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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
however, globalisation – manifested, for instance, in a ‘google-ized’
world which reconfigures notions of both public and private spheres
(categories alien to a Qur’anic worldview, but integral to C5 lived
experience 24 ) – was meaning that “we can no longer present a different
message or persona for each different audience.” (Love 2008a:
33) Tensions, both internal and external to the debate, clearly
abound.
Other responses to Tennent confirm this observation. Both Parshall
and Hoefer agreed with the likelihood of C5 serving a transitional
function (Travis et al. 2006: 125-126). Travis, however, saw
four weaknesses within Tennent’s writing (Travis et al. 2006: 124-
125), but none of them addressed the substance of Tennent’s disagreement
with C5. First, Travis saw it as largely theoretical and
without any first-hand fieldwork and, second, that Tennent’s “theological
considerations” led him to generalise from only short sections
of the literature. Also, he dismissed Tennent’s claim that adeceitfulness
within C5 renders it unethical as “an extremely biased
statement, spoken by an outsider.” Finally, Tennent, in Travis’
view “does not take account of the changing world we are living in.”
Regarding Tennent’s exegesis, Travis simply appealed to a generalised
empirical observation that C5 ministries have happened, and
are happening around the world.
Criticisms almost naturally followed, fearing a minimising of the
Bible akin to North American seeker-driven ministries (Corwin
2006, Piper 2006; cf. Corwin and Winter 2006, and the response
from Travis and Travis 2006). While the search continued for ‘appropriate
hermeneutics’ for coping with cultural diversity (Redford
2005), others countered what they saw as an excessive appropriation
of similarities without a commensurate assessment of dissimilarities
(Waterman 2007, esp. 60), or an absence of wider theological
reflection informing C5’s developments of local theologies (Corwin
2007:54-55). For many, the question that was expressed in the Sep-
24 Regarding Islam’s legal construals of public and private, see Ruthven (1997: 83-
90). These constructions of identity within space and place are very different from
those envisaged within the USA and other western democratic systems of law.
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