Depression and cognitive sequelae registered within the first year among young Danish TBI survivors

The aim of the study was to determine the proportion of depression and cognitive sequelae among young (15-30 years) Danish TBI survivors referred to interdisciplinary evaluation through a nationwide government-initiated health initiative. The cross-sectional study is based on data from the “Danish register for young adults with acquired brain injury” on TBI survivors included from October 2013 to December 2016. The main measures were Major depression inventory, Trail making test A and B, Fluency, Word learning with selective reminding, Matrix reasoning, Coding and Glasgow outcome scale - extended (GOS-E). During the study period, 131 young TBI survivors were referred to one of five national outpatient clinics. Ninety-six had complete data and of these 14.6% fulfilled the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for depression and 34.4% had cognitive sequelae. An association was found between depression and cognitive sequelae (p = 0.004). Patients with both depression and cognitive sequelae (n = 10) had a significantly lower mean score on GOS-E (p = 0.0001). Depression and cognitive sequelae were frequent and associated with a poorer global functional outcome among young TBI survivors referred within a year after trauma. This finding and the notion that only 20% of the expected TBI population was referred to this nationwide health initiative indicate an unacknowledged need for interdisciplinary follow-up.     

THE ART OF RETRIEVAL: Stoicism?

This essay argues that retrieving insights from the ancient Stoic philosophers for Christian ethics is much more difficult than is often assumed and, further, that the “ethics of retrieval” is itself something worth prolonged reflection. The central problem is that in their ancient sense both Christianity and Stoicism are practically dense patterns of reasoning and mutually incompatible forms of life. Coming to see this clearly requires the realization that the encounter between Stoicism and Christianity is a conflict of lived traditions. Precisely because we cannot simply extract Stoic insights from the lives in which they belong, the task of determining how Stoicism is useful for Christianity is exceptionally challenging. Indeed, doing justice to the Stoics has more to do with facing an alternative to Christianity than it does with appropriating insights for our own use. These points are developed in conversation with Elizabeth Agnew Cochran's recent article on the Stoic influence upon Jonathan Edwards.     

A Preface to Ethics:

This essay outlines a new preface for ethics demanded by the massive developments of the global age. It does so in and through the comparative use of “myths” to explicate the lived structure of experience. The essay begins by isolating main features of global dynamics, including proximity, the compression of the world and the expansion of consciousness, and also global, cultural reflexivity. In the second step of the “preface,” it is argued that globality itself is a moral space in which peoples must orient their lives. It is a moral space defined by the massive extension of human power in the modern world. In light of the challenge that global dynamics and the extension of human power now pose, the essay then isolates, methodologically, options for developing a global ethics, and advocates a distinctly hermeneutical approach. This approach is practiced in the last section of the “preface” by engaging ethically the biblical “myth” of creation and its reinterpretation in an epitome of Jesus's Torah teaching. The intention is to show how current religious thought can speak to massive challenges in a distinctive way. It is, again, to offer a preface to ethics.     

Biblical stories removed,Christian beliefs retained: religious elements in the life education curriculum of Hong Kong’s Methodist Church primary schools

ABSTRACT

The Methodist Church of Hong Kong has promoted a life education programme since 2004, and has progressively applied it in all affiliated schools. This article analyses the characteristics of the latest primary school life education curriculum compiled by this Christian school sponsoring body. There are three significant findings: 1) religious elements remain rich in the four strands of life education the Universe, oneself, other people, and environment; 2) biblical stories have been removed, but Christian beliefs are integrated into the curriculum materials and summaries in terms of Christian role models and the Holy Scriptures, in order to develop students’ relevant values, good character and positive attitudes towards life; and 3) the importance of prayer as a religious practise for action. The intended curriculum demonstrates how religious elements like Christian beliefs can be applied in secular education to build students’ sense of meaning and purpose in life.     

How Christian upbringing divides the religious nones in Britain: exploring the imprints of Christian upbringing in the 2016 EU referendum

ABSTRACT

Over the last few decades, Britain has witnessed a significant decline in Christian affiliation and the corresponding growth in the number of religiously unaffiliated individuals. Relatively little attention has, however, been paid to ‘former Christians’ who were brought up in a Christian household but now identify as having no religion. This study focuses on the effects of Christian upbringing on the voting behaviour of religious nones in the EU referendum of 2016. Using data from the 2016 British Social Attitudes survey, the empirical analysis in this article examines the socio-cultural characteristics of Anglican, Catholic, and ‘Other Christian’ households as well as their role in shaping the voting turnout and the voting intentions of individuals who are religiously unaffiliated. The results suggest that Anglican upbringing and Catholic upbringing serve as salient proxies for national identities among the secular groups. Additionally, in the EU referendum, the voting behaviour of religious nones with different kinds of Christian upbringing was very distinct. This reveals that religious upbringing is a source of within-group variety among British religious nones and that Britain’s Christian heritage still has important socio-political implications despite the decrease in the country’s Christian population.     

FROM EPISTEMOLOGY TO ETHICS: Theoretical and Practical Reason in Kant and Douglass

The aim of this essay is to provide a philosophical discussion of Frederick Douglass's thought in relation to Christianity. I expand upon the work of Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland—who both argue that there are Kantian features present in Douglass as it relates to his conception of the individual—by arguing that there are similarities between Douglass and Kant not only concerning the relationship between morality and Christianity, but also concerning the nature of the soul. Specifically, I try to show that the moral weakness of slaveholding Christianity that Douglass attacked is found in the ecclesial formation of the slaveholding Christian church; it is a formation that begins with epistemology, but ignores ethics. I conclude, in part, that both Douglass and Kant reject a Cartesian psychological dualism in favor of a conception of the soul that is more attentive to one's moral development.     

Caste or Christ?

This article offers empirical research using qualitative methodology to identify the presence of the caste system in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in South Asia. The findings are based on the interviews of ten participants aged 18 to 36 from at least four language groups: Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, and Malayalam. All the participants volunteered to participate in the study. Three among the ten did face-to-face interviews, and the remaining seven participants were interviewed online through the Zoom platform. The findings suggest a need to expose and eliminate the discrimination and shame caused by the caste system if the church is to remain faithful to Christ's teaching of equality among the human family.     

The Trinity in Qur’anic Idiom: Q 4.171 and the Christian Arabic Presentation of the Trinity as God,his Word,and his Spirit

ABSTRACT

Since the early centuries of Islam, the Qur’an’s deep imprint on Arabophone Christians has been evident, not only in their evocation of qur’anic language, but also in their creative employment of the text in constructing their own orthodox Christian Arabic theology. This article investigates the presentation of the Trinity as ‘God, his Word, and his Spirit’ in Christian Arabic theological tracts in the early centuries of Islam. It argues that Q 4.171 played a foundational role in constructing a distinct Christian Arabic Trinitarian theology and that Arabophone Christian writers discerned in it the nucleus of what could be developed as an orthodox Trinitarian theology. It traces the development of the Christian Arabic Trinitarian formulation in four works by Arabophone authors: John Damascene’s On Heresies 100; On the Triune Nature of God; the interreligious disputation in the court of the ?Abbāsid Caliph al-Ma?mūn attributed to the theologian Theodore Abū Qurra; and the apologetic letter by ?Abd al-Masī? al-Kindī. This article also makes observations on the implications of the Christian Arabic theological project for interreligious encounter in the early Islamic centuries.     

Interreligious dialogue groups and the mass media

ABSTRACT

Interreligious dialogues have received attention since they were introduced as a security policy and social pacification measure after the attack on 9/11. This essay examines the development of interreligious dialogue in Germany as well as the influence of media discourses on interreligious dialogue and asks to what extent they affect the motives, goals and modes of communication of both Muslim and non-Muslim participants. This analysis leads to the thesis that the mass media’s frequent security-policy framing of Islam within issues of integration, violence, and threat has developed interreligious dialogue groups as a space of face-to-face coping processes with the imagined religious conflict. Muslims attend it in order to put Islam in a different and positive frame. For the Christian participants this also presents the opportunity to reach a new relevance of religion in the public secular space.