Uphill and Downhill in a Flat World: The Conceptual Topography of the Yupno House

Speakers of many languages around the world rely on body‐based contrasts (e.g., left/right ) for spatial communication and cognition. Speakers of Yupno, a language of Papua New Guinea's mountainous interior, rely instead on an environment‐based uphill/downhill contrast. Body‐based contrasts are as easy to use indoors as outdoors, but environment‐based contrasts may not be. Do Yupno speakers still use uphill/downhill contrasts indoors and, if so, how? We report three studies on spatial communication within the Yupno house. Even in this flat world, uphill/downhill contrasts are pervasive. However, the terms are not used according to the slopes beyond the house's walls, as reported in other groups. Instead, the house is treated as a microworld, with a “conceptual topography” that is strikingly reminiscent of the physical topography of the Yupno valley. The phenomenon illustrates some of the distinctive properties of environment‐based reference systems, as well as the universal power and plasticity of spatial contrasts.     

Organized New Atheism in Germany?

This article provides a comparison of the New Atheism with German organized Humanism in terms of agendas and strategies. It draws on British and American as well as German discourses on the New Atheism and fieldwork on the Giordano Bruno Foundation (Giordano Bruno Stiftung) and the German Humanist Association (Humanistischer Verband Deutschlands). With reference to Johannes Quack’s nonreligion approach, contextual differences are highlighted in order to explain heterogeneities between the New Atheism and organized Humanism in Germany. However, further differences between the two organizations show that context is not everything. The article concludes by raising the question of how these differences should be interpreted: in contrast to the widespread opinion that organized nonreligion is constituted of small competing splinter groups, it suggests that we may observe the development of an international or even transnational movement, which is heckling its religious opponents from different directions.     

(Inadvertently) Instructing Missionaries in (Public University) World Religions Courses: Examining a Pedagogical Dilemma,its Dimensions,and a Course Section Solution

In this article, I explore an ethical and pedagogical dilemma that I encounter each semester in my world religions courses: namely, that a great number of students enroll in the courses as part of their missionary training programs, and come to class understanding successful learning to mean gathering enough information about the world's religious “traditions” so as to effectively seduce people out of them. How should we teach world religions – in public university religious studies courses – with this student constituency? What are/ought to be our student learning goals? What can and should we expect to accomplish? How can we maximize student learning, while also maintaining our disciplinary integrity? In response to these questions, I propose a world religions course module, the goal of which is for students to examine – as objects of inquiry – the lenses through which they understand religion(s). With a recognition of their own lenses, I argue, missionary students become more aware of the biases and presumptions about others that they bring to the table, and they learn to see the ways in which these presumptions inform what they see and know about others, and also what they do not so easily see.     

从世界到生活形式--维特根斯坦前后期哲学转变原因探析

一般认为,维特根斯坦前后期哲学转变的原因是语言观的变化。本文结合维特根斯坦跨越两种哲学传统的背景,认为哲学转变的根本原因是由于前期本体论的内在缺陷而导致的本体论变化,维特根斯坦前期哲学本体论只局限于可说的“世界”,而不可说的神秘之物则被排除在世界之外,这与维特根斯坦珍视神秘之物的初衷相悖,这种内在矛盾促成了前期本体论向后期本体论的转变,这一转变的重大意义在于后期本体论消泯了可说与不可说的界限,是人类社会实践的坚实基础。     

The Imperative of Diakonia for the Church and Theological Education

This article begins by arguing that diakonia is an imperative for the church, be it at the local, national, regional, or global level. It goes on to describe how diakonia has been part of the identity of the World Council of Churches during its 70 years of existence, and highlights the struggle of diakonia and development within the fellowship and ecumenical partners. The article focuses on the document Called to Transformative Action: Ecumenical Diakonia as the most recent attempt to reflect on who we are and what we do as church. It identifies one important aspect of diakonia as reflected in the Pan‐African Women's Ecumenical Empowerment Network perspective on theological education. The article concludes by reflecting on the author's vision for a just community of women and men in prophetic diakonia.     

Is there a world Lutheranism? Accountability and representation in ecumenical dialogue

The following thoughts were occasioned by my experiences representing the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in a variety of international ecumenical dialogues over the past thirteen years. I reflect on some of the fundamental challenges faced by many Lutherans as we seek to represent, as conscientiously as possible, the global communion of which we are members. The question we face is a very simple one: Whom do we represent?     

Lutheran perspectives on interfaith relations: Theological trajectories of study processes in the Lutheran communion

The global Lutheran communion has been engaged in theological reflection on interreligious relations for several decades. In the 1960s, the Lutheran World Federation embarked on theologically reflecting on its relations to the Jewish people. This led to a critical assessment of Luther's writings on Jews. 1984, the LWF established a desk to engage theologically with religious pluralism. Starting off from a theology of religions' approach the engagement of the global communion has become more contextual, dialogical, and collaborative over the years. This has led to a dialogical public theology which affirms dialogue and theology as sisters in a critical‐constructive engagement with one's own and other communities. Raising epistemological and theological questions in dialogue in view of religious actors' public accountability can help to prevent faith from mutating into ideology or manifesting itself as idolatry.     

The World Council of Churches and Pentecostals

This article recalls the history of the relationships between the World Council of Churches (WCC) and Pentecostal churches from the early years of the WCC until today. One of the greatest challenges currently facing the WCC is the shift in focus of Christianity to the South and the East, a phenomenon to which emerging Pentecostal and charismatic churches and communities are contributing. Alongside global cultural trends in the context of globalization, Pentecostal and charismatic piety and spirituality are increasingly affecting the older churches as well. While some see this negatively, many see it as an expression of adaptation to new challenges necessary for the survival of these churches. The article shows how the changing ecclesial context led to the WCC to explore new avenues for building relationships such as a Joint Consultative Group and the Global Christian Forum.     

Children of Nazi Germany 60 years on

Abstract

Defence against shock, feelings of guilt, and shame about German atrocities during National Socialism (NS) have dominated the public discourse in Germany for decades. Mitscherlich and Mitscherlich have talked about the inability to mourn due to the involvement of most German families in Nazi terror. The research projects “Childhood in War” at the University of Munich and “War Children and their Flight” at the Hamburg DPG Institute are studying the long-term implications of a childhood during World War II and the Nazi period. In most cases, the personal development of the “war children” was affected – in the case of psychoanalysts, their psychoanalytic socialisation and current professional practice as well. The transgenerational transmission forms an NS introject in the personality. Due to their parents’ lack of empathy, war children are unconsciously looking for a containment of their unbearable feelings in their childhood. Psychoanalysis (including training analysis) becomes a stage where the analysee's childhood loneliness, the taboo-forming, the inhibition to ask and the protection of the parents, as well as feelings of guilt and embarrassment in the family, not talking about matters, and silence, occur once more in transference.