Sentences with phrase «distinct theological tradition»

Lutheran congregations provide a good Petri dish for studying the megachurch impact, because Lutherans have a distinct theological tradition which they express in a particular liturgical style of worship.

Evangelicalism, in this paradigm, is now no longer a distinct theological tradition (i.e., «Reformation Christianity,» though it tends to be dominated by a «Reformed» articulation of Christian faith) or a particular piety and ethos (as it tended to be in classical evangelicalism) but has become a theological position staked out between conservative neo-orthodoxy and fundamentalism on a spectrum from left to right that is defined essentially by degrees of accommodation to modernity.

Not exact matches

Christian congregation; some have seen a theological school as distinct from but interrelated with congregations in ways analogous to the relation in the Reformed tradition between the congregation and its clergy; others have seen a theological school as related, not to congregations, but to a cadre of active clergy for whom it provides «in - service» or «extension» education.

Ironically, at the same time that formidable denominational bureaucracies were being constructed, the theological, ritual and social practices that sustain a distinct religious tradition were being eroded.

Informationally speaking, the pluralist theological option radically relativizes the importance of distinct religious boundaries, proposing that different religious traditions may all be equally valid ways of experiencing the revelation of an ultimate reality transcending the comprehension of any particular tradition (See the essays in John Hick and Paul Knitter, eds., The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987).

The awareness of the distinct identity of each tradition enables the participants in this dialogue to recognize both the similarities and the differences between these two theological traditions.