Szabó Árpád (szerk.): Isten és ember szolgálatában. Erdő János emlékezete (Kolozsvár, 2007)
John A. Buehrens: A House for Hope. Liberal Theology and the Challenges of the 21st Century
logue with or cooperate with anyone with whom it differs. Its growing political influence in the US, where it remains a minority, has taken our economic and foreign policies into similarly fundamentalist postures. Nonetheless, the worst mistake we can make is to give up the hope of catalyzing an interfaith and international response that is stronger and more authentic and more human and more blessed by the Spirit of Life than any narrow fundamentalist. That is our mission. But to fulfill it, we will also have to fill our sanctuaries with Spirit-filled people. For the Spirit cannot safely be left to Pat Robertson and those who seem to have trouble discerning the truly holy Spirit, the one that makes for wholeness, for justice, and peace. Our Pneumatology or Theology of Worship Recently I attended an inspiring ordination service. The preacher, Dr. Thomas Mikelson, is retiring this month from our church in Harvard Square, Cambridge. When he began there, the average attendance was tiny. Now the church is booming, with diversity, young people, social activism, and inspirational worship. His sermon asserts something that I also firmly believe: while it is not evident everywhere, we are in an age of spiritual revival. And we need to claim our identity again as people of the Spirit, who worship together „in spirit and truth," if we are going to fulfill our mission in this age. That mission will have to do with challenging some of the dominant forms of spirituality. Especially those that try to re-domesticate the Spirit by re-inscribing notions of normative hierarchy. In the ancient Roman Empire, when Christianity first arose, those normative notions of hierarchy manifested themselves as patriarchal household codes. Some early Christians even forgot the radical equality of discipleship and the call to universal participation in the commonwealth of God and bowed down to these hierarchical notions. You can see the struggle in the New Testament literature itself. Since Nicea, when those hierarchical notions were made normative, there have been at least three previous eras of spiritual revival important to our history. The radical wing of the Reformation represented the first such era. Thinkers like Ferenc Dávid may have doubted the personality of the Spirit, but not the reality. In fact, when he said that he would defend to the death the right of his opponents to be wrong, he was clearing the way for the same sort of moving of the Spirit that John Robinson anticipated when he said that „God hath yet more light to break forth from his holy Word.” In America and Britain, the second such era came in the 18th century. On our side of the Atlantic, it was known as the Great Awakening. Often our forebears were those who were resistant to the immediate blandish-182
