Is the faith of faith development Christian faith?

The major research with a theological and developmental psychological perspective on the meaning and development of faith has been produced by James Fowler of Emory University and the Candler School of Theology. In this paper, I will present challenges by important critics who pose a significant question. Is this faith of the faith development research Christian faith? To provide an initial answer to the question, I will offer brief summaries of some of Fowler's writings that he has listed as most important for responding to the question. I will also present evidence from his writings and from the writings of other authors that he is indeed interpreting Christian faith.     

The challenge of “Healthy People 2000”

The federal Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (U.S. Public Health Service) has again prepared a compilation of goals and objectives for the health of the Nation's people, applicable to anticipated achievements within the decade ending in the year 2000. This effort involved work groups from numerous federal agencies, testimony in regional hearings from 800 citizens, and enrollment of a consortium of 300 national organizations. The final product, Healthy People 2000, was released in September 1990, and contains 298 measurable objectives. Content regarding children, genetic disorders, developmental disabilities, and disabilities in general is less featured and less specific than was hoped for. Ten objectives of relatively direct concern to geneticists are discussed, plus 23 others of interest in the maternal and child health field. On balance, it is suggested that the Healthy People 2000 objectives can be useful and stimulating for workers in genetics, child health care, and disabilities' services. Regrettably, there was no simultaneous proposal of legislation that would provide new federal programs, funding, or assistance to states.     

Negotiating faith and identity in Muslim–Christian marriages in Britain

Marriage between Muslim men and Christian or Jewish women has been a recognized though controversial phenomenon through Islamic history. Qur'anic permission is given (Q 5:5) but the normative condition in Shari^ca is that Islam should predominate over another faith, particularly in the identification of children.

In Britain and other Western countries the prevailing cultural and legal context of autonomy in relationship formation and choice of marriage partner means that Muslim–Christian marriages may happen without conformity to religious rules or familial preference, for example in the case of Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men. Nevertheless, amongst those surveyed, Muslim identification remained strong even where marriages were deemed transgressive.

Amongst Christian partners, faith identification (of parents and children) was more likely to be treated as autonomous and personally negotiable in the context of marriage.

The experience of hybridity and liminality in these marriages may influence attitudes to faith itself and there was evidence of both ‘universalizing’ and ‘particularist’ faith responses amongst couples.     

The Significance of Identity in Muslim–Christian Encounter

Encounters between Muslims and Christians are influenced by many factors. In this article a contextual study of a religiously diverse neighbourhood in Leeds, a northern English city, is used to illustrate some of the patchwork of related and overlapping identities which Muslims and Christians negotiate in their everyday encounters. Ethnicity, socio-economic status, and encounter with people of other religions are all found to influence how Muslims and Christians relate to each other and to the secular environment.     

“I have a headache tonight”: Function of pain in marriage

This paper explores, primarily through literature review and case illustrations, the function of pain in marriage. The fact that pain is analogically used is evident in the title of this paper. Clinical exploration of this important phenomenon reveals a wide variety of meanings and purposes pain has in the context of marital relationships. These clinical observations need to be molded into testable hypotheses and subjected to systematic research. Despite the obvious lack of research, marital therapy based on an understanding of the function of pain in marriage appears to have substantial merit.     

The Evolution of Darwin to a “Unique Christian Species” in Modernist-Apologetic Arab-Islamic Thought

Darwin's theory of evolution has been the cause of great distress and the subject of intense and constant debates among Jews, Christians and Muslims. The article analyzes why and how Sunni Muslim-Arab modernist-apologetic scholars, whose approach emphasizes the compatibility of Islam with empirical sciences, shifted from reluctantly reconciling the theory of evolution with the Qur'an in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to rejecting Darwin as a fabricator and describing his theory as a Christian aberration in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through a comparative survey that focuses on the works of ?usayn al-Jisr (d. 1909), Mu?ammad Rashīd Ri?ā (d. 1935), Mu?ammad al-Ghazālī (d. 1996), Yūsuf al-Qara?āwī (b. 1926) and Mu?ammad ?Imāra (b. 1931), the article suggests that this shift corresponded with changes in the American anti-evolutionist discourse, and that, while contemporary modernist-apologetic literature casts Darwin as illegitimate, it does not close the door to a future acceptance of the theory of evolution.     

Temporal considerations in the study of family firms: Reflections on “the study of organizational behaviour in family business”

We complement the work of Gagné et al. by discussing how an extended time dimension shapes organizational behaviour in family firms. Using insights from family dynamics, identity theory, and social identity theory, we show how early formative experiences in the family can influence commitment, conflict, and motivation in family firms. Then we examine how a family's intention to pass on the firm to later generations can impact leadership, human-resources practices, and corporate cultures.     

Sharing the faith of Abraham: The ‘Credo’ of Louis Massignon

Louis Massignon (1883–1962) was one of the West's most renowned scholars of Islam in the twentieth century. He was also one of the most influential thinkers in the Roman Catholic community before the second Vatican council on the relationship between the church and Muslims. His religious views on Islam, Muhammad, and the Qur'an were largely responsible for the church's positive approach to dialogue with the Islamic world, as expressed in the document of Vatican II. Massignon believed that Muslims and Christians both worship the God of Abraham; that Muhammad was a sincere spokesman of God; that the Qur'an is in some sense inspired; that Islam has a positive mission in the history of salvation; and that Arabic is a language of divine revelation.     

The Messiah and Rabbi Jesus: Policing the Jewish–Christian border in Christian Zionism

For all their ostensible difference and separateness, Judaism and Christianity have a long history of mutual engagement and profound entanglement. I take Daniel Boyarin's assertion that ‘…the borders between Christianity and Judaism are as constructed and imposed, as artificial and political as any of the borders of the earth’ (2004, 1) as my starting point. But what Boyarin sees as an ongoing process of differentiation between Judaism and Christianity and distinct identity-building in late antiquity, I look for still today in Christian Zionism. The busy border crossing continues to separate people and ideas at the same time as it serves as the meeting place between them, the uncomfortable place where Judaism and Christianity rub up against each other. This paper examines some constructions of the Jewish–Christian border by way of two case studies of prominent religious leaders, each firmly at home in their respective communities, Jewish and Christian, who ventured out to the borderland of Christian Zionism. This is the story of what happened when they returned home to find themselves examined by those who monitor the Jewish–Christian border, and deemed to be over the limit with intoxicants brought over from the ‘other side’.     

Christian‐Muslim theological encounter: The priority of tawhid

Both Islam and Christianity are monotheistic faiths, yet the one God proclaimed and worshipped by each appears to be a different deity by virtue of the different conceptual construct that applies in each case. For Islam the defining motif is the idea of tawhld, for Christianity it is the notion of Trinity. In respect to theological dialogue between these two faiths the onus lies with the side holding the more complex construct to relate that back to the simpler and less complex, especially where the simpler motif is deemed to be contained within ike complex. Thus it behoves the Christian side to examine critically the trinitarian and related doctrines concerning the understanding of God, with a view to a clearer restatement of the essential oneness of deity which, after all, is the undergirding conceptual reference. In attempting this task, the ‘problematic of unity’ inherent in the Christian concept of God is addressed and a theological revision is suggested. The intention is to rethink critically aspects of Christian doctrine so as to further Christian‐Muslim theological dialogue, without in any way diminishing the essential insight of either side, but rather with a view to opening new lines of expression that each might equally affirm.     

The White Cross in Muslim Java: Muslim–Christian Politics in the Javanese City of Salatiga

The interplay of religion and politics has been a consistent theme within the literature of political radicalism and religious violence in the contemporary Muslim world. Indonesia, which has long paraded its multi-layered history of religions, recently emerged as one of the main sites of Muslim–Christian violence. The religious volatility that has characterized Indonesia over the past decade has, however, left variations in vitality between faith-based organizations under-researched. In order to examine how the Christian churches undergird their institutions in the world's largest Muslim country, this article takes as its case study Salib Putih (White Cross) in the Javanese city of Salatiga and traces how a legal issue comes to transcend the boundary between religion and politics at local and national levels.     

The Christian College Advantage? The Impact of Christian Versus Secular Training Among Faculty at Christian Colleges and Universities

Are faculty trained at Christian institutions better equipped to integrate their faith with their professional work? This study uses a mixed methods analysis of Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) faculty survey data to analyze whether and in what ways faculty who graduate from Christian undergraduate, master's, and doctoral programs are more apt to identify connections between their faith tradition and their course objectives. Findings show that faculty members prepared at Christian institutions are more likely to see this relationship and may conceive of it in more sophisticated ways. However, the gap is modest.     

The “discovery” of immigration in Spain: The politicization of immigration in the case of El Ejido

During the second half of the 1980s and the 1990s immigration in Spain raised keen interest in relatively restrictive circles (the administration, associations, academia, etc.), who shared the opinion that “Spain was experiencing a demographic transformation, turning from a country of emigration into a country of immigration”. As we enter the 21st century it is witnessing another important qualitative change. the issue is no longer a matter of administrative and “technical” concern, but political parties and society in general have begun to take it seriously. At the beginning of this decade then, this topic has become a “cuestión de Estado” (Raison d'État).A general overview based on relevant events over the period 1999–2001 shows us how immigration has definitively entered the social and political agenda. The purpose of this article is to examine the impact of this migration dynamic through a case study: the riots that took place in a market-gardening town in southeast Spain, El Ejido, in February 2000. Of all social events, El Ejido is the one that has played a pivotal role in framing the political and social debate, since it synthesises the main issues reflecting the Spanish management of immigration. These events have been the subject of many articles and books offering different and controversial interpretations. With El Ejido, Spain “discovered” immigration and began to undertake the formulation of its immigration issue. This is why it is worth focusing on this case study. The main questions I will pose are: what can we learn form the Spanish context? How can the contextual analysis of the El Ejido case study contribute to the debate on multicultural citizenship in Europe? My reasoning will move from the analysis of the particular context to subsequent theoretical reflections. In the concluding remarks I will summarize the main arguments challenging Spanish management of immigration two years after El Ejido.     

Reflections on Christian–Muslim Dialogue: The Hermeneutics of Messianism

The article points to the dimension of waiting in Jewish, Christian and Shi‘a Muslim thinking as one particular feature of these traditions. There is a need to distinguish between escapist and productive eschatology. The whole question might also be a feature in a discussion on the interrelationship in international relations of the concepts of realism and idealism and the possible contribution of religion.     

The perestroika of the family? Gender and occupational differences in family values in modern day Russia

The recent dramatic changes in the political and economic structures of Eastern Europe have focused interest on the position of women in Russia, where a greater openness in discussing inequalities has been accompanied by a more regressive harkening back to traditional gender roles. The study reported in this paper examines gender and occupational differences in general attitude toward the family, disclosure to family members, and child-rearing values. Three hundred sixty-eight students, 179 manual workers, and 160 entrepreneurs completed a structured measure of family orientation and replied to open-ended questions on family taboos and child-rearing practices, while a subsample (N = 475) completed a family disclosure inventory. Multivariate analyses of variance analyses revealed women to be more family oriented than men, while gender and occupation interacted in producing family disclosure rates. HILOGLINEAR analyses found that the topics suitable for family discussion, as well as the child-rearing values promoted by our respondents, were also best predicted by considering the interaction between both gender and occupation. The implications of these findings for the future shape of Russian family relations is discussed.     

Police officers’ judgements of blame in family violence: The impact of gender and alcohol

This study investigated police officers‘ judgements of blame to both victims and assailants of family violence. Furthermore, the impact of these judgements on the reported likelihood of charging the assailants with assault was examined. The sample was selected from operational police officers of the Queensland Police Service. The sample included 51 male officers and 46 female officers. Ethnicity was not examined. However; 1.3% of police oficers identify as Indigenous and 5.8% of officers come from non-English speaking backgrounds. The subjects were presented with one of eight case vignettes of assault. In these vignettes two factors were varied, the victim gender (male and female), and alcohol consumption of the victim and assailant (both the assailant and the victim were drunk, neither were drunk, the assailant was sober and the victim drunk, and the assailant was drunk and the victim sober). A third independent variable was included, gender of the police officer Male and female police officers showed no differences in judgement of blame and reported likelihood of charging. However; the level of blame attributed to both the assailant and the victim vaned with the victim gender and the alcohol consumption of the disputants. Male victims were more likely to be blamed than female victims. Drunk victims were blamed more than sober victims. Furthermore,a relationship was found between the level of blame allocated to the victim and the reported likelihood of charging the assailant. These results indicate that police officers hold gender stereotypes that influence the way they respond to family violence.     

Chris: The “crazy” kid as a family hero

A case is discussed of an eleven-year-old schizophrenic male who had made a conscious decision several years earlier to act crazy to keep his parents from fighting and divorcing. A relabeling of his crazy behavior as that of a family hero was a first step in releasing him from marital difficulties and beginning to return him to a normal life.