Copy of AREA STUDIES

Area Studies

What can we learn by comparing practices and customs in different societies around the world?

Photo credit: Britt Reints - Flickr


Posts tagged spirituality
The Threat of Compassion in an East Asian and Diaspora Context

by by Megan Geem

Why do East-Asians and their descendants find grace so challenging to understand and accept? This paper hopes to provide one answer to this question through exploring the relationship between two biblical concepts: compassion and grace. Research suggests that the two are deeply and symbiotically interconnected. The former, if understood in accordance to its original Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) context, is meant to inform and lead into the latter. Compassion, as result, may be a key piece for which believers from East-Asian honor-shame cultures need help in comprehending and receiving, so that they can show grace to themselves as well as others.

Read More
Holistic Transformational Development in East Africa through Surgical Care

by Dan Poenaru

My premise is that a health care ministry to children with disabilities and their families can—and should—be the springboard to holistic, transformational community development in low-resourced settings in Africa. I will develop this thesis by first examining the context in which it is proposed with its social, cultural, and spiritual aspects. I will then define the specific bio-psychosocial and spiritual challenges that need to be met, and propose an elaborate, if hypothetical, plan of action.

Read More
Wiconi International: A Native North American Contextual Movement in Christ

by Namarr Newson

The perspective of this article involves contextualization necessary to share the Gospel with North American Indians within their own cultural context to negate an enduring custom of ridding them from their cultural values in order to become Christians. This customary practice of Christian mission towards these people has discouraged them from following Christ or else to follow Christ at the expense of disregarding their own tribal culture.

Read More