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’.     

新生代知识员工队伍的工作家庭冲突——基于人口特征差异交互效应的视角

本研究以来自高科技企业的500名新生代知识员工为样本,采用单因变量多因素方差分析法揭示了工作家庭冲突的人口特征差异,以及不同人口特征变量之间的交互效应。检验结果表明：（1）新生代知识员工的工作家庭冲突存在显著的性别差异与工龄差异,而职位层次差异并不显著;（2）工作家庭冲突的性别差异分别与工龄差异、职位层次差异之间存在显著的二维交互效应;（3）性别差异与工龄差异、职位层次差异之间存在显著的三维交互效应。     

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).     

Luther in Context: With Illustrations

The author explores his work on the first volume of The Annotated Luther detailing Luther's commitment to humanism's “good letters” and his developing theology of preaching law and gospel, especially indicated by the Ninety‐five Theses and Freedom of a Christian.     

The Soul of Trans‐Humanism

Abstract: This article tackles the question: how should Christian theologians think about the human soul in light of the challenges posed by the new emphasis in brain‐mind identity in neuroscience and trasn‐humanism? Ways of improving human nature through medical therapy, genetic enhancement, and trans‐human cybernetic immortality are explored; and their assumptions are correlated with a spectrum of Christian theories of the soul such as substance dualism, emergent dualism, nonreductive physicalism, and materialism. Finally, the article concludes that the human person should be thought of relationally, and the dimension that is decisive for resurrection is the relation of the soul to God.     

Sin and bioethics: why a liturgical anthropology is foundational.

The project of articulating a coherent, canonical, content-full, secular morality-cum-bioethics fails, because it does not acknowledge sin, which is to say, it does not acknowledge the centrality of holiness, which is essential to a non-distorted understanding of human existence and of morality. Secular morality cannot establish a particular moral content, the harmony of the good and the right, or the necessary precedence of morality over prudence, because such is possible only in terms of an ultimate point of reference: God. The necessity of a rightly ordered appreciation of God places centrally the focus on holiness and the avoidance of sin. Because the cardinal relationship of creatures to their Creator is worship, and because the cardinal corporate act of human worship is the Liturgy, morality in general and bioethics in particular can be understood in terms of the conditions necessary, so as worthily to enter into Eucharistic liturgical participation. Morality can be summed up in terms of the requirements of ritual purity. A liturgical anthropology is foundational to an account of the content-full morality and bioethics that should bind humans, since humans are first and foremost creatures obliged to join in rightly ordered worship of their Creator. When humans worship correctly, when they avoid sin and pursue holiness, they participate in restoring created reality.     

To Preserve or Enhance Life? Nietzsche’s Perspectivist Understanding of Life and Morality

Instead of denouncing sincere Christianity, as it is often assumed, Nietzsche inveighs vehemently against insincere Christianity that interpreters take as evidence for his nihilism. This essay argues that Nietzsche’s perspectivism affirms the positive value of Christian morality as an instrument for life preservation, which is a relative standard for judging various perspectives on life. It also analyzes the negative value of Christian morality as the impediment to life enhancement, which is the absolute standard for evaluating those perspectives. As this study finally argues, it remains to the Overman to once and for all overcome the impediments to life brought on by Christian morality in the creation of a new morality, if in fact what the Overman creates is indeed a new morality.