Author: Jim Memory
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Ten Years of Vista
From Vista Magazine When Vista began ten years ago we believed there was a need for solid research-based information on mission in Europe. Europe is such a diverse and dynamic context for mission. Each European situation is unique yet, at the same time, subject to influences and changes that are common across the continent. Where can busy pastors,…
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Reconciliation in a Conflicted Continent
From Vista Magazine Europe’s history is a story of conflict. For centuries, the nations of Europe have fought bloody wars over territory, power and religion. However, since 1945 Europe has experienced an unprecedented period of peace. Of course, that isn’t true everywhere. For those living in Cyprus, the Balkans, and Ukraine, conflict is a recent…
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Demography is destiny (Part II)
For the first part of the article, click here. Interest in the link between religion and fertility has increased remarkably in the last twenty years. An online Religion and Fertility Bibliography now runs to more than 700 books and articles. The societal consequences that sustained low fertility levels are having across a whole range of issues is…
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Demography is destiny (Part I)
An article from Jim Memory for Vista Magazine. A demographic perspective on secularisation The famous maxim that “demography is destiny” may, or may not, be attributable to Auguste Comte, but it was certainly Comte who first wrote about how population trends and distributions could determine the future of a country. In the social sciences, predictions…
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Book Reviews – How (not) to be secular
From Vista Magazine To date there have been two principal attempts to make Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age more accessible to the general reader. In How (Not) to Be Secular, philosopher James K.A. Smith presents Taylor’s magnum opus as a three-dimensional map for “thecomplex and complicated terrain ofour secular age” (p.3). Recognising that a map that runs to some 800…