Evangelism Challenges the Church's Identity

The gospel of Christ has spread to hundreds of linguistic and cultural communities. Christian churches have come face to face with an extraordinarily positive but nevertheless perplexing problem: Can the churches find the common core message of the holistic gospel or will the actual content of faith become relativized into the interpretation of interpretations? Despite the many different definitions of evangelism/evangelization, evangelism always leads to consideration of the basic questions of faith: its profound understanding and its reception. Evangelism involves the questions of what I believe or believe in, and of what I commit to. In the midst of the constant flow of information and the hectic tempo of life, evangelism challenges the church again and again to reconsider how the gospel can be expressed compactly, but in a rich, understandable, and true‐to‐life way. In the ecumenical discussion, the concept of “witness” as a form of evangelism is becoming increasingly important, because it comprises all the essential dimensions of the whole gospel. Evangelism challenges churches and their members to boldly bear witness by word and deed to Jesus Christ.     

Bearing Witness to the Ethics and Politics of Suffering: J. M. Coetzee’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Disgrace</Emphasis>, Inconsolable Mourning,and the Task of Educators

How can educators and their students interrogate the ethics and politics of suffering in ways that do not create fixed and totalized narratives from the past? In responding to this question, this essay draws on J. M. Coeetze’s Disgrace, and discusses how this novel constitutes a crucial site for bearing witness to the suffering engendered by apartheid through inventing new forms of mourning and community. The anti-historicist stance of the novel is grounded on the notion that bearing witness to suffering without betraying it means refusing to represent it, that is, refusing to translate history and speak of it; instead, the novel’s characters remain inconsolable before history. The essay builds on these ideas and considers whether educators and their students need to (re)learn the limits of historicism in comprehending conflict, oppression, otherness and suffering; also, it examines the educational implications of such a pedagogical task.     

Triangulation,Untranslatability, and Reconciliation

Donald Davidson used triangulation to do everything from explicate psychological and semantic externalism, to attack relativism and skepticism, to propose conditions necessary for thought and talk. At one point Davidson tried to bring order to these remarks by identifying three kinds of triangulation, each operative in a different situation. Here I take seriously Davidson’s talk of triangular situations and extend it. I start by describing Davidson’s situations. Next I establish the surprising result that considerations from one situation entail the possibility that at any one time one language is partially untranslatable into another. Because the possibility is time-indexed, it need not conflict with Davidson’s own argument against the possibility of untranslatability. I derive the result, not to indict Davidson, but to propose a new kind of triangulation, the reconciliation of untranslatability, which I investigate. Insofar as triangulation is central to Davidson’s views, getting a handle on his various triangular situations is key to getting a handle on his contributions to philosophy. Insofar as those contributions have enriched our understanding of how language, thought, and reality interrelate, extending Davidson’s model promises to extend our understanding too.

Reconciliation and variation in post-conflict stress in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata fuscata): testing the integrated hypothesis

Reconciliation in primates, a post-conflict affiliative interaction between former opponents, appears to have two functions: (1) to repair relationship damaged by aggression such that animals who share more valuable relationships are more likely to reconcile, and (2) to reduce the post-conflict uncertainty and stress of former combatants. The 'integrated hypothesis' of reconciliation links these functions by arguing that the disturbance of a valuable relationship by aggression should result in particularly high levels of stress, which in turn should facilitate efforts to reconcile and thus gain relief from post-conflict stress. A key prediction of the integrated hypothesis is that victims of aggression suffer more stress following conflicts with individuals with whom they share a valuable relationship. In this article, we test the integrated hypothesis by observing the post-conflict behaviour of victims among a free-ranging provisioned troop of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata fuscata) living in Shiga Heights, Nagano, Japan. In this troop, monkeys reconciled roughly one in seven conflicts. The only factor that we could significantly relate to the occurrence of reconciliation was kinship; kin reconciled more frequently than non-kin did. Receiving aggression increased and reconciliation reduced the probability of being re-attacked after aggressive interactions, supporting the hypothesis that reconciliation repairs relationships. Victims' self-directed behaviour (SDB) – a behavioural index of stress comprising increases in scratching, self-grooming, and body-shaking – was elevated following aggression but decreased rapidly following reconciliation, supporting the idea that reconciliation functions to reduce post-conflict stress. Post-conflict SDB varied as follows: (1) victims showed a higher level of stress following aggression with kin than with non-kin, and (2) juvenile victims were less distressed than adults. The level of post-conflict SDB performed by juveniles following conflicts with kin was indistinguishable from that performed by adults but was greatly reduced following attacks from non-kin. These results indicate that post-conflict SDB keenly reflects the value of relationships between opponents, and that the post-conflict behaviour of free-ranging Japanese macaques fits the predictions of the integrated hypothesis. Accepted after revision: 11 September 2001 Electronic Publication     

Peace and Justice: A Limited Reconciliation

This paper aims to relax the tension between the political requirements of making peace and the moral demands of doing justice, in light of the ‘peace processes’ in South Africa and Northern Ireland. It begins by arguing that criminal justice should be reconceived as consisting primarily in the vindication of victims, both direct and indirect. This is not to deny the retributive punishment of perpetrators any role at all, only to insist that it be largely subservient to the goal of vindication. Why should we take such an account of justice to be true? The paper offers two reasons. First, Christians – and even secularist liberals – have a prima facie reason in the consonance of this account with the Bible's eudaimonistic conception of justice as ordered to the restoration of healthy community. Second, since all concepts of criminal justice share the basic notion of putting right what is wrong, it would be odd if the repair of damage done to victims (i.e., their ‘vindication’) were not prominent among its concerns; and there are reasons to suppose that this vindication should actually predominate in relation to the other principles of justice (the retributive ‘balancing’ of crime and punishment, and the reform of the criminal for his own sake). In its final sections, the paper applies the proposed conception of criminal justice to the ‘peace processes’ in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and concludes that in both cases, notwithstanding concessions to the politics of peace-making, considerable justice has been done.     

The conceptualisation of forgiveness among Turkish children and adolescents

This study examined (a) how Turkish children and adolescents define forgiveness, (b) the association between self‐reported forgiveness and the concepts participants hold and (c) the association between self‐reported forgiveness and age. Three hundred and sixty‐seven Turkish children in primary (N = 220) and secondary schools (N = 147) were involved in the study. Participants were asked to define forgiveness, and the study used the Enright Forgiveness Inventory for Children (EFI‐C). Participants' conceptions of forgiveness were categorised into four groups: conditional forgiveness, reconciliation, ignoring the hurtful event and affective reactions. Half of all the participants in the study were found to be in the conditional forgiveness category. Turkish children were found to be mostly in the category of conditional forgiveness, reconciliation and affective reactions compared with adolescents. Adolescents were mainly found to be in the ignoring the hurtful event category. The highest self‐reported forgiveness mean was in the affective reactions category. Participants were commonly offended by friends, siblings, teachers and fathers. No correlation was found between self‐reported forgiveness and age. The present results expand the literature of forgiveness by presenting evidence that Turkish children's and adolescents' understanding of forgiveness moderately relates to theoretical definitions.     

Between Remembering and Forgetting the Years of Political Violence: Psychosocial Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Peru

This article analyzes the association between knowledge of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), evaluation of TRC's achievements, experience of victimization, attitudes toward remembering and forgetting past political violence, perceptions of socioemotional climate (SEC), belief in forgiveness and attitudes toward violence in Peru based on a study conducted in three Peruvian cities with different rates of victimization due to political violence during 1980–2000 (n = 1200). Results showed that a positive attitude toward remembering the past of political violence was predominant and related to a positive evaluation of TRC's achievements. Attitude toward remembering also has an ambivalent collective effect increasing both positive and negative SECs, and it is less accepted by victims of political violence. On the other hand, attitude toward forgetting is less accepted by participants, and it also has an ambivalent effect by increasing positive and negative SECs. Attitude toward forgetting has more societal costs, since it is related to attitudes toward violence and decreased knowledge and a positive evaluation of TRC. In general, findings suggest that remembering traumatic events has an emotional cost, but also it is shown that remembering seems to be more beneficial for society in the long‐term than forgetting.     

My heart is on my tongue: the untranslated self in a translated world

Abstract: The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was the first body to provide translation in all the languages of the country, setting people free from groping around with distorted tongues, unable to see, talk or hear one another … After three centuries of silence South Africans could daily hear the black voice talking and being translated; for the first time white South Africans could hear and listen. Through translation we could access our deepest emotions and feelings. But among the two thousand testimonies there were some that were incomprehensible, that confirmed every racial stereotype built up over many years of apartheid. What does one do with these ‘untranslatable’ narratives? This paper looks at one TRC testimony and one Bushmen story, both of them translated from indigenous languages and both posing enormous moral dilemmas. Read in a particular way, the Bushmen story seems to say that they had no sense of responsibility. I will look at the story in its cultural context as revealed through translation to see if another conclusion is possible. In the TRC testimony, I and two colleagues looked at the slippages between the original Xhosa testimony and the interpreted version and explore the consequences thereof. I want to make the point that a narrative can be experienced as discriminatory and ethically problematic when read through a particular, in this case a western, perspective. But the moment there is an attempt to interpret the narrative via its embeddedness in an indigenous worldview, it becomes breathtakingly ethical, fair and logical.     

Reconciliation and Forgiveness in an Unjust Society

Justification by faith necessarily leads to justice in society. IN post–apartheid South Africa, reconciliation has required truth telling plus confession and, most importantly, land redistribution. Failure at land redistribution in Zimbabwe has reduced the effectiveness of the post–colonial reconciliation program and perpetuated previous injustice.     

The Reconciliation Pyramid—A Narrative-Based Framework for Analyzing Identity Conflicts

The Reconciliation Pyramid is suggested in this article as a heuristic tool for exploring accomplished or burgeoning reconciliation processes, as well as cases such as the Middle East, where only tentative and mostly failed steps have been taken towards reconciliation. The first part proposes a terminological framework indicating the relationship between metanarratives, national metanarratives, and national narratives . This terminology is used to analyze national narratives and their role in conflict evolvement and termination. The second part elaborates the seven stages of the Reconciliation Pyramid: Narrative acquaintance; narrative acknowledgement; expressing empathy; assumption of responsibility; readiness for restitution; asking and granting forgiveness and narrative integration. The article concludes with a short case study of the Camp David negotiations and reflects upon the suitability and contribution of the Reconciliation Pyramid to theoretical and empirical reconciliation research.