Muslims dreaming of Christians,Christians dreaming of Muslims: Images from Medieval dream interpretation

Medieval Muslims attached great importance to learning the hidden meanings of dreams which, they believed, might disclose the true character of the dreamer and others or predict the future. The popularity of dream interpretation in the Islamic Middle East is reflected in the large number of manuals devoted to the subject. They provide a valuable picture of common information, misinformation and social attitudes on a wide range of topics, including Christianity and Christians. By contrast, Christian dream interpreters were frequently regarded with suspicion in the Byzantine Empire and very little of their work has survived. The present study looks at views of each other's faith in the work of two major interpreters, one Muslim and one Christian, from the tenth to eleventh centuries, an influential period in a very conservative tradition where interpretations would commonly be repeated for centuries in many different compilations.     

Expectations of Counselling: A Comparison Between Evangelical Christians and Non-Evangelical Christians

A sample of 211 adults returned a questionnaire that was a modified version of Tinsley's (1982) Expectations about Counselling: Brief Form. The sample was recruited from an evangelical Anglican Church, an evangelical Anglican theological college, a doctor's surgery and a number of educational establishments. Analysis of the data compared subjects' choice of counselor between evangelical Christians and non-evangelical Christians. Results indicate that evangelical Christians do not have significantly lower expectations about counseling, in comparison with non-evangelical Christians, except in the Directiveness and Attractiveness sections. There was, though, a significantly higher expectation of the counselor with regard to Religious Behavior by evangelical Christians in contrast to non-evangelical Christians.     

网络宗教生活对基督徒的宗教性的影响——以长沙市在线基督徒的宗教生活为实证研究基础

本文立足于长沙市网络基督徒的宗教生活现实,通过问卷调查和个别访谈的方法,试图考察网络宗教生活对于基督徒的宗教性的实际影响状况.结果表明,网络宗教生活不仅没有削弱信徒的宗教性水平,反而加强了信徒的宗教性水平.在对于结果的进一步讨论中,我们认为有两方面的原因导致了信徒宗教性的不降反升.一,在网络化逻辑下宗教所实现的电子物质化过程;二,宗教性作为人所潜藏的天性,当遇到适宜的社会环境时,它就有可能茁壮地成长起来,成为人的"第二伦理语系".     

Walking a Tightrope: Christians and Muslims in Post-Genocide Rwanda

The 1994 genocide has become a major factor in Rwandan history. At its root lie both ethnic and religious dimensions. These events are considered in the context of a long history of tension and conflict between segments of the population. Religion having contributed to the radicalization of social identities through the involvement of the religious leadership in the genocide, the article analyses Christian–Muslim relations in post-genocide Rwanda. Interviews with Christians and Muslims show that the hitherto marginalized Muslim minority has been able to protect victims and, in cooperation with other groups, has embarked on jihād to enhance and facilitate reconciliation. As a result, both Tutsis and Hutus have been turning to Islam.     

基督徒的苦难

圣经中的约伯是个最好的典型,约伯受的苦难比谁都多,开头讲到他完全正直,远离恶事,敬畏神,后来受撒旦的试探,进入人生最低谷,甚至他的妻子也攻击约伯,使他的苦难雪上加霜。     

Contractual prayer of Christians and Muslims in Lebanon

One perspective from which to view Christian‐Muslim relations is to analyse beliefs and practices shared by Christians and Muslims in a particular culture. This paper analyses contractual prayer as practised by many adherents of the four main religious sects of Lebanon: Sunni and Shi^cfa Muslims and Maronite and Orthodox Christians. Contractual prayer (nidr in colloquial Arabic) is a prayer of petition addressed to the supernatural in which the petitioner couples a request with a conditional promise. Many similarities in the practice are attributable to inherent limitations of this type of prayer, to common human concerns that are expressed in the requests made, and to shared perspectives on gender and other cultural norms. Significant sect‐specific differences are most apparent regarding the supernatural being to whom the request is addressed, the nature of the conditional promise, and the manner and extent to which the practice is institutionalized.     

Nearest in amity: Christians in the Qur'an and contemporary exegetical tradition

This essay seeks to argue the following points: first, tafsir is an important means of understanding not only the Qur'an but also the social situation of the Muslim community in our own time. Second, the Qur'an presents a clearly pluralistic view of religion and culture which allows for religious diversity within the framework of faith in God and the last day and the performance of righteous deeds. Third, the Qur'anic verses discussed in this article illustrate this view; yet Qur'an commentators considered in this essay generally reject this Qur'anic worldview in favour of a much more rigid approach to other religions.     

Going beyond the Human: Christians and Other Transhumanists

Transhumanism is a Christian concept. Although today's transhumanism has secularized the original Christian promise for divinization or theosis by adding evolution and technological progress, Christians should critically re‐take ownership of the role transhumanism plays in the sanctification process.     

Forgivingness: Similarities and Differences Between Buddhists and Christians Living in China

Mourners often rely on faith following loss, but not all find spirituality comforting. Some grievers engage in negative religious coping (NRC), signaled by behaviors and thoughts such as anger toward God or their faith community, feeling spiritually abandoned, or questioning God's power. Our longitudinal study of 46 African American homicide survivors explored the relation of both positive religious coping (PRC) and NRC to complicated grief (CG) and investigated whether religious coping more strongly predicted psychological distress or vice versa. Results indicated that NRC was associated with CG, whereas PRC was substantially unrelated to bereavement outcome. Significantly, CG prospectively predicted high levels of spiritual struggle 6 months later, both in terms of CG and NRC composite scores and at the individual-item level. Clinical implications regarding spiritually sensitive interventions are noted.     

Gender stereotypes and power: Perceptions of the roles in violent marriages

Men are generally observed to exercise more power than women within the marriage relationship. One way of expressing such power is through the roles in violent marriages, in which the man is usually the more powerful, violent person and the woman is the less powerful, abused person. This research tested the hypothesis that roles differing in power can explain why men are believed to be high in agency and women to be high in communion. Agency involves both positive traits (self-assertiveness) and negative traits (motivated to master and subjugate others); communion involves positive traits (accommodation and concern for others) as well as negative traits (excessive selflessness and vulnerability). College students rated stimulus persons on the gender stereotyped traits. In one condition, the husband was described as violent towards his wife, and in another condition, the traditional power relationship was reversed and the wife was described as violent towards her husband. On both the positive and negative traits, violent women and men were perceived as high in agency and low in communion. Abused men and women were seen as high in positive communion and low in positive agency, although the abused woman was lower in positive agency than her male counterpart. For abused women and men, the hypothesized results were found for negative agency, but not all of the expected findings were obtained for negative communion. The sex differences that were found could be explained by differences in the perceived physical aggression inflicted by violent men and women.Portions of this paper were presented at the 1991 annual meetings of the Eastern Psychological Association, New York, and the Association for Women in Psychology, Hartford, CT. I would like to express my appreciation to Carl F. Wiedemann for his statistical advice.     

Alius or Alter: The Qur'anic definition of Christians and Christianity

An essential part of Islam's self definition was not only linking itself to prior revelations and the communities that issued from them, but also distinguishing itself from them. The Qur'an does not spend a great deal of time on those earlier revelations as such — though later Muslims did — but did attempt on a number of occasions to characterize Muslims, Jews and Christians in ways that would serve to underline the differences. This paper is concerned only with the Qur'an's view of Christians, the forces driving it and its evolution over the time span represented by the Prophetic revelations.