Issues in Sino-Christian theology

ABSTRACT

Sino-Christian theology is a relatively recent phenomenon in China, largely pursued in university settings by scholars many of whom are not Christian or are ‘cultural Christians’. It is set apart from the churches in China, and is deeply rooted in classical Chinese, Taoist and Confucian, roots. As Sino-Christian theology seeks contextualisation in contemporary Chinese culture, it begs many questions as to the nature of theology when this becomes a cultural rather than an ecclesial exercise.     

The World Council of Churches and churches in China: partnerships and diaconia

ABSTRACT

Between 1956 and 1991, Chinese church leaders, and Protestant churches active from the formation of the World Council of Churches, experienced a dramatic break in their relations with the international ecumenical movement. This paper will focus on the ecumenical relations between the WCC and the churches in China after 1978, when reforms and the opening up of the country under Deng Xiaoping provided new opportunities for the renewal of ties. The China Christian Council resumed its official ties with WCC in 1991 but between 1978 and 1991, new expressions and new modes of ecumenical relations had already emerged. Central to these ties were the upholding of the Three-Self Principles and the practice of the ‘ecumenical sharing of resources’ influenced by the outcome of the WCC’s El Escorial meeting (1987). These ‘post-colonial’ partnerships contributed substantially to making Christianity better appreciated in China and were important channels for the practice of ecumenism in a rapidly transforming China.     

Blogging while gay and Christian: Andrew Sullivan and the production of the religious,secular, and sexual

This article examines blogger and political pundit Andrew Sullivan's performance of gay Christian identity through his weblog, The Dish. Through a reading of the repetitive and collaborative nature of The Dish as a medium of cultural production, I argue that Sullivan's gay Christian performance is made legible by how the religious and secular are articulated and negotiated through the site of the body in American culture. Sullivan's performance both reproduces and resists religious and secular normativities while at the same time produces a singular identity with distinct political and social advantages. Among other advantages, examining how the religious and secular are articulated through everyday discourse and embodied performance exposes some of the political investments in this articulation and provides a space to consider the stakes of scholars' own investments in ‘secular’ knowledge.     

Caught in the crossfire: A case of mistaken identity among religious revivalists and secularists

The discussion of Islamic and Protestant revivalisms inflames not only believers but secularists as well. This paper is about standpoint and perceived standpoint in relation to carrying out feminist research about why some women in a liberal democracy join revivalist movements. The article also discusses the variegated nature of power relations within the research process. Situated within a Women's Studies Centre the author found herself in the crossfire between secular feminists and religious revivalists—some members of each group insisting she represented the position of the opposing view. This paper explores the conflictual situation and resulting ‘epistemological vertigo’ in circumstances where revivalists and secularists each believed in the stereotype of the other and assumed the researcher embodied it.     

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’.     

On the Ethics of Facial Transplantation Research

Transplantation continues to push the frontiers of medicine into domains that summon forth troublesome ethical questions. Looming on the frontier today is human facial transplantation. We develop criteria that, we maintain, must be satisfied in order to ethically undertake this as-yet-untried transplant procedure. We draw on the criteria advanced by Dr. Francis Moore in the late 1980s for introducing innovative procedures in transplant surgery. In addition to these we also insist that human face transplantation must meet all the ethical requirements usually applied to health care research. We summarize the achievements of transplant surgery to date, focusing in particular on the safety and efficacy of immunosuppressive medications. We also emphasize the importance of risk/benefit assessments that take into account the physical, aesthetic, psychological, and social dimensions of facial disfiguration, reconstruction, and transplantation. Finally, we maintain that the time has come to move facial transplantation research into the clinical phase.     

Bioethics' Gender

I argue that the field of bioethics is gendered feminine, but that the methods it uses to resist this gender identity pose real harm to actual women. Starting with an explanation of what I take ‘gender’ to be, I enumerate four drawbacks to being gendered feminine. I then argue that bioethics suffers from three of the same four drawbacks. I show how the field escapes the fourth disadvantage by adopting a masculine persona that inflicts damage on women, and conclude by urging bioethicists to reflect on their complicity in abusive power systems such as gender, race and class.     

Flagships in a sea of unbelief? Christian affiliation around big church buildings in England

Census data have prompted research on why there is so much local variation in religious identity. This study uses the key statistics of the 2011 UK National Census, aggregated by electoral wards, to investigate whether the presence of an important church building (a ‘flagship’ cathedral or cathedral-like parish/abbey church) correlates with higher Christian affiliation than would be expected if there were no such church building nearby. Using all 6,712 English wards within 30 km of a large church, those within 3 km had about 5%–7% fewer self-identified Christians than those further away. However, when social demography is controlled for, wards closest to large churches had around 1% more Christian affiliates than expected. Greater than expected levels of affiliation persisted when the analysis was restricted to buildings outside urban conurbations or just to Anglican or just to Roman Catholic cathedrals. Reasons for this ‘proximity’ effect are discussed, including the possibility that the sheer physical presence of such a building may heighten the chance of individuals self-identifying as Christian.     

Selflessness as a universal neuropsychological foundation of spiritual transcendence: validation with Christian,Hindu, and Muslim traditions

Research with US and European Christians has shown that increased spiritual transcendence is related to decreased right hemisphere/right parietal lobe (RH/RPL) functioning, which has been inferred as relating to increased “selflessness”. To determine if RH/RPL selflessness is a universal neuropsychological foundation for spiritual transcendence across cultures and religions, this study evaluated 109 individuals with traumatic brain injury from the US and India, including Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. Participants completed measures of spiritual transcendence and spatial perception as an index of the functional integrity of the RH/RPL. Spearman correlations indicated that decreased RH/RPL functioning is significantly associated with increased spiritual transcendence for the entire sample, but not for different cultures or religions, likely due to decreased statistical power. The results suggest that decreased RH/RPL-related selflessness is a universal neuropsychological foundation for spiritual transcendence across cultures and faith traditions, which is interpreted individually based on cultural and religious background (e.g., closeness to God, Allah, and Brahman).     

Supplementing Virtue: The Case for a Limited Theological Transhumanism

This paper considers the prospect of moral transhumanism from the perspective of theological virtue ethics. I argue that the pursuit of goodness inherent to moral transhumanism means that there is a compelling prima facie case for moral enhancement. However, I also show that the proposed enhancements would not by themselves allow us to achieve a life of virtue, as they appear unable to create or enhance prudence, the situational judgement essential for acting in accordance with virtue. I therefore argue that moral enhancement technologies should take a limited or supporting role in moral development, which I call “moral supplementation.”