Granberg-Michaelson Chapter Summary

In this book, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson invites “North American” Christians to explore both informative and transformative dialogues concerning the post-Christian West through the lens of 20th C. global Christianity. The general overtones, particularly in the first half of this book, are more informative as Granberg-Michaelson provides a brief history of 20th C. ecumenical movement, highlighting the major “spiritual” shifts taking place from the global North to the South, and from the Christian West to the ‘evangelized’ East. As an active insider, working closely with WCC and other ecumenical initiatives, Granberg-Michaelson provides invaluable reflections based on his personal experiences and factual data, which lead him to raise some critical assessments concerning the future of the church in America, at least from the ecumenical perspective. Some of his
In Chapter 1, Granberg-Michaelson introduces the notion of “pilgrimage” in Christianity as his overarching theme of ecumenical vision. This metaphor is strategically presented, holding today’s Christianity in-between the past and the future. In the pilgrimage of Christianity, churches cannot go back to where they were, but they can go differently if they read the “signposts” carefully as described in chapter 7. According to Granberg-Michaelson, the pilgrimage of Christianity demands something more than just believing in God’s promise to hit the end of the road. He believes, instead, in journeying together with other fellow pilgrims, taking necessary trajectories as needed, in order to experience the “inside out” transformations along the way. He argues that this “transformative” process enables the pilgrims to remember and experience God together, all the more powerfully in the midst of weary and unpromising “here-and now” spots of the pilgrimage. Such argument