Cross-Cultural Servanthood

Cross-Cultural Servanthood
Author: Duane Elmer
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 214
Release: 2009-08-20
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830874836

With careful biblical exposition and keen cross-cultural awareness, Duane Elmer offers principles and guidance for avoiding misunderstandings and building relationships in ways that honor people in other cultures.

The Bible in Cross Cultural Perspective (Revised Edition)

The Bible in Cross Cultural Perspective (Revised Edition)
Author: Jacob A Loewen
Publisher: William Carey Publishing
Total Pages: 351
Release: 2020-06-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1645083047

Some Questions are Universal. Where did I come from? What happens when I die? Am I important? Across the world, these questions are answered in a vast range of ways, shaped by our worldview, and our specific cultural context. Cross-cultural workers, seeking to engage people at the point of these questions, can offer a rich dialogue between cultural assumptions and biblical truth, but only if they can reach into the cultural framework underlying a particular context. The Bible in Cross-Cultural Perspective explores this cultural framework, tackling different aspects of the “Biblical worldview’s” interaction with both “Western/secular” and a “traditional/animist” worldviews. With topics ranging from the physical and metaphysical perception of the universe, to the significance of names, Loewen unpacks cultural construction in all of it’s layered complexity, allowing us to visualize where the Gospel will interact with people’s beliefs, regardless of their context. Jacob Loewen, the author of Culture and Human Values, draws on multiple years of experience—across several continents—as a field missionary, anthropologist, linguist, Bible translator, and missions researcher. The Bible in Cross-Cultural Perspective, originally published in 2000, is Loewen’s culminating work in missionary anthropology and it remains a useful and relevant work today.

Religion and Sexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Religion and Sexuality in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Author: Stephen Ellingson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2014-03-18
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 113537595X

Issues of sexuality and gender are hotly contested in both religious communities and national cultures around the world. In the social sciences, religious traditions are often depicted as inherently conservative or even reactionary in their commitments to powerful patriarchal and pronatalist sexual norms and gender categories. In illuminating the practices of religious traditions in various cultures, these essays expose the diversity of religious rituals and mythologies pertaining to sexuality. In the process the contributors challenge conventional notions of what is normative in our sexual lives.

The New Testament in Its World Workbook

The New Testament in Its World Workbook
Author: N. T. Wright
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2019-11-19
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310528720

This workbook accompanies The New Testament in Its World by N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird. Following the textbook's structure, it offers assessment questions, exercises, and activities designed to support the students' learning experience. Reinforcing the teaching in the textbook, this workbook will not only help to enhance their understanding of the New Testament books as historical, literary, and social phenomena located in the world of early Christianity, but also guide them to think like a first-century believer while reading the text responsibly for today.