全国性宗教团体联席会议召开第十五次会议

本刊讯2021年3月18日,全国性宗教团体联席会议以视频方式召开第十五次会议。会议的主题是学习贯彻新修订的《中国共产党统一战线工作条例》,推动落实党的宗教工作理论方针政策。各全国性宗教团体主要负责人、驻会负责人、秘书长(总干事)及中华基督教青年会、女青年会全国协会负责人参加会议。中央统战部副部长、国家宗教事务局局长王作安出席会议并讲话。会议由全国性宗教团体联席会议轮值主席、中国基督教三自爱国运动委员会主席徐晓鸿主持。     

The Second Vatican Council 50th anniversary: visions and re-visions

On 21 November 2014, the 50th anniversary of the solemn promulgation of Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio was celebrated. Between ‘aggiornamento’ and ‘ressourcement’ the Catholic Church had been striving to understand itself and its Tradition more precisely, in order to be newly relevant, lastingly true and authoritative in the future ? an indispensible task, if the gospel were to be proclaimed to the contemporary world, but not an easy one. It is little wonder that this completion of the Council's endeavours was preceded by its so-called ‘black week’. Questions remain as to the outcome of it all, and the articles assembled in this issue assess the reception of these two conciliar texts after 50 years. Where do the achievements lie? Where are the shortcomings? Where do questions need to be asked today that reach beyond the horizon of Vatican II?     

The Contribution of Professor Ninian Smart to Religious Education

Religious Experience Reconsidered was premised on the idea that experience is a site of contested meaning and value for subjects (and scholars). Although the concept of specialness has drawn considerable attention, my goal in writing the book was to update efforts to use attribution theory to bridge between religious studies and the psychology of religion. I intended the focus on micro-social processes to complement analysis at the macro-social level. The need for a broader, more generic second order term, such as specialness, emerged in the context of working out an attributional approach and can and should be extended more broadly. While anything can be set apart as special and an analysis of the politics of deeming is essential, we can still ask if there is empirical evidence to suggest that humans are more likely to set some things apart than others within or across cultures. When we take experience as a site for study, we do not have to limit ourselves to describing the range of views held by our subjects, but can also legitimately seek to explain experience in terms that make sense to us as researchers. The breaking of taboos against explaining experience in naturalistic terms will only have apocalyptic consequences if we assume a special/ordinary binary; viewed on a continuum, we can still find special meaning and value in experiences that are not protected by taboos.