The Mandate of the Ecumenical Movement

This is the text of the address given by Willem A. Visser 't Hooft to the Uppsala Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1968 after being named honorary president of the WCC, following his retirement as general secretary two years earlier. In this address, Visser 't Hooft reviews the 20th‐century history of the ecumenical movement and the contemporary mandate of the WCC, in which the central issue is the relationship between the church and the world, where the vertical dimension to God of the church's unity determines the horizontal dimension of its service to the world. The address concludes with four challenges: no horizontal advance without vertical orientation; the ecumenical movement and the churches need each other; church unity is important; and youth expects answers.     

Faith and Order from Today into Tomorrow

This article is an edited version of the director’s report given to the meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Faith and Order Commission in Nanjing, China, 12 to 19 June 2019. After looking at the significance of meeting in China, and Chinese perspectives on ecumenism, the text reviews the work undertaken by three study groups set up following the WCC 10th Assembly in Busan, Korea, on ecclesiology, pilgrimage and ecclesial communion, and the understanding of disagreement on moral issues. It concludes by exploring a proposal to hold a World Conference on Faith and Order in 2025 to coincide with the 1700th anniversary of the first Ecumenical Council at Nicea.     

A comparison of the ecclesiological doctrine of Vatican II with Faith and Order's convergence text The Church: Towards a Common Vision

Faith and Order's important new convergence text on ecclesiology was published in 2013, 50 years after the discussions in 1963, at the second session of Vatican II, which produced the council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, the following year. After acknowledging some of the pitfalls in comparing a conciliar teaching with an ecumenical convergence text, this article summarises the content of the new ecumenical text on ecclesiology, indicates points of agreement with Vatican II's teaching and proposes that The Church: Towards a Common Vision might be seen as reflecting a hierarchy of ecclesiological truths which provides a promising framework for seeking greater agreement about still divisive issues.     

“Towards a Global Vision of the Church”

After the publication of The Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) in 2013, the major task and challenge for the Faith and Order Commission's Study Group II has been the progress of the multilateral ecumenical dialogue on ecclesiology. The two subgroups of Study Group II have been working in close cooperation with each other, focusing on two major ways to achieve this progress. The focus of Subgroup 2 has been to harvest the fruits of the official responses to TCTCV. This is being done by the collection and analysis of the official responses to TCTCV, the identification of some key themes and issues that emerge from them, and the evaluation of how they point to the next steps. So far 74 responses have been received; however, geographically speaking, there has been essentially no response from the global South (there have been no responses from Africa, no responses from Latin America, and one from Asia); and, denominationally speaking, roughly 10 percent of the responses come from churches or streams that have not been part of the “traditional” ecumenical movement. Nevertheless, the latter regions and denominational families are crucial: they represent the largest and fastest‐growing part of global Christianity, and thus it is impossible to have a really “universal” and contemporary‐sensitive approach to ecclesiology without substantial input from them. Many of them have also not always been clearly or strongly part of the ecclesiological conversation before TCTCV, and thus it is even more important to include them from now on, and be enriching the multilateral ecclesiological conversation with their contributions as well. Hence, the focus of Subgroup 1 has been to broaden the table of ecclesiological dialogue, by getting into more and wider conversations with ecclesiological perspectives from regions (especially from Asia, Africa, and Latin America), denominational families (e.g., evangelical, Pentecostal, Independent churches, etc.), and forms of being church (e.g., movements, new monasticism, online churches, etc.) “which have not always been clearly or strongly part of discussions on the way to TCTCV, and whose understandings of ecclesiology we want to discover and to enter into dialogue with” (Caraiman minutes, p. 55; cf. Krakow report p. 1).     

The Future of Multilateral Ecumenical Dialogue

This article offers an overview of work undertaken in multilateral ecumenical dialogue, as it has been conducted at the international level by the commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches (WCC), to clarify the issues discussed in this dialogue and the methods used. In particular, the article analyzes the statements on unity made at various WCC assemblies. While they demonstrate a certain continuity regarding the key points of church unity they identify, they clearly mark a shift in the overall understanding of how unity is conceived. The second part of the article examines the current ecumenical situation and its importance for this dialogue, to show how Faith and Order has responded and what further progress in multilateral dialogue might look like.     

The labor of Job: The biblical text as a parable of human labor

This paper addresses how religion is playing an increasingly important role in empowering anti-nuclear protests at Gongliao in Taiwan. It begins by describing how the anti-nuclear movement in Taiwan was originally dependant on the opposition political party, and then examines how growing disaffection with party politics at Gongliao has resulted in a local temple dedicated to the goddess Mazu coming to the forefront of the struggle. This paper frames the dispute as a struggle between three different ways of generating power (and implicitly, of losing power): first, the generation of nuclear power by bureaucrats and scientists working through the industrial sector; second, the generation of political power by opposition politicians and elite campaigners; and third, the generation of religious power by people rooted in local communities, creating an alliance between religious power and secular protest.     

Meanings of movement,place and home at Walsingham

This paper examines the revival, over the past 100 years, of the Catholic pilgrimage site of Walsingham. It argues that, for some habitual pilgrims, the site is akin to a second ‘home’, constituting a place for ‘dwelling in movement’. Contemporary pilgrimage practices not only establish links between local parishes and the Walsingham shrines, but also incorporate specific forms of mobility that express connections with personal, collective and institutional representations of the past. An examination of the site encourages the blurring of analytical distinctions between ‘local’ and ‘visitor’, and also poses questions concerning the relationship between culture, place and forms of belonging.     

Pilgrimage expansion through tourism in contemporary India: the development and promotion of a Hindu pilgrimage circuit

This article investigates the development and promotion of the Char Dham Yatra (or Char Dham), a Hindu pilgrimage route in the Himalayas, to challenge some prevalent assumptions and models in current scholarship concerning pilgrimage and tourism. I argue that the current prominence of the Char Dham is closely tied to the efforts of public tourism agencies and the coming together of a popular religious concept (Char Dham) with a unit of tourism development (circuit). Turning to promotional literature, I find that, while the Char Dham is increasingly framed to incorporate tourist interests, it continues to retain a religious profile. Contemporary Char Dham guidebooks combine and sometimes merge tourist and religious selling points. The Char Dham is promoted as a picturesque pilgrimage that allows for both homage and holiday. Contrary to popular opinion, the findings of my research suggest that the interplay between pilgrimage and tourism produces changes in, rather than the removal of, pilgrimage religiosity and associated religious communication.     

The Preparation and Organization of the Holy and Great Council

This paper, given at the 8th International Conference of Orthodox Theology, held in Thessaloniki, 21–25 May 2018, on the theme “The Holy and Great Synod of the Orthodox Church: Orthodox Theology in the 21st Century,” reviews the preparation, organization, and convocation of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church in 2016 and makes suggestions for the next pan-Orthodox synodal expression of the church.     

The Council of Crete

This article offers a critical assessment of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church that took place in Crete in 2016. It argues that the situation facing the Orthodox churches after the Council of Crete is far more important than everything that directly preceded it, and that the Orthodox are only at the beginning as far as the important questions and challenges of the world today are concerned.     

Ministry as Womb and Tomb: Baptism as a Paradigm for Ministry

This article rethinks a paradigm for ministry in a world in which a culture of choice is radically challenging sacramental, baptismal theology. Drawing on the two fundamental biblical metaphors for baptism—baptism as a womb (John 3) and a tomb (Rom 6)—the article tries to reimagine ministry emerging from these two metaphors. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of developing ministry by the use of this dialectic—ministry as both womb and tomb.     

Modal Platonism: an Easy Way to Avoid Ontological Commitment to Abstract Entities

Modal Platonism utilizes “weak” logical possibility, such that it is logically possible there are abstract entities, and logically possible there are none. Modal Platonism also utilizes a non-indexical actuality operator. Modal Platonism is the EASY WAY, neither reductionist nor eliminativist, but embracing the Platonistic language of abstract entities while eliminating ontological commitment to them. STATEMENT OF MODAL PLATONISM. Any consistent statement B ontologically committed to abstract entities may be replaced by an empirically equivalent modalization, MOD(B), not so ontologically committed. This equivalence is provable using Modal/Actuality Logic S5@. Let MAX be a strong set theory with individuals. Then the following Schematic Bombshell Result (SBR) can be shown: MAX logically yields [T is true if and only if MOD(T) is true], for scientific theories T. The proof utilizes Stephen Neale’s clever model-theoretic interpretation of Quantified Lewis S5, which I extend to S5@.     

The Effect of Higher-Order Gratitude on Mental Well-Being: Beyond Personality and Unifactoral Gratitude

The purpose of this study was to examine whether higher-order gratitude consisting of multiple components (i.e., thanking others, thanking God, cherishing blessings, appreciating hardship, and cherishing the moment) explains variances in integrated mental well-being, including depression, self-esteem, and psychological well-being after controlling for gender, age, religion, the Big Five personality traits (i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism), and unifactorial gratitude (GQ). A total of 231 participants were recruited to complete questionnaires measuring the variables of interest. The results indicated that higher-order gratitude made a significant unique contribution to psychological well-being, self-esteem, and depression (3 % to 5 % of the variance, p?<?.05) above the effects of demographic variables, personality traits, and unifactorial gratitude. These findings suggested that higher-order gratitude is more than just personality traits or unifactorial gratitude, and it is important in its own right for integrated mental well-being.     

The English public space: developing spirituality in English Muslim schools

Developing a language and a context for a spirituality that can speak to children and young people in a post‐modern, secular English society is a challenge for anyone, parent or teacher, who wishes to raise the vision beyond the purely material and the everyday. The challenge is both epistemological and pedagogical. How young people see, know and describe the world in which they find themselves is central to any school curriculum. For English Muslim schools the epistemological and pedagogical interfaces with the cultural and theological in a search for a language and spirituality that is a reflection of a contemporary English Islam.     

The Perspectives and Challenges of Primacy and Synodality in the Orthodox Church Today

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church in 2016 should be perceived and received as a genuine manifestation of synodality at the beginning of the 21st century. It has reminded us that it is within the exercise of primacy and synodality at the universal level that the unity and the orthodoxy of the church is guaranteed. Its message referred to the proposal for the Holy and Great Council to become a regular institution to be convened every seven or ten years. By saying this, the Holy and Great Council has perhaps inaugurated a new era of synodality in the Orthodox Church on the universal level. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of the Holy and Great Council in an era of globalization, when the pastoral problems encountered by each local autocephalous church, due to a growing secularization of the world, are very similar and need a common synodal response.     

Social Customs and Demographic Change: The Case of Godparenthood in Catholic Europe

This article analyzes social norms regulating the selection of godparents in Italy and France. Based on Vatican statistics and European Values Study responses, the vast majority of children in Catholic Europe are baptized and birth rituals are considered important even by nonbelievers. Moreover, the dominant custom of selecting godparents from among kinsmen is a recent development, based on historical data. A new survey about the selection of godparents in Italy and France, conducted for this study, shows that godparents are chosen not for religious, but for social‐relational reasons. Selection of kinsmen is the norm, with uncles and aunts being the majority choice. For Italy, choice determinants are explored by means of multinomial regressions. The results are contrasted with demographic change to show that in lowest‐low fertility countries current godparenthood models are bound to disappear.     

青少年物质主义与幸福感的关系：感恩的中介作用

采用物质主义量表、感恩问卷、主观幸福感量表、心理幸福感量表和身体症状问卷对701名中学生进行调查,考察了青少年物质主义与其幸福感的关系,以及感恩在其中的中介作用。结果发现：（1）青少年物质主义与其负性情感显著正相关,与正性情感、生活满意度、心理幸福感和身体健康显著负相关;（2）感恩在青少年物质主义与其生活满意度、负性情感、心理幸福感和身体健康关系之间起着部分中介作用,在青少年物质主义与其正性情感关系之间起着完全中介作用。     

An Examination of Irigaray's Commitment to Transcendental Phenomenology in The Forgetting of Air and The Way of Love

Although sexual difference is widely regarded as the concept that lies at the center of Luce Irigaray's thought, its meaning and significance is highly contested. This dissensus, however, attests to more than merely the existence of a recalcitrant conceptual ambiguity. That is, Irigaray's discussion of sexual difference remains fraught not because she leaves this concept undefined but because the centrality of sexual difference in fact marks a complex and unstable nexus of phenomena that shift throughout her work. Consequently, if Irigaray is indeed the preeminent thinker of sexual difference, this is not in virtue of her recurrent appeal to a monolithic, readily digestible concept but rather somehow despite the absence of precisely this gesture. In this paper, I will attempt to elucidate the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference in Irigaray's work by identifying her persistent, though largely unexamined, commitment to transcendental phenomenology. Indeed, I attempt to show that the complex of phenomena of sexual difference emerges in L'oubli de l'air and The Way of Love as a modulation of Heidegger's own revision of transcendental phenomenology. In this sense, the peculiar preeminence of sexual difference does not mark the centrality of a concept but Irigaray's amplification of this Heideggerian gesture.