Follow this link to find out what I have been up to this weekend.
Basically, a former alumni of Cono Christian School, Richard Marsceau, still lives in the area and owns the local coffee shop that I always go to called Brewed Awakenings. Richard has also started something called Reconciliation Ministries which among many other great things holds a Monday night Conversation Cafe that I am going to start visiting.
Richard is also the pastor of Noelridge Baptist Church in Cedar Rapids which I am going to visit tomorrow morning.
Richard has been working with Coe College to bring in academic lecturers into the area of which I am very excited.
This weekend, Richard and Coe hosted Gerry McDermott who is a Jonathon Edwards scholar and a fascinating man whom I was able to have lunch with today. He gave a lecture on Friday entitled "Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Jonathon Edwards on Religious Pluralism" to which I brought my US History class. Now McDermott is a Philosophy and Religion professor at Roanoke College and a trained Episcopalian priest, so his lecture understandably went way over the heads of my students. But I think they appreciated being able to go to a college lecture and they enjoyed the experience and were able to get some things out of it.
I gained a lot out of McDermott's visit and I will still see him once more tomorrow morning to cap it off at Marceau's church. Today I heard an excellent lecture from McDermott on Homosexuality and the Church in which he gave one of the most balanced (and totally orthodox) answers I have ever heard. It was especially interesting considering that he is an Episcopalian especially affected by the controversy of homosexuality in the Episcopal Church. Lets just say he didnt have a lot of nice things to say about Bishop Spong.
But more than anything he said, I found McDermott interesting because of his life. He's one of those guys who has done a lot in his life. He grew up Catholic in the Northeast and got a New Testament and Early Christian Literature Bachelor's degree from University of Chicago. He then lived in religious communes for seven years. He then founded a Christian school which still lasts in good number to this day and got a Masters in Education (something I am prestently interested in doing at Covenant). He then started a PHd in Religion at the University of Iowa at the age of 31. Now I am always interested to meet guys who get their PHd later in life because it shows me that I still have a chance.
Being around guys like that really make me hungry for higher education. Teaching high school has its wonderful benefits but it has the drawback of making you thirsty for academic stimulation that high school cant fulfill. This is one reason I am excited about Richard Marsceau's ministry in this area, because he also seems to feed off academic stimulation and I think he will be helpful for me.
McDermott had fascinating views on Edwards, particularly that Edwards was consumed during his life with the study of World Religion and thought that a category of religious typology exists in World Religions as well as in nature and in historical events. I hadnt known this before or thought about it but it makes me want to read some of the books he has written on the topic including "Can Evangelicals Learn From World Religions?"
McDermott did put me on a bit of a defensive PCA stance when he started promoting N.T. Wright's New Perspective on Paul. My PCA self told me to reject what he was saying, but I realized I havent actually read N.T. Wright yet, shaming me quite thoroughly into shutting my mouth.
P.S. We are all praying intently here for Rudy Schmidt. The Belz family (including Mrs. Jean Belz, Rudy's sister-in-law) may leave here at any moment to see Rudy in Chattanooga. They are ready to go at a moments notice. They seem very affected by the news. There are many prayers in Iowa being said.
Posted by todd at November 5, 2005 10:21 PM