Countering Cultural Metaphors of Aging

SUMMARY

This article examines three clusters of metaphors or cultural images of aging which function to marginalize older adults: metaphors which focus on aging as physical decline, on aging as aesthetic distance from youth, and on aging as failure of productivity. It then sketches out two ways to counter the marginalizing power of these cultural images of aging, to shape new metaphors or images of aging within a community of meaning, and to help make new sense of growing old, namely the formation of face-to-face groups of older adults and the creation of rituals in worship which name publicly the realities and experiences of aging.     

从《说文解字》字义体系透视中国先民的农业崇拜

《说文解字》是找国的文字学经典,也是一部隐秘记载着中国上古历史状况的百科全书。本文通过对《说文解字》中部分字义的探讨,窥探其中蕴含的先民农业崇拜心理。     

Stone,Ken, Practicing Safer Texts: Food,Sex and Bible in Queer Perspective

Abstract

The past twenty years have witnessed much discussion about the place of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people in the Church, particularly through two sets of debates: on whether and under what circumstances LGBT people should be ordained, and on whether and under what circumstances LGBT people should have their marital unions blessed. The past twenty years have also witnessed the creation of various liturgical materials responsive to the needs of LGBT people, particularly for events that are crucial to an LGBT person's life and faith but for which there were no existing rites in public worship. However, by concentrating only on the occasional and extraordinary events in a person and a community's life as "queer worship" (with its double sense of both "unusual worship" and "worship for LGBT people"), we are neglecting the myriad ways in which day-to-day ordinary worship is, and is not, queer. This article therefore examines the ways in which heteronormativity and the demand for "covering" can create tacit prohibitions around worship for LGBT Christians. Arguing for the inherent queerness of Christian worship, it suggests practical ways in which LGBT people's lives can more fully integrate into a community's liturgical life, and vice versa.     

Bio‐Theoacoustics: Prayer Outdoors and the Reality of the Natural World

What does it mean to pray when the Earth—the fabric of our bodies’ lives, and indeed of the incarnation itself—is profoundly endangered from human action? What would Christian prayer look like that was not “losing track of nature” but following its tracks, physically and spiritually immersed in the actual, present, threatened and wild life of the more‐than‐human world? Using categories outlined by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his Ethics, this essay asserts that prayer and worship that take place entirely within the wall‐, speech‐, and screen‐mediated bubble of anthropocentrism risk becoming an abstraction. The essay explores this assertion in three moves: first, it delineates Bonhoeffer's assertion of the “abstraction” created by forms of Christian life in which God is conceived in separation from the world. Next, it shows how these categories—“God” and “world”—come together in prayer outdoors, understood both literally and metaphorically. And finally, it proposes how prayer outdoors might take shape for individuals or communities: a bio‐theoacoustics of prayer for the life of the world.     

Information Needs of Church Worship Leaders

Qualitative research methods were used to investigate the informational needs of church worship leaders as they related to collection development for worship service planning. Aguilar's environmental scanning model is adapted from a long-range strategic planning framework, to a short-term information-gathering methodology with task-focused implications. Although the interview subjects come from varied backgrounds, denominationally, educationally, and experientially, they have all developed a personal system of using environmental scanning for their collection development needs.     

God's Mission and the Christian Assembly: The Search for an Alternative Practice of Worship

Abstract : The search for something alternative characterizes the practice of worship in many contemporary Christian assemblies. Although “alternative” is often set in opposition to “traditional,” it is better understood in response to “conventional” worship. Five such alternative movements are described here: liturgical movement, contemporary worship movement, liberation perspectives, Pentecostalism, and postmodern approaches. The alternative impulse in all of these perspectives has to do with a fuller realization of the Christian assembly in relation to God's mission.     

Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties

Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong (e.g. Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether children regard moral properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists.     

Eastern Orthodoxy and Ecumenism

This article reviews a set of papers in a special issue of The Ecumenical Review on “Theological Exchanges: The Ecumenical Reception of Orthodoxy,” which examines the reception of Orthodoxy by other theological traditions through the mediation of ecumenical dialogue. The papers display a wide variety of approaches, many introducing, although in different ways, the nature of engagement with the Orthodox by the different Christian bodies represented. Others looked more directly at theological conversations between the Orthodox and other Christian bodies, and especially the doctrine of theosis (deification). The remaining papers offer an insight into specific moments of Orthodoxy’s involvement with other Christian traditions.     

Theologia Prima—Liturgical Theology as an Ecumenical Challenge to Lutheran Worship Practice

Abstract : The doctrine of justification is of highest importance for Lutheran theology. But regarding their worship practice Lutheran churches seem to be less aware of this priority than Orthodox, Roman‐Catholic and Anglican churches. David Fagerberg, building on Alexander Schmemann, claims the worship service experience is theologia prima, God's action upon God's people. At the same time Andrea Grillo calls the human being an animal ceremoniale stating that liturgy always reminds us that God's action comes first. Can Lutherans building upon this ecumenical liturgical theology find in the worship service the ‘place of justification’?     

Broadway Musicals and the Christian Sermon: Communicating Moral Reasoning,Church Values,and Prosocial Behaviors

This article considers the influence of Broadway musicals on the spiritual growth, prosocial attitudes, church values, and moral reasoning of adults when used in Christian congregational worship. Can a church structure and use Broadway musicals in sermons to encourage its lay congregation to identify moral reasoning and recognize core church values and prosocial ideas through sermons based on Broadway musical theater? We applied humanistic psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of moral reasoning and development considered along with the church's stated core values and prosocial behavior to test if these themes were reflected in the rhetoric of sermons based on Broadway musicals presented from 2008–2015. Findings indicate that this series was well received by the congregation and leadership. Suggestions for further research and church applications for Christian education are given. This research highlights the importance of church archives and library support for the further development of information about the church and its role in society.