Academic literature on the topic 'Programme for Theology and Cultures in Asia'

Cross-cultural ministry to Muslims raises questions about communication and the legitimacy of presenting biblical truth in different forms. This paper seeks to address some of those questions through a survey of the biblical storyline by focusing on the development of diverse cultures, languages, and communities in Scripture. After establishing an endorsement of cultural diversity in the Scriptures, the article moves to applying those principles to the task of translation in light of one prevailing theory of communication, namely Relevance Theory (RT). Translation practices offer both risks and opportunities to the church and established theology. The article argues that in engaging other cultures and language, cross-cultural workers should take a posture of risk and experimentation. They should bias their efforts towards the receptor cultures’ understanding even when the existing church may fear a loss of valued theological principles. This applies to the initial questions raised in the article by endorsing creative ways of presenting biblical truth, including ways that co-opt other religious structures.

The present article has as its premise that the objectives of Receptive Ecumenism, a method of engagement recently promoted in western churches, is already well captured by the Asian Church’s method of triple dialogue. Both emphasize the Christian community’s willingness to learn from rather than to teach their partners-in-dialogue. The contextual realities which gave rise to the Asian Church’s theology of dialogue with the poor, the religions and the cultures of Asia will be discussed, especially with reference to the teachings and experiences of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences.

Abstract This paper seeks to explore an emerging theology of migration and its missiological implications in the official documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). The FABC asserts that migration cannot be separated from the complex interplay of social, economic, class, religious, and political factors that interact to displace people from their homelands. Its emerging theology of migration is rooted in its threefold theological vision of (i) commitment and service to life, (ii) triple dialogue with Asian cultures, religions and the poor, and (iii) with the aim of advancing the Reign of God in Asia. In practical terms, the FABC’s theology of migration begins with social analysis that questions the poverty, economic marginalization, racial, political and religious tensions, environmental degradation, as well as many Asian nations’ heavy dependence on the remittances of their nationals as economic migrants, which lie at the heart of the ever growing numbers of migrants. However, the FABC goes beyond mere social analysis of the dehumanizing conditions that are endured by migrants when it seeks to undergird its migration theology within its broader theological threefold dialogue with the quintessentially Asian realities of diverse cultures, religions, and the immense poverty. Finally, the FABC is convinced that its theology of migration needs to take seriously the intercultural and interreligious implications of migration and integrate the intercultural and interreligious dimensions in its pastoral care of migrants.

AbstractThis article looks at public theology from the perspective of the Asia-Pacific context. Thus, the focus is on theology from the standpoint of Christianity as a minority faith, seeking to do theology in a world outside that of the western church. The article considers the activity of public theology through the engagement of theology with a world of violence. It begins by looking at violence and the transformed communities of peace in the New Testament, through examining the milieu of violence, the transformed communities of peace and the dynamics which created those transformed communities. It then goes on to observe the dynamics of peace and violence in the intercultural history of Christianity, by looking historically at cyclic culture and word culture and the interaction between the two, particularly as they relate to peace and violence. From this, the article draws out conclusions on the Christian experience of peace and violence in relation to cultures, and looks at how Christians are called to engage in public theology in such a world.

In this study, we aimed to examine the intercultural sensitivity levels and ethnocentrism levels, as well as some variables that affect them, of students studying in the Necmettin Erbakan University Theology Faculty in Turkey. A descriptive survey research method was adopted to realize this aim. The Intercultural Sensitivity Scale and the Generalized Ethnocentrism Scale were used as the data collection tools. The sample of the study consisted of 326 students studying in the Necmettin Erbakan University Faculty of Theology during the 2018–2019 academic year. According to our findings, the intercultural sensitivity level of the theology students was “high,” whereas their ethnocentrism level was “low.” The intercultural sensitivity levels of the theology students differed based on age and exposure to individuals from another country or culture. Ethnocentrism levels in the students differed based on gender, the nationality of the students (Europe, Turkey, Asia-Africa), the size of the settlement unit, and exposure to individuals from different countries or cultures.

AbstractThis essay seeks to investigate the mission theology of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences (FABC) as presented in its official documents during the past three decades of its existence and evaluate its implications. In its official documents, the FABC has proceeded on the basis that the Asian milieu, with its rich diversity and plurality of religions, cultures and philosophical worldviews require a distinctively Asian approach to the proclamation of the Gospel that is sensitive to such diversity and pluralism. To this end, this essay surveys and examines the principal aspects and foundational principles of the FABC's theology of mission. It also explores the implications of the FABC's missiological approach for meeting the challenges of the task of carrying out the Christian mission in the diverse and pluralistic Asian Sitz-im-Leben, especially the FABC's consistent insistence that the Christian mission in Asia is best carried out through a threefold dialogue with the myriad of Asian religious traditions, Asian cultures and the teeming masses of Asian poor and marginalized. It then suggests that the FABC's missiological approach is best described as missio inter gentes (mission among the nations) rather than the traditional missio ad gentes (mission to the nations), because of how the FABC perceives the issue of religious pluralism in Asia and its preferred non-confrontational dialogical approach for dealing with it.

The purpose of this article is to provide a new perspective in building theology that is appropriate to the Indonesian context. In an effort to build a distinctive Indonesian theology, the author explores the Syria-Iraq and Palestinian contexts that live in the midst of all situations and challenges in maintaining faith. John Damascus, al-Kindy al-Hasyimi, and Mitri Raheb developed a theology that fits the Syria-Iraq and Palestinian contexts. In their explanations, they present familiar terminology for the Syria-Iraq and Palestine situations, making it easier for Christians to explain the content of the Christian faith. In this way, Indonesian Christians can learn from Syrian-Iraqi and Palestinian Christians in building a Liberation theology that is uniquely Indonesian. To build a Liberation theology in Indonesia, it is necessary to pay attention to the challenges in Indonesia, namely the many cultures and religious traditions and more importantly to the issue of sectarianism or intolerance that results in violence. If the starting point for theology departs from the explanation of Jesus, there will be a clash. The Federation of Asian Bishops Conference (FABC) suggests doing theology in Asia, specifically in Indonesia, not starting with Christology but starting with Pneumatology.

AbstractAs liberation theology spread across the globe in the seventh and eighth decades of the twentieth century, the need was felt for mutual learning and teaching among its proponents in various continents. The Ecumenical Association of Third World Theologians (EATWOT) was founded at Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1976 to facilitate such a dialogue. This article explores the ways in which the thought of Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J., (a Spanish philosopher and theologian who was murdered in El Salvador in 1989) and Asian liberation theology can enrich each other.After situating Ellacuría, especially his activities as rector of the Jesuit University of Central America, in the context of political and military conflicts of El Salvador, the essay expounds Ellacuría's philosophy of realidad historica, his theology of the People of God as el pueblo crucificado, and his understanding of a Catholic university as a “social force,” and shows how these three ideas can enrich Asian liberation theology. The essay then presents Asian liberation theology in the socio-political and religious contexts of Asia and explains how it can enrich Ellacuría's thought and by extension Latin American liberation theology in three areas: theological method, through the use of non-Christian religious sources, especially popular religion; theology of liberation, by attending to the efforts of non-Christian activists for justice and peace; and a new way of being church, through a triple dialogue: dialogue with the Asian people, especially their poor; dialogue with Asian cultures; and dialogue with Asian religions.

This book provides a fascinating historical and cultural overview of traditional beliefs about spirit possession and exorcism around the world, from Europe to Asia and the Middle East to the Americas. Possession and exorcism are elements that occur in nearly every culture. Why is belief in spiritual possession so universal? This accessible reference volume offers a broad sample of the traditions and cultures involving possession and exorcism, presenting thoughts on this widely popular topic by experts from the fields of anthropology, sociology, religious studies, history, neuroscience, forensics, and theology. The entries cover the subject of possession and exorcism across all inhabited continents, from the Bronze Age to the 21st century, providing information that is accessible and intriguing as well as scholarly and authoritative. Beyond addressing the Christian tradition of possession and exorcism, Pentecostalism, and "New Age" and less widely known Western concepts about possession and exorcism, this work examines ideas about possession and exorcism from other world religions and the indigenous cultures of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. It also covers historic cases of possession and presents biographies of famous theologians, exorcists, and possessed individuals. High school and undergraduate readers will learn about world history, religious and spiritual traditions, and world cultures through a topic that figures prominently in popular culture and modern entertainment. Bibliographies that accompany each entry as well as a selected, general bibliography serve to help students locate print and electronic sources of additional information.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Abstract Asian churches enthusiastically received Vatican II in all areas of their life. However, in certain areas, the reception of the council is more evident, including ecclesiology; dialogue with religions, cultures, and the poor; renewal of the Eastern churches; greater participation of the laity; and a renewed understanding of mission. Immediately after the council, Asian churches initiated a process of serious study and assimilation of its teaching. The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) played a vital role in the reception of the council in Asia. The theology of the ‘local churches’ and the triple dialogue that the FABC underlines is key to understanding the Asian reception of Vatican II. The council’s Decree on the Catholic Churches of the Eastern Rite, Orientalium Ecclesiarum, also had a special influence on Asia.

This chapter calls for reimagining multicultural education from the geopolitical location of Asia. Multicultural education in East Asian Pastoral Institute and the Loyola School of Theology, both located within the Ateneo de Manila University, is reimagined, using the hermeneutical lens of coloniality, androcentrism, and patriarchy, which are related to settler colonialism, from the perspectives of the indigenous communities and hierarchy with recourse to the Asian critical feminist theories of two Korean women scholars. The course on leadership has enabled the multicultural community of learners to identity the “lights” and “shadows” in the diverse cultures of their specific contexts while the course on dialogue with indigenous culture and spirituality has encouraged the community of learners to experience epistemic emancipation that enabled them to generate a more context-specific empowering postcolonial theoretical frameworks. More will be done in the future courses to mobilize wisdom and examine settler colonialism for emancipation of the subaltern in Asia.

Abstract William Empson cherished ‘our strong and critical curiosity about alien modes of feeling, our need for the flying buttress of sympathy with systems other than our own’ ( EG 32). It was a belief that fuelled a sustained attempt to foster deeper understanding between the cultural traditions of Europe and Asia. However, after seven years as a university professor in China, Empson did not underestimate the difficulties of a rapprochement between two civilizations separated by what he conceived of as a profound difference of theology. John Haffenden’s narrative of the extraordinary years Empson spent in China during the turbulent upheaval of the Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 9) and throughout the Civil War and the Communist takeover (1947 – 52) has transformed the context in which scholars and critics approach the worldliness of the later poetry and criticism, peppered with anecdote and offhand personal testimony. And yet, a decade of ‘attending’ to Asian cultures had taught Empson a tough CP 55, 101.

This paper describes a new concept and experiences of a distributed interdisciplinary learning programme for students across continents. The aim is to provide students with a truly Global Intercultural Project Experience (GIPE) by working together with peers from around the world, and solving real-life client’s problems. We have received seed-funding for four annual projects to engage students from Germany (Europe), Namibia (Africa), Indonesia (Asia), and Peru (Latin-America). In 2020, 30 students from four continents engaged in a one-semester distributed software development project for a Namibian client. Despite Covid-19 they successfully completed the project expressing deep appreciation for the learning opportunities overcoming challenges of working across wide-spread time zones, cultures, changing requirements, and various technical challenges. Considering the vast learning benefits, we suggest to incorporate such projects in all tertiary education curricula across the globe.