Oliva Sabuco de Nantes and her Nueva Filosofia: a new philosophy of human nature and the interaction between mind and body

ABSTRACT

The main objective of the New Philosophy was to ‘improve the lives of people and nations in part by improving medical practice’. To this end, Oliva Sabuco sought to improve humankind's knowledge of the philosophical underpinnings of medicine while taking experiential practices into account. She suggested that a variety of procedures (pharmaceutical, emotional and therapeutic) should be adopted to maintain and restore harmony between the mind and body. Oliva Sabuco sought to promote health and prevent disease by expanding our knowledge of the interrelationship between mind and body; the ultimate goal was to understand the body's function and form in order to promote inner harmony and thus health. The influence of classical traditions in moral and natural philosophy, medicine, and cosmography is unmistakable in Oliva Sabuco's text, yet she synthesized these traditions, disagreed with fundamental aspects of them, and transformed them in a holistic philosophy of human nature that is part of a larger view of the cosmos and mankind's place in it.     

Truth,hope, compassion in a time of corona virus and a presidential election

Despite signs of public unity in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic has also highlighted our divisions, disparities, and racism. The churches can have a voice for greater harmony and community if their public theology flows from their core beliefs and practices and is marked by engagement with truth, and a vision of hope acted out with compassion.     

Reflective structured dialogue: A conversation with 2018 American Academy of Religion excellence in teaching award winner Jill DeTemple

This conversation between the 2018 American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching Award winner Jill DeTemple and the editors of Teaching Theology and Religion continues an occasional series of interviews that has previously featured Jonathan Z. Smith, Stephen Prothero, Mary Pierce Brosmer, Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore, and two previous AAR Teaching Award Winners, Joanne Maguire and Lynn Neal. After initial discussion about teaching the intro course we launch into a long discussion of “Reflective Structured Dialogue” – an effective teaching technique for staging contentious conversations, building trust and understanding, and a dialogic culture of curiosity. 1 1 The authors would like to dedicate this article to the memory of Ruel W. Tyson, Jr., a champion of collaborative scholarship and intellectual community. The research referenced in this article was supported by a subaward agreement from the University of Connecticut with funds provided by Grant No. 58942 from the John Templeton Foundation. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of UCONN or the John Templeton Foundation.
     

儒道禅文化的自我觉解与心理和谐修养

心理和谐是社会和谐的基本要素之一,而不同层次的自我意识间的和谐又是心理和谐的核心。通过对当代中国人心理现状的分析,发现在自我意识的层次中缺乏高层精神性自我对各层自我的整合,是影响个体心理和谐因素中最根本的。儒道禅文化对宇宙自我的觉解及其对各层自我的关照,对增进当代中国人心理和谐具有极大理论意义和可操作性价值。     

Introduction: the image of Islam in Russia

ABSTRACT

Russia has a long, complicated and, at times, contradictory relationship with Islam and Muslims. Islam is classified as one of the ‘traditional’ religions, along with Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism. Throughout Russia’s history across the centuries, the efforts by the state and Muslims to define their relationship have led to contradictory outcomes. This special issue grew out of a conference that took place in 2016, seeking to explore the complicated nature of the image of Islam in Russia from a multidisciplinary perspective. A collection of six contributions explore how Islam is viewed and projected in the public and media sphere in contemporary Russia, including state attempts to ‘manage’ the development of Islam, initiatives to transform the public image of Muslims and the charitable work of a mosque at the local level.     

Religion and development ethics in global perspective: a case study of a foreign Christian NGO in China

ABSTRACT

Much academic writing on religion and development tends to focus on the values, beliefs, and modes of operation of religious organizations to examine whether religion contributes ethically to development. A problem with such an approach is its disregard of the contested and evolving nature of religious participation in development in broader national and global contexts. What constitutes ethical religious contribution to development? How can we study the question sociologically? To answer these two questions, I develop Roland Robertson’s notion of the global field to present a framework for analyzing the dynamic interaction between religion and development ethics. In terms of methodological contribution, the framework proposed here prompts us dynamically to contextualize the issue of religious development ethics with reference to four components that make up the global field: the religious agent, the national society, the global civil society, and the global discourse on wellbeing and development. This means that, from an analytical perspective, what is proper or ethical in religious development ethics should not be construed in absolute terms, but in terms of degree and variation. I demonstrate the usefulness of such a contextual approach by drawing on research on ‘GMV’ (pseudonym for an international Christian medical professional services group actively engaged in community development) in China and examining the relationship between religious NGOs, the party-state, and evolving discursive practice of development in the country.     

Community as practice: social representations of community and their implications for health promotion

Health promotion researchers and practitioners have increasingly turned to community-based approaches. Although there has been much work around the diverse understandings of the term in areas such as community psychology and sociology, I am concerned with how such understandings relate directly to community health research and practice. From a discursive perspective ‘community’ is seen as a socially constructed representation that is used variously and pragmatically. However, from a wider view, community can be seen as a matter of embodied practice. This paper draws on social representations theory to examine the shifting constructions of ‘community’, the functional use of those understandings in social life, and the practices that suggest that it is important to attend to their use in particular contexts. Accordingly, the paper argues that meanings of community in the health promotion or public health context must be seen as representations used for specific purposes in particular situations. Furthermore, the broader notion of embodied practice in social life has implications for community participation in health promotion. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Organizing Race

Faith‐based community organizing is receiving an increasing amount of attention from scholars of religious ethics. This essay is motivated by the worry that accounts of such organizing depend on a problematic embrace of multiculturalism, an embrace characteristic of our neoliberal era. Like the powers that they purport to challenge, organizing efforts often embrace difference (racial, gender, and religious) only when it is carefully managed. This is being challenged by theological accounts of organizing that take the religious dimension of such efforts seriously, as well as by feminist critiques of community organizing. This essay probes how race might be taken just as seriously by religious ethicists who study community organizing. Drawing on the civil rights movement's legacy of faith‐based community mobilization as well as traditions of Black theological reflection, this essay challenges the easy embrace of multi‐racial coalitions in faith‐based organizing.