IMAGING THE FUTURE: NEW VISIONS AND NEW RESPONSIBILITIES

Abstract. History may be pregnant with a new paradigm centering around the organic features of systems in four areas: the global-ecological, the national-social, the organizational-institutional, and the individual-psychological. Key terms are holistic, synergy, harmony, interdependence, and synthesis. A transition is occurring in each of these realms that has great potential for human fulfillment, if the shift can be successfully managed. Movements in theology can be similarly illuminated by this analysis at three points: the global conversation between liberation and establishment theologies, the renewed discussion among Christian theologians regarding other world religions, and the current influence of process theology.     

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: HOW AND WHY WOMEN BECOME AND REMAIN ENGAGED IN COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP

This research examines women's narratives regarding the experiences that lead to becoming, sustaining, and challenging active community leaders. Seventeen women neighborhood leaders, age 28 to 73 years, completed in-depth interviews. Qualitative thematic content analyses identified prominent themes in participants' responses that were subsequently linked to a generativity framework. Analyses revealed that leaders reported circuitous rather than linear paths of emerging community participation and growing up among others who demonstrated an ethos of care in informal as well as formal community practices. Women's initial community engagement was most often in response to invitations to address community needs. Both communal and agentic rewards and challenges to community involvement were identified. Based upon the findings, strategies for promoting and sustaining women's community leadership are identified.     

CONTEMPORARY EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AS A NEW HEURISTIC MODEL FOR THE SOCIOSCIENTIFIC METHOD IN BIBLICAL STUDIES

Abstract. Notions of uniform and gradual evolution have been replaced in some circles by biological and paleontological models that postulate that periods of rapid change punctuate long periods of evolutionary stasis. This new theory, called punctuated equilibria (or PE for short), may have implications for paradigms in scholarly disciplines other than the sciences. Whereas old evolutionary models exerted great influence upon historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and students of religion for more than a century, the new model may provide heuristic paradigms for research that correlate more adequately with the current observations of scholars. We therefore provide suggestions for deployment of this new scientific paradigm in history and anthropology. In particular, this model can explain the rise of the Israelite state and the religious ethos in the Hebrew Bible, two major concerns of today's socioscientific study of biblical materials. Thus the possibility of an overarching paradigm for the social sciences is entertained.     

BUDDHISM AND THE SCIENTIFIC IMAGE: REPLY TO CRITICS

I provide a précis of The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized ( 2011 ), and then respond to three critics, Christian Coseru, Charles Goodman, and Bronwyn Finnigan.     

CONSERVATION IN COMMUNITY SCHOOL CHILDREN FROM THE MILNE BAY AND MOROBE PROVINCES OF PAPUA NEW GUINEA

Three hundred and forty primary level boys and girls from the Milne Bay and Morobe Provinces of Papua New Guinea were tested for conservation of number, length, quantity, and area. Relationships observed between schooling, age, sex and conservation confirmed previous conclusions from work in Papua New Guinea about the importance of the first two of these variables for conservation. Comparisons between different language-culture groups suggested that explanations of any lag in achieving conservation in Papua New Guinean children must give attention to specific characteristics of children's environments since groups which were significantly superior performers on some tasks were significantly inferior on others.