Week 10 - Revised outline/draft

I. Describing Naturalism and how it plays out in my world and church.
According to Webster’s dictionary, naturalism is understood as, “The doctrine that the world can be understood in scientific terms without recourse to spiritual or supernatural explanations.”
Naturalism originated in Europe and was popularized in the 18th century as a philosophy built upon the empiricism and objectivity of the Enlightenment. Furthermore, naturalism has used Darwinian evolution as its main argument in that the origins of the universe can be explained without the agency of intelligent design. This ideology has had great success in the West because the cultural climate was already primed by the empiricism and objectivism of the Enlightenment. The hopeless message of naturalism has created a void of meaning in our culture. In turn, consumerism has helped lead Western culture into filling that void of meaning with absurdity. However, I believe many are convinced that science is incapable of answering the ‘why do we exist’ question. Therefore, many are comfortable with science and faith coexisting without conflict. On the other hand, the Church’s reaction to naturalism has been predominantly one of fear. A dominant belief has been that any concession with naturalism would lead to the demise of theism.

II. Using Bevans anthropological strategy to express the Gospel in Naturalism.
Bevans anthropological model is the best strategy for contextualizing and expressing the Gospel in the culture of naturalism. The anthropological model is useful because God’s work can already be seen in the naturalist’s culture of cosmology, physics, biology etc. Pointing to evidence of God in the physcial universe and asking good questions allows the faith seeking naturalist to "play back" what he is hearing from the missionary into a scientific world view.

III. Ways the Church can address naturalism's impact internally and externally.
Churches can bring in authors and leaders in the Intelligent Design community to give seminars and presentations to their congregants. Churches could also implement curriculum for small groups and Sunday school classes that would study concepts like Darwinian evolution, cosmology, geology and how the findings in these fields can be compatible with a Biblical world view. Churches can also encourage that the schools and universities within their tradition have robust physical science courses and degree programs. This in turn would do good things for the Church’s world reputation and thereby its witness. Subsequently, this could have a large impact on the global community because students from colleges and universities go on to effect change in a variety of different fields.