I just came back from the first night here in Brasília, Brazil, of Rikk Watts' seminar. Its title is "Living in the world as the people of God". I would give it a 4 out of 10. He's definitely well intentioned and knowledgeable. I didn't like some details. I think he failed, so far, to 'make his point' in the first night, after hours of speach. I haven't heard of this contextualization of the Gospel or Paul's writtings yet for Brazil. I haven't heard yet - and I bet he is capable of - of philosophical categories in a Brazilian context that would serve as framework toa contextualized Christianity here. I haven't hear how he will decouple faith from culture in a way that fully embeds faith in culture and still keeps truth in faith. I have heard of great praises of Christianity as the source of science (why is that important?), but omitting the contribution of Islam to science, from mathematics to medicine to engineering to economics. I have heard of how Christianity brings life to a society (in his own words - paraphrasing - Scicily is still lagging to date behind the development of the rest of Europe because of their non-Christian sociological problems that arise from mafia). But I haven't heard of the great historical catastrophies of Christianity, such as the colonization of Latin America and the Holocaust, all right in the middle of Christian societies. Anyways, I can agree with the basic idea of being in the world, and contextualizing the gospels, but I frankly would expect more from someone so knowledgeable.
Oh, they were 3 hours of speach with a 15 minute break and he took no questions.
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