The Bible and Gender Troubles: American Evangelicals Debate Scripture and Submission

Abstract : This article surveys the recent debates about gender roles and submissions in American evangelical theology since the 1960's. It argues that the so‐called “complementarian” viewpoint, in which women are equal in being but submissive to men in gender roles, is not the same as the traditional Christian patriarchal viewpoint. Both biblical equality and complementarian views are thus revisionist. This article introduces the “return to the Trinity” in this debate as one of the more interesting moves in recent years, and suggests some lessons for mainline Protestants.     

Schooling,the Protestant churches and the state in Northern Ireland: a tension resolved

In 1998, Byrne and McKeown examined the churches’ roles in Northern Ireland’s (NI) schooling system. NI was then governed by direct-rule from the UK’s Westminster Parliament. The authors concluded that the desire of the Protestant churches to re-establish their influence in schools was ‘unlikely to succeed’. This was contrasted with the ‘success-story’ of Catholic influence in schooling. This article tracks the fortunes of the Protestant churches in NI’s educational policy developments in the last 18 years. Of particular interest are the government’s proposals to establish an Education and Skills Authority (ESA) under a new Education Bill. A careful reading of the Protestant churches’ annual education reports indicates the alarm with which these proposals were met. In the early years of the new millennium it seemed that the conclusions of the 1998 paper were prescient. However, extensive lobbying by the Protestant churches in a changed (devolved) political context secured almost all their demands. This article concludes that the ‘tension’ (claimed in the 1998 paper) between the Protestant churches and the state has largely been resolved. The article evaluates the significance of recent developments for the Protestant churches and their involvement in schooling. More critically, the propriety of these developments is questioned asking if they mark an advance for the Protestant churches and/or schooling in NI.     

The Jerusalem of Jesus: space and Pentecostal-evangelical branding in Orlando’s Holy Land Experience and Eureka Spring’s Holy Land Tour

Jerusalem, Israel, holds a special place as a holy pilgrimage destination for devotees of Christianity and other religions, although travel to the holy sites of Jerusalem is costly and can be difficult for many. For evangelical Protestants (and especially Pentecostals), the significance of Jerusalem – as the place where Christ the Messiah lived and accomplished his works – can be mobilised and channelled (decentralised) by creating sites which participate in the spiritual ‘power’ of Jesus Christ. Spiritual ‘power’ in this sense is not dependent on recorded miracles or canonisation by a central religious authority, but in the creation of spaces which through various strategies effectively evoke for their Protestant consumers the ‘authenticity’ of Jesus’ Jerusalem, and thus the ‘power’ and ‘reality’ of Christ. This paper examines the spatial strategies and branding of two such sites, the Holy Land Experience (Orland, Florida) and the Holy Land Tour (Eureka Springs, Arkansas).     

How Hebrew were the Hebrew Christians?

This article demonstrates how Hebrew Christians – or Jews who converted to Christianity but retained Jewish identity – resonated with the claims of the Zionist movement in its first decades, particularly with regard to its notion of Hebrew identity. In their espousal of Zionist ideals and their attempts to join Zionist efforts, Hebrew Christian notions of Hebrewness reflected the multivalence of Hebrew identity in the Zionist movement itself, and particularly the understanding of Hebrewness as racial, ethnic, and cultural. The influence of the Zionist movement upon Hebrew Christians was especially evident in Hebrew Christian attempts to form their own institutions. These organizations promoted Jewish national culture dissociated from Judaism, expressed assertive and even aggressive motivations (what I term “Muscle Hebrew Christianity”), and recognized the ineluctability of anti-Semitism regardless of Jewish religious beliefs. Examining the somewhat obscure movement of Hebrew Christianity can ultimately help us to better understand the ways Zionism was interpreted in its formative stages, especially in light of its own divisions and various emphases.     

The dangers of religious nationalism: Lessons from Srebrenica

What are the consequences of the politicization of religious myths and symbols for religious communities? The ethnic cleansing that culminated in the massacre of Srebrenica was promoted to the Serbian population, both in Serbia proper and in Bosnia, through the use of religious mythology and symbols. In Bosnia, religious language lost its meaning, religious observance remained low and it became difficult for religious leaders to join together to address community issues. We see a similar use of religious language and symbolism today in the U.S., particularly from evangelical leaders justifying the current president and his jingoistic actions. We can look to the conflict in Bosnia as a warning to the U.S. not to link religion and nationalism.     

Group Identification and Support for the Supreme Court: Evidence from Evangelical Protestants

Research on the determinants of the U.S. Supreme Court's institutional support among the public focuses on three factors at the level of the individual, including satisfaction with its performance, knowledge of the judiciary, and support for democratic values. Evidence from the group level has revealed that the relative importance of these factors can vary, despite the predictions of positivity theory that the effects of all factors should be similar across all subsets of the U.S. population. We seek to explain this inconsistency between theory and evidence through an analysis of evangelical Protestants, a politically powerful and theoretically compelling group. Drawing on group‐based studies, we develop a principled account of when group members will base their institutional support more strongly than others do on their satisfaction with the Court's recent performance, and identify defining features of the information environment of evangelical Protestants that satisfy the model's components. We report evidence from a national survey that the effects of all three major factors differ systematically for evangelical Protestants. We discuss implications of our analysis for an ongoing debate over positivity theory and for identifying other groups for whom institutional and specific support will be strongly linked.     

Dominus Iesus as Ecumenical Shock

The Roman Catholic declaration of 2000, Dominus Iesus, shocked the ecumenical world by declaring that Protestant churches are not “churches in the proper sense.” The two reasons given are that Protestants fail to maintain a valid episcopate and the fail to celebrate genuinely the Eucharistic mystery. This article takes up the latter claim by defending Protestantism and pleading for Roman Catholic self–correction, specifically opposing private masses and requiring the gathered community to celebrate the Eucharist.     

Protestant Ghosts and Spirits of Capitalism: Ecology,Economy, and the Reformation Tradition

This essay analyzes current Protestant perspectives on the relationship between this tradition and capitalism from the perspective of social and ecological concerns. Rather than deciding between the tradition's purity or culpability in the rise of capitalism, this essay suggests that those concerned with both the future of the tradition and social/eco‐justice must acknowledge both the tradition's congruence with global capitalism and the tradition's prophetic ability to critique and propose alternatives.     

The Pentecostal Church in Slovakia and the Common Witness of Evangelical Churches in the Spirit of Partnership and Cooperation

This study aims to describe the Pentecostal Church in Slovakia in the scope of current ecumenical cooperation and dialogue. The Apostolic Church is a member of the Union of Evangelical Churches in Slovakia, which established the Department of Theology and Christian Education (DETM) at the University of Matej Bel. Since 1994, individual churches have continued together in ecumenical cooperation in the education of their young spiritual workers. The curriculum includes academic interpretation and missiological reflection on selected parts of mission. It offers the practical efforts of the teachers and students, especially from the viewpoint of the churches' common witness in diversity. The curriculum of the study programme for theologians interprets the two mission documents Together towards Life (TTL) and The Cape Town Commitment (CTC) from a Slovakian evangelical theological view and applies it practically in context. This paper introduces DETM's educational programme in mission and ecumenism and examines how it embodies the values and concepts of those two mission documents through its activities. Special interest is focused on the topic of the practice of common witness in a spirit of partnership and cooperation.     

组织中的工作伦理研究概况

工作伦理是指员工在组织中对职权行为和人际互动的价值判断,包括个体的态度和价值观以及反映这些态度和价值的外在行为。文章从工作伦理的概念形成、结构与测量、相关实证研究、跨文化比较研究等5个方面,对目前组织中工作伦理的研究现状进行了介绍和评价。文章最后指出了工作伦理的未来研究趋势