Reconciliation and the Great (whole) Commission

The label “Great Commission,” attributed to Matthew 28:16-20, has been for evangelicals the inspiration for the evangelization of the world for over a century. But there is more to the commissioning words of Jesus than the ministry of evangelism. This article contends that a missiology of reconciliation, applied to “the Great Commission,” uncovers the broader, holistic nature of the mission of the church. In addition to evangelism, reconciliation as mission also includes peacemaking and stewardship.     

The New Interventionism

This paper focuses on the boundaries of political sovereignty, one key aspect of global political justice and an important background condition to the issues of global economic justice treated in the other papers of this volume. I first present an interpretive summary of the traditional arguments against and for intervention, stressing, to a greater extent than is usual, the consequentialist character of the ethics of intervention. It makes a difference whether we think that an intervention will do more good than harm, and some of the factors that determine the outcome are matters of strategy and institutional choice. I then explore the significance of a key factor that makes for much of what is new in the new interventionism: the role of multilateral and particularly U.N. authorization and implementation. I argue that the more salient role of the United Nations should lead us to a more expansive tolerance of international intervention and that global standards of justice, both political and economic, can therefore be more widely enforced against claims to national autonomy.     

Peacemaking at home in the world: grounding children’s spirituality in peace

Peace is both a religious and non-religious proposition. Religiously it is articulated within doctrinal categories. In non-religious terms, it is pursued within national and international interests. Non-religious pursuits to peace were often framed within political and some cultural considerations involving adult participants. However, numerous spiritual considerations to peacemaking have traditionally identified children’s dispositions as a material for inquiry. This paper described how children’s perspectives on peace and peacemaking essentially projected aspects of children’s spirituality on peace using some 296 children’s essays and drawings on peace. Results showed how peculiar traits of children’s spirituality grounded on peace were strategically nested on domestic order, the world and environment. Peacemaking is homemaking; it is peacemaking at home in the world.     

War in Christ's World: Bonhoeffer and Just Peacemaking on War and Christology

Abstract : In this paper, I apply Dietrich Bonhoeffer's exposition of the nature of war as found in his unfinished magnum opus, Ethics, to the contemporary peacemaking movement known as “just peacemaking.” Using Bonhoeffer, I argue that the just‐peacemaking approach accomplishes tactical peace, but only by undermining its stated purposes of bringing theology to bear on war. By assuming theological reasoning as secondary to historical conditions, just peacemaking has, by Bonhoeffer's logic, already abandoned the world to itself and severed it from theological resources.     

Samuel Kobia: Ecumenical,Passionate, Peacemaker

This article discusses the role played by Samuel Kobia in the ecumenical movement and the World Council of Churches, of which he was general secretary from 2004 to 2009, and his involvement in peacemaking and mediation in Africa, especially in his home country of Kenya, in Sudan, and in South Sudan.     

What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic in Christian Theological Schools

This article argues for reconceptualizing islām as ‘wholeness making, peacemaking, well-being making, and safety making’ in the institutional setting of theological schools. A small number of Protestant seminaries have hired Muslim faculty and introduced Islamic studies programmes, thereby allowing for approaches to the study of Islam that focus on theology, professional practice and the lived experience of religion. Using the lens of translation studies, this article analyses the semantic and functional equivalence of this fourfold meaning in the Arabic source language and context, as well as the English target language and context, focusing on Emmanuel College of Victoria University in the University of Toronto as an example. The article demonstrates how this translation is linguistically more accurate than ‘submission’ and other conceptualizations and contextually better suited to meeting the theological and professional needs of students who venture into the workplace. Furthermore, the article shows how this fourfold translation serves as an overarching ethos in ethical reasoning, rendering the central theory of the objectives of the law (maqā?id al-sharī?a) functional and pragmatic. At the same time, it provides a foundation for dealing with diversity and difference in interreligious and intercultural settings.