Let's Talk About Race: Evaluating a College Interracial Discussion Group on Race

The authors evaluate Dialogues on Race, an interracial group intervention in which undergraduate student facilitators led conversations about race with their peers. The evaluation process is described, including developing collaborative relationships, identifying program goals, selecting measures, and analyzing and presenting results. The authors discuss lessons learned about evaluating an interracial dialogue intervention that did not originally include researchers in the hope that this examination will encourage others to evaluate similar campus interventions. Diálogos sobre Raza es una intervención de grupo interracial en la que estudiantes universitarios moderaron conversaciones sobre raza con sus compañeros. Se describe el proceso de evaluación, incluyendo el desarrollo de relaciones de colaboración, la identificación de objetivos del programa, la selección de medidas, y el análisis y presentación de los resultados. Los autores discuten las lecciones aprendidas sobre la evaluación de una intervención interracial dialogada que en principio no incluyó a investigadores con la esperanza de que este examen animará a otros a evaluar intervenciones similares en sus campus.     

Interfaith dialogue: seven key questions for theory,policy and practice

Interfaith dialogue is increasingly being recognised by governments across Europe as crucial to developing cohesive communities. This article critically analyses approaches for developing strategies to promote interfaith dialogue between individuals and/or organisations within civil society. It does this by drawing on a series of theoretical questions concerning those who are involved (and missing), what the dialogue is for, and how the dynamics of participation and representation are handled. In the process, the article considers the conditions, spaces, processes, relationships and understandings of identity that can enable successful interfaith dialogue, and how these might be developed in ways which address the issues raised. The original theoretical analysis presented in this article is supported by examples from the author’s cumulative research with policymakers and practitioners across Europe since 2004.     

Beyond Dialogue: The Role of Science Within Theology

Abstract : The purpose of this article is to provide background overview and contemporary context for the theme of this issue of Dialog, the role of science within theology. Over the last fifty years, this role has primarily involved dialogue and the drive to mutual understanding. That discussion has now reached a new stage seeking to move beyond dialogue toward what some are referring to as hypothetical consonance. One of the most serious constructive proposals moving beyond dialogue is Creative Mutual Interaction (CMI), proposed by Robert John Russell. The first five ways he discusses in CMI specifically address the role of science in theological reflection. It is argued that these five ways will assist the reader in contextualing the discussion found in the articles in this issue. Elaboration of each way is given, concluding with a constructive theological example of the heuristic use of scientific concepts found in quantum field theory.     

THEOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY,CLASSICAL THEISM,AND “LIVED TIME” IN ANTJE JACKELÉN'S TIME AND ETERNITY

Antje Jackelén's Time and Eternity successfully employs the method of correlation and a close study of the question of time to enter the dialogue between science and theology. Hermeneutical attention to language is a central element of this dialogue, but we must be aware that much science is untranslatable into ordinary language; it is when we get to the bigger metaphysical assumptions of science that true dialogue begins to happen. Thus, although the method of correlation is a useful way to approach this dialogue, there is not a strict equivalence in this relationship. Theology needs science more than science needs theology. In speaking of time and God we must keep in mind the relational nature of classical Christian theism, even in its most austere forms. We should not read Enlightenment ideas of God back into the classical Christian tradition or neglect the apophatic emphasis in Christian theism, which warned against assuming knowledge of the divine nature. God's relation to time always lies beyond our understanding. Studying the effects of either the Newtonian or Einsteinian concepts of time on our theological concepts should not detract our attention from the “lived time” that characterizes human experience. Consideration of the notion of time in the Madhyamaka Buddhist tradition reminds us that we cannot control the inner reality of time and that for humans time is something to be considered pragmatically.     

Giles’s Game and the Proof Theory of Łukasiewicz Logic

In the 1970s, Robin Giles introduced a game combining Lorenzen-style dialogue rules with a simple scheme for betting on the truth of atomic statements, and showed that the existence of winning strategies for the game corresponds to the validity of formulas in Łukasiewicz logic. In this paper, it is shown that ‘disjunctive strategies’ for Giles’s game, combining ordinary strategies for all instances of the game played on the same formula, may be interpreted as derivations in a corresponding proof system. In particular, such strategies mirror derivations in a hypersequent calculus developed in recent work on the proof theory of Łukasiewicz logic. Presented by Daniele Mundici     

The Perspectives and Challenges of Primacy and Synodality in the Orthodox Church Today

The Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church in 2016 should be perceived and received as a genuine manifestation of synodality at the beginning of the 21st century. It has reminded us that it is within the exercise of primacy and synodality at the universal level that the unity and the orthodoxy of the church is guaranteed. Its message referred to the proposal for the Holy and Great Council to become a regular institution to be convened every seven or ten years. By saying this, the Holy and Great Council has perhaps inaugurated a new era of synodality in the Orthodox Church on the universal level. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of the Holy and Great Council in an era of globalization, when the pastoral problems encountered by each local autocephalous church, due to a growing secularization of the world, are very similar and need a common synodal response.     

Love for the Neighbour as Lived Theology

The aim of this article is to identify the theological potential for interreligious relations as embodied in the everyday life of ordinary Christians in South India. The empirical study that underlies the discussion is based on interviews with lay churchgoers and pastors from Pentecostal and mainline Protestant churches in Bangalore. The beliefs they articulate, as well as the practices they carry out in their daily lives, are defined as their lived theology. This is analyzed through the terminological framework of theology in four voices. Interviewees express beliefs that emphasize the superiority of Christianity over other religions and the importance of evangelism. Nevertheless, in everyday life they prioritize respect for religious others and maintenance of relationships with them over sharing an exclusivist message about Christ. Their lived theology emphasizes relatedness across religious boundaries and the priority of showing love for the neighbour in practice.     

The snake in the mandala: dialogical aspects of Jung’s ‘A study in the process of individuation’

Jung’s study centres on the amplification of pictures painted by a woman patient and posits their sequence as evincing the initial stages of the individuation process. His text performs a dialogue with its audience whereby Jung persuades us of this truth, and also reveals Jung’s dialogue with his patient and with his own ideas. The present paper revisits the clinical material first with a focus on the interaction between Jung and his patient. The second part compares the 1940 and 1950 versions of Jung’s study with attention to tensions that traverse them, such as Jung’s attitude to the animus and his two voices as a practitioner and a theorist.     

FOCUS INTRODUCTION: TOWARD SHARING VALUES ACROSS CULTURES AND RELIGIONS

The contributors to this focus issue participated in a unique gathering of over sixty scholars in Lukenya, Kenya in January 2009, organized by Globethics.net. The three contributions here by Sumner B. Twiss, Shanta Premawardhana, and Ariane Hentsch Cisneros are not the outcome of the deliberations and discussions there; however, they led to the idea of this focus issue. Each essay incorporates major aspects of the general themes discussed in different groups at the Lukenya meeting: (1) defining global ethics; (2) ensuring a successful interreligious dialogue on ethics; (3) integrating means and methods of sharing values in a human to human approach; (4) balancing power relations, inducing a real transformation; and (5) sharing values in the Kenyan and East‐African contexts.     

The Effectiveness of Argumentative Strategies

In this article, I further analyze the notion of the effectiveness of argumentative strategies, introduced in Jovičić, 2001. The most relevant achievements of the theories of reasonable discussion and the theories of persuasion are called to mind with the aim of explaining the mechanism of the argumentative effectiveness. As a result, a procedure for evaluating the effectiveness of argumentative strategies is suggested.