Interesting conversation going on about Cornerstone Festival’s Imaginarium theme this year – named Days of the Dead. Quite controversial, actually. A ‘covert mission’ to witness to the Christians at Cornerstone has led to a conversation that will no doubt explode onto the wider stage. Slice opens the issue, and accuses Cornerstone of introducing occultism. Lint Hatcher responds from Cornerstone’s perspective.
Mike Hartenstein mentions the ‘protesters’ in his report who were handing out leaflets and wrapping toilet paper around the Asylum tent and i can only guess this is a reference to the ‘covert mission’ mentioned earlier. John Morehead, a speaker at the Imaginarium, speaks on his blog about the thinking behind the theme, and the connection between halloween and Days of the Dead.
Michael at Evangelical Resources was there at Imaginarium. He has more links than me and is the next blog-stop if you want to track this conversation. He says Cornerstone’s attempt was “itself devoid of occultic elements” and feels Slice “dramatically overstates” what happened .
As for me and my house, I think we need to address festivals and rituals and decide for ourselves and our families whether they should be redeemed [like Easter and Christmas] . . . or NOT. We also need to be very thoughtful in our contextualization lest we “blunder” our way through and end up losing the prophetic message or in syncretism. Its a tricky balance.
Related: Trevor McPherson who heads up the Underground ministries Roundtable each year at Cornerstone will be at our Roundtable in Germany next month. Maybe he will give us the skinny.
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A slice of what?
As usual, Ill give a tip-o-the-hat to TSK for this:
It seems that Slice have served themselves up a slice of dont get it – dont want to get it – wont get it if you explain it slowly with small words.
The Corner…
Thanks for mentiong the Imaginarium event, and the ensuing controversy. I think you have given a fair description of the various views. However, your post above conflates Mike Hertenstein’s statements on the topic and my own summary of it on my blog.
I think one of your paragraphs above hit on a key issue: the need to consider festival and ritual. This is precisely why Cornerstone addressed the topic of Days of the Dead, and I mentioned in my seminar series that evangelicals tend to have a post-Reformation knee-jerk reaction against ritual and festival, hence the flirtation with it in various cultural festivals, whether Halloween or Mardi Gras.
Yes, there is always a fine line between sound theology and praxis where ritual, festival, and contextualization are concerned, but we should not let our fear stop us from engaging in the critical contextualization process. A tricky balance worthy of more willing to walk the balance beam.
john
thanks for coming on. CONFLATION did indeed occur and i have corrected the problem by rearraning the offending paragraph and links.
It was reassuring to me to read through your recent blog posts earlier today on contextualisation and missiology.
The “covert mission” person who wrote the article about Cornerstone supposedly condoning the occult didn’t come across as being very rational or well-informed. Saying that gauging your ears is inherently evil because some people supposedly gauge their ears as part of pagan rituals is like saying that all magazines are evil because some of them are pornographic. It also bothered me how the author insinuated that having a tattoo precludes you from being a Christian (did I use the word “preclude” correctly?).
Days of the Dead
Well it seems my mate John Morehead has been coping flack for speaking at the
Thanks for the fair reporting about the Days of the Dead theme at the Imaginarium this year. One thing should be cleared up though: the covert operatives were not responsible for toilet papering the Asylum tent. That was an in-joke among some Cornerstone folks.
Thanks,
Lint
Hi, friends – just discovered your comments on the controversy. I also attended the Imaginarium this year, and I just posted my own reactions to it (and a fisk of Dwayna Litz’ report) on my blog, http://www.kathleenlundquist.blogspot.com.
FYI, I am a Roman Catholic, so I come at this from a different angle. Come visit; I’m curious to see what you think.
Days of the Dead
Well it seems my mate John Morehead has been coping flack for speaking at the