Depression and Religion: Realities,Perspectives, and Directions

The debate between psychologists hostile and friendly to religion regarding whether religion promotes or deters depression is reviewed from a historical perspective. Two modes of religion can be seen as forming a continuum with one pole as a life-celebrating, self-affirming religion that deters depression and the other pole as a life-constricting, self-derogating religion that promotes depression. Counselors are advised to help lead religious clients out of depression by procedures aimed at moving them from unhealthy toward healthy religious modes     

Character Education: Christian Education Perspectives

Character is defined broadly by leading authorities, including concepts such as practicing apt behavior and teaching right from wrong. Virtue and moral undertones tend to pervade most experts' use of character, although in secular settings, the notion of ethics is more prominent. Overall, developing in students a desire for the good is how most authorities understand the construct. Implementing character in the public and Christian schools, apart from a Judeo-Christian view of the construct, leaves schools open to values clarification, situational ethics, and other post-modern foundational options. Character development, at least at the conceptual level, is at the heart of all education—Christian or non-Christian.     

God, Freedom, and Evil: Perspectives from Religion and Science

This paper develops analogies concerning the evolution of dissipative structures in nonequilibrium thermodynamics to interpret irrational human behavior in which one finds a lack of correspondence between the invested means and the consequences observed. In an attempt to positively explain the process of cooperation between the free human person and interacting God, I use philosophical categories of Whitehead's process philosophy in an aesthetic model that opposes composition and performance in a musical symphony. Certainly, the essence of human freedom can be expressed in neither thermodynamical nor aesthetic terms. The models proposed can, however, facilitate our understanding of the mutual relations between God's action in the world and the drama of human free choice of moral evil.     

Anchoring Religion in the World: A Southern African History of Comparative Religion

This essay focuses upon a single object, a shipwrecked anchor that was washed ashore on the eastern Cape coast of southern Africa. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, European travellers, missionaries, and magistrates cited this anchor as evidence of religion among indigenous people in the region. By the end of the century, however, this same anchor was being used by metropolitan theorists as a classic piece of evidence for the origin of religion. By recounting the strange story of this anchor, I hope to recover a history (or prehistory) of the study of religion in three phases—frontier, imperial and apartheid—that have defined the practice of comparative religion from a southern African perspective.     

宗教与全球治理:一个跨宗教的比较视角

宗教与全球治理的关系是当今国际政治的一个重要命题。从宗教观念自身来看,宗教在和平与冲突中的角色是矛盾的。具体说来,每种宗教都包含和平的因素,同时却又常常成为冲突的动力。然而,这一矛盾的角色却促成了宗教与全球治理的关键机制。这其中的核心在于全球公民社会的建构,公民宗教是具体的表现形式。其具体的步骤包括:全球民主的机制、国家与社会关系的重构、宗教人权、宗教对话等。治理概念的引入标志着与孔汉思的全球伦理不同的路径以及理解当今宗教与全球秩序之间关系的新视角。