It's a lousy pun, and most of the lyrics of the song by Keane don't really relate, but the title "Everbody's Changing" and a few of the sentiments I perceive it to contain maybe do.

I am wanting to research how Baptists approached change in the past to inform my/our present and affect/infleunce our future.

But

History is particular, in just about every conceivable meaning of the word, and its methods and aims have changed over time

And

Theology is likewise particular and contingent (at least I think that's the word)

And the purpose of this research according to an email from my professor is one

"where new academic knowledge is generated in order to effect change, in terms of perosnal develpment or understanding best practice etc.'

So

I am a student of change (I am studying it) I am a subject of change (I get changed in the process of doing the study) and I am an agent of change (I seek to effect change by what I do)

This makes any pretence of objectivity nonsensical since it is impossible to define an absolute starting point within myself

But

I can find discrete historical case studies where traces of the past may be discernible and it is feasible to say 'practice was X and is now Y' even if interpretation of the 'how' is largely conjecture.

As of this moment, I am quite enjoying understanding the confusion, but as the song says...

So little time
Try to understand that I'm
Trying to make a move just to stay in the game
I try to stay awake and remember my name
But everybody's changing
And I don't feel the same

The quest for truth is everlasting, and when I think too hard it is easy to end up feeling like it is all shifting stand.  I haven't a clue as yet how I reconcile the complexity of these changes upon changes, but maybe it'll be fun trying?

(Oh, and by the way, my name is Catriona, I can remember that much!)

This is my conclusion every time I read another book or encounter another idea!  This week having managed to maintain the new regime, and enjoying it, is no exception.  I read stuff on spirituality and it sparks ideas on historiography; I read a book on historical methods and postmodernity and neurons start firing to remind of stuff by Paul Fiddes and Walter Wink.  Every answer conceals a dozen questions and the whole of a conceiveable eternity would be too short to work through them all (yes, I know, a conceiveable eternity would not be eternity).

In Spirituality and Theology, I have just read the chapter on Julian of Norwich and realise how partial/distorted a presentation of her I gleaned from my spirituality courses.  Women mystics always did my head in with their endless headaches and illogical approach, but here I found a more helpful look at some of Julian's writings.  In particular, her reference to God as Mother; part of her expression of trinity as 'Father, Mother, Lord.'  It is not that God is 'like a mother', more that our experience of 'mother' is a reflection of that aspect of God's Godness (btw, I invented the word Godness, even if anyone else did before me!).  Although our experience of the earthly points us towards God, it is actually the reflection of God that we see.  Does this make sense to anyone else?  I see echoes of it in one the funeral prayers in the Baptist Brick (Gathering for Worship, great book but too big to fit in your pocket/bag) which says 'We thank you for the ways in which N’s life has shown us your goodness, mercy and love.'  I have used this prayer for some time and can now do so with new insight.

My research is trying to look at Baptists thinking about change (even if I feel I am being pushed/pulled/coerced into other directions) and my reading about historiogrpahy/historical method has kind of touched on some of this - though what follows may be incoherent!  Historical method/historiography has changed over time, as have the ways in in which people think, but I think my overarching question 'how does studying the past affect present and future' remains valid, i.e. by studying how people in the past approached change, in so far as it is possible to reconstruct this, what lessons can be learned that can affect our present and shape our future?  Although history (both as recorded and as understood) is itself a subject of change, it remains an agent of change.  Maybe I have too many variables here, but in the search for truth, a provisional, demonstrable and defensible argument may be the best that is achieveable and presents a 'practical realist' (thanks Appleby et al, Telling the Turth about History) response drawing on the strengths of the 'modern'/'scientific' methods of the past and the 'post-modern'/'contextual' insights of the present.

One interesting challenge, I think, is that a lot of church and Christian history is written in an 'Enlightenment' fashion, i.e. the God-factor is omitted in the quest for objectivity.  In a so-called Postmodern age, is there now permission to write this back in, albeit in a more tentative, provisional way that might have been done when Queen Elizabeth I allegedly saw the hand of God defeating the Spanish Armada?

Please God, can I have a bigger brain - or at least a processor upgrade on the one I have?

No my child, my strength is made perfect in weakness, the one you have will do fine.

 

Ah well, plod on!

OK, so you need to understand the language games to make sense of this question (post modern) but I think it is a fair question to ask.

Having (finally) found a real attempt by a serious writer to explain what they understand by both Modernism and Post-modernism, I am left with the question of whether the latter is really an example of the former.  If modernity sought absolutes and was the product of a white, male-dominated, Euro-centric context, then Postmodernism is actually thoroughly modern, isn't it?  Its overarching absolute is that there is no absolute and most of its thinkers, seemingly, are French men.

OK, so this is over simplistic but the slide from modernity to post-modernity, like that from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment is exactly that - a slide not a sudden paradigm shift.  As a child of modernity, post modernity carries with it the taint of its forebears and expresses itself through the very structures and norms it resents.  The way it is described and critiqued (is that subtly different from problematised, a, seemingly, Postmodern word?) in the book I'm reading leaves me thinking that it is as yet in a kind of 'adolesence' where it is more concerned at kicking against its forebears than becoming a self-reflective 'adult.'  Again, I'm sure this is over simplified and next week I'll read something that answers my questions - we'll see.

A definition:

'In those days Israel had no king: everyone did as they saw fit' (Judges 21:25)

A comment:

'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun' (Ecclesiastes 1: 9)

On Deconstruction and langauge games

'In the begining was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God' (John 1:1)

I wish I could claim originality for any/all of this but I can't!  The first quote emerges from flicking through chapter titles in a book on the quest for objectivity in historiography and then thinking, hmm, I wonder how many readers will know that is from the Bible, let alone where.  The other two are my own connections - but given that almost every time I get a new insight I read about it soon afterwards I'm sure that Ecclesiastes 1:9 holds here too.

In Spirutality and Theology on page 67 the author refers to the work of a Canadian philosophical theologian called Bernard Lonergan and says this: -

'Lonergan's language frequently sounds empirical.  This may be explained by Lonergan's mathematical and scientific background - unusual in a theologian'

People often make this assertion about a perceived 'unusualness' that a person trained (and in my case also an experienced practitioner) in maths/science/engineering would have an interest in theology and/or be called to ordained ministry.  But is it true?  My college principle was trained as a theoretical physicist before stuying theology, other college principles I know of include at least three others with backgrounds in physical sciences and several fellow students had qualifications in scientific fields.  Maybe the overall proportion is small, or maybe the assertion is flawed. 

Given that both the 'history of history' and the 'history of theology' stuff I've read in the last couple days refers to a 'scientific approach' within both fields, I'd have thought it entirely feasible that people with a scientific background could/would also make reasonable theologians (not that Sheldrake says they can't, merely that they are unusual) or historians - or even both.