Between Private and Public Sectors

This article validates Simon Kuznets’ argument that minorities prefer the private sector to the public sector in order to avoid discrimination. Based on new archival findings, comparative interethnic research shows that majority Greek civil engineers in the interwar years developed close, interlocking relations with the government and national institutions, which elevated their socio-professional status. Despite the absence of anti-Jewish legislation, this process effectively excluded equally qualified Jewish engineers from Greek-controlled power networks and employment. The Greek nationalistic climate of the times permeated the civil engineers’ professional associations and Greece's one higher educational institution (National Technical University of Athens) of engineering. As the professional networks consolidated to protect their interests, Jewish civil engineers and architects, employers and employees alike, were effectively shut out with no possibility of benefitting from professional integration or association with the mainstream community of civil engineers. Jewish civil engineers were, therefore, channelled into restricting their services to Jewish clients and community projects. However, with the newly developing large-scale armaments industries in the 1930s, Jews opted to train as chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineers to fill positions in family-owned firms (as did their fellow Greeks), and also found employment in lower paying jobs that Greek engineers considered unattractive in state-owned facilities.     

The Baltic Churches and the Challenges of the Post-Communist World

This article analyses and describes the recent history of the Baltic churches, their theological reorientation and the challenges they have encountered in the post-Communist Baltic society. The focus is on the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Lutheran churches whereas the Catholic and Orthodox churches receive less attention. It is first demonstrated that much has changed since the Second World War regarding the churches' membership numbers and their societal position. The article then pays attention to two phenomena that have caused much discussion not only within the churches but also among foreign observers: the fear that the Lutheran Church will surrender to the Catholic Church, and the quite opposite anxiety that the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod will grow too influential within Baltic Lutheranism. Finally, the author examines the way the Baltic churches have been involved in politics during the last two decades.     

Therapeutic outcomes in the Welsh Government's school‐based counselling strategy: An evaluation

Aims: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of school‐based counselling, as delivered in the Welsh Government's School‐based Counselling Strategy, for reducing psychological distress in young people aged 11–18. Method: The study used a quantitative cohort design, comparing levels of distress on either the Young Person's CORE (YP‐CORE) or the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) from baseline to endpoint. Data were available on 3613 episodes of counselling, across 42 datasets. Meta‐analytical procedures were used to identify the mean effect size and predictors of outcomes. Results: Within each dataset, counselling was associated with significant reductions in psychological distress, with a mean effect size (d) of 0.93(95% CI = 0.89–0.97) using a fixed effects model and 1.09 (95% CI = 0.97–1.22) using a random effects model. Datasets using the YP‐CORE had larger effect sizes than those using the SDQ, and datasets with more complete response rates had lower outcomes than those with poorer response rates. Conclusion: The results confirm that school‐based counselling, as delivered in the UK, is associated with significant reductions in psychological distress, comparable to adult counselling and psychotherapy services.     

Benchmarking key service quality indicators in UK Employee Assistance Programme Counselling: A CORE System data profile

Background: Levels of psychological distress appear to be increasing in the workplace, in parallel with the growth of employee assistance programme (EAP) provision offering a range of talking treatments. However, such growth takes place in the absence of a substantive body of supporting research evidence despite a quarter of a decade of research activity. Aims: To analyse a national sample of EAP data and profile relative service quality on a set of key service indicators. Method: CORE System data profiles of over 28,000 clients were voluntarily donated by six EAP service providers. An established benchmarking methodology was used to assess the relative quality of EAP service provision compared with published CORE System benchmarks for NHS primary care and UK higher education student counselling services. Results: High quality data profiled an EAP service clientele who were quantifiably distressed, accessed treatment quickly, with the majority completing treatment and demonstrating high rates of recovery and/or improvement relative to published benchmarks from the NHS and HE comparative sectors. Limitations of the study and implications for practice and further investigation are considered.     

The Vatican and Europe: Political Theology and Ecclesiology in Papal Statements from Pius XII to Benedict XVI

The article examines the origins and evolution of the Vatican's political theology and ecclesiology for Europe from Pius XII (especially after the Second World War) and including the pontificates of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It seeks to examine the continuities of the ‘Idea of Europe’ in papal thought against a background of changing political context – the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, the fall of the communist state system, the emergence of a united but diverse Europe after 1989. The political structures of the continent now include within its geographic sweep Western and Eastern Christian churches which, divided by tradition and modern history, find their relationship a key marker in the contemporary religious identity of Europe. This reality is a significant framework for Vatican thinking on Europe especially for John Paul II and Benedict XVI.     

The Behavioral Genetics of Religiousness

Behavioral geneticists have sought to characterize the genetic and environmental contributions to individual differences in religiousness. Behavioral genetic methodology is described and twin and adoption studies of religiousness are reviewed. It is concluded that familial resemblance for religiousness is due largely to shared environmental factors in childhood and adolescence, but to genetic factors in adulthood. Additional evidence shows that there is a genetic correlation between religiousness and antisocial and altruistic behavior. Claims for the discovery of a “God gene” are premature and unlikely, as any genetic influence is likely to represent the aggregate effect of many genetic factors.     

Christian Mysticism and Science: The Phenomenological Dimension

Abstract

In this second of three papers, I identify three fundamental phenomenological themes that have informed Christian mystical theology and then explore how these themes might be given further understanding via natural science. The first theme, detachment, minimizes any association with the secular world in favor of humility and openness to God. Detachment is chosen in consciousness using a resonant global workspace linked through the hippocampus to reconstructions of both declarative and emotional memory. The second theme, infused contemplation, is concerned with God's top-down revelation to the recollected mind of the mystic. The resulting top-down resonance creates an appropriate theory of mind for infused contemplation, as the human mind is now more perfectly linked with the mind of God. The third theme is mystical union, which both theology and science claim occurs within consciousness. Starting in intentional consciousness, the mystic undergoes an unmediated surrender beyond cognition to non-intentional consciousness. Because God fills the center of our being, a resonating luminosity can thus occur arising from the union of God and self within pure consciousness.     

Incarnation Deep and Wide: A Response to Niels Gregersen

Abstract

This paper responds to Professor Niels Gregersen's theology of deep incarnation by doing three things. Section 1 summarizes and defines the idea of deep incarnation, with particular reference to what is intended by the key adjective “deep.” Section 2 engages Gregersen's proposal critically in relation to traditional options within the Christian doctrine of the incarnation. If Gregersen's language of “incarnation” is to be taken seriously as a proposal that is grounded in but goes beyond traditional ideas, its best chance for success lies in being as clear as possible about relationship with its traditional sources. Finally, Section 3 offers a few suggestions concerning the promise of deep incarnation for contemporary theology, especially for theology informed in part by serious engagement with the natural sciences.     

The Field of Science and Religion as Natural Philosophy

“Natural philosophy” is an important term from the history of science because it was used to describe the study of nature during medieval and early modern Europe. This article gives an overview of the history of natural philosophy, since the use and eventual disuse of the term helps one to understand the emergence of modern science. Following a suggestion by the historian of science Peter Dear, I argue that the term deserves to be rehabilitated because it draws attention to the complexities of scientific theorizing. The article concludes with an argument that the field of science and religion should be seen as an updated version of natural philosophy.     

Robert Burns in the counsellor's chair: A socio-cultural analysis of the Burns myth

To illustrate how difficult endings are, this paper first cites an Italian therapist's experience of the use of time with university students in Naples and then associates to contrasting examples in the novel, art, music and the cinema. It uses a dialogue about ending in the film Brief Encounter as a possible paradigm for what is needed in brief therapy. It then refers to the work of James Mann on different experiences of time which underlie the resistance to brief work. How can brief therapy contain the paradox between finite and infinite time? Incorporating another model of therapeutic intervention with the use of Milton Erickson's attitude to time and the unconscious, the paper then moves on to a clinical example, where treatment consisted of an assessment and five sessions. Here the practice of not interpreting the transference is challenged, along with an exploration of the concept of transference to the organization and the use of pre-treatment ‘maternal reverie’ associations. Using the combination of informal trance-like states with a clear focus on the ‘here and now’, the process of the therapeutic relationship is then worked with in the case material.