The Church in the Contemporary Ecumenical‐Missional Moment: Together towards Life in Dialogue with The Cape Town Commitment and Evangelii Gaudium

The doctrine of the church has always been important to developments in mission and ecumenism – a fact that has been true since the birth of the modern ecumenical movement and is no less so today. This article compares three recent documents – the WCC's Together towards Life (2013), the Lausanne Movement's Cape Town Commitment (2011), and Pope Francis' exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2014) – in light of the rise of a prominent new way of expressing the role of the church in the mission of Christ (missio Dei). This theological development has significantly impacted mission and ecumenical thinking and practice in recent decades, requiring us to consider the church's relationship to mission in a new and important way. The article reveals various aspects of missio Dei theology at work in all three of these documents, and finally looks at the visionary leadership of Pope Francis in calling the Catholic Church to a joyful expression of the gospel of Christ through both words and deeds. EG does not so much address the doctrine of the church as it assumes it. Its concern is far more pastoral: “How do we more effectively and powerfully communicate the gospel in our time?”     

Beyond the Lynn White Thesis: Congregational Effects on Environmental Concern

An extensive literature has explored the effects of religion on opinions about environmental protection and action on environmental issues, but has largely concerned itself with the effects of theology as inspired by the Lynn White thesis. However, religion is multifaceted and any complete study should also incorporate the social dimensions of religious experience. In this article, we employ a unique data set to demonstrate the varied informational effects of church membership on environmental attitudes. We find that social sources of information in the church shape the dimensions of religious belief and exert much stronger effects on attitudes on the environment than do doctrinal or religiosity measures.     

Religious Diversity, Christian Doctrine and Karl Barth

Abstract:   The recognition of the heterogeneity of the goals of the world's religions has led to a greater alertness to the doctrinal questions raised by the presence of truth and rectitude which Christians might recognize in the other religions. In this article J.A. DiNoia's proposals for the recognition of subordinate and non-oppositional truths in the other religions, and his more recent defence of Barth's account of the religions in Church Dogmatics §17, are brought into dialogue with Karl Barth's account of truth extra muros ecclesiae in CD §69. It is argued that the latter raises a number of crucial doctrinal questions for DiNoia's own proposal for the recognition of subordinate and non-oppositional truth, and that it is a more important resource for contemporary discussions than is the controversial CD §17.     

The Council of Newton: A Pedagogical Exercise for Understanding Conceptual and Historical Difference with Respect to Intra‐Religious Notions of Divinity

In this essay, I examine the following pedagogical question: how can we unlock students' mistaken notions that religious “traditions” are monoliths, and instead help them to recognize, puzzle over, and appreciate the complex multiplicity and vibrant set of doctrinal and ritual conversations that characterize religious traditions? More specifically, how can we teach students to recognize these differences with respect to a religion's notions of god? And how can we do so even when students are particularly stuck on, invested in, or trained to see homogeneity? In answer to these questions, I present an exercise that I have used in my World Religions courses. This exercise – which I call the “Council of Newton” (named for the building in which I first taught it) – is particularly effective because it helps students uncover and wrestle with this diversity at two levels: conceptually and historically.     

The Reformation of Jan Hus as Inspiration for Transformative Ecumenism

While 2017 marks the 500th anniversary of the Lutheran Reformation, this article argues that reflection on the Reformation should begin by remembering that the Lutheran Reformation was only one of several reformations. Noting both the achievements and the limits of Luther's Reformation, the article proposes commemorating Jan Hus and the Czech Reformation, which took place a hundred years before Luther. Unlike Luther's Reformation, which focused on the doctrinal issue of “justification by faith,” the Czech Reformation focused on the issue of the Lord's supper and practised a “social Holy Communion” beyond the boundaries of the church. The article concludes that the Czech Reformation provides a fresh vision and inspiration for the contemporary ecumenical movement in Korea and around the world, transcending a perspective that sees ecumenism as being focused on a fellowship of churches.     

Evangelical Environmentalists? Evidence from Brazil

While scholarship on the relationship between religions and environmental attitudes has been inconclusive, evangelical Protestants present an exception: they consistently report less environmental concern than other groups. However, prior studies have largely been conducted in the United States. Following a recent “contextual” turn, we revisit the assumption that universal cognitive and doctrinal factors drive the previously documented negative association between evangelicalism and environmental concern. Leveraging qualitative fieldwork, nationally representative surveys, and a survey experiment from Brazil, we find that evangelical and Pentecostal affiliation and church attendance are not associated with reduced environmental concern; that members of these groups simultaneously embrace otherworldly beliefs and advocate for this-worldly solutions to environmental problems; and that being primed to consider divine intervention increased support for environmental protection. Even in a tradition emphasizing orthodoxy, doctrine appears not to exert a universal influence, a finding we suggest results from different issue frames in the United States and Brazil.     

The Imperative of Diakonia for the Church and Theological Education

This article begins by arguing that diakonia is an imperative for the church, be it at the local, national, regional, or global level. It goes on to describe how diakonia has been part of the identity of the World Council of Churches during its 70 years of existence, and highlights the struggle of diakonia and development within the fellowship and ecumenical partners. The article focuses on the document Called to Transformative Action: Ecumenical Diakonia as the most recent attempt to reflect on who we are and what we do as church. It identifies one important aspect of diakonia as reflected in the Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network perspective on theological education. The article concludes by reflecting on the author's vision for a just community of women and men in prophetic diakonia.     

Empowering Latino Church Leaders to Deal with the HIV-AIDS Crisis: A Strengths-Oriented Service Model

Ideology and attitudes of Latino church leaders in the United States toward HIV/AIDS are explored. A qualitative approach utilized with emergent categories including: a desire within the Latino church for greater acceptance of HIV/AIDS sufferers, the supposed contaminating influence of HIV/AIDS individuals over other church members, and the feelings of helplessness many church members experience in relation to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Understanding ideological resistance that prevents engagement is here identified and a strategy of empowerment of church leaders is recommended to overcome it including: adopting a strengths-oriented service model that focuses on resources religious denominations already have, as opposed to a financially driven, medically oriented service model that highlights what churches often do not have; church leaders educating health care agencies on how to use religious beliefs to motivate church members to work on behalf of HIV/AIDS patients; the power of doctrinal ideology in affecting church and civil society’s response to HIV/AIDS.     

States of curiosity and interest enhance memory differently in adolescents and in children

Curiosity – broadly defined as the desire to acquire new information – enhances learning and memory in adults. In addition, interest in the information (i.e., when the information is processed) can also facilitate later memory. To date, it is not known how states of pre‐information curiosity and post‐information interest enhance memory in childhood and adolescence. We used a trivia paradigm in which children and adolescents (N = 60, 10–14 years) encoded trivia questions and answers associated with high or low curiosity. States of high pre‐answer curiosity enhanced later memory for trivia answers in both children and adolescents. However, higher positive post‐answer interest enhanced memory for trivia answers beyond the effects of curiosity more strongly in adolescents than in children. These results suggest that curiosity and interest have positive effects on learning and memory in childhood and adolescence, but might need to be harnessed in differential ways across child development to optimize learning.     

Principles of Discipleship and Church Growth from Acts 2:46-47

The purpose of this article is to make a comprehensive exegesis of the text of Acts 2:46-47 and to extract basic biblical principles for the work of discipleship. Along with this topic, this article also analyzes the aspect of the growth of the church, since the study text indicates that the Lord added new converts to the church, although the church itself had an internal task to fulfil. Even though church growth has generally been distanced from doctrinal catechesis in the church in the same way that theology is divorced from ecclesiastical practice, this work attempts to show that a responsible and simple exegesis of the text can integrate the “theory” of doctrine with missionary practice and the responsibility to make disciples, so that the church increases in membership.     

Paul Hinlicky's Critical Dogmatics: Triune Redemption and Hope in the Beloved Community

In a host of recent publications, Paul Hinlicky has offered both methodological and substantive contributions to a constructive Lutheran theology that takes seriously the post‐Christendom context in which the church finds itself. By elaborating a vision of theology as “critical dogmatics,” Hinlicky adapts pragmatist and perspectivalist motifs to outline a trinitarian picture of the redemption of creation as well as the church's role in anticipating the coming of the Beloved Community. Grounded both in Romans 8 and the trinitarian implications of Luther's joyful exchange, Hinlicky's vision interweaves soteriological, eschatological, and ecclesiological themes to demonstrate how critical dogmatics can test the spirits of a given age in order to determine which features of contemporary existence align with God's ongoing redemptive work, and which must be opposed by the church.     

The new (old) age movement: Assessing a Vatican assessment

This article examines the recent Vatican document "Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the 'New Age' ". This official Catholic response to a diverse and polycentric religio-spiritual phenomenon reveals problematic conditions and core institutional concerns surrounding religion in the culture of postmodernity. These concerns--which are both cause and effect of the diffusion of Catholic identity--include pollution motifs, the impact of relativism, pluralism, privatized religiosity, and waning institutional control of religious symbols. Attention is also directed to the efficacy of doctrinal formulations as a boundary maintenance mechanism and to the way in which the Vatican response to the New Age movement exemplifies church/sect dynamics within contemporary Catholicism.     

Belonging without believing: religion and attitudes towards gay marriage and abortion rights in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

Same-sex marriage has become a divisive issue in established western democracies. As in earlier research on abortion, there is now a growing body of studies which suggests that religious factors, such as identity, belief and practice, are the most frequent predictors of opposition towards gay marriage. Yet, what we know about the combined influence of these religious factors remains unexamined. Mindful of this omission, this study examines the relationship between regular church attendance and a belief in God on attitudes towards same-sex marriage and abortion rights. Using the recent survey data from Northern Ireland, the results suggest that not only are those who belong but do not believe distinctive in terms of their demographic makeup, but they are also significantly more likely to adopt a liberal stance in relation to both these issues – gay marriage and abortion rights – than the most religiously devout, or those who both belong and believe.     

Preaching the Word in the Context of Increasing Perplexity and Hopelessness

Abstract :  This article highlights the complexity of preaching the word in the caste-ridden context of India. Preaching in India has been largely individualistic and emphasizes a personal approach to the Christian faith resulting in a church that is passive and ineffective, especially in its approach and response to issues in the social realm. What is needed is a reading of the Word that enables individuals and communities to recognize God active in creative and transformative struggle and thereby enables the participation of the community in the struggle for life in all its fullness. Unfortunately, tensions between the varied roles of the pastor, doctrinal misunderstandings, and a caste-ridden church have hindered pastors from preaching the Word that empowers people to seek their liberation and that of the community.     

Studying ecclesiology in ecumenical perspective: the Finnish context: what does it mean to be ‘the same church in all directions’?

This article introduces the main international ecumenical contacts of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF). The article shows how the ecumenical contacts shape the unique ecclesiology of the ELCF. According to its own ecumenical strategy, the ELCF wants to be the same church in all directions. Unlike Lutheran churches in other Nordic countries, the ELCF is not a state church, but a folk church. Its status from a majority church in a national state is rapidly changing to a majority religious body in a multicultural society. This requires a new kind of ecclesiology, too. This article claims that there are four inter-related issues that shape the ecclesial self-understanding of the ELCF as an ecumenically active folk church. These issues are emphasis on doctrinal unity, communion within the LWF and Porvoo Communion, the status of a decreasing majority folk church, and internal debates on socio-ethical issues, especially those related to sexuality.     

The Old Catholic churches of the Union of Utrecht

Abstract

The Old Catholic Churches of the Union of Utrecht have different historical backgrounds. The Dutch Church has her roots in the Catholic Counter‐Reformation, the German‐speaking Churches in the protest‐movements against Vatican I, and the Polish Churches in the problems of emigrants to USA. However, they adhere in common to the conciliar and synodical tradition of the Catholic Church. They lay stress on the relative autonomy of the local church, the episcopal apostolic succession, and the Eucharist as the manifestation of the Church. The autonomy of the local church is not seen as detached from the universal Church or the responsibility to stay in or to restore Church unity. This leads to an ecumenical engagement which has resulted in full communion with the Anglican Churches and a doctrinal consensus with the Orthodox Churches. Reference back to the undivided Church is a key feature of Old Catholic ecclesiology, though this does not lead to uncomplicated ecumenical solutions.     

Personality,prayer and church attendance among a sample of 11 to 18 year olds in Norway

A series of recent studies has employed various measures of Eysenck's dimensional model of personality alongside questions of frequency of personal prayer and church attendance. The consensus from these studies suggests it is psychoticism, rather than extraversion or neuroticism that is fundamental to a greater frequency of personal prayer and church attendance. The present study tested the generalizability of these findings by examining the association between measure of personal prayer and church attendance and the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire among a sample of 479 11- to 18-year-old Norwegian school children. For the total sample a significant association was found between a greater frequency of both personal prayer and church attendance and lower psychoticism scores. These findings are consistent with previous research and with Eysenck's theory regarding individual differences in social attitudes.     

Teaching and telling

Recent work on testimony has raised questions about the extent to which testimony is a distinctively second-personal phenomenon and the possible epistemic significance of its second-personal aspects. However, testimony, in the sense primarily investigated in recent epistemology, is far from the only way in which we acquire knowledge from others. My goal is to distinguish knowledge acquired from testimony – learning from being told – from knowledge acquired from teaching – learning from being taught, and to investigate the similarities and differences between the two with respect to the interpersonal dimensions of their structures.     

Case Study on Together towards Life and Ministerial Formation

When asked over the years why I believe the World Council of Churches is so important to the life of the church, my response has been not so much because of what its programmes do but because of its work in building a common ecumenical vision and bringing the diversity of the world church around that vision. This has been so valuable in shaping the life and ministry of the church ecumenical at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries. Together towards Life gives us a fresh opportunity to do this again in the area of mission and evangelism.