Creating an Academic Domain of Urban Poor Missiology
After four decades of theological reflection, publication and lifestyle as a prophetic activist at the coalfaces of oppression, murder and poverty among 1.4 billion slum-dwellers, one finds oneself as an inadequate but global voice in the definition of the disciplines of urban poor missiology at the beginning of an urban millennium.
This Reflective Commentary Statement and Web-based Portfolio is (1) a series of reflections on these decades of catalyzing a domain of knowledge that interfaces fields of faith and fields of action in the slums. (2) The catalyst for this reflection is the request to demonstrate faith integration at a professorial level through a portfolio of artifacts. Both goals are interwoven throughout this paper.
This evaluation will be based on:
• Developing criteria for establishing a new domain.
• Identifying criteria for evaluating faith integration within the domain.
• Examining faith integration within six artifacts that evidence paradigm breakthroughs that are significant in it development.
• Differentiating the domain from two parallel domains.
• Reviewing public dissemination and dissemination networks as a scholarly essential.
• Conclusions based on the evaluation of capitalizing formation of a domain and scholarly activity in the process.
• Documentation of the extent of research, publication, dissemination, and institutional development.
n.b. Since the request to do this self-analysis relates to personal work output, it may not appear from the reflections, that all development over the decades has come from deep camaraderie with committed cadres of reflective activists. Creating loving communities that seek to understand the works of God is a central activity of the educational apostolate. I have listed some of them in the Colaborers page.