Authority and Legitimisation: the Intraecclesial Strategy of Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens

Abstract?

The election of Ieronymos as archbishop of Athens took place at a critical moment for the Orthodox Church of Greece (OCG). On the one hand, the social credibility of religious bureaucracy was waning. On the other, a fundamentalist faction within the Synod was essentially questioning his authority. In order to confront these problems, Ieronymos found the necessary social and religious legitimisation via the partial democratisation of the administrative function of the OCG as well as the restoration of its relations with the Patriarchate of Constantinople (the Ecumenical Patriarchate). The decoding of this intraecclesial strategy, starting from his election in February 2008 until October 2009, is the topic of the present article.     

Lutheranism in Russia: Amidst Protestantism,Orthodoxy and Catholicism

When religious confessions that were suppressed or seriously persecuted in Soviet times are regenerating themselves, the result is sometimes quite novel religious movements that have no prerevolutionary precursors. To some extent this applies to all confessions. Even postsoviet Orthodoxy is nothing like the prerevolutionary Russian Orthodox Church. The metamorphosis of Russian Lutheranism, however, goes a good way beyond the norm for novelty in Russian confessions. In Russia today Lutheranism is unexpectedly becoming quite different, doctrinally and psychologically, from what it ever has been anywhere before. It could well play its own unique role on the future Russian religious scene. Until the 1980s virtually the only Lutherans in Russia were communities of Germans, most of which had been deported from European Russia to the Urals and Siberia by Stalin. These were mostly old people with not much education, and their numbers were rapidly declining because of increasing emigration. All the signs were that there was no future for Lutheranism in Russia. Over the last 15 years, however, the situation has changed radically. Most Russian cities now have Lutheran parishes, and most of the parishioners are Russians. In some cities - for example Izhevsk, Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk - the Lutheran parishes are several hundred strong. In some of these cities the number of practising Lutherans is comparable to the number of practising Orthodox. There has been just as much of a radical change in the social makeup of the Lutheran parishes, with young people, students and people with higher education now playing a prominent role. They are a living refutation of Dostoyevsky's famous dictum that 'Russian means Orthodox': they see themselves as Russian patriots but at the same time faithful followers of Lutheran teachings. There is a widely held conviction among them that they are more faithful disciples of the Wittenberg reformer than today's Germans or Swedes. At the start of the twenty-first century Lutheranism has turned out to be the religious niche most suitable for many Russians who are seeking God but have failed to find him either in Orthodoxy or in more radical forms of Protestantism.     

No Justice Without Democracy: A Deliberative Approach to the Global Distribution of Wealth

Abstract

The debate about global distributive justice is characterized by an often stark opposition between universalistic approaches, advocating an egalitarian global redistribution of wealth (Beitz, Pogge, Barry, Tan), and particularistic positions, aiming to justify a restriction of redistribution to the domestic community (D. Miller, R. Miller, Blake, Nagel, Rawls). I argue that an approach starting from the deliberative model of democracy (Habermas) can overcome this opposition. On the one hand, the increasingly global scope of economic interactions implies that the range of individuals concerned with the redistribution of wealth should also be increasingly universal. On the other hand, the need for democratic deliberation refers to the fact that demands of justice should be contextual and should take into account the particular circumstances, needs and values of the people concerned. Both concerns can be realized simultaneously only within a multi‐layered democratic system in which redistribution is a concern at the domestic, the international and the global level.     

The Response of Mainline Protestant Clergy Members to the Moral Panic Regarding Harry Potter

This article builds upon and expands an earlier research project on the moral panic that surrounded the Harry Potter books and movies from 1997 through the first decade of the twenty-first century. Soulliere focused on the publications and public pronouncements of religious groups and leaders, media, and research organizations linked together by “the promotion of traditional values and a conservative ideology as well as a Judeo-Christian worldview, primacy of the family, and emphases on biblical foundations and authority” (Soulliere paragraph 14), which he refers to as the Christian Right. The current study seeks to discover the degree to which, if any, this moral panic extended beyond the Christian Right into the pulpits of mainstream Protestant denominations.     

Creating a sustainable global society— the evolutionary path

Many indicators suggest that modern society is presently in a period of transition. The older order is showing obvious signs of decline, and elements of a new order appear to be forming. Growing numbers of people are coming to recognize that the worsening global dilemmas are best viewed as symptoms of an underlying disorder involving some of the most deeply underlying assumptions of modern society. The ultimate resolution of these dilemmas will come about, not through politically implemented “solutions,” but through our further evolution to a fundamentally different, “trans‐modern” society. The key challenge to individuals and organizations is to understand the necessary evolutionary change well enough to contribute toward its taking place with a minimum of attendant social disruption and human misery.     

Timescapes of Security: Clocks,Clouds, and the Complexity of Security Governance

This article pulls together the disjointed complexification of security studies. Such analytical overview suggests that the perspective of “timescapes” allows for exploring the complexity that shapes meanings and practices of security and its governance. In this respect, it is the imperative to change that suggests the significance of complexity thinking to security studies—that is, it is alone in taking the discontinuities of global life seriously. Security, in this regard, is not merely about the clockwork of survival, but is redefined through the cloudlike adaptive contingency of “security as resilience.” In this setting, the security governance of complexity is identified through its dancing to the timescaped rhythms of uncertainty, cognitive challenges, complex risks, and exaptation prompted by the heterogeneity of global life.     

Jewish Blood: Reality and Metaphor in History,Religion, and Culture

Although Rodney Stark is best known for his work on religious economies, he has recently turned his attention to the social effects of monotheism. If we look carefully on the theoretical trajectory evident in this recent work, what we find is a social-evolutionary approach to religion that was prevalent in the 19th century, but long ago assumed by most academics to be discredited. Furthermore, as becomes increasingly evident going through this series, the particular social-evolutionary sequence that Stark constructs has been shaped by a vision of Protestant triumphalism, and a privileging of evangelical Protestantism, that also belongs to an earlier time. While it would easy to ignore Stark's work (and the last two books in this series do seem to have been ignored in academic circles), there are reasons (which include the popular appeal of his work and his treatment of Islam) for taking his work seriously.     

Violence as Worship: Religious Wars in the Age of Globalization,by Hans G. Kippenberg,trans. Brian McNeil,Stanford University Press: Stanford,CA, 2011, viii + 286 pp. ISBN 978 0 8047 68726, US$70 (cloth); ISBN 978 0 8047 6873 3, US$21.95 (paperback)

The author argues in this paper that the ‘state effects’ generated by religious movements – even those operating at the margins of societies – require us to consider anew the impact of religious movements on state formation. In Sri Lanka, for instance, evangelicals are a minority. Yet their practice of proselytizing to new audiences was considered ‘unethical,’ generating opposition that was directed not only at them, but also at ruling elites for failing to stem what was seen as an intrusion of incompatible ‘Western’ ideals. Instead of considering how such Christian movements seek to ‘take over’ the functions of the ‘state’ as has been the experience in the United States and parts of Latin America, the author illustrates in this article why it makes more theoretical sense to ask how their activities impinge upon the conceptual frameworks through which the ‘state’ is imagined.     

Boehme's mysticism

David Walsh, The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfilment: A Stud.)' of Jacob Boehme. Gainesville, University of Florida Humanities Monographs, 53. x + 139 pp.