The 1920 Encyclical of the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Proposal for a “League of Churches”

In January 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued an encyclical – “Unto all the Churches of Christ Wheresoever They Be” – which has played a key role in the history of the ecumenical movement and the engagement of the Orthodox Church in it. The document was prepared by a group of theologians of the Ecumenical Patriarchate headed by Metropolitan Germanos (Strenopoulos). At the time of its publication, it had an official English version; however, it is usually referenced according to its later revised translation, undertaken in 1959 by W. A. Visser ’t Hooft. A significant difference is that the 1920 translation did not include what has come to be seen as the central feature of the 1920 encyclical: that is, the proposal to create a “League of Churches.” The article explores whether the revision is a more accurate translation of the Greek original or rather an interpretation of the encyclical that enshrines in the text its key concept – which was, however, not contained in the original document.     

From Olaf to Omar: Pedagogy of Place at a Lutheran University

This article reflects on the range of environmental and institutional layers that support pedagogical composition and student learning at a Lutheran University affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in the Pacific Northwest. After reflection on layers that include geographic location, institutional affiliation and denominational affiliation, the author traces the way in which she incorporates these elements into the content and methods of assessment in a religion class on Islam.     

Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s Trinitarian Formulation in the Islamic Milieu

This article examines a theological treatise of Abū al-Faraj ?Abd Allāh Ibn al-?ayyib, a savant of the Assyrian Church of the East. The treatise discusses the Attributes of Deity demonstrating a thematic correspondence with the dominant polemical arguments occasioned by the Christian view of the Trinity and Christology. These include the relation of the hypostases to the attributes of essence, specifically the unity of the divine essence in contrast to the plurality of the hypostases. Ibn al-?ayyib also borrows concepts from the Muslim milieu to commend his Christian formulation. Most notable among these is the Ash?arī concept of the divine attributes (?ifāt) and their categorization. The Ash?arīs had limited the attributes of essence to seven. Ibn al-?ayyib limits them to three: paternity, filiation and procession. The article considers Ibn al-?ayyib’s Christian intellectual forebears, demonstrating that he used and amended their formulations. Finally, two Muslim polemicists are considered to establish that Ibn al-?ayyib was engaging with specific objections concerning the Christian Trinity. This thematic correspondence warrants a reconsideration of Ibn al-?ayyib’s contribution to the Muslim–Christian interface. Although never an explicitly polemic theologian, the savant-priest developed an implicit apologetic through his theological treatises that provided intellectual fortification for his Christian community.     

The Roman Catholic Church and Slavery in José Evaristo d'Almeida's O Escravo (The Slave)

This installment of Dialog's Theology in Film and Fiction series introduces the first Cape Verdean novel, The Slave, by José Evaristo d'Almeida (1856). This vivid story depicts a number of social and moral issues tied together within the tragic plot of the novel. The article discusses the historical relationship of the Roman Catholic Church to slavery, the colonial history of Portugal and Cape Verde, and the theological use of the Bible in this history. This discussion is applied to Almeida's novel, revealing the manifold nineteenth‐century varieties of the literary history and theology of colonialism.     

基督教传统对美国政治、社会的认知及影响

基督教传统从北美大陆殖民地时期开始就一直主导着这一地区的政治倾向和社会发展,在确立了政教分离的建国原则后,这一传统在影响美国政治与社会发展的进程中,也在不断适应着变化的时代。本文以美国历史为主线,分析了不同历史时期基督教传统对政治体制、社会变迁等问题作出的认知与判断,并简述其对美国政治领域和社会领域的影响。     

Dyadic Nexus Fighting Two‐Front Battles: A Study of the Microlevel Process of the Official‐Religion‐State Relationship in China

This article provides a microlevel perspective of the interacting dynamics between religion and the Chinese state, demonstrating how religious leaders and local officials negotiate with each other pragmatically, continually withstanding pressure from hardline religious masses and state bureaucracy. This perspective, constructed using qualitative data on the True Jesus Church, also helps to answer a critical empirical question left open in scholarly discussions: When and how does the state regulative power on religion come to the fore in the economic reform emphasizing pragmatic religion‐state cooperation? The findings show how religious leaders and local officials have become pragmatic, cooperating to form a dyadic nexus that tackles regular affairs in a practical way, though it may run the risk of fracture when lay members and bureaucratic superiors pressure leaders and officials, respectively, to take hardline positions. The leaders and officials have continually fought two‐front battles while shuttling between negotiations with their nexus partner and aligning with their hardline sources of pressure. This study may shed light on future research of the Chinese religion‐state relationship in general by illustrating a microlevel, integrative, dynamic approach.     

The Christian Reformed Church Periodical Index

Abstract

This article describes the creation of a web-based database that indexes less well-known periodical titles of importance to scholars in the Christian Reformed Church, and generally not covered by other indexing services. The author explains how the data from the index, originally stored in a card catalog, was moved online to a text-based system, and eventually into its present form in a web-based system. Highlighting some of the challenges that were overcome in creating this resource, brief details are provided on how the data are stored and retrieved in the web environment, on how the data are searched and presented to the researcher, and on the methods used to keep the database current.     

Developments in Catholic Biblical Studies Reflected in Three 20th Century “Catholic Encyclopedias”

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes entries pertaining to biblical studies in three Catholic encyclopedias, the Catholic Encyclopedia(1907-1914) and the original and revised editions of the New Catholic Encyclopedia(1967 and 2003), to determine the degree to which, individually, they represent the “state of the art” at the time of publication and, collectively, whether they accurately reflect developments in Catholic biblical scholarship in the twentieth century. The author concludes that, despite certain inadequacies and gaps in coverage, the three encyclopedias are a valuable resource for tracing the course of those developments.     

Missions without missionaries: the social dimension of church growth in Muslim Java,Indonesia

We live in a world where religion is not confined to the private sphere and where faith-based acts, from Qur'an burning to terrorist activities, affront not only believers but also non-believers. Indonesia, where moderate Islam has long enjoyed its compatibility with other religions, has recently emerged as a hot spot of Muslim–Christian violence. In order to examine the social face of faith in ‘unfavourable’ circumstances, this article analyses church growth in Muslim Java by addressing the sociological issues related to what makes a church strong. Through an empirical investigation into the Java Christian Church, the article demonstrates that a church manages to establish a firm foothold in a Muslim society by developing the porosity of the religious frontier at the organizational level.     

The Orthodox Churches of the Russian tradition in twenty-first-century Japan: negotiating an identity between Tokyo and Moscow?

In this paper I compare the identities of the Japanese Orthodox Church (JOC), which is an autonomous part of the Moscow Patriarchate in Russia, and the Embassy Church (EC) of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) in Japan, which is an integral part of the ROC. I argue that, at the moment, the JOC is a more Japanese organisation than the EC in terms of culture, attitude towards Russia, the ROC and the Japanese state. There is, however, evidence that this is slowly changing as a result of the policy of the Moscow Patriarchate towards its structures in Japan, but also as a result of the difficulties the JOC is facing in adapting to the Japanese cultural context.