Mark T. Mulder

Connecting the Mind, Heart and Hands throughIntentional Community at Calvin College1

This study examines three different models of building intentional community at Calvin College. Emphasis is placed on understanding if and how intentional communities can connect academics (mind), faith (heart) and service (hands) for a fully integrated life.

Global Pentecostalism and Ethnic Identity Maintenance among Latino Immigrants: A Case Study of a Guatemalan Neo-Pentecostal Congregation in the Pacific Northwest

Protestantism has been considered particularly weak for sustaining ethnic boundaries among immigrants. Recognizing the global adaptability and indigenization of Pentecostalism, however, we expect that immigrants from more pentecostal nations will likely retain their Protestantism in ways that affirm their ethnic identity. Using ethnographic data, our research demonstrates how a Guatemalan pentecostal church in Oregon successfully preserves its homeland culture, revealing how the structure of Pentecostalism at La Iglesia de Restauracion (affiliated with Elim churches) sustains ethnic continuity with its native indigenous culture. This Latino Protestant church affirms Pentecostalism’s capacity to encourage transnational relationships through a variety of social mechanisms, including provision of ethnic symbols and a space to use them, use of homeland languages (both Ki’che and Spanish), and promotion of a homegrown leadership. Moreover, the doctrinal division between “world” and “church” discourages assimilation into American culture while simultaneously reinforcing maintenance of “godly” indigenous practices that are legitimated as appropriately religious.

Evangelical Church polity and the nuances of white flight: a case study from the Roseland and Englewood neighborhoods in Chicago.

Present patterns of residential segregation have been proven to have antecedents in the so-called white flight of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Close scrutiny of this social phenomenon has yielded results that indicate complicated impetuses and call into question sweeping assumptions about white flight. A case study of seven congregations from a denomination called the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRC) who left the Englewood and Roseland neighborhoods of Chicago during the juncture in question further reveals the dubious role of religious practices and arrangements in the out-migration of white evangelical Christians. By utilizing church histories, council minutes, and field interviews, it became readily apparent that the departure of the members of these congregations found sanction within the hierarchical apparatus (or lack thereof) of the church. The response of these CRC congregations exemplified how the political structures (congregational polity) and social networks of a particular denomination could allow for an almost seamless process of white flight.