Bosch's discussion of the Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening (pp. 277-81) reminded me of some research I did last fall when I was taking a business course in Organizational Theory and Design and wrote a paper, "Life Cycle Theory and The Episcopal Church U.S.A." An invaluable resource for the paper was a work by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992), in which they argue that the Great Awakenings are essentially myths promulgated by the churches in order to assure people (including themselves?) that the church was not in crisis - despite the fact that the total “market share” of all mainline (Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians) and evangelical (Baptists and Methodists) churches decreased consistently from the periods between 1776 and 1985 (Finke and Stark, p. 16).
I raise this possibility in light of Bosch’s comment that “these movements exercised a profound influence on mission.” What might the influences on mission have been if Finke and Stark’s assessment is the accurate one?
Despite this question, I have found the chapter, “Mission in the Wake of the Enlightenment” to be quite informative. The Enlightenment’s “faith in humankind” (p. 267) seems to provide a nice summary of each of the “contours” (p. 265) described by Bosch.
One final comment, the section on Missionary Motifs has been helpful in aiding me to name my own prejudices against “doing” mission! I am very much looking forward to the Post-Enlightened Paradigm that is promised in Part 3 of Bosch’s book – and which, we began exploring in class last week.