Theological Reflection

Theological Reflection

Introduction

In the given excerpt by Davey (2002) highlights about the world becoming an urban place. Considering this, the church must accept this imperative facet and make efforts to carry out more theological research upon this changing cultural and social phenomenon of urbanization. In the past, many of the Church initiatives have included studying the changing social patterns, including engaging with government at all levels. This involvement mainly addressed the issues of social justice and the environment. However, despite these efforts, not much has been done to identify the wider cultural failures that have led to the many urban problems experienced by humans today. Conversely, this paper aims to highlight reflections based upon the excerpt provided from the work by Davey (2002). The reflection presented in this paper is based upon whether the writers agree or disagree with the statements provided within the excerpt. This is discussed in the following section.

Discussion

Urbanization and the Church

According to Ramachandra (2003) globalization is that process which has dismembered the human activities from local contexts and reorganized them to be re-embedded into a more complex global context. The latter describes the social application of globalization. However, from the economic perspective, globalization has rendered a more free form of trade without geographical barriers. Moreover, globalization is also said to be one of the leading forces behind urbanization. According to McKinney (2006) urbanization is described as one of the most homogenizing of all human activities. Urbanization has resulted as the main pull factor for human population to migrate to those regions that present better social and economic conditions. Moreover, this has also resulted in creating a large vacuum in the urban areas, leading to many social problems such as crime and poverty as a result of lack of resources.

Similarly, Leonard (2004) highlights the role of Church in the changing social and cultural assimilation of the society. The scholar notes that Church is not against or set between different cultures. However, the Church makes all efforts to understand and facilitate those individuals who can be categorized as multicultural. Urbanization has led to the migration of many individuals from their native regions and homelands to the bigger urban city centers. Thus, a large majority of these migrants tend to maintain and neither deny their native culture and that of the urban region that they live in. Thus, the Church has made its best efforts to act as ...