Africa’s Women: A Journey of Hope

by Marta D. Bennett


Originally from Seattle (USA), Marta Bennett has been teaching full-time at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya since 1994. Most recently, she has served as Dean of Postgraduate Studies, and is the adoptive mother of three Kenyan children. Prior to Kenya, she served at Seattle Pacific University (1982-1994) as Director of Campus Ministries and adjunct professor in religious studies, and urban ministries.


My daughter’s Kenyan classmate is named “Good News.” A university student from the Democratic Republic of Congo is called “Faida” meaning “good fortune” or “profitable.” “Victory” teaches Sunday school at our local church, and “Grace” and “Charity” served me in government offices the other day. While world news may or may not cover the most recent African disasters, hope refuses to be quenched on the African continent, as evidenced in these cited names. Visitors from outside, coming to meet their sponsored child or traveling on tourist safari, more often than not comment, “People are so warm, so hospitable and generous. They have ‘nothing’ and yet they are so friendly! I am overwhelmed!” Both on-going tragedy and local hospitality make up the reality of the African people, whether they are the vast numbers living in abject poverty, the growing professional middle-class, or the materially wealthy and powerful few. Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania is oft quoted as saying, “In Africa we have problems, but we remain cheerful.”1

Much has been written about the crises of the African continent, a region of the earth that does indeed seem to continue to receive more than its share of natural as well as humanly-inflicted disasters. Some in the West have written it off as beyond hope, all 52 nations of it. In the midst of the rampant challenges of poverty, disease, unemployment, drought, ethnic clashes, and wars, injustices against women rank high in the scope of atrocities.

It is true that a higher percentage of HIV/AIDS victims in sub-Sahara Africa are women; they are biologically more vulnerable, and men who have multiple partners then bring the virus home to the women, who have no rights to refuse their husbands. Rape cases have increased, against younger and younger victims, some in the hope that sexual relations with a virgin will cure HIV/AIDS. Female circumcision is not as rare as government law would suggest. Women have less access to education, and less than one-fourth of Kenyan women are found in the formal work sector. Women tend to lack collateral to access financial loans for economic ventures, and in Kenya, they rarely inherit land. The girl-child is often kept home to haul water, carry wood, care for her younger siblings, and then sent off to become the second or third wife of the elderly village patriarch, in exchange for bride-wealth paid to her family. In Africa, women make up the largest number of refugees, and/or are left behind to care for the children, the sick and the wounded, and to recover from gang-rapes by the rebel armies. The problems faced here are neither few nor trivial.

Yet there is hope. In the face of all this, children are being named Good News, Faida, Victory, Grace, and Charity. There is hope in Africa, and for African women.

Women are beginning to rise up to make a difference. Professor Wangari Maathai, once vilified by the former government, now serves as the Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife. Upon receiving the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, she has become a role-model, a hero, and the pride of the continent. What was her motivation? She states, “Women are responsible for their children; they cannot sit back, waste time and see them starve...African women in general need to know that it’s OK for them to be the way they are – to see the way they are as a strength, and to be liberated from fear and from silence.”2 On another occasion, Prof. Maathai stated, “Every one of us can make a contribution. And quite often we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution…. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what’s happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do.”3

Trained as a nurse and mid-wife, the leading short story and novel writer in East Africa, Grace Ogot, has served as Minister of Parliament, has represented Kenya in the United Nations, and became Assistant Minister of Culture and Social Services. She noted, “Being a mother, you are not only a mother of your children, you are also a mother of the husband and another to his people…I think that in motherhood you can change the course of life for a society and for a people…The main issue is equal opportunity and respect.”4 She went on to assert that “The difference between my actions and what western women are doing, even when I am an activist within my political life, is that I must remember that…what I do affects the status in society of my husband, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law…Therefore a Kikuyu woman or a Luo woman…will always look back and ask, ‘am I carrying the family with me?’”5

Charity Ngilu, business woman and current Minister of Health in the Kenyan government, in 1997 became the first woman to run for an African presidency. As one commentator observed, “Charity Ngilu had a vision, a vision for the people of Kenya. It is her burning desire to achieve her vision that drove her to seek the presidency. She wanted the office to accomplish her vision; she did not need or want the office itself.”6 Her vision was of a Kenya that addressed the injustices against women, women who were walking in tatters, carrying sick children on their backs, from homes that had holes that can be seen through, because of poverty.

These are but a few examples of women who are publicly rising up to speak out, to mobilize others, and to work for positive societal change. Within religious circles, members of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, with its various country chapters, are writing and publishing from a holistic approach. While addressing social injustices and gender-based violence from a faith perspective, they are assisting in giving voice to the voiceless through a theology of lamentation,7 as well as being bearers of hope and life. As Nyambura Njoroge writes, “We have chosen to touch the cloak of Jesus and to hear his voice calling us to arise! We have chosen to participate fully in God’s mission and to name the missing links in African theology, mission, and life…”8

In terms of women’s roles in church leadership, a female seminary student at Nairobi International School of Theology recently researched African views of women in ministry for her M.A. thesis. From her interviews, she concluded that in spite of patriarchal cultural realities, the issue of women serving in ministry was a Western, not an African concern. If any believer has gifts in ministry, he or she must use them in whatever way possible. Together, male and female form the image of God. All must lend their hands, their gifts, to build up the Body of Christ and to extend God’s Kingdom. Christ, not any human vessel, is head of the church. Under him, we are all servants, leading God’s people towards him.9

On the ground, numerous examples of African women can be cited, those who, in a response of faith, have looked to see what they hold in their hand.10 What they hold they have used to transform realities of despair into models of hope. Muthoni, one of seven children by different fathers, raised by her grandmother in rural Kenya, now a university graduate, felt compassion for teen girls at risk in the informal settlements of Nairobi. Under the umbrella of our local church she began with ten at-risk girls referred by slum churches, to live-in with her in the slum for a year, for discipleship, life-skill training, and vocational training. At the end of the first year, the girls were sponsored and re-integrated into schools at the level where they had left off, and some were reconnected with their families. Then ten more girls were taken in. Four years later, forty girls now call Muthoni “Mom,” with a fifth group soon to start. A second home is about to be opened, and a team of volunteer staff oversee and mentor the girls, helping them to get on their feet, learn to make wise choices, and become equipped to contribute back into church and society. Muthoni is one of many such young women who are rising up, working towards the turn-around of the African continent.

The church in Africa is one of the fastest growing portions of Christ’s Body in the world.11 Its impact is not only spiritual, but also social and economic. In 2002, I undertook field research exploring of the role of the church in the economic development of marginalized peoples of Nairobi. By the end of three weeks of steady interviews and site visits, I came away so encouraged by the multitude of micro-enterprise projects, micro-finance schemes, and community-based organizations initiated by local church congregations, in squalid informal settlements up to prestigious denominational headquarters. From a group of seventeen women who collect garbage paper and then shred, soak, pound, and transform it into designer cards sold at luxury hotels, enabling them to raise and educate their own families, to the groups of 15 to 60 neighbors who serve as collateral for each other to access loans, receive training and begin small businesses, the church is actively involved in promoting holistic development of not only its own members, but also of its neighbors and the wider community. The needs are vast and over-whelming, but by “small wins” advances are being made, one woman, one child, one family at a time.

“Jitegemea” or “self-reliance” is the motto of one of the mainline denominations in Kenya,12 declaring its commitment to promote its ministries without relying on external donor support. This portrays a healthy understanding that the church in Africa is not dependent on missionary founders or foreign donors, but is able to stand as a partner in ministry, both locally and globally. To a Western point of view, this may be a paradigm shift, considering the dismal portrayal of Africa in the media. One East African student, however, came back from studies in North America with a poignant observation. She did not deny the technology and efficiency of Western culture. She admired the accessibility of education for all, up through high school. She admitted that there is a mind-boggling amount of material possessions owned by each individual. But when she reflected on the terms “developed” vs. “under-developed” or “developing” world, she noted that she wasn’t sure which was which. Materially, America may be very developed, but in other aspects of life, Africa has significant contributions to offer.

In Africa, the elderly don’t die alone. If an extended family member is in need, others in the family with their own meager resources make sure the need is met. In the African context, there is no such concept as “inconvenience.” Unexpected visitors are blessings, and there’s always room at the table for one or two more. Older siblings help with school fees for the younger ones. Here people know how to celebrate, to dance, to sing, without spending a fortune to do so. Yes, life is hard, but people know how to find and express joy in the midst of what they have, with each other. People greet each other with “God is good…” to which is replied, “…all the time, and all the time…” “God is good!” concludes the first. Is this simplistic optimism…or is it a view of reality which addresses life from the perspective of eternal priorities?

In spite of the many grand-scale challenges, there is hope. A proposed new national constitution is to be voted on in Kenya at the end of November 2005, in which rights of women are upgraded and reinforced. Whether or not the referendum is passed, a groundswell of popular concern is demanding that attention be given to human rights, including those related to gender equity and advocacy. Multi-party politics are beginning to focus more on issues than on mere power jockeying, and attempts to provide free primary education and accessible health care are positive steps forward. More and more women are stepping to the forefront to take their place in decision-making bodies, media and commerce, and in so doing, are providing role-models for the younger generations who are watching.

The road is not smooth. The set-backs are many. While monetary capital may seem in short supply, social capital, when valued, can balance the deficit. With life-giving communal ties and resilient attitudes, there is hope rooted in pockets of progress, and grounded in the ability to savor life with dignity, and to use what one has in one’s hand. Two recent book titles reinforce this perspective: one is entitled The Poor Discover Their Own Resources, describing a practical approach to poverty reduction in urban and rural areas in Africa.13 The other is entitled, Africa is Not a Dark Continent,14 contradicting of the stereotype shaped by early European explorers. God is at work in the people of Africa. When tempted by cynicism as one views the challenges, it can be remembered that one day at a time makes up life. “Most of all, life in Africa is the joy of people- the spontaneous welcome for an unexpected visitor, a beaming mother with her newborn child, the joyful response of small children when greeted by name, the ululation (a special trilling sound made in the back of the throat) of women and girls… Despite the stark hardships that often accompany daily life, African people show remarkable resiliency and an ability to celebrate life. There is deep wisdom in the saying, ‘The poor celebrate best.’”15


Endnotes


1Healey, Joseph G. (2005), Once Upon a Time in Africa. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, Introducton x.

2http://womenshistory.about.com/od/quotes/a/wangari_maathai.htm.

3http://www.sgi.org/wssd/02quietr/main01/htm.

4Kuria, Mike (2003), Talking Gender: Conversations with Kenyan Women Writers. Nairoib: PJ-Kenya, 92.

5Ibid. 93.

6Adler, Nancy J. (2002), International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, 4th edition. Canada: South-Western Thomson Learning, 358.

7Kalu, Ogbu U. (ed.)(2005), African Christianity: An African Story. Pretoria: University of Pretoria, 465.

8Ibid, 467.

9Muhinda, Anne (2004), unpublished Masters thesis, at Nairobi International School of Theology, Nairobi, Kenya.

10Taken from the image of Moses’ staff in Exodus 4:2

11Jenkins, Philip (2000), The Next Christendom. New York: Oxford University Press.

12The Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA)

13Stenger, Fritz and Maria Teresa Ratti (eds.)(2002), The Poor Discover Their Own Resources. Nairobi: Paulines Publications.

14Stenger, Fritz (ed.) (2005), Africa is Not a Dark Continent. Nairobi: Paulines Publications.

15Healey, Joseph G. (2005), Once Upon a Time in Africa. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 85.

Brazilian Christians Issue a "Manifesto" About the Right to Declare Homosexuality a Sin

Read the manifesto here.

"Homophobia"

Written by Phil Johnson over at Pyromaniacs: read the article here.

"Give We Sense": Seeking to be Wise in a Shrinking World

Plenary address, Day of Common Learning
Seattle Pacific University, Seattle, WA

October 17, 2006

Thank you very much for that very generous introduction. If you don't mind, I'd like to have a copy sent to my mother. My friends, it is an honor and a delight to be asked to address you on this Day of Common Learning. We live in uncommon times, and we need to spend the days we have in a learning community seeking wisdom for what God is calling us to do. We live in a world that is full of surprises. Who would have thought, for example, that Oakland and Detroit would be playing for the American League crown? But more seriously, if there is one phrase to capture the spirit of our times, I would vote for this one: "Who would have thought?" Perhaps life holds surprises only for us older people, who have been around long enough to see strange twists in history, but we have seen enormous surprises in the last 20 years. Who would have thought that the formidable communist regimes of the Soviet Union and its satellites would suddenly collapse? Who would have thought that the Chinese, who were devastated body and soul during their violent Cultural Revolution, would today be leading the world in economic growth rates and eagerly consuming western ideas as well as products? Who would have thought that Islam would experience a major resurgence? Who would have thought that violent radicals, acting in the name of Islam, (and illegitimately so, most Muslims would agree) would threaten the peace and security of millions worldwide?

Five years out from the 9/11 tragedy, our talking heads, blog sites and thought magazines are awash with chatter about the surprises of our day: the impact of economic and cultural globalization, of Islamic radicalism, and of the rise of China, the new economic superpower. I acknowledge the importance of these themes, but as a historian of the modern era, I am dismayed to see that most of this talk ignores one of the greatest and most surprising changes in the world of recent times, one that reaches across regions and civilizations. Resurgent Islam--we hear lots about that. But until very recently, an even greater religious change has been ignored. Christianity has become pervasive. Today it is a worldwide faith. This new fact amounts to a seismic shift going on in the world's religious commitments. The vast majority of Christians live not in Europe and North America, as is commonly supposed, but in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific region. Today, Christianity is predominantly a non-western religion. Who would have thought?

For the past thousand years, Christianity and Christian consciousness have been tied to Europe, and our understanding here in the global North of what it means to be Christian bears the deep stamp of European culture. But today Christianity is in deep decline in Europe, and it is rising elsewhere. What does this great fact mean to us assembled here today? I submit to you that this change is huge; it rocks our world, but it does so in God's surprising ways, not the ways we might expect. Before I offer some suggestions about what this big surprise might mean for us here, let me briefly outline the contours of this great change.

From Christendom to World Christianity

Perhaps the best way to start is to look at some worldwide religious developments over time. In 1900, 80 percent of the world’s Christians lived in Europe and North America. A century later, nearly 70 percent of the world’s Christians now live in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Christian adherence and vitally are waning in the North, and they are rising in the South and East. In Great Britain, for example, only about 1 million of the 26 million members of the Church of England attend on Sundays. In Nigeria, there are now 18 million Anglicans, and their churches are packed on Sunday. Half of the world’s Anglicans now live in Africa.

The rise of nonwestern Christianity has come as a huge surprise. Christianity outside of the West was thought to be a product of European imperialism, and it was expected to wither and die in the post-colonial era. Just the opposite happened. Christianity has grown much more rapidly since the end of the colonial empires than during them. Consider the huge change in Africa. In 1900, there were only about 9 million Christians in all of Africa. By 1950, with Africa still mostly under colonial rule, this number had tripled, to about 30 million. By 1970, however, in post-independence Africa, this number nearly quadrupled, to over 117 million. Today, the number has more than tripled again, to an estimated 397 million Christians in Africa. Says historian Philip Jenkins, the Christianization of sub-Saharan Africa is probably "the largest religious change in human history."

Even so, the notion that Christianity in Africa, Asia and Latin America is a Western import remains strong. When Americans think of Christianity in those lands, we think of it as a missionary product. Western missionaries, religious ideas and media products are indeed flowing freely around the globe, more so than ever before. But so is the new Christianity. It too is a missionary sending faith. The United States still leads the world in mission sending, but the U.S. also receives the largest number of foreign missionaries. A missionary lives down the block from me in Grand Rapids. Antonio Rosario, an Adventist minister from the Dominican Republic, oversees three new Latino congregations in our city.

We Americans think that Christianity elsewhere is a derivative of our own brand of it. But as it takes root in the global south and east, Christianity is being transformed. Never before has the world seen the faith of the Cross expressed in so many languages and cultural forms. Increasingly these facts contradict the assumption that Christianity is a European faith. African Christian scholars, for example, see Christianity as an African religion, not an import. That is the main point of the Ghanaian theologian Kwame Bediako's stirring and provocative book, Christianity in Africa: The Renewal of a Non-Western Religion (University of Edinburgh/Orbis, 1995). Yale historian Lamin Sanneh, a Christian from the Gambia, has an eloquent little book, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Eerdmans, 2003), which portrays a stunning contrast between today's post-Christian West and non-Western Christianity.

Christianity is in fact becoming predominantly non-Western. What ought that fact imply to us? It ought to say, among other things, that what happens in Africa, Asia and Latin America will have a growing influence on what Christianity will be like worldwide. Conversely, what happens in Europe and in North America will matter less. Tite Tienou, the West African theologian who now heads Trinity Evangelical Divinity School near Chicago, insists that “the future of Christianity no longer depends on developments in the North.” Missions historian Andrew Walls concludes that “it is Africans and Asians and Latin Americans who will be the representative Christians, those who represent the Christian norm, the Christian mainstream, of the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries.”

Only a few years ago, such assertions would have seemed vastly overblown, but the tragic events of September 11 and the subsequent wars have begun to awaken us to the “globality” of contemporary life. What happens halfway around the globe matters here almost immediately. And one of the surprises is how religious this radically interactive world truly is. The eminent sociologist Peter Berger, formerly a high priest of secularization theory, puts it starkly, “the assumption that we live in a secularized world is false.” He goes on to say that the assumption that “modernization necessarily leads to a decline of religion” has proven to be mistaken. Globally interactive modernity has proven to be a powerful vehicle for religious interaction and competitive expansion, as traditional religious and communal boundaries have broken down. The rising Christianity of the south and east is no longer distant or exotic. It is in fact starting to change the whole church, even up here in the North.

Time does not permit me to point out all the ways in which the Christian churches in the global North and worldwide are being changed by the new Christianity, but let me suggest a few of them, briefly. First, one worldwide Christian fellowship after another now has a leader from the global South. The head of the World Council of Churches is Samuel Kobia, a Kenyan Methodist. The executive director of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches is Setri Nyomi, a Ghanaian Presbyterian. The general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation is Ishmael Noko, from Zimbabwe.

Second, the most compelling public leaders and thinkers for the Christian church are beginning to come from the global south and east. If you asked who is the leading Christian public theologian or intellectual 50 years ago, people might say Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian. Today, it is Desmond Tutu, a South African.

Third, Christians from Africa, Asia and Latin America are enlivening Christian witness and fellowship in the global North. The largest congregation in London is headed by a Nigerian Pentecostal. The same is true in Kiev. In the United States, the Catholic Church is being transformed, once again, by immigrants. Three thousand U.S. Catholic parishes now have Spanish-language masses each week. There are three thousand African Christian congregations in Great Britain. Twelve hundred Chinese evangelical congregations now grace the U.S. and Canada. In Grand Rapids, in addition to the burgeoning Latino presence in Catholic and evangelical churches, we have Korean, Cambodian, Kenyan, Sudanese and Ethiopian congregations. Religious demographers tell us that the main reason why Christianity continues to grow in the U.S. is because of immigration.

Fourth, even in our predominantly Anglo churches, we are singing hymns and praise songs from Zimbabwe and Nicaragua and from South Korea. Our youth groups and oldsters too travel on service and witnessing trips to El Salvador, Kenya and the Philippines. We used to hear about the gospel's progress in Africa or Asia from our own missionaries. Today we are as likely to hear the news from African or Asian church leaders themselves. The same globalization that has made our world more radically interactive in business and popular culture is bringing Christianity from the global south and east into increasing interaction with its North Atlantic counterparts.

Re-Orienting Ourselves

It is not difficult to predict, then, that in our North Atlantic world, Christians will more and more take their cues from the parts of the world where Christianity is on the rise, where the churches are becoming movers and shapers in society rather than declining, and where critical and compelling, life-and-death struggles abound. My friends, this is where the main stage for Christianity is today, where the average Christians live and give witness. We stand here on the far northern reaches of a global religious network whose heartlands are to the South and East. There are more Christians in Africa than in North America. Brazil is now the second-largest Protestant nation. China may soon overtake it.

So we need to ask ourselves, what are the most widely practiced forms of Christianity in the world today? Who are the world's average Christians, and what is their life like today? The average Christian in the world today, historian Dana Robert reminds us, is a lady from Africa or Latin America. Her family doesn't have money. Her husband farms, and he scrounges up short-term cash jobs when he can. She tries to sell a few things at the market. The kids don't have their shots and they get sick. She struggles to keep them in school, where there are no textbooks. The political situation is fragile, and the national government doesn't get much done, while local officials demand bribes. Our sister reads her Bible, and its accounts of famine, plagues, poverty, displacement and exile, tyranny, and endemic cronyism and corruption, which seem distant to most of us in the North, are immediately relevant to her. Biblical stories of robbers on the roads, streets full of the crippled and sick, the struggle to pay gouging tax and debt collectors and demanding landlords are foreign to most of us here, but they are familiar to people in the global South. The Bible is their book.

So who is Jesus to our average Christian lady and her family? Certainly he is their personal savior, as North American evangelicals put it. But the defining text for southern Christians in understanding Jesus' ministry is not so much the quiet conversation with Nicodemus in John 3 about being born again. It is Jesus' public inauguration of his ministry in Luke 4, where in his home synagogue he boldly claims in the words of Isaiah that he has come "to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoner and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18-19). As the center of Christian adherence and vitality continues to shift southward, it will be only natural for this outlook from the South to gain weight. Voices and perspectives from Europe, Christianity's declining northern margin, will seem less authoritative. This new world Christianity is with us to stay, and it will shape who we are as Christians.

How important is this phenomenon? How much should it matter? We are finding out, in our post-September 11 world, that many things we once thought were distant, exotic, and of peripheral importance matter a great deal. We are discovering, as the American business journalist Tom Friedman put it in a recent book, that "The World Is Flat." We North Americans can have no distance from the rest of the world. Its passions, troubles, and dynamic prospects are immediately our business too.

Not only that, but the time has come for North Americans to listen and to learn from our Christian brothers and sisters who give witness to the faith from the lands to our south and east. That is not easy for us to do. We tend to think of Christianity to the south and east of us being quite fragile, and still dependent on us for help. So we send our missionaries, relief and development workers, and our short-term service teams. We send our money. We send our parachurch superstars, to preach the purpose-driven life. My friends, I don't want to romanticize African, Asian and Latin American Christianity, which certainly has problems and issues of its own. But our brothers and sisters have much to teach us. As the Ugandan Anglican Bishop David Zac Nirinigiye recalled recently, it was so refreshing when a prominent American evangelical pastor came over to Uganda just to be with him, to understand his ministry, to see how he gave witness to the gospel, to learn. So I propose that we do a little learning today from some African Christians.

Give We Sense

Last summer, my wife and I and some friends of ours visited fellow Christians in Sierra Leone, West Africa. We made a few visits in the capital, Freetown, then headed to Kabala, an up-country town far to the north, to visit people in our sister churches there. It was an unforgettable visit, sweet with fellowship and new friendship, and poignant with recognition of all these folk had endured in recent years. We heard a sermon while we were there, by Mr. M.B. Jalloh, on the text of I Kings 3. Its title in Krio, the Leonean's English-derived Creole tongue, was "Give We Sense." Mr. Jalloh told his people that just as God wanted to know the desires of Solomon's heart and to grant him his deepest request, God wants to know our hearts and wants to give us what we need. Like Solomon, we should be asking God for "sense," for wise and discerning hearts. It was a message I will never forget, made all the more profound by the context.

With bright sandy beaches and lush green peaks and plains, Sierra Leone can look like paradise. But in recent years, Sierra Leone has been a living hell. From 1991 to 2000, it was wracked by a brutal and meaningless civil war, fed by illegal drug and diamond trading. Gangs of rebels, often young boys who had been kidnapped, brutalized and kept high on drugs, sucked the life out of villages and terrorized the inhabitants, raping and maiming them, then torching their homes and moving on. After years of violence and insincere peace talks, a British invasion in 2000 quickly ended the rebellion, and for the next five years, a U.N. peacekeeping force occupied the country. Poorly supplied, underpaid and undisciplined, many of the peacekeepers made their way by extortion. Villagers were not sorry to see them go.

Now, six years past the end of the fighting, the country still struggles to recover. Freetown, the capital city on the coast, is swollen to three times its prewar population. The city has no electrical power, and the water system is dangerously close to failure. The strain of staying alive is evident on people's faces. Up country, resilient farming people are trying to rebuild their lives. They are putting food on their plates, but the schools are overcrowded and poorly supplied, burned-out modern homes and businesses often get replaced only with mud-brick traditional dwellings, and a generation of teens and young adults face life without the ability to read or write. Kids have no shots, and many suffer with measles and malaria. The average life expectancy is about 40.

So if you were in their situation, what would you ask God to give you? Surely, people of faith in Kabala ask God for help all the time. They pray, fervently, for their daily rice, and for the rain and seed and health and strength to raise it. Children fall sick and there is no medicine; parents plead with the Lord to heal them. Yet here in this biblical story, God comes and asks what Solomon wants, and Mr. Jalloh assures his audience that God approaches them, too, saying, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you." Jalloh tells them that he struggles with Solomon's answer. There is so much that we need, he says, that we do not have. A long life, some material blessings, some protection from those who would do us harm. But Solomon asks for a discerning heart, for the wisdom to distinguish what is right from what is wrong, for the sake of justice and good order in the land. Mr. Jalloh pleads with his hearers to ask God for the same thing: "Give we sense!" If we ask and receive that from God, he says, then God promises that the rest will follow.

So what we saw and heard among this movement of new Christians in up-country Sierra Leone was really amazing. In a land where the task of rebuilding is so immense, and the daily struggle to make it is so challenging, here were Christian brothers and sisters, some of whom could not read and write, asking for wisdom and discernment. This was big-picture thinking of an amazing quality. Indeed, it was wisdom born, I believe, out of the experience of extreme distress and the meltdown of government and the breakdown of social norms. People had learned, through it all, to have radical trust in God. Here were up-country, village people, trusting God's word, and coming up with wisdom that on a secular level it has taken decades for the Africa studies experts to discover. What does Africa need? After fifty years of opinions regarding the emerging nations of Africa, the experts are finally saying something quite basic. Africa needs wise rule--good governance, transparency, accountability, and discernment--for administering justice and promoting the common good.

Our Christian brothers and sisters in up-country Sierra Leone seem to know those things intimately. And they were bold to take it upon themselves, as New Testament people of God, as agents of God's kingdom, to ask collectively for what the Old Testament portrays as the privilege of a king. Not "give me sense," but "give we sense." In an amazing coincidence, our pastor back home in Grand Rapids preached on the same text a month later. It was a good sermon, but the focus was entirely different. It was on our individual needs and experience, all about "my God and me." Our Leonean brothers and sisters were thinking in much more collective and communal terms. "Give we sense." They know what we need to rediscover, my colleagues. We are in this struggle for God's reign together. We need to think and pray and act in together terms.

I am too much the novice and the foreigner to know with any certainty what wise and discerning people should decide to do in up-country Sierra Leone to make things better. But what I saw these Christian people doing was deeply impressive. We met a lady named Kumba Sesay, who has taken in 29 widows and orphans, provided them with food and shelter, and helped the children go to school. Kumba has been taking reading classes herself, humbly providing a good example to others. Her husband, Joseph Sesay, is a leader in a Christian community development agency that the missionaries from Grand Rapids had been forced to leave during the war. It is performing well under Leonean leadership and is now taking on projects of national scope, including one to put deep wells and sanitary latrines in 100 towns and villages; and another to provide school fees and adult literacy classes to thousands of girls and young women. These initiatives seemed to be taking place according to a high level of wisdom--conferring with and deferring to local authorities, and involving local people in the planning, execution and long-term management of projects. God was granting our Leonean friends their request. He gave them sense, and as a result, we can hope, the material blessings of longer life, a bountiful supply of goods, and domestic tranquility might multiply for them and for their troubled land.

So God allowed us to see our brothers and sisters at work and in thought in Sierra Leone, and it blessed us in ways beyond our imagining. Africa is now one of the great heartlands of world Christianity, and the people we met there are now the world's average Christians. Their way of reading the Bible and discerning its message is now among the 'normal' ways in which God's word comes to believers today. That can be a tough thing for northern Christians to acknowledge. Much more rapidly than many of us well-meaning but patronizing northern Christians can accept, we are hearing powerful and authoritative words from the southern church. There is a cliché making the rounds, even repeated by some African spokesmen, that the church in Africa is "a mile wide and a foot deep." African Christianity has its problems, but usually when I hear this phrase, I think it applies more closely to Christianity here in the North. If only we could make half the difference in our societies today that we saw God's faithful doing in up-country Sierra Leone this summer. Lord, give we sense.

And what would some God-given sense show us? I am still praying for it myself, so I can't presume to tell you in detail. But in brief and broad-brush terms, a discerning heart and mind, one that is attuned to God's worldwide activity and purposes, would surely show us these three things:

Three Things to Learn

1. The world we inhabit is not "normal." The way things are is not the way things are supposed to be. That is starkly evident to a visitor in Sierra Leone. It may be more difficult for us to keep in mind here, where normalization campaigns abound, but the Bible lays out clearly for us that we live in abnormal times. It shows that we inhabit a world that was created good by God, but which has become distorted and subverted by sin and rebellion. Jesus came to defeat the forces of sin and death that plague our world, and to cleanse, empower and deputize all who put their trust in him to be his advance agents, working for the world's redemption and renewal. There is a struggle on, and we are enlisted in it. But we northerners live in an era when people believe that the contemporary state of affairs is normal. Many of our neighbors believe the secular myth of progress, that society's evolving standards will lead us to a more benevolent, more enlightened world. Others, with a more sober view of the world's violence and wreckage, have become moral cynics, and decide mainly to look out for themselves in a normally nasty and cruel state of affairs. In North America especially, faith in progress probably still dominates, and it continues to push Christians to accommodate their faith to society's changing values. In places like Sierra Leone, this "secular narrative of progress" is not plausible. Christian believers' instinctive stance toward prevailing social norms is to oppose them. To conform to prevailing social norms would be to give in to chaos and revert to paganism. Perhaps we should be more oppositional in our approach to cultural engagement here in the North. Give we sense.
2. God is moving in this world. Remarkable things are happening for the Kingdom of God, but we may have to adjust our angle of vision and categorical lenses to see them. In secular terms, America is the cultural capital of the world, the economic capital of the world, the political and military superpower. Seattle is one of the great seats of empire, the home of such world-shaping, iconic firms as Microsoft, Boeing, and even Starbucks. Seattle's Pacific Rim location projects American power out to the world, both in commercial and in military ways, via the Bremerton naval station and the army post at Fort Lewis. We tend to think that the world of policy making, statecraft and armed conflict, or perhaps the world of capital investment, corporate affairs and business competition are the worlds that truly matter. But God seems to do the main kingdom work in ways that are radically different. Grassroots Christian movements are a force for transformation in China. African and Asian Christian women reading their Bibles are leading what Philip Jenkins calls a "biblically fueled social revolution." And in the supreme case of God's subversive action, our Lord Jesus defeated sin and death by allowing himself to be executed by torture. So God is full of surprises, using, says the Apostle Paul, "the weak things of the world to shame the strong" (I Cor. 1:29). God is using the "average Christians" of Sierra Leone, South India and El Salvador to change the world, and with their immigrant cousins arriving on our shores, we exclaim, in the words of Acts 17:6, "these people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also" (Acts 17:6). Lord, give we sense--to see how and where you are moving in this world, and to invest ourselves there too.
3. God has things for us to do. To whom much is given, Jesus said, much will be required. It is easy in a small university with a Christian stance, working in an international knowledge industry that values size and secularity, to think you are marginal. It is tempting to believe that you can't make a difference. Yet in comparative, world Christian terms, you have enormous privilege. This is what an African friend of mine said last spring in his commencement address at a small Midwestern college. Anyone who has the great gift of a place in a university is being groomed for leadership. As a future leader, God's word has plenty to say to you about what you should be doing, and preparing to do. Read again the stories of Daniel, who was being groomed for a cabinet post; of Joseph, who rose through the ranks to become prime minister, and of Queen Esther, who found a timely seat in the king's court. Esther's Uncle Mordecai counseled her with words that may be God's words to you as well: "who knows whether it was not for such a time as this" that you were put here? (Esther 4:14) God is preparing you for some important tasks. Like Daniel and his fellow scholars in Nebuchadnezzar's court, you should pursue your studies at full tilt. What did Daniel and his friends do? They were at the palace, the Bible says, to learn the language and the literature of the Babylonians. They didn't just focus on their own culture, they eagerly learned about the broader, stranger world into which they had been carried. They were faithful to God in their studies, and he gave them, the Bible says, "knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning," (Daniel 1:17) learning that surpassed that of the other students. Knowledge is not the same thing as wisdom, but it is a powerful aid, and in the process of acquiring it, with a God-given discerning heart, it can become wisdom. So for Daniel and his colleagues, "in every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them ten times better…." (Daniel 1:20). Dare to be a Daniel, to be an Esther. Seek knowledge, push on out beyond what is comfortable and easy, find out what an astonishing world we live in, and ask that God make you wise, for the sake of the kingdom. Give we sense.

Fed money eyed for shelters for sex-trafficking victims

Click here for article

Should Women Be Pastors and Elders?

From an apologetics and research ministry.

Read the piece here.

Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?

Click here to read full article.

Exhibit displays Nazis' 'Deadly Medicine'

The exhibit at Loyola Marymount University argues that by advancing the theory of eugenics — an outgrowth of Darwinism — German doctors helped lay the foundation upon which the Holocaust was built.

Click here for article

Kidnapping, Tribal Reprisal Upend Iraqi Woman's Life

Click here to read article

New Bible drops gender-neutral language of '05 version

Click here to read article.

Funny Comic :)

Hello, are you human? (At a Silicon Valley cocktail party, it's hard to find anybody who passes the Turing Test)

Click here for the article.

Religious Undercurrent Ripples in Anti-Gay Bullying

Article here

Back

Sorry sorry sorry... really. The break from writing was really longer than I expected it to be.
And... I actually don't have a full post for you today. Sorry again. It's coming soon.
But I do have some news. Very soon I'm adding another writer to this blog. His debut post will be posted later today.
Hope you all are well, we're almost back. :)

-Jamie

College

Leaving for college today! Sorry for the delay, but the posts will come back in a couple of weeks.

Radiolab

I'm sticking to what I said about postponing my psychology and Christianity series for now, but I decided to pop back in for a minute to tell you about Radiolab, which I discovered last night.

Radiolab describes itself as such: "Radiolab believes your ears are a portal to another world. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and human experience. Big questions are investigated, tinkered with, and encouraged to grow. Bring your curiosity, and we'll feed it with possibility."

Personally, it's a little trippy. But it's also really very interesting, especially for those of you who are auditory learners (like myself). It isn't just listening to someone talk; though it has that too. But in this podcast, audio effects are like color accents in the visual world, bringing out new and engaging depth.

The podcast episode I listened to first was called "Words". The whole question of the program was exploring the connection between thought and language. What is thinking without language? What is it like to live without language? To find out their discoveries and theories (not all of which I agree with but are extremely absorbing), go to the Radiolab website or the podcast on iTunes which is FREE! 

Update

I fear that my next installment of this series will be a bit late. I'm moving so I have lots of packing to do. Also too, there are some edits that I need to make to my last post. Hold tight, see you soon.

-Jamie

Psychology vs. Christianity: The Sufficiency of Scripture

Last post focused mainly on defining psychology. Today I'm going to get started on one of the big arguments against psychology as posed by John MacArthur: psychology denies the sufficiency of Scripture.

I will be working very much in response to a sermon by MacArthur on the sufficiency of Scripture. In it he says this (I included the first paragraph because, though it does not directly talk about psychology, marriage and family is an area that falls within the study of psychology. Remember that my dad is a marriage and family therapist):

Further, another category in which we see this kind of abandonment of the belief of biblical sufficiency is in the matter of marriage and family, for one. There was a time when we believed that the Bible gave us adequate insight into marriage and the family. That if we studied the Word of God, we would be able to live life in the family to its fullest, that marriage could be all that God ever intended if lived by biblical principles. Families can be all that God ever intended if lived by biblical principles but now there is a proliferation of tricks and gimmicks and sex techniques and just a plethora of things that are added to the Scripture to try to deal with family problems. And in an underlying and subtle way, they are making the comment that the Bible is to one degree or another insufficient or inadequate...

But perhaps as dominant or more dominant than any of these themes is this area of psychology. Psychology today is making inroads into the church that really are frightening. In fact, there is in the evangelical church what is fast becoming a wholesale exodus from the traditional land of biblical theology into the new promised land of psychology and psychotherapy. Churches that once and for always would hire pastors and evangelists and teachers are now hiring psychologists. Pastors that once would go to seminary and learn the Word of God or Bible college and master the Scripture are now going to schools of psychology to study human wisdom in dealing with the problems of mankind. This again is a subtle way of saying the Bible is insufficient. When coming to grips with these deep seeded emotional anxieties of man, we cannot expect the Bible to speak in any sophisticated way to those problems. Seminaries are changing their curriculum dramatically. For the first time in the history of the church, seminaries are hiring psychologists on their staff to teach, psychiatrists to teach, they're teaching psychology, they're adding more psychology courses in many places, diminishing the biblical content of their curriculum...

The world has been saying the Bible cannot help and now sad to say, the church is chiming in and agreeing that the Bible is inadequate to deal with psychological problems. In fact, I would go so far as to say there are many advocating today a psychological salvation in place of the new birth. There is nothing in this more than a pseudo-evangelical humanism. This preoccupation with self-esteem and self-love and self-fulfillment and self-actualization that psychology has brought into the church knows no biblical counterpart. 

What MacArthur is saying here can really be summed up with this statement of his: "But can we go to the Bible and find in it that which is sufficient for all of life and conduct? And the answer, I believe, is a resounding yes."

MacArthur goes on to draw support from Scripture, as is outlined and commentated on (his own words) below:

2 Corinthians 3:5: "Our sufficiency is from God."

• "Our sufficiency is not from men. Our sufficiency is not from human wisdom. Our sufficiency is not from human resources. Our sufficiency is from God...what does that mean? That means our capability of living life in God's plan to the maximum is from Him... Now I want you to understand [...] that I am not saying that there's nothing outside the Bible that has any value. There are many things that have value. God's common grace, that is the grace of God on all men, will create certain things in our human environment that are very helpful. But when it comes to the matters of spiritual life, all we need to know is revealed in the Word of the living God and ministered to us by the Spirit through that Word. And outside the Word of God we do not have to look for a sufficiency that is not provided in the Scripture." 

2 Corinthians 9:8: "And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work..."

John 17:17, "Sanctify them by the truth; your Word is truth."

• "We conclude then, very obviously, that the full holiness of the believer is the work of the Word of God, it is the work of the Word of God. It is not the Word of God plus something else, that's cultic." 

1 Corinthians 2:13-16: "This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment: 'For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ."

• "The wisdom of God comes to us not through human sources. Our sufficiency is of God. God dispenses His wisdom to us by the Spirit of God, revealing His teaching in the Word of God and it is the wisdom not in the words which man teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches. In fact, it is so comprehensive, it is so effective, it is so complete, he says in verse 15 that by that Word of God through the Holy Spirit, we can judge or appraise and evaluate all things.... marvelous statement... Now is there any insufficiency in the mind of Christ? Is Christ limited? He knows a few things but He's also learning from some people? Not hardly. The mind of Christ is the consummate mind of God. The mind of Christ is omniscient. The mind of Christ is supreme. The mind of Christ knows no insufficiency. All we need to understand is the mind of God about any problem, about any need, about any issue. All we need to understand is how does God see it, how does God think about it, what does God say about it and that suffices us." 

Hebrews 4:12: "For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account."

• "Listen, the Word of God is living, it's active, it's powerful, it's sharper than any other weapon and it will go deeper and cut cleaner and truer than anything that exists to reveal the deepest thoughts and intentions of the human heart...so that verse 13 says, 'All things are open and laid bare.' It will do what psychoanalysis will never do. The Word of God opens the soul. It penetrates. It breaks up the heart. It reveals. It is sufficient to penetrate the deepest part of a person's soul." 

Colossians 2:3-10: "...in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments. For though I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit and delight to see how orderly you are and how firm your faith in Christ is. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than Christ. For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority."

• "That's unqualified. Everything you need to know about wisdom and knowledge, you find in Christ. So no believer should be looking elsewhere.... All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are found in the Christ who is revealed in the Word. So stay away from human philosophy, it cannot speak to spiritual matters. It can speak to some things and it can be helpful in the practical aspects of living. But when it comes to the spiritual dimension and the needs of the heart and the soul and in the mind of man at their deepest level, for those of us who know God, only God provides our sufficiency through His Word."

The point MacArthur makes here is difficult to refute. Some points of Scripture are stronger (these are the ones I mentioned here; he had many more) at defending his argument than others, but they generally compliment what he is saying.

First though, we must make a clarification. How do we complete the statement, "the Bible is sufficient in..."? In the beginning of MacArthur's sermon, he completes that statement with, "all life and conduct." At the end, he answers it with "the spiritual dimension and the needs of the heart." Are those two answers even the same? Well, no, they aren't. (I don't think MacArthur is being inconsistent, I'm just being picky. It helps to illustrate that point I want to make.)

Is the Bible sufficient in telling us how to swim? How to cook pasta? What chromosomes look like? These seem like silly questions. But these things are parts of life. They are realities.

I think that MacArthur would agree that they are misguided questions. When he says "all life and conduct," he means the things that really matter for eternity. The more frivolous things I listed before are not spiritual issues. The Bible can't literally be used for all of life (like how to make pasta). So when he says that the Bible is sufficient in the spiritual dimension and the needs of the heart, I believe that MacArthur is dead on. His first answer was more vague and we should not make the mistake of misreading what he means.

The Bible is the only thing that really matters. It is the only thing that can bring any lasting joy or peace or wisdom. Scripture is the only thing that holds any eternal value. But other things do hold value too. MacArthur says as much earlier in the sermon: "Now I want you to understand [...] that I am not saying that there's nothing outside the Bible that has any value... But when it comes to the matters of spiritual life, all we need to know is revealed in the Word of the living God and ministered to us by the Spirit through that Word." It's important that we don't take the doctrine of the sufficiency of Scripture to mean that nothing outside the Bible is good. This is obviously foolish (an apparent example would be that of modern surgery, which saves lives daily). It simply means that nothing outside of the Bible can save a man's soul.

Psychology though, taken in its most "pure" form, does not intrinsically deny the sufficiency of Scripture. It does not contradict the fact that only the Bible meets "the spiritual dimension and the needs of the heart" and it does not claim to "save" people". Remember our definition from my first post: "a diverse field, with a myriad of concentrations and theories, that seeks to describe, predict, explain, and control the mental processes and behaviors of the individual in all aspects of life." Psychology is (or at least strives to be) a scientific discipline. Science helps us discover scientific truth (facts learned by experimentation). But if God is a God of truth, we have nothing to fear from knowledge--scientific or otherwise.

In addition to being the pastor at GCC, MacArthur is also the president of The Master's College, a Christian liberal arts institution. Martin Richards, a well-loved professor at Master's College says, "It's not 'Christianity versus science.' That's like saying, 'Christianity versus... pianos.' They don't contradict" (paraphrase). So if psychology is what it claims to be, (i.e., a scientific field) the next step for the Christian who is interested in psychology is to explore how psychology might be applied in a godly way, as we must with any study.

So then, what's the problem? Why does MacArthur even argue against psychology when it's just a useful science?

But it's not just a useful science that has been misused.Therein lies the problem. In MacArthur's mind, psychology's place among the scientific disciplines is shaky at best. Instead, MacArthur asserts that psychology is a philosophy under the guise of science, a philosophy that promotes a "psychological salvation". He asserts that psychology claims to solve spiritual issues.

If, in fact, psychology is not a science, we have a whole different issue on our hands. That is what I'll be dealing with in my next post: "Is psychology a science?" We'll get into more good stuff then. :)


-Jamie


Links:

• MacArthur's sermon is here

Craigslist Removes Adult Section

Craigslist's reputation for prostitution ads in it's "adult" section has resulted in pressure to remove it from the site. (This is dated but I wanted to file it away on here.)
Story link is here.

Psychology vs. Christianity: What is Psychology?

If you haven't read my first post in this series, I suggest you do so. It will make things a lot more clear! You can read it here.

In this post I will attempt to answer the question "What is psychology?" Here, I'm dealing with definitions. (Before we begin, please note that I am not dealing with animals. I am dealing solely with human beings.)

So I went where any self-respecting academic (ha!) starts in order to discover an answer. Google. 

Psychology: the science of mental life (Princeton); lit. "study of the soul" or "study of the mind", an academic and applied discipline which involves the scientific study of human mental functions and behaviors (Wikipedia: another source for the true intellectual). 

The APA (American Psychological Association), a "scientific and professional organization that represents psychology in the United States" (Wikiversity), is considered by many an authority on psychology. The APA admits that psychology is a broad field but most psychologists would agree with the definitions that I gave above. 

According to the APA, there are two distinct "branches" of psychology: basic and applied. These two branches are probably what you'd expect. Basic psychology seeks to describe, predict, and explain behaviour and mental processes. Applied psychology more conscientiously seeks to help individuals control their behaviour and mental processes, or at least explain them so that the individual can better function. 

It is important and interesting to note that there are a myriad of different subfields of psychology that come from those two branches, including the following: 

• Clinical psychologists treat people who exhibit mental or emotional disorders which range from uncomfortable reactions to the stress of daily life to extreme psychological disorders.
• Community psychology is mostly preventative in nature. These psychologists specialize in human behavior at home, at school, and in neighborhoods.
• Counseling psychologists are therapists who help clients adjust to life, make important decisions, and help people cope. This field of human behavior is similar to clinical psychology.
• Developmental psychology focuses on human development from birth to death. This type of psychology describes, measures, and explains age-related changes in behavior.
• Environmental psychologists attempt to improve the interactions between humans and the environment. The management of natural resources, effects of extreme environments, and architectural design are part of this branch of human behavior. 
• Educational psychology is research-oriented, and focuses on how people learn. Teachers, school administrators, and guidance counselors may apply the findings of educational psychologists in schools, colleges, or universities.
• Experimental psychology focuses on basic processes of human interaction and biology. This type of psychology often involves studies on animals and people.
• Family psychologists are therapists who concentrate on the family and how it affects our development and lives. Sexual dysfunction and family counseling may be subsections of family psychology.
• Forensic psychologists study criminal behavior, and often assist law enforcement agencies in criminal investigations.
• Geriatric psychology focuses on the health and well-being of older people. This field of human behavior includes both practical and research applications.
• Health psychology is a branch of human behavior that is concerned with the psychological implications of actions on health. For instance, smoking, weight gain, stress management and fitness can affect our mental health – and that’s what health therapists focus on.
• Organizational psychology focuses on our relationships to work. This study of human behavior includes career counseling, cross-training, retirement planning, and job productivity.
• Physiological psychology is about the genetic and physical roots of psychological disorders, such as how our brains change due to drug use or how cells develop and function.
• Positive psychology is a relatively new area in the study of human behavior. It encompasses a holistic approach to mental wellness, with a shift away from disease to personal wellness and health.
• Psychometrics focuses on psychological testing and assessment. Psychometrists are employed at private companies and government organizations.
• Rehabilitation psychologists help people with handicaps, such as birth trauma or stroke, improve their functioning in the world. This field of human behavior ranges from birth to old age.
• School psychology focuses on the intellectual and emotional development of young people.
• Social psychology explores how we live in the world. Pop cultural, group behavior, the media, and our attitudes and opinions are all part of social psychology.
• Sport psychologists are therapists who concentrate on the mental and emotional factors that affect professional or amateur athletes. Sport therapists attempt to maximize motivation and performance (Types of Psychology). 

There are other fields of psychology in addition to this: evolutionary psychology, legal psychology, quantitative psychology, etc. There seems to be no comprehensive list and some of the sub-disciplines above include other sub-disciplines that sometimes receive special distinction.

In the journal of clinical psychology, Gregg R. Henriques writes,

What is psychology? Is it a single, coherent scientific discipline awaiting transformation from the current preparadigmatic state into a more mature unified one? Or, is it a heterogeneous federation of subdisciplines that will ultimately fragment into a multitude of smaller, more specialized fields? This is, in essence, the “to be or not to be” question of the field. Currently, psychology exists as an uneasy compromise between unification and fragmentation. On the one hand, the existence of numerous societal institutions suggests that psychology is a singular entity at some level. Academic courses, degrees, and departments, as well as organizations like the American Psychological Association (APA) suggest that the concept of psychology is a specifiable, coherent entity (Matarazzo, 1987). On the other hand, a more detailed inquiry reveals a remarkable degree of confusion, fragmentation, and chaos at the theoretical level. So formidable is the problem of conceptual incoherence that several prominent authors have flatly stated that it is insurmountable (e.g., Koch, 1993).

Later in Henriques' article, he quotes Reber's Dictionary of Psychology (1995):

"Psychology simply cannot be defined; indeed, it cannot even be easily characterized . . . Psychology is what scientists and philosophers of various persuasions have created to . . . understand the minds and behaviors of various organisms from the most primitive to the most complex . . . It is an attempt to understand what has so far pretty much escaped understanding, and any effort to circumscribe it or box it in is to imply that something is known about the edges of our knowledge, and that must be wrong" (p. 617). [Note the rather puzzling conclusion.]

Henriques later goes on to say, “The deep philosophical concerns that fractionated the discipline at its inception have not been resolved, and Koch’s prophesy that psychology can only exist as a collection of studies, rather than as a coherent science, seems to have been vindicated.”

Along with an admittance of fragmentation, there is a confession here that psychology, though primarily self-described as scientific, is a bedfellow with philosophy. We shall explore this more at another time. 

For now though, I wish to expand the basic definition of psychology: it is a diverse field, with a myriad of concentrations and theories, that seeks to describe, predict, explain, and control the mental processes and behaviours of the individual (as opposed to groups or societies, as in sociology), in all aspects of life. 

Boring post, huh? Ah well, definitions are the boring part. It must be done. The more interesting stuff is to come, promise.

-Jamie

Links:

1. About the APA
2. Psychology According to Wikipedia
3. Types of Psychology
4. Wikiversity: Basic psychology