Christianity and Islam: Theological affinity and competition

CHRISTENTUM UND ISLAM: THEOLOGISCHE VERWANDT-SCHAFT UND KONKURRENZ. By Hans Zirker. 2nd. rev. ed. Dusseldorf: Patmos, 1992. ISBN 3-491-77784-4.     

Radical Otherness: Sociological and Theological Approaches

Abstract

This article reports two studies on the development of the Embodied Spirituality Scale (ESS), an instrument designed to measure the level of integration between one's experience of sexuality and spirituality. Both studies were limited to specifically Christian samples. Study 1 reports the initial construction of the ESS. Participants in Study 1 consisted of 128 women and 64 men (ages 16 to 75, M = 22.7 years). Study 2 reports a validation study of the ESS. Participants in Study 2 consisted of 125 female (46.5 per cent) and 142 male (52.8 per cent) adults between the ages of 18 and 78 (M = 47; SD = 10.9). The results offer empirical support for the concept of embodied spirituality as an integral relationship between sexuality and spirituality. The results also suggest that, as a measure of embodied awareness, the ESS may offer clues to the nature of the ‘active ingredient’ in the relationship between spirituality and health.     

The Theological Misappropriation of Christianity as a Civilizing Force

The theological misappropriation of Christianity as a civilizing force occurs when individuals convert to Christianity due to deception that ignores the faith-based aspect of Christianity. The history of Western education in India illustrates the hidden curriculum that Christian missionaries employed to disrupt the Indian educational system. This unnerving pedagogy points to the need for a postcolonial theoretical framework that relates the inescapable hybridity of religion and culture where Orientalism has the potential to occur. To press the ongoing urgency of this discussion, I convey how the history of British India connects to my lived-reality as an American Hindu. Overall, I point to hybridity as a lived paradox of ambiguous conflict that embraces interfaith relations. I offer implications for Christian missionaries today to foster authentic interfaith connections without engaging in colonizing ideologies.     

Transsexualism: Some Theological and Ethical Perspectives

Abstract : The debates in church and theological circles regarding sexuality have been dominated by the subject of homosexuality. There has been far less theological discussion and ethical reflection regarding transgendered people and transsexualism in particular. This article introduces readers to some basic facts about transsexualism and to a selection of theological and ethical responses to this phenomenon with particular attention to how the notion of “disordered sexuality” is a factor in both the debate over the ethical status of transsexualism and homosexual unions.     

儒家文化促进经济发展的若干进路

"儒家文化"是个宏大的概念,从学理和实践的层面看,都不能在整体上得出儒家文化能够促进或者妨碍经济发展的结论,而应做具体的分析. 毋庸讳言,儒家文化作为中华民族传统文化的构成之一,在一定程度上,它的某些成分可以成为促进当代中国社会经济发展的动力.经过近20多年的研讨,特别是经过上个世纪90年代以来的市场经济体制建设实践的探索,儒家文化的某些内容可以成为社会文化发展的助力,已经成为事实.现在的问题是,儒家文化要在当代中国成为促进经济发展的助力,就要有切实的契合点,即要有恰当的进路;否则,无论儒家文化有多少优良之处,无论人们对于儒家文化在当今社会的作用有多么强烈的共识,都无济于事.而要合理地解决这个进路问题,就应当从儒家文化社会功能的两面性人手,对其做切实的分析.     

加强实践神学研究 促进基督教中国化神学

近年中央提出坚持我国宗教中国化方向,既是党和政府对我国宗教提出的要求,也是我国宗教自身发展的要求。基督教要坚持好中国化方向,在更广的范围、更深的层次实现中国化的目标,应当将神学思想的中国化放在首要位置,把中国化的注意力和资源聚焦到神学思想建设上来。     

Toward a Renewed Theological Culture: Introduction

This article introduces a series of articles analysing the current state of theology and inquiring about the possibilities of a renewed theological culture (not least within secular societies). It places theology, and more precisely, the conditions of a possible renewal thereof, in several fields of tension. Paradigmatic for secular societies is the tension between theology and the natural sciences. It is argued that theology and the natural sciences cultivate different modes of reasoning on different epistemic levels and that no competition between them has to be construed if one is not caught up in the premises of secularism. A brief summary of each of the contributions follows these initial remarks.     

Christianity in Iran: A Brief Survey

This article reviews the long and varied history of Christianity in the country now known as Iran. The historical emphasis is on the Assyrian Church of the East, although other churches are also mentioned. The relationship, successively, with Zoroastrianism and with Islam, as the dominant religious traditions, is discussed, as are its implications for the wider Islamic world. Western contacts with Iran, and, in particular, those of western churches, are also examined. In the light of this historical analysis, and from discussion of the situation since the Islamic Revolution, some conclusions are advanced about the prospects for Christianity in the new contemporary context.     

Churched Ibiza: Evangelical Christianity and Club Culture

In this article, I trace the shifting theorisation of religious conflict to argue that religious conflict in the USA is shaped by a dialectic of religious and secular movements. Church-sect theory, which was originally a class-based theoretical framework, was appropriated by the rational choice approach in the sociology of religion, which instead privileged competition in a religious marketplace. Ernst Troeltsch described divisions between church and sect, but H. Richard Niebuhr demarcated a denominational divide in the USA based on class, region, ethnicity and race. In the 1980s, Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney, Robert Wuthnow and James Davison Hunter observed that the differences in the US were no longer necessarily between denominations but could occur within denominations. For them, what had become known as the Culture Wars were based on a conflict between religious liberals/progressives and religious conservatives/orthodox. This conflict is shaped by a dialectic of secular and religious movements and counter-movements.     

Survey article: Christianity in the People's Republic of China

Jeppe Sinding Jensen and Luther H. Martin (eds), Rationality and the Study of Religion. Acta Jutlandica LXXII: 1, Theology Series 19. Aarhus, Aarhus University Press, 1997, 221 pp., n.p., ISBN 87 7288 692 7).

Phillip Blond (ed.), Post-Secular Philosophy. London, Routledge, 1998, xiii+376 pp., £50, $85 (hardback) ISBN 0 415 09777 0, £15.99, $24.99 (paperback) ISBN 0 415 09778 9.

Peter and Linda Murray, The Oxford Companion to Christian Art and Architecture, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, xii+596 pp., £15.99 (paperback) ISBN 0 19 860216 2.

Andrew Rawlinson, The Book of Enlightened Masters: Western Teachers in Eastern Traditions. La Salle, IL, Open Court, 1997, xix+650 pp., $34.95, £31.50 (paperback) ISBN 0 812 69310 8.

C. G. Jung, Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal, edited and selected by Roderick Main. New York and London, Routledge, vi+177 pp., $69.95, £45 (hardback) ISBN 0 415 15509 6, (paperback) $18.95, £14.99 ISBN 0 415 15508 8.

Rosalind Hackett, Art and Religion in Africa. Religion and the Arts Series. London, Cassell, 1996, 240 pp., 113 drawings and black-and-white photographs, four colour plates, n.p. ISBN 0 304 33752 8.

Schubert M. Ogden, Is There Only One True Religion or Are There Many? Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1992, iii+114 pp., $12.95 (paperback) ISBN 0 87074 329 5.

N. Ross Reat and Edmund F. Perry, A World Theology: The Central Spiritual Reality of Humankind. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, iii+314 pp., $65.00, £45.00 ISBN 0 521 33159 5.     

The Challenge of Autism for Relational Approaches to Theological Anthropology

In this paper, I argue that autism places an important restraint upon the use of relationality in theological anthropology. This argument proceeds by outlining how the appropriation of dialectic personalism, which initiated ‘the relational turn’ in twentieth century theological anthropology, has struggled to escape the capacity or property‐based focus on individual subjects. As such, this relational account remains discriminatory against those who do not or cannot enact a particular kind of relationality, as some models of autism suggest. Moreover, attention to interpersonal relationships as a key human capacity within twentieth century theological anthropology closely parallels and may even have informed the development of autism within psychology as, in part, a social impairment. The devastating collision of these two intellectual trajectories is made apparent in explicit references by contemporary theologians to autism as a condition that prevents some humans from bearing the image of God, developing fully into persons, or receiving God’s grace by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.     

木偶与侏儒——马克思与基督宗教“联手”面对当代资本主义

许多国外马克思主义的研究已显示,当代资本主义思想形态越来越具有宗教性质,俨然成了当代人的宗教,因此对于资本主义的批判,采取一种神学批判的进路变得极富挑战。在《资本论》,马克思把"市场体系"基本上看作是一个"宗教体系",认为基督教是最适合作为一种商品生产体系的一种宗教形式,他深刻地理解到金钱与宗教、资本主义与末世论愿景之间的深刻关系,这意味着对于资本主义的批判是可以探取一种神学批判的。本文即是将马克思对资本主义的分析置于与传统宗教社会学不同的进路,以神学批判的进路揭示马克思的批判不仅是历史的,也是哲学的,更是神学的。     

Religionless Christianity and the Political Implications of Theological Speech: What Bonhoeffer's Theology Yields to a World of Fundamentalisms

This article seeks to utilize Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity in a formative and constructive way to aid theological speech in the complexly secular and multi-faith setting of the twenty-first century. It will begin by seeking to highlight trends in unhelpful contemporary theo-politics, and to locate these in the interconnection of secular and religious forms of fundamentalism. It will then consider how a theological interpretation of Bonhoeffer's religionless Christianity might assist in undermining such fundamentalisms. A further section identifies a threefold positive benefit that Bonhoeffer's thought offers in the contemporary situation: a distinction between God and religion; a genuine understanding of the sovereignty of God; and an inability to separate secular–religious concerns from inter-faith concerns.     

Some Current Trends of Christianity in Africa

This article examines three trends in current African Christianity. Its denominational fragmentation is currently marked by the coexistence of three major groups: the “churches that emerged from the apostolic process of Christian antiquity”; the “churches born from Western missionary processes”; and the “African revivalists” (African initiated churches and African Pentecostal churches). The African revivalists are characterized by doctrinal and institutional creativity that largely draws on Africa's historical trajectory, with its challenges of a sociocultural, identity, and economic nature. This “fragmented African Christianity” inevitably has a diverse view of African cultures, ranging from a positive viewpoint on one end of the scale and radical rejection on the other, and including various patterns of taking over Christian heritage with the goal of giving new value to the formally scorned African identity. This diversity of attitudes in turn prompts overall judgments on Christianity in Africa, which range from praise to suspicion regarding the pertinence of this religion on the continent. This complex shape of current African Christianity is not an obstacle to the Ad Gentes mission, whose current dynamism is increasingly marked by the phenomenon of African emigration. All of this represents a great challenge for ecumenism, because a trend toward a “religion market” is taking the lead over collaboration and search for Christian unity. This is why it is important to recognize the quality of this African missionary Christianity, whose fragmentation is quite original.