Forgiveness as singularity: The “Allah” controversy in Malaysia and the church's public discourse of cheek‐turning

This paper adopts a Lacanian motif to present the world as being psycho‐theologically characterized by sacrifice and loss, with its subjects (including, more often than not, Christians) remaining in bondage to a vicious cycle of tit‐for‐tat violence and retribution. The chief solution to this situation is for the church to mimic the mercy, forgiveness, and cheek‐turning displayed by Jesus. Through via unconditional forgiveness in the face of injustice and oppression, the community defined by the enemy‐loving work of Christ can exemplify an unravelling of the present diabolical world system. In Lacanian terms, the church is responsible to initiate an ongoing assault of the Real (of peace‐making and forgiveness) upon the Symbolic Order (of rights‐seeking and oppression). This article argues that turning the cheek is no mere political tactic, but is indeed the church's singularity, that is, that aspect of a subject whose jouissance (or enjoyment) refuses the validation of the Other. It concludes by highlighting two episodes from the “Allah” controversy in Malaysia where Christian leaders prioritized forgiveness and reconciliation over legal reprisal.     

Evangelism in “Christian” Societies

The globalization of the economy and the unthinkable development of mass media and transportation and communication have transformed the oldest Christian societies of the northern hemisphere and especially of Europe into multicultural societies. Re‐evangelization is the answer to the question of what must be done. Faith originates from hearing; the missionary preaching that is directed toward the people who are ignorant of the world‐saving work of Christ needs to be articulated, keeping in mind the scheme of communication and the special significance of the following factors: transmitter, receiver, topic, message, channel and code. The gospel is addressed to all ages. Youth and intellectuals exhibit more difficulties in acceptance, which calls for the adoption of a special code of communication. Of the utmost necessity is the flame of the transmitter. Electronic channels of communication offer unthinkable possibilities for the transmission of the message of the gospel to innumerable receivers by the use of a variety of codes.     

“OPENNESS TO THE WORLD”: KARL BARTH'S EVANGELICAL THEOLOGY OF CHRIST AS THE PRAY‐ER1

What is at stake in accounts of “prayer” is reflection on a practice that cannot be readily spoken of free from the most important considerations of God, world, human identity and the shape of its performance. Instead, if prayer “is not to become a harmless game and an endlessly babbling chatter” (Karl Rahner), attention needs to be paid to the god or gods that practices of so‐called “prayer” encounter, and it may be that much of what moves in the name of the God of Jesus Christ is, in Barth's terms, no‐god. For Barth not only has the knowledge of the practice of prayer, in a sense, been taken out of our hands in its Christ‐grounding, but its Christ‐shaped performance involves the determination of Christian life and its self‐reflective thought in the pattern of the new life that might be characterised as the properly ordered freedom of self‐dispossessing obedience.     

“A Mosaic Community Together in the Journey of Faith”

This article demonstrates how missional churches have emphasized accompaniment as missiological foundation in the COVID-19 pandemic season. Employing ethnographical method, interviews, and virtual church visits as the primary approach, the paper explores how NextGen Church as the embodiment of Christ’s love has moved communities to solidarity and unity in the middle of global suffering. It concludes that God is on the mission of love and that the pandemic has provided an opportunity for the church to enhance its participation in missio Dei by epitomizing Christ’s love.     

The Wild Patience of John Howard Yoder: “Outsiders” and the “Otherness of the Church”

Yoder offers a vision of particular dialogical communities that practice generous solidarity precisely through creative uses of conflict and a vulnerable receptivity to the “least of these” within the church and outside it. Few today offer as compelling a vision for pursuing justice and political engagements in heterogeneous societies. Yoder interprets the binding lordship of Christ as the opening of dialogical relations between the church and the world in which giving and receiving happens in both directions. Vulnerable relations with outsiders are integral to the otherness of the church. When this understanding of caritas is forgotten and unpractised, the church loses its otherness and assimilates to the violence of the world.     

Pondering “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today's World”: A Protestant Missiological Reflection

The article explores “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today's World” (MOCT), one of the six official documents issued by the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church that took place on the island of Crete in 2016. It is the first official Orthodox statement on mission ever published. The aim of the present article is to offer a reflection of MOCT from a Protestant missiological perspective. The article argues that MOCT interprets mission as the service of the church to the world, motivated by love. It goes on to discuss six major thematic areas of the statement, namely, the dignity of the human person; freedom and responsibility; peace and justice; peace and the aversion of war; the attitude of the church toward discrimination; and the mission of the Orthodox Church as a witness of love through service. The article seeks to provide a constructive critique of MOCT, assessing both its weaknesses and its assets. It concludes by saying that despite certain theological question marks, the new Orthodox mission document represents an invaluable contribution to the ecumenical discussion on mission and evangelism.     

Divide and Rule Better: On Subsidiarity,Legitimacy and the Epistemic Aim of Political Decision‐Making

How should a political society be structured so as to legitimately distribute political power? One principle advanced to answer this question is the principle of subsidiarity. According to this principle, the default locus of political power is with the lowest competent political unit. This article argues that subsidiarity is a structural principle of a conception of political legitimacy informed by epistemic considerations. Broadly, the argument is that political societies organised according to the principle of subsidiarity can more effectively achieve political decisions that can justifiably appear to be correct from the point of view of those subject to them. The article presents two considerations in order to establish a pro tanto case for acting separately before presenting five additional epistemic considerations that establish a prima facie case for acting separately. The article then shows that political legitimacy and the epistemic aim of decision‐making can sometimes be served more effectively and efficiently by allowing higher‐level political units to assist lower‐level political units.     

Populism and religion: On the politics of fear

Our societies of fear go along with an increase of populist movements in politics. This article explains the basics of populism and shows how easily it joins highly likely political friend‐enemy patterns. Anthropologically, we have to deal with parochial altruism undergirded by a static type of religion. A further step deals with the relationship between politics and fear by referring to terror management theory and its insight into the relationship between mortality and fear. The concluding part addresses ways out of fear and in what way a dynamic type of religion helps to avoid scapegoating and political enmity.     

Evaluations of relational aggression as a function of relationship type and conflict setting

The present study examined influences on girls' evaluations of relational aggression situations. Second‐, third‐, fifth‐, and sixth‐grade girls evaluated four relational aggression conflict scenarios in terms of attributions of aggressor's intentions, evaluator's behavioral response, evaluator's affective state, and how likely the situation was to actually occur. Girls evaluated intentions of a best friend more positively, reported being more mad at an enemy, and perceived conflict to be more likely to occur with an enemy than a best friend. Aggressor intentions in direct conflict scenarios (aggressor said something mean to evaluator) were perceived as more negative than aggressor intentions in indirect conflict scenarios (aggressor said something mean about evaluator to another peer). Younger girls reported intentions of their enemy as being more positive than did older girls. Further, older girls reported intentions of their best friend as being more positive than intentions of their enemy. Older girls also were more accurate in conceptualizing variations in the conflict setting (direct, indirect) and responding in a context‐consistent manner. Findings are discussed in terms of the social‐relational and social‐situational processes that influence children's evaluations of relational aggression and how the current study extends previous research on relational aggression. Aggr. Behav. 26:179–191, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

“We” are Different: Exploring the Diverse Effects of Friend and Family Accessibility on Consumers' Product Preferences

Prior research suggests that close friends and family members exert similar effects on consumer behavior because both represent strong social ties and are subject to communal norms. However, drawing on regulatory focus theory, we postulate that accessibility of friend and family can have divergent impacts on consumers' subsequent purchase decisions. Across four experiments, as well as a pilot study, we demonstrate that accessibility of friend (vs. family) is more likely to activate a promotion focus, which results in more favorable consumer responses toward products with promotion‐focused appeals, whereas accessibility of family (vs. friend) is more likely to activate a prevention focus, which leads to more positive consumer responses toward products with prevention‐focused appeals.     

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.     

A Search for the Body: Is there Space for Christ's Body in Pannenberg's Eschatology?

Pannenberg's thought makes a constant appeal to ‘anticipation’, and this concept depends on a metaphysical proposal, temporalized essentialism, which includes an account of eternity as simultaneity of all history in God. This view of eternity has been both applauded and criticized. This article considers Pannenberg's account of the body of the exalted Christ who is in eternity. Pannenberg affirms the resurrection of Jesus, but has no account of the nature of Jesus’ resurrected body. He emphasizes the church as the body of the exalted Christ, but describes this body as lacking particularity. His account of the Eucharist does not have any place for Christ's corporeal presence or for participation in Christ's exalted body. His account of the return of Christ is oriented to the revelation of the glorified unity of all reality in Christ. The reason that Pannenberg has no account of the body of Christ is due to his conception of eternity, a conception which differs markedly from that of Paul. The Pauline heavenly realm is part of the creation, and thus has a spatio‐temporal relationship to the earthly realm as well as having a spatio‐temporal dimension in itself. Pannenberg's conception of eternity is that it is outside of the created realm and has no spatial dimension. Douglas Farrow argues that a theology that lacks an account of the exalted body of Christ fails to have a proper account of the redemption of humanity and creation, and it seems Pannenberg's view is open to this criticism.     

“WHY BE MORAL?” The Cheng Brothers' Neo‐Confucian Answer

In this article, I present a neo‐Confucian answer, by Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, to the question, “Why should I be moral?” I argue that this answer is better than some representative answers in the Western philosophical tradition. According to the Chengs, one should be moral because it is a joy to perform moral actions. Sometimes one finds it a pain, instead of a joy, to perform moral actions only because one lacks the necessary genuine moral knowledge—knowledge that is accessible to every common person as long as one makes the effort to learn. One should make the effort to learn such knowledge—to seek joy in performing moral actions—because to be moral is a distinguishing mark of being human. This neo‐Confucian answer seems to be egoistic, as its conception of motivation for morality is based on self‐interest: to seek one's own joy. However, since it emphasizes that one's true self‐interest is to seek joy in things uniquely human, which is to be moral, self‐interest and morality become identical; the more a person seeks one's self‐interest, the more moral the person is, and vice versa.     

Derrida's “Antigonanette”: On the Quasi‐Transcendental

In this article, I rely both on Derrida's 1974 work Glas, as well as Derrida's 1971–72 lecture course, “La famille de Hegel,” to argue that the concept of the quasi‐transcendental is central to Derrida's reading of Hegel and to trace its implications beyond the Hegelian system. I follow Derrida's analysis of the role of Antigone—or, as the lecture course has it, “Antigonanette”—in Hegel's thought to argue that the quasi‐transcendental indicates a re(con)striction of empirical difference into the transcendental, which is thereby only ever provisionally transcendental. I then argue that the economy of difference indicated by the quasi‐transcendental is neither a general economy, nor is it in each case singular, but rather it ambivalently oscillates between these two. Finally, I treat the temporality of the quasi‐transcendental, arguing that the economy of difference indicated by the quasi‐transcendental is not prior to the re(con)striction of empirical difference, but is paradoxically produced by it by being retroactively constituted. I take up this analysis for the sake of describing what I contend is the quasi‐transcendental structure of constitutive exclusion, a way of understanding the conceptual structure of political bodies, and the political structure of concepts.     

"Us" and "Them":

Abstract: In the Aristotelian tradition, politics is a matter of public deliberation over questions of justice and injustice. The Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has been uniformly hostile to this notion, and it has instead promoted a jingoistic politics of self‐assertion by an America largely identified with the executive branch of its government. This is doubly disturbing, as the executive branch has sought to free itself from international law, multinational commitments, and domestic judicial regulation, even as it has sought to validate itself by demonizing its enemies. This essay draws out the disturbing echoes here of Carl Schmitt's work of the 1920s, in particular of Schmitt's conception of the sovereign as the ungrounded ground of the law and the political as the site of mortal conflict between friend and enemy. The essay argues that Schmitt's position in the twenties, for all of its evident problems, is superior to that of Bush, Wolfowitz, and Ashcroft in at least two senses: Schmitt condemns the idea of waging war for profit and recognizes that such wars will often be disguised as moral crusades waged against the “inhuman”; and he acknowledges that claiming to fight a war for humanity denies one's enemies their humanity, leaving them open to torture and even extermination.     

“Theology of Presence” in African Christianity: A Transforming Missiological Factor for Women in Contemporary Pentecostal Churches in Africa

Following the independence of many African countries, Christianity has been gaining freedom through indigenizing the church. Christian churches in Africa are self‐indigenizing, self‐innovating, and self‐criticizing their practices and theologies. However, women in African churches remain in an uncomfortable zone. African, biblical, and missionary cultures have been named as sources of discrimination of women in the church. This paper deploys a “theology of presence” to claim that contemporary Pentecostal Christianity (CPC) in Africa, with some continuity in African worldview and biblical cultures, has touched upon and answered women's complex and challenging questions that for a long time have been denied by Christian missionaries. The paper shows how theology of presence, in the “witnessing” and “healing” practised by CPC, has been transforming the missiological factor for women. The paper suggests learning from other models for transformation than policies and gender mainstreaming tools, since these have had little impact. The paper recommends research on hermeneutical reading of the Bible and providing more innovative skills to help women break the silence of being violated.     

The Ignorant Citizen: Mouffe,Rancière,and the Subject of Democratic Education

Much work in the field of education for democratic citizenship is based on the idea that it is possible to know what a good citizen is, so that the task of citizenship education becomes that of the production of the good citizen. In this paper I ask whether and to what extent we can and should understand democratic citizenship as a positive identity. I approach this question by means of an exploration of four dimensions of democratic politics—the political community, the borders of the political order, the dynamics of democratic processes and practices, and the status of the democratic subject—in order to explore whether and to what extent the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can and should be understood as a particular order. For this I engage with ideas from Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière who both have raised fundamental questions about the extent to which the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can be captured as a particular order. In the paper I introduce the figure of the ignorant citizen in order to hint at a conception of citizenship that is not based on particular knowledge about what the good citizen is. I introduce a distinction between a socialisation conception of citizenship education and civic learning and a subjectification conception of citizenship education and civic learning in order to articulate what the educational implications of such an ‘anarchic’ understanding of democratic politics are. While the socialisation conception focuses on the question how ‘newcomers’ can be inserted into an existing political order, the subjectification conception focuses on the question how democratic subjectivity is engendered through engagement in always undetermined political processes. This is no longer a process driven by knowledge about what the citizen is or should become but one that depends on a desire for a particular mode of human togetherness or, in short, a desire for democracy.     

Forecasting “friends forever”: A longitudinal investigation of sustained closeness between best friends

Using data collected across 19 years, the chief goal of this study was to discover predictors of continued relational closeness between best friends. Participants were same‐sex and cross‐sex best friend pairs recruited from a small Midwestern college. In 1983, participants completed several tests and activities designed to assess facets of intimacy, with follow‐up studies in 1987 and 2002 measuring relational closeness. Regression analysis indicates that both manifest similarity and months of closeness in 1983 are associated with relational closeness in 2002. These results suggest that the investment of resources in the friendship and similarity between friends facilitate friendship longevity and that Kelley et al.’s (1983) conceptualization of closeness as related to interdependence is empirically robust.     

‘The friend of my enemy is my enemy’: Modeling triadic internation relationships

The evolution of internation relationships is studied by means of a mathematical model based on a popular rule of triadic interaction: the friend of my friend is my friend, the friend of my enemy is my enemy, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the enemy of my friend is my enemy. The rule is shown to lead to the formation and preservation of unipolar and bipolar configurations of nations, with the strengths of relationships, both friendly and conflictual, intensifying through time. These results confirm speculations originally made in static, graph theoretic studies of the balancing of relationships within individuals, small groups and systems of nations.This research was funded by a grant from the World Society Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland.     

Narrative and Metaphysical Ambition: On Being “in Christ”

This article addresses some of the confusion regarding the role of metaphysical claims in narrative theology. Proponents and critics of narrative theology alike wonder at the ambiguous place of metaphysical speech about God as an objective reality. This essay enters the conversation through the side door of soteriology. Rather than focusing on the relationship between narrative and metaphysics or narrative and analogy or narrative and first‐order theological claims, I examine what sort of metaphysical statements are required to make the Christian claim that human beings are “in Christ” intelligible as a soteriological reality. I argue that the Christian grammar itself assumes a Christology with a certain kind of metaphysical ambition without which Christianity lapses into incoherence. To make this case, I show that David Kelsey's “narrative identity” Christology in Eccentric Existence lacks the metaphysical statements necessary to uphold his conviction that human beings are “in Christ.” A comparison with T. F. Torrance and the Book of Hebrews reveals that when narrative circumvents metaphysical statements about the incarnate Son, soteriological claims lack coherence and the biblical narrative itself is distorted by a false metaphysic. Thus, metaphysical claims internal to the narrative of Jesus are necessary to tell the story of God faithfully. In this way, narrative is the expression of a theological metaphysics.