What is Happening to Global Christianity?

Abstract :  Following Philip Jenkins's analysis of "the next Christendom" it is argued that when the centre of Christianity is moving southwards Christianity will change. As a translation movement, Christianity is a religion made to travel. The consequences of this development are dramatic. In the West and North the mainline churches are in decline. The diversification within Christianity will continue in a certain tension to a trend towards uniformity. This leads to new priorities in mission. The discipline, theology of religions, will gain in importance as the churches are confronted with the life and death choice between a "clash of civilisations" or a peaceful multicultural and multireligious co‐existence.     

The Dialogue between Science and Religion and the Dialogue between People of Different Faiths: Areopagus Revisited

Christianity finds itself in a new situation, one that resembles its first-century experience in that it will be shaped by a new dominant world culture. This culture is marked by three factors-the economy, the multireligious situation, and science. The author's discussion deals with the issues that arise in this engagement with culture under three rubrics: dialogue between science and religion, globalization of the religious encounter, and interreligious dialogue in a globalized world. The major assertions are: (1) Science and religions must avoid restrictive and expansionist relationships and work for reciprocal interaction. (2) Globalization is an unavoidable, but ambiguous, historical development; religions should reject responses of "ethnification" and "primitivism" and rather engage in strategies that encourage both productive encounter and critical distance. (3) Interreligious dialogue includes dialogues of life, of intellectual exchange, of religious experience, of common action, and of confrontation; this dialogue will seek to embrace truth (which involves science) and wisdom (which includes the various religious traditions) in the reciprocal interaction that is marked by love.     

Factors predicting the probability of initiating sexual intercourse by context and sex

Despite men initiating sex more than women there is considerable variance within the sexes. This study is the first to consider the impact of multiple predictors from the literature, and investigates how factors, such as relationship length, sociosexuality, and different aspects of self‐perceived mate value among others, independently and interactively predict initiation of sexual intercourse in both short‐term sexual and long‐term romantic mating contexts, testing predictions from Sexual strategies theory. For long‐term relationships, positive partner bond increased initiative to sexual intercourse for women. For men, self‐perceived independence increased probability of taking the initiative, while relationship attachment decreased probability. For short‐term relations, the desire component of the sociosexual orientation inventory increased probability of initiation for both sexes, while male initiative was increased by pleasure reasons for sex. The impact of individual predictors on initiating intercourse is influenced by being included in a multidimensional model, and relationship context affects the impact of the predictors.     

Wittgenstein as philosopher of culture

Interest in Wittgenstein came to Norway in a period of unrest on the Norwegian philosophical scene. The dominant Oslo School of empirical semantics was dissolved during the same period, not because it refused to take the locutionary/ illocutionary distinction seriously enough, but mainly because of its blind spot, caused by its exaggerated honesty. This paper argues that the semantic theory of ‘proposition and occurrence’ led the empirical semanticist into an intellectual attitude, overlooking language as part of a cultural landscape. Through overlooking this possibility, the empirical semanticist became an animal without a habitat. The way out was an interpretation of the notion of a language‐game which makes Wittgenstein a philosopher of culture.