Mission and Reconciliation in the Orthodox Church

This article examines the Orthodox view on reconciliation as reflected in the famous patriarchal and synodical encyclicals early in the last century and in more recent official documents: the Messages of the Primates of the Orthodox Churches, the approved documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church, and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew’s official statements. These are looked at in reference to (i) the mission statement of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, Together towards Life, and (ii) the papal encyclicals Unitatis redintegratio and Ut unum sint. The article further examines the need for a common Christian witness and the reactions within the Orthodox world from a tiny but vocal anti-ecumenical minority. It underlines the importance of a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities along with the existing Universal Declaration of Human Rights to address the ecological problem and inequities of the current world economic system, based on the interrelatedness of economy and ecology and the consolidation of the interfaith dialogue for a wider reconciliation. The article also underlines the highest priority of the theological dialogues at all levels and by all bodies of the Orthodox ecclesial reality as a necessary step to promote reconciliation. Finally, the article assesses (i) the dialogue aiming to achieve the visible unity of the church; (ii) dialogues generally focusing on Christian unity, or even unity with other faithful; (iii) dialogues aiming as much as possible at common Christian witness; and (iv) dialogues focusing on the church’s responsibility toward society and the integrity of creation.     

Love Your Neighbour as Yourself

This paper examines the many ways interreligious dialogue and interreligious relationship-building interact with and serve how we live out – with others – the moral core of the Christian faith, which is the love of God and neighbour. I take as an example the contemporary Poor People’s Campaign in the United States. The campaign originated with the Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and others involved in the civil rights movements of the early 1960s. While the Poor People’s Campaign was initiated by and is led by Christians, it is intentionally inclusive of people of many different faiths and those with no particular faith, all of whom share the commitment to love and to serve the poor.     

The Dialogue Between Religion and Science: Which God?

As exemplified by three cases, difficulties in the dialogue between religion and science not infrequently arise from differing views of God's omnipotence and omniscience. From the side of theology, reflections on the biblical and church-related sources of those views, on Auschwitz and theproblem of theodicy, on God as Creator of the universe, and on how to read and interpret the Bible show that a view of a God who self-limits almightiness and all-knowing in order to grant freedom and functional integrity to a Creation about which God cares can be multiply justified. Such a view is not dissonant with regard to a self-organized, open universe, producing "unexpected" emergent features as seen by science     

Going Public: Science-and-Religion at a Crossroads

A survey of recent news events involving science and religion is conducted with an aim toward analyzing the current state of the science and religion dialogue. Recent events suggest that the dialogue has come to a crossroads, achieving an unprecedented level of popular attention. At the same time, this attention reveals what still needs to be done. More attention needs to be given to the nature of religion, to the history of religion and science, and to the increasing plurality of the dialogue.     

Concerning Madness and Human Suffering

Pastoral Psychology - Few behavioral scientists have attempted a penetrating examination of the problem of suffering. Eschewing its etiology as a moral issue, they have left it to philosophers and...     

Reflectivity, Reflection, and Counter-Education

This article sets forward a new concept of reflection, to be contrasted with more usual reading of the concept for which we use the term `reflectivity'. The contrast is related to a distinction between normalizing education and counter-education. We claim that within the framework of normalizing education there is no room for reflection, but only for reflectivity. In contrast to reflectivity, reflection manifests a struggle of the subject against the effects of power which govern the constitution of her conceptual apparatus, her knowledge, her consciousness and her limitations and possibilities for successful functioning. Reflectivity re-presents the hegemonic realm of self-evidence and the productive violence of social and cultural order. Reflection, by contrast, aims to challenge the supposedly self-evident and the present order of things. Reflection aims at transcendence and represents a moral commitment in respect of the otherness of the Other, which power relations in every realm of self-evidence oblige us to neglect, to destroy or consume. Transcendence is a concrete utopia, and so is the subject in her nonrepressive communication with the Other: they are part and parcel of our present possibilities, sometimes in microscopic arenas, struggled for, and from time to time even realized.     

The Listening Partners Program: An Initiative Toward Feminist Community Psychology in Action

The Listening Partners intervention is described and analyzed as a synthesis of feminism and community psychology, within a developmental framework. Working from an empowerment perspective, this social action, peer group intervention supported a community of poor, rural, isolated, young, White mothers to gain a greater voice, claim the powers of their minds, and collaborate in developmental leadership—creating settings that promote their own development and that of their families, peers, and communities. High quality dialogue, individual and group narrative, and collaborative problem-solving were emphasized, in a feminist context affirming diversity, inclusiveness, strengths, social-contextual analyses, and social constructivist perspectives. The power of enacting a synergy of feminism and community psychology is highlighted.     

The ad Hominem argument as an informal fallacy

This article outlines criteria for the evaluation of the argumentum ad hominem (argument against the person, or personal attack in argument) that is traditionally a part of the curriculum in informal logic. The argument is shown to be a kind of criticism which works by shifting the burden of proof in dialogue through citing a pragmatic inconsistency in an arguer's position. Several specific cases of ad hominem argumentation which pose interesting problems in analyzing this type of criticism are studied.     

Dialogue theory for critical thinking

A general outline of a theory of reasoned dialogue is presented as an underlying basis of critical analysis of a text of argument discourse. This theory is applied to the analysis of informal fallacies by showing how textual evidence can be brought to bear in argument reconstruction. Several basic types of dialogue are identified and described, but the persuasive type of dialogue is emphasized as being of key importance to critical thinking theory.