Reviving the Mainline: An Overview of Clergy Support for Evangelical Renewal Movements

Evangelical renewal movements (ERMs) are proliferating in the old Protestant mainline and they show few signs of splitting from their parent denominations. Ironically, the very theological pluralism that ERMs seek to eliminate has provided an opportunity for their entry and a barrier for their expulsion. This essay offers an introduction to the evangelical movements arising in the mainline and reports the initial findings from a survey of United Methodist clergy's involvement in ERMs. As expected, United Methodist clergy are predominantly older, white males leading small congregations. Surprisingly, however, fully 29 percent of the clergy do not have a seminary degree and more than half of those with seminary degrees did not attend United Methodist-affiliated schools—with 22 percent attending an evangelical seminary. The clergy involved in ERMs are younger, more likely to have attended evangelical seminaries (or no seminary at all), and hold more exclusive Christian beliefs. The survey also found that the once isolated evangelical clergy of the United Methodist Church are now embedded in evangelical associations and hold friendships with other evangelical clergy. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

My brain's running slow today – The preference for “things ontologies” in research and everyday discourse on human thinking

The focus of the article is toreflect on the tendency of research traditionsin the areas of human learning, development,and communication, to use metaphors andanalogies that construe human mental activitiesand resources in terms of physical objects.This is evident, for instance, in moderncognitive science where computer metaphors(information processing and informationstorage) have been foundational for thediscipline. However, this tendency to reifyhuman activities can be found in many othertraditions, and it goes back to ancient Greekthinking. It is argued that the consequences ofthis tradition of reification are significantfor the human sciences. One important elementof these types of metaphors is that theydescribe people and their capacities in static,rather than developmental, terms.     

A Religion for an Age of Science

The period 800–200 B.C.E. has been called an axial period or age because it was a period of major technological and cultural change that led to the development of new worldviews, which in turn called for and led to the emergence of the current major world religious traditions. The world is now in the midst of another period of major global scientific, technological, and cultural change that is leading to the development of a new global worldview. In this worldview, the cosmos is taken to be more like an activity than a thing—more like an emergent complex of interrelated and interactive doing in space–time than a created complex of beings in space and time–and its complexity and space—time scale are understood to be enormously greater than heretofore supposed.
These changes in worldview call for changes in theology, religion, and ethics. Most workers in the field of science and religion are heeding this call by attempting to reconcile traditional religious concepts with the new scientific concepts. Others, however, have become convinced that the new worldview differs so radically from the previous ones as to mark a new axial age, which calls for a new, post-traditional theology, religion, and ethics, with a theos that is more like an activator of doing than a ground of being, and with meaning and purpose achieved more by a quality of doing than a quantity or quality of being.     

History’s Ethical Demand: Memory,Denial, and Responsibility in the Wake of the Holocaust

What does it mean to discover an unspoken Nazi past in one’s own family? In a moment defined by chance and circumstance, I discovered that my German grandfather had joined the Nazi Party. Using my family’s struggle with memory as a site of inquiry, I examine the process of remembering, its transmission, and dissociation, particularly as it relates to past and present perpetrator groups. What lurks in the silences that are passed down between generations? How does our collective response to history’s atrocities shape what we what we know and remember as individuals? How do we define the moral obligations of memory, or understand the power of dissociation more than seven decades after the Holocaust? When does complacency in the face of past or present injustice make us complicit? Any answer to these questions points to the complexity of memory and the ethical demands of history. Connections between collective crimes of the past and social injustices in the present are considered and different forms of historical awareness and personal responsibility are discussed. In the face of overt prejudice and racism, “history’s call” and the work of psychoanalysis are inherently related.     

Teaching Responsible Research and Innovation: A Phronetic Perspective

Science and Engineering Ethics - Across the European research area and beyond, efforts are being mobilized to align research and innovation processes and products with societal values and needs,...     

Screening for cognitive impairment in an Australian aged care assessment team as part of comprehensive geriatric assessment

Accurate detection of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is important to stratify and address risk. Yet, few short cognitive screening instruments are validated for this. . In Australia, all clients referred to an Aged Care Assessment Team (ACAT) receive comprehensive geriatric assessment (CGA) including the Standardized Mini-Mental State Examination (SMMSE). We compared the accuracy of the quick mild cognitive impairment (Qmci) screen to the SMMSE in 283 participants: 195 with dementia, 47 with MCI, and 41 with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) in an Australian community-based ACAT. Both had similar accuracy in identifying dementia, AUC of 0.86 for the Qmci versus 0.93 for the SMMSE (p = 0.10), but the Qmci was more accurate than the SMMSE in differentiating MCI from SCD, AUC of 0.84 versus 0.71, respectively, p = 0.046. These suggest that the new, short (3–5 min) Qmci screenis appropriate for use in an ACAT or other units conducting CGA.     

Three fragments on trauma and time

How does trauma influence a client and a therapist’s experience of time in time-limited therapy? The therapist must first work to understand and remain responsive to the different registers of time now operative following the traumatic event. This paper contends that in the immediacy of trauma, hallucinatory wish-fulfilment oblivious to the structuring conditions of time and space appears to dominate. In chronic traumatic states, time appears to circle in a narrow compass, buffering between a cluster of moments surrounding and including the moment of traumatic rupture – as if struggling to re-establish a secure connection with linear time. The three clinical fragments presented attempt to describe different experiences of traumatic bereavement and the felt movement of time within them. The death of another confronts us not only with their loss but with our own mortality – the time we have lived and the time we have left. It is not surprising, therefore, that an individual's otherwise fluid transitions between different temporalities are disturbed in the aftermath of traumatic bereavement. The therapist’s capacity to regulate tempo when the client’s subjective experience of time is dysregulated offers an important means of containment. The aim of the therapist working with the traumatically bereaved client is to develop collaborative understanding to get thinking moving again and to gradually help the client unpin time, moving it beyond the confines that it occupies in trauma.     

Corruption,Trust, Inclusion and Cohesion in North Africa and the Middle East

Corruption provokes much anger in the Middle East and North African (MENA) and was important in the Arab Uprisings; it was government corruption that sparked the greatest anger among the population. The argument of this Report is (a) that corruption is a major and obvious breach of trust, (b) that the same is true for ‘civil’ corruption – ‘wasta’ in employment, business corruption – (c) that as well as not trusting their government and its institutions, MENA residents do not trust each other either, to the detriment of maintaining functional nation states without coercion, and (d) that corruption is a special case of breach of the Rule of Law which is essential for a decent society. The initial focus on corruption leads to consideration of what people think they can reasonably expect from government and from each other. Ultimately, corruption divides the society into those who extort bribes or dispense favours and those who are required to pay bribes and are excluded from favour – in other words, there is a breakdown of social inclusion. Further, it destroys trust between people and trust in social institutions, which breaks the cords that hold modern societies together - it is an attack on social cohesion. The article is based mainly on the Arab Transformations Survey, carried out in six developing MENA countries in 2014, three years after the ‘Arab Spring’.