Expanding the Horizontal Call: A Typology of Social Influence on the Call to Ministry

This research examines the social actors and interactions that facilitate seminary students' sense of calling. Drawing from 36 in-depth interviews with first year Masters of Divinity students, we introduce six ideal typical social others who play a formative role in the early stages of a call to ministry: instigators, exemplars, interpreters, affirmers, challengers, and codiscerners. Together, these findings demonstrate that the call to ministry, while deeply personal, emerges through social interactions that facilitate and make plausible a person's sense of calling and that sustain it over time. Extending Richard Pitt's conceptualization of the “horizontal call,” this paper argues that social others help evoke and solidify—not merely legitimate—a personal sense of call. This research also highlights differences in the social structuring of call by gender. Despite considerable gains in the ordination of women, we find that many still face obstacles to experiencing and embracing a call to ministry.     

Good government and the vocation of citizenship: A Lutheran perspective

Martin Luther considered governmental authority to be one of the structures through which God exercises providential care of the created world. Consequently, government and civil society are dimensions of life in which one lives out the divine calling to serve one's neighbors. This theological perspective offers a distinct contribution to discussions of the appropriate role of religion in the public square. God's desire for justice for all is the criterion by which to evaluate specific governments, policies, and officials. The goal of justice provides a common framework within which Christians can work for the common good with those of other faiths and no faith.     

Vocation and encounter: A Scandinavian theological reflection on everyday life as Christians

Martin Luther turned from understanding vocation as a Christian praxis of leaving the world to understanding it as a praxis within everyday life. In accordance with such an understanding, historically, vocation in the Scandinavian countries was central for organizing society as a whole. This article discusses a contemporary use of vocation where there is a tension between communal and individual aspects in a Scandinavian context characterized by democracy, gender equality, and migration. I then propose a focus on vocation and encounter.     

Vocation for planetary citizenship: Lutheran liberal arts education in the Anthropocene

The focus question of this article is, “In what ways should Lutheran higher education's teaching on vocation be revised to include the fact that we are living in a natural world massively impacted by human behavior, the Anthropocene Era?” This can be broken down into two more explicit questions: “What is the role of liberal arts education in such a changed context?” and “What resources in the Lutheran tradition can contribute to preparing students to become effective sustainability leaders?” The thesis of this article is that Lutheran liberal arts education, to foster planetary citizenship, must move students from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric understanding of vocation, preparing them to become leaders for a sustainable, interfaith society. This change can be accomplished by reaffirming the value of the liberal arts to foster sustainability education and retrieving Luther's understanding of creation to elicit wonder and appreciation of the natural world.     

CLIMATE CHANGE,LAUDATO SI', CREATION SPIRITUALITY,AND THE NOBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST'S VOCATION

This exploration into spirituality and climate change employs the “four paths” of the creation spirituality tradition. The author recognizes those paths in the rich teachings of Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si' and applies them in considering the nobility of the scientist's vocation. Premodern thinkers often resisted any split between science and religion. The author then lays out the basic archetypes for recognizing the sacredness of creation, namely, the Cosmic Christ (Christianity); the Buddha Nature (Buddhism); the Image of God (Judaism); the “Primordial Man” (Hinduism), as well as the premodern universal teaching of “God as Beauty.” He addresses the subject of evil which deserves serious attention in the face of the realities posed by climate change and the resistance to addressing them. In the concluding section, the author speaks of a new Order of the Sacred Earth that was launched in fall 2017 to gather persons of whatever spiritual tradition or none to devote themselves to preserving Mother Earth.     

Equipping the Equippers: The Pedagogical and Programmatic Implications of The Christians' Callings in the World Project

When five theological schools realized (a) their graduates affirmed vocation as central to their theology and practice, yet (b) the parishioners of their graduates nevertheless did not feel called, they knew they had to do something. For six years, faculty teams from these schools conducted a variety of experiments in pedagogy, curriculum reform, and program development in order to train their graduates to equip all of God's people to claim and live their vocational identity in the world. This article introduces the identified challenge and necessary theological and pedagogical shift and then describes five of those experiments in greater detail.     

The Option for Life

In today's Anthropocene, the reality of our growing global population, with its requirement of and strain upon the natural world, and our grave projected ecological outlook pose new challenges for Christian ethicists. How can both people and the earth flourish? Discussed within the context of theological and secular reflections on natural law, this article proposes one answer to such a question through a recasting of the human right to nature by way of a deep and wide understanding of vocation. Using Luther as a prototype who demonstrates the innate value of all life forms and offers an innovative working concept of vocation, it is here shown how an emphasis on vocation, when extended ecologically, can promote the option of life for all.     

The Information Behavior of Catholic Women Discerning a Vocation to Religious Life

Approximately 10% of Roman Catholic women seriously discern a vocation to religious life during their lifetime. Spiritual discernment is often characterized by prayer and spiritual direction, but also the acquisition of knowledge and information about religious life. No study to date has sought to understand how women seek out and retrieve information about religious life. Therefore, the current study sought to answer the following research question: “what is the information-seeking behavior (ISB) of Catholic women discerning a vocation to religious life?” using Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology. A survey was administered online and yielded responses from 124 participants. Findings indicated that digital and print resources were heavily utilized. However, participants indicated that connecting with a person face-to-face and visiting religious sisters produced a kind of knowledge and information that could not be acquired online, suggesting that their ISB was an integration of digital and print resources and human connection. This study contributes to the literature by intersecting the disciplines of information science and religion to equip practitioners who seek to develop resources for them. The study introduces the concept of limited Internet effectiveness in order to understand the integration of digital versus in-person resources in spiritual religious processes.     

新的人身损害赔偿司法解释对医疗行业的影响及医疗行业的对策

新的人身损害赔偿司法解释将于2004年5月1日正式施行.预计将引起医疗纠纷诉讼大量增加,且多以医疗侵权为诉因,医疗机构的赔偿费用也会大幅上升.医疗行业应从减少医疗过失,改善医患关系,完善医疗事故鉴定等方面加以应对.