The beast from the abyss

The dissolution of Yugoslavia in the nineties brought a series of armed conflicts, civil wars and outright war to the Balkan Peninsula. The Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) was entangled in these conflicts. The SOC’s involvement in these wars has sparked an academic discussion about the role of religion, especially that of the SOC, in these conflicts. This discussion has so far mainly been social scientific in its scope and preoccupied with nationalist movements and political elites, and has therefore not sought to investigate the SOC’s own reflection on the war. Secondly the discussion of the SOC’s role has been on some level detached from the broader discussion of Christianity’s relation to war and violence. This article will provide an in-depth study of a selection of Serbian Orthodox reflections on war and its relationship to Christian, and in particular Eastern Orthodox, tradition, bringing forth ways in which parts of the SOC views war and violence.     

“上德若谷”与潇洒人生

每个人要想在人生旅途中"潇洒走一回",具有"上德若谷"的品德是不可或缺的条件.要求在待人接物上,应具有宽宏、宽容、忠厚、大度的品格,切忌待人接物尖酸、刻薄,心胸狭隘.宽容美德,是构建潇洒人生的重要保证.     

Toward a racial abyss: eugenics,Wickliffe Draper,and the origins of The Pioneer Fund

The Pioneer Fund was created in 1937 "to conduct or aid in conducting study and research into problems of heredity and eugenics . . . and problems of race betterment with special reference to the people of the United States." The Fund was endowed by Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper, a New England textile heir, and perpetuates his legacy through an active program of grants, some of the more controversial in aid of research on racial group differences. Those presently associated with the Fund maintain that it has made a substantial contribution to the behavioral and social sciences, but insider accounts of Pioneer's history oversimplify its past and smooth over its more tendentious elements. This article examines the social context and intellectual background to Pioneer's origins, with a focus on Col. Draper himself, his concerns about racial degeneration, and his relation to the eugenics movement. In conclusion, it evaluates the official history of the fund.