working group 2: practices, way of life, social movement?

in preparation for the national working group meeting here at yds, and specifically in response to one of the pastor's pushing (skip masback, who is a dynamite pastor in new canaan ct), i tried to think through faith as a way of life project within a larger movement around living our faith in a holistic way. this, it seems to me, would push us to think horizontally and collaboratively in trying to make progress, making 'our stuff' more clearly something god is doing.

so, i took david miller’s smart princeton dissertation on the 'faith at work' movement and mined it for the criteria to assess if social phenomena amount to a social movement. he focuses on three descriptive components of a social movement and I tried them on to see if fwl is part of a social movement.

1) involve a plurality of individuals, groups, and/or organizations, often with loose network of relations
a. institutions/organizations
i. lilly endowment, religion division
ii. valparaiso project
iii. yale center for faith & culture
iv. project on lived theology
v. emerging church network
vi. practicing congregations project
vii. renovare
viii. north american forum on the catechumenate

b.scholars and core texts
i. alasdair macIntyre (after virtue)
ii. george lindbeck (nature of doctrine)
iii. stanley hawerwas (community of character)
iv. miroslav volf (practicing theology)
v. dorothy bass and craig dykstra (Practicing Our Faith)
vi. richard foster (celebration of discipline)
vii. james dunning (echoing god's word)
viii. many others, often students or friends of the above

2. having collective identity
a. christian
b. seeking lived faith, post-modern concern for integration of life against modern dissection, compartmentalization
c. employing framework of practices, concept of ‘way of life’

3. emerges in response to cultural conflict, problem
a. “when it comes to the difficulty of connecting faith with life, the smorgasbord culture is a challenge for communities of faith, but it is not their main problem. rather, the main problem is that communities of faith have not found effective ways to offer such a culture a compelling vision of an integral way of life that is worth living.” miroslav volf
b. “a far more important stimulus for this radical shift in the understanding of practical theology has come from a profound loss in the church and in the culture of a clear sense of the meaning of the christian gospel and of the shape of the life of christian faith.” craig dysktra

so, blogosphere lurkers, is this a movement? do i have some of the parts right? others wrong? have at it.

anon, and +peace