A comment on mill's argument for utilitarianism

This article contains criticisms of various interpretations of Mill's argument for Utilitarianism. An attempt is made to explain how Mill conceived the rationality of his proof, and how his justification of the Principle of Utility differs from a justification of fundamental moral principles on the basis of the logic of ethical discourse.     

Cognitive-behavioral treatment for professional sexual misconduct among the clergy

Inappropriate sexual behavior by professionals has been reported in increasing numbers. This article focuses on the cognitive-behavioral treatment of clergy who have acted out sexually. Case studies are used to identify the various issues and facets of treatment. The article concludes with a program designed to return previously offending clergy to active roles within their denominations is described.     

Using strategic psychotherapy: A case study of chronic PTSD after a terrorist attack

This article describes a case of chronic post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The patient came to psychotherapy three years after he was injured in a terrorist attack. He was in a state of dysfunction. The article elaborates on theoretical issues, the choice of strategic model of psychotherapy, the various phases of the therapeutic process and the specific difficulties that such a case presents.     

The Goodbye Brochure: Helping Students to Cope With Transition and Loss

This article describes a brochure that has been used by various college personnel in their attempts to help students in coping with transition and loss. The brochure's content is presented, and its development, use, merits, and limitations are discussed.     

Learning from what? A question of subject focus in religious education in England and Wales

The terms learning about and learning from religion have now become firmly established in the lexicon of religious education (RE). The publication of a national Non‐statutory Framework for RE in October 2004 gave them official status. But what is actually meant by these terms? Certainly teachers have been less confident when attempting to put learning from religion into practice. This article takes the view that a clear articulation of what and how pupils should learn from religion depends on being clear about what it is they should learn about religion in the first place. It goes on to argue that what pupils learn about religion is often not reflective of anything distinctive that distinguishes religious education from other humanities subjects. This is due to the dominance of a naturalistic understanding of religion in religious education, based on disciplines such as sociology and anthropology.

This article seeks to redress the balance by attempting to outline a second order interpretative framework that is more truly reflective of religious life than the naturalistic disciplines yet less narrow than a tradition bound theological framework. The latter part of the article offers an example of how this might be reflected in taking pupils to visit various places of worship.     

Adventist Perspectives on Faith Integration: Subject Index for Christ in the Classroom,Volumes 21–40

Abstract

This article presents a bibliography of essays from the Christ in the Classroom collection, organized by subject. The essays focus on various aspects of the intersection of faith and academic fields of study. This article presents the subject index for volumes 21 through 40 of the collection, including volumes produced in the French, Portuguese, and Spanish languages. The index for volumes 1–20 was printed in 2017. All essays listed here are freely available for download at http://ChristInTheClassroom.org/.     

The Human Rights Debate in the External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church

Abstract

This article analyses the ideological and institutional context of the document The Russian Orthodox Church's Basic Teaching on Human Dignity, Freedom and Rights (Osnovy ucheniya Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi o dostoinstve, svobode i pravakh cheloveka), issued by the Bishops' Council of the Moscow Patriarchate in 2008, with the particular aim of shedding light on its nature as an instrument of the external relations and foreign politics of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Through a documentation of the milestones in the Russian Orthodox human rights discourse and through a semantic analysis of the key terms used, the article shows how the ROC's rhetorical self-positioning vis-à-vis the liberal human rights regime changes over time and shifts from an outright opposition to a more conciliatory attitude. The article is based on internet sources, in particular various websites related to Russian Orthodox institutions, as well as observations and interview material.     

The Al-Sābiū’n (the Sabians) in the Quran: An Overview from the Quranic Commentators,Theologians, and Jurists

The term ‘al-Sābiū’n,’ as literally employed in the Qur’ānic commentaries, denotes “peoples who shift from one religion to another” or “peoples who take on a new religion other than their own.” This term is the plural of sābī’ and it derives from the root sabā, which signifies “turn to” or “lean towards to.” The term al-Sābiū’n as applied in the Qur’ān indicates various technical meanings, since almost all commentators of the Qur’ān and the earliest scholars have left the identification of al-Sābiū’n vague. Such a vague identification is plausible, since al-Sābiū’n is represented by a conglomerate of various views comprising remnants of sects who were oriented to cultic practices, ancient heathen sects of several nationalities, namely Greeks, Persians, and Indians, and sects who were Neo-Platonic in their origin and character. This article thus has a distinct purpose. It attempts to exhibit the features of the Sabians as perceived and conceived by the Quranic Commentators, Theologians, and Jurists. It is hoped that the article will provide a preliminary yet clear understanding of the Sabians as interpreted by themselves.     

Climate change and social order: Knowledge for action?

This article is a critical, sociological examination of policy advice aimed at reducing or limiting CO₂ emissions. The policy proposals are taken from various sources directed to governmental or economic institutions and targeted to cope with the natural and social consequences of global warming. We ask, based on a sociological understanding of features constitutive of practical social science knowledge, how feasible and practical are various policy proposals. Our assessment, in turn, is based on a theoretical model of the characteristics ofpractical scientific knowledge, which is discussed in conjunction with the current field of climate change knowledge. He is currently the editor of theCanadian Journal of Sociology. This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the 27th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association, Learned Societies Conference, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada, June 1992.     

Mind Leaks: A Commentary on Wooffitt’s Poetic Confluence: A Sociological Analysis of an Enigmatic Moment

This commentary on Wooffitt’s lucid article discusses three major implications of the phenomenon of poetic confluences or ESP puns to our understanding of minds and selves. The first reinforces the view of mind as associative and metaphorical, rather than merely computational. The second reviews various strands of evidence, including experimental research on psi phenomena, to reveal that selves and individuals are not sharply distinct or separate from others. The final, epistemological, implication is that poetic confluences add to the irresolvable causal uncertainty about mental events.     

Advancing Shūrā: A Social Agent for Democratization

ABSTRACT

This study is an analytical comparison between Islamic articulations of shūrā (consultation) and notions of representative democracy. It emphasizes various epistemic understandings of shūrā in light of qur’anic exegesis and historical precedents of consultative rule in Islam. In particular, it identifies shūrā as an agent for democratization in contrast to its more familiar manifestation as a top-down consultative system. This is examined together with the works of influential Muslim scholars from modernist, Islamist and pro-democratic backgrounds to elucidate what aspects of democracy they accept and/or reject. The article does not exhaustively analyze each scholar’s interpretation of democracy. Rather, it selects scholars from different historical epochs with distinctive theoretical positions on shūrā. Overall, the study finds shūrā remains largely under-utilized as a result of post-colonial discourses on Islam and authoritarian political systems in Muslim-majority countries. The article finally examines how shūrā can be better facilitated as a social agent to renew civil society and combat authoritarian rule.     

Making Critically Conscious Disciples: A Zambian Pentecostal Pneumato‐Discipleship Missiology

This article calls for rethinking of discipleship within missio Spiritus for political formation necessary for the viable functioning of Zambian Pentecostalism in the neo‐colonial context. It argues that the theme for the 2018 World Mission Conference in Arusha, Tanzania, “Moving in the Spirit: Called to Transforming Discipleship,” calls for pneumato‐discipleship in promoting human dignity. Through an empirical missiological approach, the article analyzes interviews conducted with various believers in various Pentecostal communities to demonstrate the emerging missio Spiritus praxis among Zambian Pentecostals, which seeks to promote a missional ethics of resistance to neo‐colonial political culture. Pneumato‐discipleship, as pedagogy for critically conscious disciples, is geared toward realization of human dignity. It is the instrument of hope in the search for dignity and struggle against pervasive inhumanities.     

Prayer spaces in schools: a subversion of policy implementation?

Based on a major evaluation project, this article presents an emerging theme from research on the activities supported by Prayer Spaces in Schools, an organisation supporting ‘pop-up’ prayer spaces in schools across the UK and internationally. Evaluating the activities primarily in terms of their possible contribution to spiritual development, a number of important issues arose relating to policy on education and religion. This article focuses on how some engage with these prayer spaces as a way of reimagining and renegotiating educational policy. Based on data gathered from interviews with staff and students (aged 7–16) across seven schools in England, questionnaire responses from 555 students across 15 schools and feedback from two prayer spaces conferences, a hermeneutic approach is used to compare the interpretations of staff with those of students and the implicit positions of policy documents. This article explores various forms of policy implementation and how staff engagement with prayer spaces can be seen as a form of subversion, with staff tactically subverting policy implementation sometimes in order to promote the very intention of those policies – a form of what we refer to as subversive obedience.     

CRITICAL REALISM REDUX: A RESPONSE TO JOSH REEVES

This article combines an appreciation of several themes in Josh Reeves's Against Methodology in Science and Religion: Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology while arguing in favor of critical realism. The author holds that critical realism manages to combine the objective truth reached through inference and especially cognitive acts of judgment as well as the various, contingent historical contexts that also define where science is practiced. Reeves advocates a historical perspective, but this article claims that in order for critical realism to be credible, a philosophical perspective must be maintained.     

When God Smites: Talking with Students about the Violence of God in Scripture

This article emphasizes the need for religious educators to address the issue of divine violence in Scripture with students, and it offers various pedagogical strategies for doing so. The focus is on violent Old Testament texts, with special attention given to the issue of Canaanite genocide. A general framework for structuring class time around divine violence in Scripture is proposed which includes (1) encouraging students to encounter violent biblical texts firsthand, (2) helping them understand why people find these passages problematic, and (3) offering various options for dealing with the potential problems these passages raise. In the second half of the article, significant attention is devoted to a number of practical considerations that should be taken into account when talking about this sensitive issue in class. A brief word about assessment is offered at the end.     

Transference,Catharsis, Insight and Reality Testing during Concomitant Individual and Group Psychotherapy

The authors argue that shame is a core issue for many men who assault their partners. Shame must therefore be addressed in treatment groups. This article outlines how one intervention, “the confession,” elicits shame and how that shame is negotiated through the various stages of group development.     

Nature as Muslim: Applying a Qur'anic Concept to the Bible

Eco-sensitive readings of both the Bible and the Qur'an have become common in recent years as scholars have drawn upon insights and methods from environmental studies to inform their interpretations of biblical and qur'anic passages. This article attempts to put the two texts in conversation with one another on this topic to show how what one of them has to say about the natural world can have an effect on how we understand and interpret the other. Some have argued that the Qur'an's view of nature is that it is “muslim” because it submits and conforms itself to the divine will. This article applies that idea to selected biblical texts that refer to various elements of the natural world. Rereading these passages from the Bible through the lens of the Qur'an's concept of nature as muslim can enable us to see important aspects of the biblical view of the environment that we might otherwise miss.     

The Rādhāsoāmī Theory of Subtle Body as an Expression of Religious Inclusivism

This article looks at the yogic theory of subtle body as a hermeneutical and pedagogical tool used by the Rādhāsoāmī (rādhāsvāmī) tradition to construct an inclusivist strategy for appropriating other religious systems. When constructing the theory of surat-?abd-yoga, the Rādhāsoāmīs took the ha?ha yoga of the Nāths as a vital reference point. While rejecting the corporeal techniques of ha?ha yoga, they remained influenced by the Nāth theory of subtle body. A thorough modification and expansion of this theory enabled the Rādhāsoāmīs to construct a historiosophy based on a hierarchy of religious paths. The article discloses various manifestations of the inclusivist strategy in Rādhāsoāmī thought, establishes its historical and structural determinants, and examines the process of development of the theory of subtle body into a hermeneutical tool for interpreting rival paradigms of yoga in a manner that portrays them as inferior.

     

Thomas Kuhn on the existence of the world

This article argues that Thomas Kuhn's views on the existence of the world have undergone significant change in the course of his philosophical career. In Structure, Kuhn appears to be committed to the existence of the ordinary empirical world as well as the existence of an independent metaphysical world, but realism about the empirical world is abandoned in his later writings. Whereas in Structure the only relative worlds are the scientific worlds inhabited by the practitioners of various paradigms, the later Kuhn puts the non-scientific worlds of particular groups or cultures on the same footing as the paradigm-related scientific worlds. The article shows that, on what Ian Hacking called the “new-world problem”, the later Kuhn has moved to a more radical antirealist position. It is also argued that the earlier and later solutions to the “new-world problem” face insuperable difficulties, which render Kuhn's account of scientific change implausible.     

Metaemotional Intentionality

This article argues against two theories that obscure our understanding of emotions whose objects are other emotions. The tripartite model of emotional intentionality holds that an emotion's relation to its object is necessarily mediated by an additional representational state; I argue that metaemotions are an exception to this claim. The hierarchical model positions metaemotions as stable, epistemically privileged higher‐order appraisals of lower‐level emotions; I argue that this clashes with various features of complex metaemotional experiences. The article therefore serves dual purposes, offering metaemotions as a counterexample to an intuitive thesis about emotional intentionality, and examining their intentional structure in its own right.