The gender perspective theory is a framework that assists Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) scholars and practitioners to develop less violent and more equal societies. In Colombia, this theory is under attack from Protestant Christian churches that have produced the category of gender ideology to delegitimize the gender perspective. In this article, we analyse the narratives used by members of the Protestant Christian churches and conservative political leaders in Colombia to create the category of gender ideology. This new (...) concept became a central element both in forging the identity of Protestant Christian congregations and in opposing the peace agreement reached by the Colombian government and FARC guerrillas. We discuss how family plays a significant role in the development of the gender ideology. Finally, we contend that gender ideology is a social category that is gaining ground in legal and academic circles in Colombia, forming an identity for Christian conservatives centered in a Manichean world that excludes people who traditionally have been marginalized in Colombian society. (shrink)

In the United States, Protestant Christian identity is the dominant religious identity. Protestant Christian identity confers status privileges, yet also creates objectionable status inequalities. Historical and contemporary evidence includes the unfair treatment of Mormons, Native Americans, Muslims, and other religious minorities. Protestant Christian supremacy also plays a significant role in bolstering anti LGBTQ prejudice, xenophobia, and white supremacy. Ways that Protestant Christian identity correlates with objectionable status inequalities are often neglected in contemporary political philosophy. This paper (...) aims to make a modest contribution towards filling that gap. Some forms of inequality linked to Protestant Christian supremacy can be characterized as domination and oppression. Other instances include barriers to fair equality of opportunity for self-determination. Adapting ideas from egalitarian political philosophy I propose an analysis of objectionable status inequality rooted in Protestant Christian supremacy. Alan Patten’s defense of an egalitarian principle for assessing the effects of law and policy is helpful for this task. (shrink)

Global capitalism is a transnational “operational space” which is produced by the practices of states, policy- and issue-specific government networks, and private organizations such as transnational corporations, global law firms, and standard-setting agencies. This “operational space,” which I call the transnational constellation, works through and beyond distinct spatial settings, endowing them with a global financial capitalistic logic and limiting the scope of democratic self-determination. In the second section, I analyze political protest against this transnational constellation in terms of democratic theory. (...) I argue that transnational protest and activism have to be appreciated for their reshaping of spaces of the political, for developing and delivering a genuinely global perspective on political problems, and for their politicization of the transnational constellation by revealing and contesting structures and strategies of domination. However,... (shrink)

The contemporary Finland is more culturally diverse than previous years thanks to increased international migration. A large number of immigrants entering Finland today are religious in one way or another. This article is a case study of religious beliefs and experiences of protestant Christian immigrants in Finland with the aim of finding out the personal feelings of immigrants towards the Finnish society. A comparative analysis of Protestant Christian immigrants’ experiences in both the host country and country of origin (...) was taken as a foundation for determining effects of the immigrants’ religious beliefs in Finland. This study takes a cross-cultural perspective in analyzing and evaluating the religious beliefs of immigrants. Even though religion is credited to have an upper hand in facilitating social integration of immigrants into host societies, this study found out that religious beliefs and experiences of protestant Christian immigrants in Finland can be integrating or alienating, depending on the degree of religiosity of the immigrants. An awareness of this observation as discussed in this article goes a long way in providing options to choose from in navigating the common problems faced by Protestant Christian immigrants in Finland. (shrink)

In his contribution to this special issue, Michael Northcott argues that there is a historic association between Protestant cultures and the origins of environmentalism. It seems to me, however, that the connection between Protestantism and environmentalism is more complicated and ambivalent than the positive relation he highlights. In this paper, I will problematize that relation on the basis of various theoretical and empirical contributions in the literature on religion and environmentalism. Different positions in this regard within Protestantism will be (...) identified and related to theological positions and the historic impact of Protestantism on culture. In the final section, the impact of environmental degradation on the (global) poor will be highlighted, which leads to the identification of a tension between an orthodox/evangelical Protestant stance towards the poor and towards the environment. (shrink)

In the moral and spiritual vacuum left in Russia by the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989-1991, some of the thinkers who first opposed the Leninist revolution of 1917 have come to a new prominence, and among these is the religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948). He expressed a passionate protest against the revolution and was clearly the most comprehensive contemporary critic of the revolutionary project from a Christian perspective. From his consistently religious perspective he foresaw with precision much of (...) the inhuman and tyrannical potential of the revolutionary project. (shrink)

The empirical study of grace, a relational virtue, is in its beginning stages. The purpose of this study was to provide rich, context-based, qualitative data to describe Mainline Protestants’ (a) experiences of, and (b) beliefs about, divine grace. Interviews were conducted with 28 community adults who were affiliated with Mainline Protestant Churches. Results indicated that Mainline Protestant Christians have varying beliefs about divine grace and how it is related to both the present moment and the afterlife. Divine grace (...) was often defined as, or associated with, other relational virtues (e.g., forgiveness and love), and participants occasionally defined grace as a gift. In addition, divine grace was also reported to be difficult to accept at times for a variety of reasons, but the effects of divine grace have direct associations with participants’ overall well-being. Divine grace was also associated with beliefs about heaven or the afterlife, yet participants had varying beliefs about how grace is applied to non-Christians. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed in light of the present empirical literature on divine grace. (shrink)

New Breeding Techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 are revolutionizing plant breeding and food production. Experts believe that the social debate about these technologies could be similar to those on green genetic engineering: emotional and highly controversial. Future debate about Genome Editing could benefit from a better understanding of the GMO (genetically modified organism) controversy. Against this background, this paper (a) presents results of a content analysis of position papers criticizing green genetic engineering in Germany. In particular, (b) it focuses on the (...) controversy as a place where normative concepts of nature are debated and become visible. Hence, the study complements existing interpretations by showing that the emerging concepts are more diverse than the familiar reductionist breakdown of the debate into anthropocentric vs. non-anthropocentric conceptions suggests. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social ThoughtCharles W. ChristianBonhoeffer and King: Their Legacies and Import for Christian Social Thought Edited by Willis Jenkins and Jennifer M. McBride Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010. 304 pp. $25.00Countless books have been written about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King Jr., assessing their individual leadership in the areas of social justice and theology in the twentieth century. Relatively few (...) works have brought these two individuals together in comparative analysis. This book, edited by Willis [End Page 216] Jenkins (assistant professor of social ethics at Yale Divinity School) and Jennifer M. McBride (visiting lecturer at Candler Divinity School), seeks to do that; it brings together a wide array of scholars in the fields of ethics, theology, pastoral ministry, political theory, African American studies, and feminist theology.As McBride points out in her introduction, the “significant differences in their historic, sociopolitical contexts” can present challenges in comparing the work of these two men and in seeking to contemporize them (8). However, the thought and life of both martyrs “demand[s] action”; in other words, the “thought” of both Bonhoeffer and King remains incomplete without “courageous, constructive, redemptive social engagement” (3). It is in this spirit that the book unfolds.The book is divided into four parts. The first four chapters compose part 1 (titled “Critical Distance”), which takes a broader look at the legacies, key concepts, and limitations or critiques of the thought of Bonhoeffer and King. For example, the second chapter by Stephen R. Haynes (“King and Bonhoeffer as Protestant Saints”) reminds us of the perils of the larger-than-life legacies of both these individuals. When noteworthy persons become personalities or cultural heroes, key aspects of their legacies can be minimized or overlooked. This is particularly important in contemporary American settings where politicians and commentators tend to reduce the legacies of both Bonhoeffer and King to fit their own political agendas.Part 2 pays specific attention to the influence of Bonhoeffer and King on matters related to social justice, such as poverty, racism, and violence. Among the notable contributions in this section is the chapter by Craig J. Slane that deals with the “unexpected turn toward violence” (112) for Bonhoeffer during his involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler during World War II. Part 3 looks at the ways in which the lives and teaching (and especially preaching, in King’s life in particular) of Bonhoeffer and King are instruments of social redemption. In addition to noting the influence of Niebuhr’s emphasis on social sin and social redemption on King’s preaching and leadership, it points out that both Bonhoeffer and King were deeply influenced by the economic and social upheavals of their time; their preaching, teaching, and writing sought to address, in concrete ways, the racial, economic, and political realities of their contexts. In part 4, “Peacemaking,” four authors highlight the contributions King and Bonhoeffer have made to peacemaking and the influence these contributions continue to have. They discuss both men’s commitment to nonviolence and pacifism and the particular challenges this commitment created for them (especially for Bonhoeffer, given his participation in a plot to overthrow Hitler).The essays in this book do not present these two martyrs as unblemished. The book contains rich discussions that honestly assess their personal struggles [End Page 217] of conscience as well as their contextual struggles with such issues as the role of women. Furthermore, the reader will find a solid introduction to the lives and thought of both men while at the same time sitting in on a diverse conversation about how their influential interpretations of the Christian faith can continue to be fleshed out. May this kind of conversation (and action) continue!Charles W. ChristianMount Vernon Nazarene UniversityCopyright © 2012 The Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

À la fin du xvie siècle et au début du xviie, la France sort d’une série de massacres et d’une trentaine d’années de violences extrêmes. Et durant ces Guerres de religion, l’un et l’autre camp se sont référés à la notion d’holocauste, prise au sens religieux et littéral du terme. Si les protestants ont été plus enclins à pratiquer cette référence biblique du point de vue de la victime, les catholiques, en particulier ligueurs, l’ont plutôt employée dans le sens d’un (...) holocauste des réformés. Toujours est-il que les deux camps, réciproquement, se saignent à blanc et font subir à toute une population, impliquée ou non, une horreur qui marque les esprits des « gens d’après ». Si bien que, durant la période de paix intérieure relative qui suit l’accession d’Henri IV au pouvoir, la conscience d’une catastrophe juste passée s’impose, en particulier au théâtre et dans les tragédies. Une catastrophe à laquelle les contemporains se réfèrent comme événement radical du monde d’alors, un pire absolu de ce que l’humanité peut produire d’inhumain, une horreur qu’il faudrait peut-être oublier et/ou sur laquelle il est pourtant nécessaire de faire retour, pour tenter de la penser. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis is the first English translation of Pierre Bayle’s political pamphlet, Réponse d’un nouveau converti à la Lettre d’un refugié of 1689. It may be one of the most critical attacks on a writer’s own side in the history of political ideas. It is a stinging rebuke of Bayle’s own party, the Protestants, for their incoherence, hypocrisy, and violence. It came three years after his similarly savage refutation of the Catholics in The Condition of Wholly Catholic France, also recently published (...) in its first English translation in this journal. A substantial introduction explains some of the context, explores the political theology of this pamphlet, and reviews scholarly interpretations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue ed. by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph WhiteFrederick Christian BauerschmidtThomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue. Edited by Bruce L. McCormack and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013. Pp. viii + 304. $36.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8028-6976-0.The essays collected in Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue are the (...) fruit of a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2011. As presented in this volume, they form five pairs, one each by a Catholic and a Protestant theologian, focused on the topics of (1) the being of God, (2) the Trinity, (3) Christology, (4) grace and justification, and (5) election, providence, and natural law. Thomas Joseph White provides a lengthy introduction, and Bruce McCormack concludes with a brief epilogue. All of the essays at least touch on both Barth and Thomas, though in varying degrees. It must be noted that, with the exception of the essays by White and Wawrykow, the Catholic interlocutors generally engage Barth less deeply than the Protestant interlocutors engage Thomas. Why this might be the case is a point to which I will return.Under the topic of the being of God, Robert Jenson begins with a brief, reflective essay focusing on the radical implications of Barth’s account of God’s “being” or “reality” as “event,” “I,” and “decision” (Ereignis, ich, Entscheidung), and on the content of God’s essence as “the loving One.” Jenson argues that if we follow Barth’s trajectory, we arrive at the paradoxical view that “God’s being is an implosion of freedom, so sheerly contingent that it is not contingent on anything and so is the one necessity. And it is an explosion of love, so sheerly a commitment to the other that it is freedom” (51). Thomas gets only a brief mention, though presumably he stands as the conventional account of God’s being that provides the background against which the true radicalism of Barth’s account can appear. Richard Schenk offers a Catholic counterpoint, engaging not so much with Barth himself as with Jenson and other post-Barthian thinkers such as Ebeling. His essay responds to Jenson’s paradoxes of imploding freedom and exploding love by educing from Thomas’s writings “a theodicy-capable theology of the cross” (57) that operates within a commitment to God’s impassibility as traditionally understood. Implicit in Schenk’s argument is the wager that a God who is, qua [End Page 301] God, beyond all suffering is a richer resource of hope for suffering humanity than is a God who suffers with us in his divinity.Under the topic of the Trinity, Guy Mansini’s essay launches something of a preemptive strike on Bruce McCormack, who, in a widely discussed essay (“Grace and Being,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, 92-110) and in subsequent writings, has developed Barth’s notion of Christ’s obedience on the Cross as the manifestation in time of his “intra-trinitarian obedience” to the Father in order to argue against traditional notions of divine being and in favor of something like the view Jenson sketches in his essay. Mansini draws on the patristic and monastic traditions as well as Thomas to explore the humility and obedience of Christ, arguing that obedience can only be a virtue of a created will: “’To obey,’ like ‘to be caused’ or ‘to be moved,’ belongs exclusively to the created order” (82). Thus, Christ is humble and obedient qua human, not qua divine, and therefore one cannot sensibly speak of an intra-trinitarian obedience but only of the obedience of Christ’s human will to the one divine will that is common to the Father, Son, and Spirit. McCormack’s essay, which follows, seeks to show that the position he has developed by way of Barth’s theology can also be grounded in Thomas’s theology of the relation of divine processions and missions, at least as this has been interpreted by Matthew Levering. McCormack reads Thomas with notable ecumenical generosity, seeing in Thomas’s view that the... (shrink)

English summary: This volume looks at the so far little studied connections between the philosophy of Schelling and the historiographic waves in theological, philosophical and historical discourse during the first half of the 19th century. The reception of Schelling in theology, philosophy and history relates primarily to his writings around 1800. The essays in this volume firstly analyze the considerable impact that these texts had on the structure of contemporary debate. Secondly, they analyze the interdependence of the historical theology that (...) was beginning to take root and Schelling's emerging later philosophy. Thirdly, they examine the reception of Schelling's philosophy of history from the perspective of Friedrich Schleiermacher and historical academic discourse, as well as David Friedrich Strauss, Ferdinand Christian Baur and the Landhut Romantics. German description: Der vorliegende Band thematisiert die bislang nur wenig erforschten Zusammenhange zwischen der Philosophie Schellings und den Historisierungsschuben in den theologischen, philosophischen und geschichtswissenschaftlichen Diskursen der ersten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Die Rezeption Schellings in Theologie, Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaft bezieht sich vor allem auf dessen Schriften um 1800. Die Beitrage des Bandes untersuchen sowohl die breite Wirkung dieser Texte in den zeitgenossischen Debattenkonstellationen sowie die Wechselwirkungen zwischen der sich etablierenden historischen Theologie und der Herausbildung von Schellings Spatphilosophie als auch die Rezeption der Geschichtsphilosophie Schellings bei Friedrich Schleiermacher sowie in den geschichtswissenschaftlichen Diskursen, bei David Friedrich Strauss, Ferdinand Christian Baur sowie in der Landshuter Romantik. Mit Beitragen von: Christopher Arnold, Ulrich Barth, Christian Danz, Georg Essen, Malte Dominik Kruger, Christof Landmesser, Michael Murrmann-Kahl, Georg Neugebauer, Jan Rohls, Oliver Wintzek, Johannes Zachhuber. (shrink)

The article analyzes the influence of German thought on Baron Friedrich von Hügel’s philosophy of religion. The activities of the British scholar in the networks of Catholic modernism are placed within the broader framework of the international discussion on religion around 1900. His religious universalism was shaped to a great extent by the encounter of German intellectuals from a liberal Protestant background, most notably by Rudolf Eucken, Ernst Troeltsch and Friedrich Naumann. This encounter, started during the 1890s, focussed on (...) the concepts of historical individuality and historical development. It took a new direction with the public role adopted by German intellectuals in the propaganda of the World War. Von Hügel’s often ignored treatise The German Soul reacted to the fusion of liberal religious thought with German nationalism as observed in Troeltsch and Naumann. His criticism of a lack of „international morality“ of German thought and his approach to identify the reason for this deficit in the Lutheran and idealistic tradition shed light on the ongoing discussions of a „Sonderweg“ of German thought. Von Hügel’s late attempts to promote Christianity as an anti-nationalist force remind of other more theological rejections of nationalism after the war. However, these attempts are not based on a strict theological or confessional rationale but try to continue the interconfessional and interdisciplinary discussion of the beginning of the century. This is revealed best by von Hügel’s close but not uncritical relationship to Troeltsch in the early 1920s. (shrink)

This article explores the significance of feminism in transnational activism around LGBTQ protest events, namely equality marches and associated festivals in Kraków, Poznań and Warsaw in Poland. The arguments advanced in this article are based on a multi-method qualitative research project focusing on transnational cooperation in the planning and realization of LGBTQ protest events in Poland, conducted in the years 2008–2009. The authors highlight the decisively coalitional nature of the activist networks around LGBTQ politics in some of the locations studied. (...) They argue that feminists are core actors in these ‘networked solidarities’ around the oppression and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people both in local and transnational contexts. Solidarity is a concept used by many research participants to account for their political actions and to rationalize intra- and intergroup dynamics shaped by complex webs of differences. The authors draw on postcolonial feminist discussions on the limits and potentialities of politics of solidarity as a ‘politics of location’ to account for tensions which some activists reported regarding their experience of ‘coalition work’. Some of these tensions related to gender politics and gender relations, always articulated in the conjunction of wider webs of power relations. (shrink)

This essay describes a problem, that German protestant theology has faced for nearly a hundred years. The problem derives from a theory of death, which spread among theologians in the first decades of the 20th century. In contradiction to traditional doctrine they interpreted death not as the moment, when the immortal soul seperates from the body, but as the moment in time, when human life comes to its absolute end. That means, they denied the idea of an immortal soul. (...) Accordingly they interpreted the resurrection of the dead as a radically new creation. This theory, named Ganztodtheorie, caused an unsolvable problem, that can be described as follows: How can one be sure, that it is exactely he, who becomes resurrected and not a newly created double? Christian Henning discusses the answers to this question, that had been given by Carl Stange, Paul Althaus, Werner Elert, Karl Barth, Eberhard Jüngel and Wolfhard Pannenberg and finally presents his own solution. In doing so he modifies the traditional idea of the immortality of the soul. (shrink)

The doctrine of creation and the knowledge of nature have come into tension in modernity. Against this background, the article discusses the basic problems of a theology of nature starting from a systematic theology of religious communication. Dogmatic statements about the world as God’s creation are not about a description of nature and reality but about a reflexive account of Christian–religious communication. The object of the doctrine of creation is thus the world-related contents of the Christian religion as well as (...) the function these have in it. Thus, both the critique of the representational version of the doctrinal tradition’s conception of creation and its reflexive turn in 20th-century Protestant theology are taken up and carried forward in such a way that the belief in creation is not understood as a general qualification of the world but is related to the concrete contents of religious communication. Contribution: The article proposes a new formulation of the traditional doctrine of creation on the basis of a systematic theology of religious communication. This approach is intended to avoid a coexistence of religious belief in creation and scientific explanation of the world, as well as their being pushed into one another. By transferring the belief in creation to Christian–religious communication, the latter thematises how religious contents are created in the Christian religion. (shrink)

The latest news from our planet is threatening: climate change, pollution, forest loss, species extinctions. All these words are frightening and there is no sign of improvement. Simple logic leads to the conclusion that humanity has to react, for its own survival. But at the scale of a human being, it is less obvious. Organizing one’s daily life in order to preserve the environment implies self-questioning, changing habits, sacrificing some comfort. In one word, it is an effort. Then, what justifies (...) such an effort? The personal choice to act in order to preserve our environment is often made by simple altruism. This choice is based on our love for other human beings: our love for the others grounds our effort. Our moral values, our ethical reflections and our religious beliefs are the deep core of these choices. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” (John 15.12 NRSV). This Charter shows the moral and religious values that can help us react regarding the current environmental crisis and it should empower us to transcend the ideas of effort and sacrifice in order to consider the respect of the shared house, in a prophetic fulfillment of the being. (shrink)

Within a German sample, the current cross-sectional questionnaire study conducts interreligious and interdenominational comparisons between Catholics, Protestants, free-church Protestants, Bahá’ís, Muslims, Spiritualists, i.e., religiously unaffiliated persons who label themselves as “spiritual,” and religious/spiritual “nones.” The comparisons refer to self-ratings of religiosity and spirituality, centrality of religiosity, as assessed by the Centrality of Religiosity Scale, and God concepts. The study is largely exploratory in nature, but also aims at identifying contexts of faith in which the term “spiritual” is typically used as (...) a self-description. The results show that only Spiritualists and free-church Protestants substantially label themselves as “spiritual.” However, they differ in many respects from each other, thus representing two distinct contexts of faith. The results further reveal a medium position of Catholics and Protestants in between the other subgroups, commonalities as well as specific differences between free-church Protestants, Bahá’ís, and Muslims, and some religious/spiritual approaches even within the “nones.”. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGIn der gegenwärtigen theologischen Debatte über das zukünftige Schicksal des Individuums ist der Gerichtsgedanke mit seinem doppelten Ausgang, der zur Seligkeit oder zur Verdammnis führt, sehr umstritten. Darin zeigt sich, dass die Funktion eschatologischer Aussagen undeutlich ist. Der Beitrag unternimmt den Versuch, im Durchgang durch die protestantische Lehrtradition Funktion und Bedeutung eschatologischer Aussagen für das Verständnis des christlichen Glaubens herauszuarbeiten. Die Bedeutung von Himmel und Hölle liegt nicht in einer Beschreibung einer objektiven Realität, sondern in der Selbstbeschreibung des Glaubens als (...) einem unableitbaren Geschehen des Sich-Verständlich-Werdens des Menschen in der Geschichte.SUMMARYIn contemporary theological debates on the future destiny of the individual, the image of the Last Judgement with its twofold outcome of either leading to eternal bliss or to damnation is highly controversial. This calls for new reflection on the function of eschatological statements. This paper offers an elaboration of the function and meaning of eschatological statements for the understanding of the Christian faith by going through the protestant doctrinal tradition. The meaning of heaven and hell, it is argued, is not to be found in a description of an objective reality but in the self-description of faith as a contingent self-understanding of human being in history. (shrink)

At the end of the 16th century and early 17th century, France emerges from thirty years of extreme violence and a series of massacres. During these Religious wars, both sides, using the literal religious meaning of the word, referred to the notion of holocaust: if Protestants tend to practice this biblical reference from the point of view of the victims, the Catholics, particularly the members of the catholic League, have rather used it in the sense of a (necessary) Holocaust against (...) the Protestants. Anyway, the two sides are mutually bleeding themselves white: they imposed on the whole people, involved or not, an incredible horror, and unforgettable for all the individuals who lived after this period. Therefore, during the period of relative peace which followed Henry IV’s accession to the throne (1593-1594), and even if the Edict of Nantes forbids to recall it, the collective consciousness of a just passed disaster remains, especially in theatre and in the tragedies. This disaster is seen as a radical event for the world, as an absolute worst the humanity can generate in terms of inhumanity. Do people must forget this disaster or do they have to look back on it to think and judge what occured some years before? (shrink)

Whereas in the first half of the 20th century, proclamation was the focal point of pastoral care in Germany, the 1970s witnessed an embracing of the American pastoral care movement. From then on, pastoral care was increasingly understood as accompanying patients whilst adopting the spiritual dimension. Nowadays, Christian chaplains are encountering an increasing number of patients from different religious communities. Various models have been proposed to help Protestant chaplains find an authentic form of pastoral care suitable for all religions. (...) Until a clear position is assumed with regard to Christianity's demands of absolutism, however, none of these approaches can be satisfactory. (shrink)

For many reasons, it is true that the Protestant Reformation unleashed the forces that lay behind the emergence of capitalism. Such a system was compatible with the emancipation of individuals, their mentalities, due to specific societal reforms and transformations. Therefore, it gave birth, in an unprecedented way, to a “new form of capitalism”. But the main idea I want to stress in this article is that the capitalist ethos was present before the Reformation, many centuries ago, in what is (...) called now the “Christian spirit”. In this direction, I emphasize many theories which disagree with the Weber’s well-known thesis about the relation between capitalism and religion, especially when it comes to generalize a particular result that is both theologically vague and empirically disprovable. (shrink)

It is evident that disunity is a reality wherever we look in the world today. Even within the Body of Christ there is a lack of unity that is appalling. The universal church needs to develop a greater urgency about it and at the same time, do more about it than most are doing. If the universal church comes to a realization that genuine Christian unity is already ‘an established reality and can progressively be realized and brought into the actualities (...) of life’, perhaps then the universal church would strive harder to create and maintain a sustainable Christian unity making it a ‘lived reality’. As a Reformed family, we believe in the creative and redemptive activity of God, inaugurated in Jesus Christ but not yet completed. The Kingdom of God is a present reality, which will be expressed anew in all its fullness. This is our Christian hope, which is fundamental to our Christian faith and Christian faith is expectant faith. The universal Church therefore must offer the image of a people who are mature in faith and capable of finding a meeting-point beyond denominational barriers and not the image of a people divided and separated because of ecclesiastical differences. It is hoped that the Global Christian Forum will continue to reflect that image. (shrink)

This essay brings Critical Whiteness Studies into liberationist Christian ethics in order to analyze white Protestant responses to the 1969 Black Manifesto, which demanded reparations from white churches. The essay's primary argument is that the absence of a sense of white moral agency among white Protestants manifested itself in behaviors and rhetoric that ensured whiteness went unacknowledged, which caused Protestant responses to the Manifesto to fail. A related argument is that white behavior and rhetoric were particularly dramatic because (...) of the call for reparations. Reparations assume that race is a material relationship in which there has been a perpetrator and a victim, rendering the acknowledgment of white agency unavoidable. This essay thus analyzes several ways in which whites can be seen turning away from white selves, turning a scrutinizing gaze instead to Black selves and, in the process, absenting white agency from the work of racial justice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Scriptural AuthorityA Christian (Protestant) PerspectiveReinhold BernhardtThe Sola Scriptura Principle in the Reformation MovementIn curbing the authority of the ecclesiastical Magisterium the Reformation movement brought the authority of the Holy Scripture to the forefront as the normative foundation of Christian theology. One of its basic axioms is the sola scriptura principle, meaning that all one needs to know in order to live in a salvific relation to God can (...) be acquired “by scripture alone.” This constitutes the formal, epistemological principle of Protestant theology up to today, and complements the material principles solus Christus, sola gratia, and sola fide. Whereas these material principles refer to the manifestation of salvation in Christ (alone), to the eternal ground of salvation through the grace of God (alone), and to the gift of salvation by faith (alone), the formal principle of sola scriptura calls upon the Christian to realize that these three principles of material truth are made known to us (only) by the formal principle—by Holy Scripture. “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture.” 1On the one hand, the Reformers taught that Holy Scripture not only offers testimony to the Word of God but also is itself of divine origin since the authors wrote under the immediate influence of God. In view of this, God is ultimately the principal author, while the writing humans are only instrumental scribes. It follows from that that the Bible possesses divine authority.On the other hand the Reformers distinguished between the Bible as the Word of God and the Word of God in the Bible. Furthermore they made a distinction between the written word of the biblical books and the “Logos,” the eternal word of God, which speaks through the words of the Bible and addresses the reader here and now, existentially. As a testimony to and a medium of the Word of God the Holy Scripture for Luther is “Christ’s spiritual body,” 2 and thus the authority of the biblical scriptures is a derived and secondary authority. This authority does not rest simply on the sacred text as such but rather on the proclamation of God’s grace-filled Lordship over nature [End Page 73] and history in general and over the individual life in particular. It is not the text as such which is to be regarded as Word of God, but the text’s message. “Message” does not refer primarily to the semantic focus of the text as intended by the human author and as understood by the reader, but to the kerygma, the living and effective word of God. The Reformers stressed the soteriological efficacy of the “Word of God” as witnessed in the Scripture. Not only does this Word bear a specific significance and lead to insight and knowledge, but it also heals the broken relationship between the human and God, imparts forgiveness, incorporates into the community of saints, creates faith, and renews life. The Bible is the instrument of God through which God reveals Godself and opens the way to salvation through faith (which signifies existential incorporation) in Christ.Let us now take a closer look at the differences among the three branches of the Reformation movement—the Lutheran, the Calvinist-Reformed, and the Spiritualist—with regard to their understanding of scriptural authority.LutheranFor Luther there is a normative core message in the New Testament, a gospel within the gospels. It consists in the “good news” of the justification of the sinner sola gratia in Christ, without any contribution on the part of the one justified. God is the author of that “good news,” though it is not expressed in all of the biblical scriptures with equal clarity. As a consequence of this difference between the gospel and the scriptures Luther assesses the relative worth of the various books of the Bible, using the gospel of unmerited and unconditionally granted grace as the criterion for interpreting and evaluating the various biblical texts. The Epistle of James, for instance, he dismissed as a stroherne Epistel—a... (shrink)

The volume contains ten historical theological studies tracing the significance of Luther for Protestant religious culture (mainly in the German-speaking world) since the Reformation. The approach taken is one of the history of reception: selected positions in modern Protestantism are identified as different forms of reception of Luther's theology. In the background is the view that at present a productive systematic theological approach to Luther's theology primarily requires a detailed consideration of a new Protestant religious culture.

The Protestant ethic — a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God — was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety (...) over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms. (shrink)