...and please excuse my typos above, as I make these comments from my phone.

Tnx for heads up Alan, keep 'em coming :-)

Tnx Jamie :-) I'm still climbing the learning curve between general blogging, and placing research ideas into forums like these. Your questions got me to reflect not just on that, but on my research, and to defend it which is helpful. It also draws me into the wider critique around my discourse reviews, and essential considerations. So thanks. Looking forward to that work by Bell.

I will be 'pushing' those account of Augustine to explore their limits and at present suspect (but need to establish) that they go to far, in that they result in the Church being over ontologised. In that sense they do maintain enough of a strong distinction between the two cities. The Church overwhelming the world. But I think they push us (interesting how evangelicals make more of them than the mainline protestant or catholic church), back into a giveness for ecclesiology. But the 'eucharist' ('world in a wafer') is not enough. I think Wannewetsch points the the way to an embodied life and conception of worship as 'political' within a healthy reading of Augustine. I won't be collapsing the saeculum into the earthy city, it's that kind of dichotomy that I want to avoid. Tnx again for taking the time to comment, it is very helpful.

Tnx Jamie, I should have out ascetic in scare qoutes, "ascetic". Yes I will that's what I will be doing. I'm exploring the 'inter-relationship ' ecclesial and political life. I'll be using Cavanaugh, Wannwetsch, Milbank to assert that it is the institutions and practices of the church that constitute the church as an ecclesia res publica. And within that I am trying to address a methodological problem of the philosophical turn to religion as a resource for second order reflections that has no interest in lived communities and experience. As an outworking for E/C critique I want to address how this manifest in the epiphenomenon of 'churchless-faith' and post church ecclesiologies. The 'blueprint' ecclesiologies that N Healy frames. And in that regards I am making use of Healy's suggestions for the need for ‘ecclesiological ethnography'. I'm using an historical account of evangelicalism to generate analytical conceptualisations of ecclesial life within capitalist markets, that I can then explore with socio-poltilcal theories. I hope that enables me to understand the complex ways christian belief functions in lived contexts, so that I may in turn a theological framing and understanding of those accounts. I hope that will allow me to establish ekklesia as a rival and embedded discipline. Robert Markus and Eric Gregory are my starting points for Augustine, but I have alot of work to do before I get to them and into other sources. As you say 'sphere talk' is a misreading, as is the collapse of all into the secular that many post-church ecclesiologies are undertaking. And Alisdari MacIntyre will feature heavily for me as I make the case for virtuous and self critical institutions, around practices and habits. Tnx for your comments Jamie, Jason

Say hi to Tim Keel for me Alan :-)

Just got the book, looks superb, tnx again for heads up

I've not read any Fiddes, any suggestions of where to start with him? Tnx.

Thanks Geoff. Is you research centred around that hope? That's my hope. I just emailed Stephen Long, I forgot you were at Marquette?! Jase

Hi Paul, I find myself in a similar location to yourself, and thanks again for your encouragements. I am at odds with much of evangelicalism, in terms of it's ecclesiology, and see the mega church and much of the Emerging Church as flip sides of the same coin on a continuation and ecclesial trajectory. A resourcement by the great tradition is my hope, hence my turn to Augustinian reformed theology. I have found Reinhard Hutter most helpful, he has been my Barry Harvey. However Hutter ultimately converted to Catholicism. This ecclesial consideration around mission and the desire for a turn back into the church and tradition is one we see in Newman, it has happened continually within evangelicalism. As is the turn out of the church, that we see with large segments of the emerging church. Personally I am wanting to remain within a missional evangelical identity and wondering if I can be an anglo-catholic baptist vineyard church pastor/minister, without having to converted to Anglicanism/Catholicism ;-)? And in that regard I remain at odds with large parts of the anglican and catholic church, due to some inherited missional imperatives from my evangelical traditions :-)

Keith: Thanks for your encouragements. And your research sounds intriguing and very interesting. Have you looked at Charles Taylor? Julian Templeton has a paper on Taylor, with regards to the self and accessing the Gospel of John. Taylor might help you with that connection between myth and images for socio-economic realities? I will be using all of Noll's works, including America's God. Just a short bibliography here at this point. All the best with your research and it would be good to see some of it here! Jason. ---------- "Charles Taylor draws a distinction and contrast between the ‘porous’ self of the enchanted world and the ‘buffered’ self of the disenchanted world. The porous self is open to good influences (God, angels, relics) and bad (Satan, evil spirits, spells). The buffered self assumes a boundary between its autonomous self, governed by mind, and everything else outside it, with which the buffered self may choose to interact. For those whose default understanding of the self is buffered, the theology of the indwelling of Father, Son, Spirit and believers in The Gospel According to John may seem puzzling or even disconcerting in its apparent neglect of all-important boundaries. I will argue that there are aspects of the Johannine theology of indwelling that can liberate the atomist and solipsist tendencies of the buffered self through a renewed understanding of union, communion and empathy."

Welcoem back, looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Welcoem back, looking forward to hearing your thoughts.