Project GOALS

As a collaborative academic venture endeavoring to engage the most pressing issues in California’s culture, TECC brings interdisciplinary theological engagement to bear upon its research questions. As such, it has a number of aims that it sets out to accomplish.

• to hold a series of ongoing public and private gatherings bringing together theologians, historians, social-scientists, and others to explore particular issues in California life
• to generate papers suitable for publication in academic periodicals on the issues engaged
• to enable scholars from a range of development to participate in discussion of the topics under investigation
• to draw Christians in churches, colleges, and universities into consideration of issues within California’s culture and the relationships these phenomena have with their beliefs
• to encourage knowledge and understanding of such issues in the wider California communities as well as in communities of faith
• to provide information in the field for the general public through various public events
• to generate publications (books and themed-periodicals) that will be accessible after the completion of the project, as a medium of publicity and information and also as a catalyst for further discussion
• to formulate a collaborative research bid so as to pursue nub issues identified by the network at greater depth

Dissemination of information

The core research committee will aim to assemble and edit a select number of papers to be included in a single volumes published by leading publishing houses. It is also expected that paper presenters will either pursue publication of their research in academic journals like Cultural Encounters, the Journal of Religious History, Religion and American Culture, Sociology of Religion, Modern Theology, the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics, or a number of peer-review academic theological journals. Wider evangelical communities may be also addressed through denominational or institutional publications, or by reports from attendees who are part of various churches or religious schools. The core research committee is also interesting in assembling practical, more popular volumes as a means of synthesizing TECC's research data for a wider audience. 

TECC will continue its mission as an ongoing project in many ways. It is envisaged that certain members of the network will discover sufficient common interests across disciplinary boundaries to continue to co-operate in joint ventures. More specifically, the growing constituency of interdisciplinary colleagues aware of this work remain potentially ongoing for both a target of information dissemination and a forum for discussion after the initial work has begun. Ongoing efforts will continue to be planned for the benefit of the media and the wider community.

Most concretely of all, the research will be designed to take forward the tasks begun by the network, among other results leading to a series of collaborative volumes. The network will have identified gaps in our knowledge of the acute issues and questions in California’s culture that call for further investigation and theological engagement. It is intended that these will be pursued in further projects so that there will be continued advances in the understanding of the relationship between theology and California’s culture.