Journal articles on the topic 'Thomas Orthodox Church of India'
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1
Varghese, Baby. "Renewal in the Malankara Orthodox Church, India." Studies in World Christianity 16, no. 3 (December 2010): 226–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/swc.2010.0102.
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The Malanakra Orthodox Syrian Church, which belongs to the family of the Oriental Orthodox Churches, proudly claims to be founded by the Apostle St Thomas. Its history before the fifteenth century is very poorly documented. However, this ancient Christian community was in intermittent relationship with the East Syrian Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which was discontinued with the arrival of the Portuguese, who forcefully converted it to Roman Catholicism. After a union of fifty-five years, the St Thomas Christians were able to contact the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, thanks to the arrival of the Dutch in Malabar and the expulsion of the Portuguese. The introduction of the West Syrian Liturgical rites was completed by the middle of the nineteenth century. The arrival of the Anglican Missionaries in Malabar in the beginning of the nineteenth century provided the Syrian Christians the opportunity for modern English education and thus to make significant contributions to the overall development of Kerala, one of the states of the Indian Republic.
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Sodomora, Pavlo. "St. Thomas Aquinas in Ukrainian Orthodox Schools." Hybris 44, no. 1 (March 30, 2019): 21–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/1689-4286.44.02.
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Ukrainian philosophical thought has been developing under the influence of several philosophical streams. Being influences by Orthodox tradition mainly, Church has always been at the forefront of any political campaign conducted on Ukrainian terrain. The level of education plays a key role in the process of cultural development of any country. Western part of Ukraine, comparing to its Eastern counterpart, had better access to education and information due to Catholic Church predominance in the region. The article intends to investigate the scholastic and patristic thought and its reproduction by Ukrainian cultural environment via various European teaching systems. Ukraine has been developing in a broad European context and this is why it could not have been deprived of influential teachings. But Russian imperialistic, and later communist ideology was hindering constantly the deployment and development of many ideas that were important for European philosophy. Together with Eastern theology, which was based mainly on works of Damascenus, Aristotelian traditions were introduced in Ukrainian schools gradually, and based on Aristotle’s works, theology of St. Thomas was taught. Prominent Ukrainian thinkers were influenced by many scholastic philosophers, including St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas’ influence is apparent in later thinkers.
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Trush, Tetiana. "CHRISTIAN GEOPOLITICS: HIS ALL-HOLINESS ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW І AND UKRAINIAN AUTOCEPHALY." Sophia. Human and Religious Studies Bulletin 19, no. 1 (2022): 67–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/sophia.2022.19.15.
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This article will discuss the role of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew І in restoring the independence of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. Today we are witnessing radical changes in our country. These changes are related to the restoration and struggle of Ukraine for its independence. It is a struggle both in the political arena and in the arena of the national church project. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has been an invaluable help in this direction for Ukraine. Therefore, this article will highlight the path Ukraine has taken to receive Thomas. The giving of Thomas to Ukraine is a solution to a universal global question that has lasted for centuries. Thomas is a borderline of sorts against Russian encroachment on Ukrainian lands, church, and culture. And the events of 2018 at the Cathedral of Bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate become important from a geopolitical point of view. The consequence was the restoration of the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.
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Platt, Warren C. "The African Orthodox Church: An Analysis of Its First Decade." Church History 58, no. 4 (December 1989): 474–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3168210.
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The African Orthodox church, an expression of religious autonomy among black Americans, had its genesis in the work and thought of George Alexander McGuire, a native of Antigua, whose religious journey and changing ecclesiastical affiliation paralleled his deepening interest in and commitment to the cause of Afro-American nationalism and racial consciousness. Born in 1866 to an Anglican father and a Moravian mother, George Alexander McGuire was educated at Mico College for Teachers in Antigua and the Nisky Theological Seminary, a Moravian institution in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (then the Danish West Indies). In 1893 McGuire, having served a pastorate at a Moravian church in the Virgin Islands, migrated to the United States, where he became an Episcopalian. In 1897 he was ordained a priest in that church and, in the succeeding decade, served several parishes, including St. Thomas Church in Philadelphia, which was founded by Absalom Jones. His abilities and skills were recognized, and in 1905 he became the archdeacon for Colored Work in the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas. Here he became involved with various plans—none of which bore fruit—which would have provided for the introduction of black bishops in the Episcopal church to assist in that church's work of evangelization among black Americans. It is believed, however, that McGuire was influenced by the different schemes which were advanced, and that he “almost certainly carried away from Arkansas the notion of a separate, autonomous black church, and one that was episcopal in character and structure, as one option for black religious self-determination and one avenue for achieving black independence.”
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Black, Joseph William. "Offended Christians, Anti-Mission Churches and Colonial Politics: One Man’s Story of the Messy Birth of the African Orthodox Church in Kenya." Journal of Religion in Africa 43, no. 3 (2013): 261–96. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700666-12341257.
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Abstract Thomas Nganda Wangai’s personal account of the beginnings of the Orthodox Church in Kenya gives a first-hand narrative of the Kikuyu resistance to mission Christianity and mission-imposed education that led to the break with the mission churches and colonial-approved mission schools. The subsequent creation of the Kikuyu Independent Schools Association and the Kikuyu Karing’a Education Association as well as independent churches attempted to create a new identity outside the mission church establishment in colonial Kenya. This desire to remain Christian while throwing off the yoke of Western versions of Christianity led Nganda and other early leaders to seek out a nonmission form of Christianity that reflected the ancient purity of the early church. Nganda tells the story of how a schismatic archbishop of the African Orthodox Church provided the initial leadership for the nascent Orthodox movement. Nganda charts the interrelatedness of the search for an ecclesiastical identity and the decision to align with the Alexandrian Patriarchate and the growing political conflict with the Kenyan colonial authorities. The paper concludes with Nganda’s description of the Orthodox Church’s response to the declaration of Emergency in 1953, along with the hardship and suffering that the subsequent ten years of proscription imposed.
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Conovici, Iuliana. "The Romanian orthodox church after 1989: social identity, national memory, and the theory of secularization." Erdélyi Társadalom 5, no. 1 (2007): 65–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.17177/77171.76.
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The Romanian Orthodox Church engaged, after the fall of communism, in the reconstruction of its public identity and its position in society. The public discourse of its official representatives – the Holy Synod and individual hierarchs, especially the Patriarch Teoctist – expresses and „translates” this process to the faithful and the general public. Its perception by this public, particularly when mediated by means of mass communication, is usually partial and frequently altered.</p> <p>By focusing on the official discourse of the Romanian Orthodox Church representatives, as expressed in the ecclesiastical press and (re)transmitted in the common mass media, this paper will explore the justification/explanation by ecclesiastical officials of this process, following the lines of two main - intertwined - lines: the legitimization of the resurgence in the public sphere of the Church as an institution of spiritual and social assistance and its presence as the privileged keeper and guardian of national values.</p> <p>It will be further argued that, while explicitly refuting and condemning any signs of secularization in the Romanian society, the Romanian Orthodox Church, through its official discourse, is actually contributing to the deepening of this very process within both society and the Church itself.</p> <p>Our main sources for the public discourse of the Romanian Orthodox Church will be the ecclesiastical press and collections of speeches, sermons, articles of Orthodox hierarchs and documents of the Holy Synod. For the theoretical framing of the paper, the main references will be works of Thomas Luckmann, Danièle Hérvieu-Léger, Grace Davie, René Rémond, etc.
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Obushnyi, Mykola. "POLITICAL COMPONENT IN THE CONFLICTIZATION OF INTERCONFESSIONAL RELATIONS IN UKRAINE." Almanac of Ukrainian Studies, no. 25 (2019): 84–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/2520-2626/2019.25.13.
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The article identifies the place and role of the political component in the conflictization of interconfessional relations in Ukraine by taking into consideration that the network of religious organizations in our country is one of the largest on the European continent. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the political component in the conflictization of interconfessional relations in Ukrainian Orthodoxy. During more than thousand years the Orthodoxy, despite the conflicts between the churches and their believers in past and present is still the most widespread Christian confession in Ukraine. Moreover, it saved a tendency to the inner unity, including creation of the Local Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). Obtaining by the Orthodox Church of Ukraine on January 6, 2019 from the Ecumenical Patriarchate the Thomas was an important step in founding of independent and competent national church. This is also evidenced by the fact that during the first year of existing of the OCU the number of its parishes increase up to 7,000, not less important is the fact that three churches: The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the Hellenic Church and the Patriarchate of Alexandria recognized the OCU and this already testifies its international acceptance as the part of Orthodoxy. Undoubtedly, the Russian occupation of Crimea and Putin's war in Donbas and the support of these shameful actions by the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and its Ukrainian branch, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC MP) served to the political choices and self-identification of a big part of Ukrainian believers and it gives hope for the gradual stabilization (deconflictization) of interconfessional relations in the Ukrainian Orthodoxy.
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Gura, Vitalii. "Thomas Bremer. Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia." Theological Reflections: Euro-Asian Journal of Theology, no. 22 (April 17, 2019): 134–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.29357/2521-179x.2019.22.14.
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Dunn, Dennis J. "Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia by Thomas Bremer." Catholic Historical Review 101, no. 3 (2015): 593–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/cat.2015.0136.
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Nichols, R. L. "The Orthodox Church. By Thomas E. Fitzgerald. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. 240 pp. $65.00." Journal of Church and State 39, no. 2 (March 1, 1997): 361–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jcs/39.2.361.
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David, Edward A. "Church, State, and Virtue in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo (2020)." Religions 14, no. 2 (February 10, 2023): 239. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/rel14020239.
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To curb the spread of COVID-19, houses of worship in the State of New York were legally required to limit attendance at religious ceremonies. Two religious communities—the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and the Orthodox Jewish organization, Agudath Israel of America—asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. This article provides a theological interpretation of the Court’s decision to grant these communities injunctive relief, thus freeing them from the State’s restrictions on religious attendance. Drawing upon the Catholic tradition, and especially the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, the article offers a sustained virtue-based analysis of the Court opinion and of the relationship between church and state more generally.
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CHARIPOVA, LIUDMILA. "PETER MOHYLA'S TRANSLATION OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST." Historical Journal 46, no. 2 (June 2003): 237–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x03003108.
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The article is dedicated to one of the least known early works of Peter Mohyla, Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev (1633–46). Known as a great church and educational reformer and ‘Westernizer’, he made a major contribution to the cultural development in Ruthenia, then a part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Muscovy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The work has survived in a single manuscript copy which could have been made from a printed edition that was suppressed or destroyed soon after its publication. The author has established, for the first time, that the work in question is not an original piece, but a rendition of the fifteenth-century Catholic devotional treatise The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis into contemporary literary Ukrainian. First-hand evidence is presented to support this claim. Mohyla brought many significant changes to the original text using it as a vehicle to convey his own views formed under the influence of the Catholic Reformation, Jesuit education, and Latin books. Conclusions are drawn about the way he applied Western sources to rid the Orthodox Church from obscurity and self-imposed isolation from the European Christian civilization.
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Kovalenko, Natalia. "Tolstoy as a Social and Religious Reformer." Социодинамика, no. 3 (March 2023): 54–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.25136/2409-7144.2023.3.39824.
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This paper examines the works of the great Russian writer, philosopher and socio-religious reformer Leo Tolstoy created in the late XIX – early XX centuries. Tolstoy's social philosophy assumed and was based on the religious type of culture as its foundation. The Christian type of personality in its Orthodox sound was fundamental for Tolstoy. Although at the same time, he analyzed and criticized the contemporary Orthodox Church from unorthodox positions for its close connection with the power structures of the Russian Empire. As the historian of Russian philosophy V.V. Zenkovsky wrote at the time, Tolstoy's worldview was inseparable from the Orthodox faith. Tolstoy's teaching, in particular his philosophy of nonviolence, became quite widespread and contributed to the emergence of the socio-religious movement of Tolstoyites in Russia. Tolstoy's ideas were adequately perceived abroad, in particular, this is the ideology of Mahatma Gandhi's non-participation in India of the XX century. Tolstoy's philosophy of nonviolence corresponded both to Tolstoy's rejection of the hierarchical structure of intra-church life and to the traditions of Eastern philosophy with its reliance on the principle of non-doing and nonviolence.
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Bradshaw, Brendan. "The Controversial Sir Thomas More." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36, no. 4 (October 1985): 535–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046900043992.
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Perhaps the most notable achievement of the so-called renaissance in Morean studies in recent years has been to provide the historiography with a new focus, namely the phase of More's career that begins in the aftermath of Utopia (1516) and concludes with his imprisonment in 1534. Hitherto, interest in that period was confined largely to the domestic scene celebrated in Holbein's famous portrait and drawings, the household at Chelsea as a centre of humanist culture, Christian piety and cosy family virtue. Yet this was the period of More's public career in which he served as a councillor to Henry vm and in a number of major administrative posts before his elevation to succeed Cardinal Wolsey as lord chancellor in 1529. It was also the period in which he assumed a leading role in the campaign against the Reformation in England, partly as a prosecutor of heresy on behalf of the Crown, but more spectacularly as a polemicist, specifically commissioned by the Church to defend orthodox doctrine against the challenge of the reformers – a task on which he expended some million words in the period between his tract against Luther in 1523 and the changed circumstances which induced a more devotional literary mode in the much acclaimed Tower Works.
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Van Aarde, A. G. "Jesus - Kind van God, Vaderloos in Galilea." Verbum et Ecclesia 22, no. 2 (August 11, 2001): 401–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ve.v22i2.662.
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This article consists of four sections. Firstly, it reflects on the public debate regarding Jesus' alleged illegitimacy. The article argues that illegitimacy here refers to fatherlessness. Secondly, Joseph is focused on. According to New Testament writings of the latter part of the first century, Joseph is either Jesus' biological father (John's gospel) or the person who adopted him as son (the gospels of Matthew and Luke). Thirdly, Joseph as a legendary literary model is discussed (in the Old Testament, intertestamentary literature, the New Testament, writings of the Church Fathers and the dogtrines of the Orthodox Church). Fourthly, the articles sketches a picture of a fatherless Jesus based on evidence from the earliest intracanonical writings (the Sayings Gospel Q, traditions in the Gospel of Thomas, Paul's letters and the Gospel of Mark). Joseph does not appear in these writings. The article concludes with a reflection on the relevance of fatherlessness for today.
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Marino, Elisabetta. "“Sensation” India." Acta Neophilologica 55, no. 1-2 (December 14, 2022): 19–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/an.55.1-2.19-31.
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Florence Marryat was a prolific author, as well as being renowned for both her involvement with spiritualism and her parallel career as an actress. In 1854, she married Thomas Ross Church, an officer in the British Army, with whom she travelled through India for six years. On coming back to England, she began her successful writing career. She specialized in popular (and lucrative) sensation novels, but she also capitalized on her residence in India by penning a travel memoir: Gup. Sketches of Anglo-Indian Life and Character, eventually released as a volume in 1868. By engaging in a close reading of the text, this paper sets out to demonstrate that, in crafting her account, Marryat concocted an imaginary, “sensational” depiction of India and its people, to please and entertain her readership, while serving her own social and political agendas.
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Scherr, Arthur. "Thomas Jefferson Versus the Historians: Christianity, Atheistic Morality, and the Afterlife." Church History 83, no. 1 (March 2014): 60–109. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640713001686.
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For many years, the Religious Right has argued that Thomas Jefferson's “wall of separation” metaphor, expounded in his address to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802, did not reflect his true views on cooperation between Church and State; and that he was actually a devout Christian who embraced a symbiotic relationship between them. Recent scholarship, concurring with these views, contends that Jefferson's thoughts and actions, both in political office and as a private individual, reflected his desire for government participation in religious ceremonies and his sincere dedication to the Christian faith. This article refutes such arguments. It compares Jefferson's ideas with John Adams's more orthodox opinions, particularly in their attitudes toward the connection between atheism and personal morality. The article notes that Jefferson, while endorsing Jesus' ethical teachings, also embraced philosophical materialism. He probably did not believe in an afterlife. Jefferson's most thoroughgoing rejection of organized Christianity occurred in old age, when his fading hopes for religious reform latched onto Unitarianism.
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Rennie, Bryan. "Mircea Eliade’s Understanding of Religion and Eastern Christian Thought." Russian History 40, no. 2 (2013): 264–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/18763316-04002007.
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This article introduces Mircea Eliade. His biography and his understanding of religion are outlined and the possibly formative influence of Eastern Orthodoxy is considered, as are recent publications on the issue. His early essays present Orthodoxy as a mystical religion in which, without some experience of the sacred, profane existence is seen as meaningless and he later identified this same basic schema in all religion. Orthodox theologians Vladimir Lossky and Dumitru Stăniloae are inspected for similarities to Eliade. Ten consonances between Eliade’s thought and Orthodox theology are considered. However, dissonances are also noted, and for every potential Orthodox source of Eliade’s theories there is another equally credible source, causing a controversy over the formative influences of his Romanian youth as opposed to his later Indian experience. It is suggested that Eliade gained insight from Orthodoxy, but that this was brought to consciousness by his sojourn in India. Theology in the form of categorical propositions is present in the Eastern Church but exists alongside other equally important expressions in the visual, dramatic, and narrative arts. The Eastern Church as a multi-media performative theater prepared Eliade to apprehend religion as inducing perceptions of the “really real”—creative poesis exercising a practical influence on its audience’s cognitions. Orthodoxy is a tradition in which categorical propositions had never come to dominate the expression of the sacred, and Eliade wrote from a vantage point on the border, not only between East and West, but also between the scholar and the artist.
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Sulaiman, Maha Qahatn. "Woman’s Self-Realisation in the Poetry of Thomas Hardy." English Language and Literature Studies 8, no. 4 (November 28, 2018): 58. http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v8n4p58.
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A comprehensive investigation of Thomas Hardy’s poetry reveals the doctrines of Existentialism which were new and not common during the 19th century. Hardy’s poetry, combining both Modern and Victorian elements, proclaims the emancipation from the fetters of money and religious oriented orthodox heritage. Hardy believes that the struggle for existence is the canon of life and, therefore, human cooperation is a necessity to man’s wellbeing. Though Hardy’s religious beliefs declined, mainly the concepts of divine intervention, absolution, and afterlife, he did not relinquish his faith in the moral principles of the Christian Church. This is expressed in his poetry through an intense desire to elevate man’s status in the world, to secure the transition of man’s existence from insignificance to accomplishment and excellence. The present study examines Hardy’s poetry in the light of the existentialists’ belief that man can achieve supremacy by being conscious of one’s limitations, ethical responsibilities, and duties. The focus of the study is on female characters in Hardy’s poetry, whose elevated consciousness and self-realisation present an ethical model that can assist the development of humanity and improve the world.
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Regule, Teva. "Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice ed. by Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya." Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 4, no. 1 (2021): 115–18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/joc.2021.0006.
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Clutterbuck, Richard. "Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya (eds), (2020) Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice." Ecclesiology 17, no. 2 (July 12, 2021): 288–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/17455316-17020010.
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Grumett, David. "Book Review: Tradition and Reform: Thomas Bremer, Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia." Expository Times 128, no. 3 (November 28, 2016): 142. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0014524616665962c.
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Raj, Pushpa. "Devasahayam: The First Martyr For Jesus Christ In Travancore." Proceedings Journal of Education, Psychology and Social Science Research 1, no. 1 (November 22, 2014): 1–6. http://dx.doi.org/10.21016/icepss.14031.
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Travancore was the first and foremost among the princely states of India to receive the message of Jesus Christ. According to tradition, St. Thomas the Apostle came to India in 52 A.D. He made many conversions along the west coast of India. It had to the beginning of Christian Community in India from the early Christian era. He attained martyrdom in 72 A.D. at Calamina in St. Thomas mount, Madras. He was the first to be sacrificed for the sake of Christ in India. During the close of the second century A.D. the Gospel reached the people of southern most part of India, Travancore. Emperor Constantine deputed Theophilus to India in 354 A.D. to preach the Gospel. During this time the persecution of Christians in Persia seemed to have brought many Christian refugees to Malabar coast and after their arrival it strengthened the Christian community there. During the 4th century A.D. Thomas of Cana, a merchant from West Asia came to Malabar and converted many people. During the 6th century A.D. Theodore, a monk, visited India and reported the existence of a church and a few Christian groups at Mylapore and the monastery of St. Thomas in India. Joannes De Maringoly, Papal Legate who visited Malabar in 1348 has given evidence of the existence of a Latin Church at Quilon. Hosten noted many settlements from Karachi to Cape Comorin and from Cape Comorin to Mylapore. The Portuguese were the first European power to establish their power in India. Under the Portuguese, Christians experienced several changes in their general life and religion. Vas-co-da-gama reached Calicut on May 17, 1498. His arrival marked a new epoch in the history of Christianity in India. Many Syrian Catholics were brought into the Roman Catholic fold and made India, the most Catholic country in the East. Between 1535 to 1537 a group of Paravas were converted to Christianity by the Portuguese. In 1544 a group of fishermen were converted to Christian religion. St. Francis Xavier came to India in the year 1542. He is known as the second Apostle of India. He laid the foundation of Latin Christianity in Travancore. He could make many conversions. He is said to have baptized 30,000 people in South India. Roman Congregation of the propagation of Faith formed a Nemom Mission in 1622. The conversion of the Nairs was given much priority. As a result, several Nairs followed Christian faith particularly around Nemom about 8 k.m. south of Trivandrum. Ettuvitu pillaimars, the feudal chiefs began to persecute the Christians of the Nemom Mission. Martyr Devasahayam, belonged to the Nair community and was executed during the reign of Marthandavarma (1729-1758). It is an important chapter in the History of Christianity in South India in general, and of Travancore in particular.
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Webster, Peter. "Eric Mascall and the making of an Anglican Thomist, 1937–1945." Journal for the History of Modern Theology / Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 30, no. 2 (October 1, 2023): 216–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/znth-2023-0008.
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Abstract This article examines the early career of E. L. (Eric) Mascall, Anglican Catholic priest, theologian and philosopher of religion, late of Christ Church Oxford and King’s College London. Mascall spent the years between 1937 and 1945 teaching at Lincoln Theological College, in a time of acute political and intellectual unsettlement and (in due course) world war. Mascall rebelled against the previously dominant liberalism of the 1930s while also rejecting both Barthian Protestantism and certain currents in Orthodox theology, both of which were products of the same turmoil. The article documents his turn instead to the natural theology of Thomas Aquinas, and examines both its sources and its particular articulation in Mascall’s work. Even though relatively few in England followed Mascall down this particular path, his formation in the 1930s and 1940s reveals much about the temper of the moment.
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Wolffe, John. "Plurality in the Capital: The Christian Responses to London’s Religious Minorities since 1800." Studies in Church History 51 (2015): 232–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s042420840005021x.
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On a late spring day in 1856 Prince Albert carried out one of the less routine royal engagements of the Victorian era, by laying the foundation stone of what was to become ‘The Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders’, located at Limehouse in the London docklands. The deputation receiving the prince was headed by the earl of Chichester, who was the First Church Estates Commissioner and president of the Church Missionary Society, and included Thomas Carr, formerly bishop of Bombay, Maharajah Duleep Singh, a Sikh convert to Christianity and a favourite of Queen Victoria, and William Henry Sykes, MP and chairman of the East India Company.
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Frazee, Charles A. "The Orthodox Church. By Thomas E. Fitzgerald. Denominations in America 7. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1995. xiii + 241 pp. $65.00." Church History 65, no. 4 (December 1996): 781–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3170481.
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Yeo, Geoffrey. "A Case Without Parallel: The Bishops of London and the Anglican Church Overseas, 1660–1748." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 44, no. 3 (July 1993): 450–75. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046900014184.
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‘For a bishop to live at one end of the world, and his Church at the other, must make the office very uncomfortable to the bishop, and in a great measure useless to the people.’ This was the verdict of Thomas Sherlock, bishop of London from 1748 to 1761, on the provision which had been made by the Church of England for the care of its congregations overseas. No Anglican bishopric existed outside the British Isles, but a limited form of responsibility for the Church overseas was exercised by the see of London. In the time of Henry Compton, bishop from 1675 to 1713, Anglican churches in the American colonies, in India and in European countrieshad all sought guidance from the bishop of London. By the 1740s the European connection had been severed; the bishop still accepted some colonial responsibilities but the arrangement was seen as anomalous by churchmen on both sides of the Atlantic. A three-thousand-mile voyage separated the colonists from their bishop, and those wishing to seek ordination could not do so unless they were prepared to cross the ocean. Although the English Church claimed that the episcopate was an essential part of church order, no Anglican bishop had ever visited America, confirmation had never been administered, and no church building in the colonies had been validly consecrated. While a Roman Catholic bishopric was established in French Canada at an early date, the Anglican Church overseas had no resident bishops until the end of the eighteenth century. In the words of Archbishop Thomas Seeker, this was ‘a case which never had its parallel before in the Christian world’.
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Ivanova, Maria, and Michelle R. Viise. "Dissimulation and Memory in Early Modern Poland-Lithuania: the Art of Forgetting." Slavic Review 76, no. 1 (2017): 98–121. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/slr.2017.13.
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The most well-known practitioner of dissimulation among early modern Christians of the Eastern Rite is Meletii Smotryts'kyi (ca. 1577–1633), the Orthodox archbishop of Polatsk (in modern-day Belarus), who was suspected of being a Uniate for several years before he was openly charged with apostasy during a council of the Orthodox hierarchy of Poland-Lithuania in August of 1628. For the previous year Smotryts'kyi had lived a double life, outwardly an Orthodox archbishop but secretly a Uniate, having formally accepted the Union with Rome on July 6, 1627. In this period of clandestine Uniatism and the years leading up to it, during which he flirted with conversion, Smotryts'kyi fulfilled his official duties, playing a leading role in Orthodox synods and risking exposure that would bring public disgrace and even physical harm. Smotryts'kyi had a positive reason for keeping his conversion secret: he argued that the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition should allow him to remain in office as an Orthodox bishop so that he might convene a council of the Orthodox hierarchy and elite and, “received as a schismatic [an Orthodox], would be able to set forth and to explain the twofold causes of the present discord of the Church & and to cause doubt for them in the schismatic faith (through the reasons that had taught him himself that there was no contradiction in thing [essence], only in words, between the holy Greek and Latin fathers).” Smotryts'kyi concluded his request for secrecy by comparing his situation with that of Jesuits engaged in mission work with non-Christians: “Wherefore, indeed, if the fathers of the Society of Jesus and the other priests in India can live with the heathens in secular habit, this should cause no one scandal, especially since, with God’s help, we will hope for the much greater fruit of holy Union from his hidden Catholicism & than if he were now known by all.”
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Ingram, Robert G. "‘The Clergy who Affect to Call Themselves Orthodox’: Thomas Secker and the Defence of Anglican Orthodoxy, 1758–68." Studies in Church History 43 (2007): 342–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0424208400003326.
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The spectre of the seventeenth century loomed large in the eighteenth century. The Anglican orthodox were particularly aghast at the radical assault on the religio-political order during the previous century and feared a reprise during theirs. In 1734, for instance, Thomas Seeker (1693–1768) warned his audience at St James’s, Westminster, that Charles I’s execution was ‘a most peculiarly instructive example of divine judgments, brought down by a sinful people on their own heads’. In all his providential interventions in human affairs, God teaches ‘an awful regard to himself, as moral governor of the world; and a faithful practice of true religion’. And what drew his divine wrath upon Britain during the 1650s was the abandonment of’real religion’ for ‘hypocrisy, superstition, and enthusiasm’. Certainly Laud and his followers might have displayed ‘an over warm zeal, and very blameable stiffness and severity’, Seeker acknowledged. ‘But there was also, in the enemies of the church, a most provoking bitterness and perverseness; with a wild eagerness for innovation, founded on ignorant prejudices, which their heated fancies raised into necessary truths; and then, looking on them, as the cause of Christ, they thought themselves bound and commissioned to overturn whatever was contrary to them.’
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CARTER, DAVID. "The Ecumenical Movement in its Early Years." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 49, no. 3 (July 1998): 465–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046997006271.
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The year 1998 sees the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the World Council of Churches. Great, but subsequently largely disappointed hopes, greeted it. The movement that led directly to its formation had its genesis in the International Missionary Conference of 1910, an event often cited in popular surveys as marking the beginning of the Ecumenical Movement. This paper will, however, argue that modern ecumenism has a complex series of roots. Some of them predate that conference, significant though it was in leading to the ‘Faith and Order’ movement that was, in its turn, such an important contributor to the genesis of the World Council.Archbishop William Temple, who played a key role in both the ‘Faith and Order’ and ‘Life and Work’ movements, referred to the Ecumenical Movement as the ‘great fact of our times’. This was a gross exaggeration. It is true that the movement engaged, from about 1920 onwards, a very considerable amount of the energy of the most talented and forward-looking leaders and thinkers of the Churches in the Anglican and Protestant traditions. It remained, however, marginal in the life of the Roman Catholic Church until Vatican II, despite the pioneering commitment of some extremely able people amidst official disapproval. Some leaders of the Orthodox Church took a considerable interest in the movement. However, both the official ecclesiology and the popular stance of most Orthodox precluded any real rapprochement with other Churches on terms that bore any resemblance to practicality. Even in the Anglican and mainstream Protestant Churches, the movement remained largely one of a section of the leadership. It attained little genuine popularity, a fact that was frequently admitted even by its most ardent partisans. One could well say that the Ecumenical Movement had only one really solid achievement to celebrate in 1948. This was the formation, in the previous year, of the Church of South India, the first Church to represent a union across the episcopal–non-episcopal divide. This type of union has yet to be emulated outside the Indian sub-continent.One of the aims of this article will be to try to explain why success in India went unmatched elsewhere. The emphasis will be on the English dimension of the problem, though many of the factors that affected the English situation also obtained in other countries in the Anglo-Saxon cultural tradition. This assessment must be balanced, however, by an appreciation of the real progress made in terms of improved and even amicable church relationships.
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Шлёнов, Дионисий. "HE DISPUTE BETWEEN THE LEGATE THOMAS AND THE MONK NICEPHORUS HESYCHAST ABOUT THE ORTHODOX FAITH." Метафраст, no. 2(2) (June 15, 2019): 135–58. http://dx.doi.org/10.31802/2658-770x-2019-2-2-135-158.
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Известнейший аскет и мистик конца XIII в., стоящий у истоков расцвета исихазма в XIV в., прп. Никифор Итал был автором не только трактата «О хранении сердца», вошедшего в «Добротолюбие», но и диспута о вере, который никогда не переводился на русский язык. Диспут состоялся в городе Птолемаида/Акра в конце 1276 г. с Фомой, латинским патриархом Иерусалима, папским легатом в Святой Земле и известным персонажем в иерархии Римско-католической церкви. В настоящей публикации предлагается русский перевод памятника, важного не только для истории полемики между латинянами и греками, но и как сочинение, в котором в зачаточном виде присутствуют черты учения о сущности и энергиях Бога, впоследствии развиваемого свт. Григорием Паламой. «Диспут» носит яркий автобиографический характер и, помимо богословия, проливает свет на жизнь прп. Никифора Исихаста, которую можно реконструировать по отдельным внешним свидетельствам. В целом данный памятник важен, в том числе, и для формирования учения о неизменности предания семи Вселенских Соборов, которое впоследствии применялось в антилатинской полемике. The most famous ascetic and mystic of the end of the 13th century, who stood at the origins of hesychasm in the 14th century, was the author of not only the treatise «On the Keeping of the Heart», which was included in the «Philocalia», but also the author of a debate on faith, which was never translated into Russian. The dispute took place in the city of Ptolemais Acre at the end of 1276 with Thomas, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, papal legate in the Holy Land and a famous figure in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. This publication offers a Russian translation of the monument, which is important not only for the history of polemics between the Latins and the Greeks, but also as an essay in which the features of the doctrine of the essence and energies of God, later developed by St. Gregory Palamas, are presented in their earliest stage. «The Dispute» has a vivid autobiographical character and, in addition to theology, sheds light on the life of St. Nicephorus the Hesychast, which can be reconstructed on the basis of some external evidence. In general, this work is important for the understanding of the formation of the doctrine of the immutability of the tradition of the seven Ecumenical Councils, which was later used in the anti-Latin polemics.
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Caron, Louis. "Thomas Willis, the Restoration and the First Works of Neurology." Medical History 59, no. 4 (September 9, 2015): 525–53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2015.45.
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This article provides a new consideration of how Thomas Willis (1621–75) came to write the first works of ‘neurology’, which was in its time a novel use of cerebral and neural anatomy to defend philosophical claims about the mind. Willis’s neurology was shaped by the immediate political and religious contexts of the English Civil War and Restoration. Accordingly, the majority of this paper is devoted to uncovering the political necessities Willis faced during the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, with particular focus on the significance of Willis’s dedication of his neurology and natural philosophy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Gilbert Sheldon. Because the Restoration of Charles II brought only a semblance of order and peace, Willis and his allies understood the need for a coherent defense of the authority of the English church and its liturgy. Of particular importance to Sheldon and Willis (and to others in Sheldon’s circle) were the specific ceremonies described in theBook of Common Prayer, a manual that directed the congregation to assume various postures during public worship. This article demonstrates that Willis’s neurology should be read as an intervention in these debates, that his neurology would have been read at the time as an attempt to ground orthodox worship in the structure of the brain and nerves. The political necessities that helped to shape Willis’s project also help us to better understand Willis’s innovative insistence that philosophical statements about the mind should be formulated only after a comprehensive anatomical investigation of the brain and nerves.
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Ermishin, Oleg. "V. N. Ilyin: from unpublished lectures on the history of medieval philosophy." St.Tikhons' University Review 99 (February 28, 2022): 113–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.15382/sturi202299.113-128.
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Philosopher, theologian and literary critic Vladimir Nikolaevich Ilyin (1890–1974) taught in 1925–1940 the history of medieval philosophy at St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris. Later, based on lectures, he prepared for publication the book «The History of Medieval Philosophy in Connection with General History of Culture, Science and Theology», which remained unpublished, but was preserved in the archival fund of V.N. Ilyin (Archive of Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of Russia Abroad. F. 31). This publication contains one of the lectures by V.N. Ilyin entitled «Problems, origins and ways of medieval philosophy». It gives an idea of the general approach of V.N. Ilyin to medieval philosophy, about his main concept. According to Ilyin, medieval thought of Western Europe was determined by the antinomy between dogma and dialectics. Ilyin divided the history of medieval philosophy into two periods: until the XIII century, the era of the struggle of ideas and active development, and after the XIII century, when scholasticism won, and then fell into decay. V.N. Ilyin considers that two thinkers Thomas Aquinas (around 1225–1274) and Bonaventure (around 1217–1274), their ideological confrontation, are of great importance for understanding the philosophy of the XIII century. Thomas Aquinas won and determined the further development of Western philosophy, but Bonaventure’s ideas about the union of theology and philosophy did not disappear and develop in new philosophical teachings (Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling, Henri Bergson, Gabriel Marcel and others). In Ilyin’s opinion, in order to overcome scholasticism and rationalism, which prevailed in Western philosophy, it will necessary to return to the fathers of Church, to Plato and Aristotle. V.N. Ilyin proposed his program, based on the main thesis «Return to the Fathers of the Church as a source of true philosophy», expressed solidarity with V. Gioberty and I.V. Kireevsky.
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Hunsberger, George R. "Conversion and Community: Revisiting the Lesslie Newbigin—M. M. Thomas Debate." International Bulletin of Missionary Research 22, no. 3 (July 1998): 112–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/239693939802200308.
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In India in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Bishop Lesslie Newbigin and M. M. Thomas debated the nature of conversion and Christian community. The importance of the subject was underlined by the findings of sociological research that in major urban centers such as Madras there were thousands of Indians who believed in “Jesus as the only God” though they had no visible connection with the Christian church. The Bangalore theologian Kaj Baago sharpened the issue by asking, “Must Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims become Christians in order to belong to Christ?” Baago wished to advocate the kind of Christian witness that might lead to “the creation of Hindu Christianity or Buddhist Christianity.” On the occasion of the March 1966 Nasrapur Consultation on mission Newbigin launched the debate by responding. first to Baago. By 1969 the debate became focused in published discussions between Newbigin and his friend M. M. Thomas. The following essay reacquaints us with the issues as Newbigin and Thomas saw them. As we approach the twenty-first century in Christian mission, the issues taken up in the Newbigin-Thomas debate remain as relevant as ever.
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Demacopoulos, George E. "Book Review: Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia. By Thomas Bremer. Translated from German by Eric Grits." Theological Studies 75, no. 3 (August 7, 2014): 697–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0040563914538732l.
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Lushnikov, Dmitry. "Rational Theology in the System of Fundamental Theology Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov)." Philosophy of Religion: Analytic Researches 5, no. 2 (2021): 41–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.21146/2587-683x-2021-5-2-41-64.
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The article attempts to critically examine the first textbook on fundamental theology in Russian Academic theological school (lntroduction to Orthodox Theology), written by Metropolitan Macarius (Bulgakov) (1816–1882) who is much more renown for his authoritative volumes on dogmatics and history of the Church and can be regarded as the founder of Russian Academic systematical theology in general. The author of the article is the first one to have scrutinized Macarius’ contribution into rational theology here. He reveals the strengths and weaknesses of the Macarius’ presentation of the rational justifications for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, which he, like Thomas Aquinas, called the paths of knowledge of God. It is shown that arguments for the existence of God presented by him are mainly complementary, with the exception of the fourth, known in modern rational theology as “Argument from religious experience”. The author discloses that “the first path” of Metropolitan Macarius combines historical and ontological arguments, “the second path” cosmological and teleological, the third one ontological and moral. It is emphasized that among the significant shortcomings of Metropolitan Macarius’ presentation of these arguments are the absence of references to Western authors who formulated the arguments he used, and, most importantly, complete disregard for Kant's criticism of these “proofs”. The truth of the immortality of the soul is also presented, according to the author’s analysis, unconvincingly, although it contains a number of arguments that are productive for rational theology. The author also offers a comprehensive assessment of the system of Orthodox theology of Metropolitan Macarius by his contemporaries, the main complaints of his critics being concerning the dryness and “schooliness” of his style. The conclusion of the article deals with the positive significance of the Introduction as the first experience of building a system of theological knowledge in the aspect of the formation and development of fundamental theology in Russia including fundamental elements of rational theology. The article opens perspectives for the further scrutiny of rational theology within Russian Orthodox Academic tradition to begin with such a renown disciple of Metropolitan Macarius as Nikanor (Brovkovich).
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Iitti, Vesa. "The Fourth Way in Finland." Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 20 (January 1, 2008): 78–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67328.
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This article focuses on the general history of the Fourth Way in Finland. The Fourth Way, or simply ‘the Work’, began as a Greco-Armenian man named Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1866?–1949) gathered groups of pupils in St Petersburg and Moscow in 1912. To these groups, Gurdjieff started to teach what he had learned and synthesized between ca 1896 and 1912 during his travels on spiritual search of Egypt, Crete, Sumeria, Assyria, the Holy Land, Mecca, Ethiopia, Sudan, India, Afghanistan, the northern valleys of Siberia, and Tibet. Neither Gurdjieff nor any of his disciples called themselves a church, a sect, or anything alike, but referred to themselves simply as ‘the Work’, or as ‘the Fourth Way’. The name ‘the Fourth Way’ originates in a Gurdjieffian view that there are essentially three traditional ways of spiritual work: those of a monk, a fakir, and a yogi. These ways do not literally refer to the activities of a monk, a fakir, and a yogi, but to similar types of spiritual work emphasizing exercise of emotion, body, or mind. Gurdjieff’s teaching is a blend of various influences that include Sufism, orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Kabbalah, and general elements of various occult teachings of both the East and the West. Gurdjieff’s teaching is a blend of various influences that include Sufism, orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, Kabbalah, and general elements of various occult teachings of both the East and the West. It is a unique combination of cosmology, psychology, theory of evolution, and overall theory and practise aiming to help individuals in their efforts towards what is called ‘self-remembering’.
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Yeremieiev, Pavlo. "Review on the book: Thomas Bremer. Cross and Kremlin. A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia. Transl. on Ukrainian. Kiev: Dukh i litera, 2018." Палеоросия. Древняя Русь: во времени, в личностях, в идеях, no. 1 (2021): 146–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.47132/2618-9674_2021_1_146.
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Mosaleva, Galina Vladimirovna. "RUSSIA OF CHICHIKOV AND RUSSIA OF GOGOL IN THE POEM “DEAD SOULS”." Russian Journal of Multilingualism and Education 14 (December 28, 2022): 85–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.35634/2500-0748-2022-14-85-93.
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The paper considers the polysemy of the image of Russia in N. V. Gogol’s “Dead Souls.” It is a new angle of research; its relevance is connected with the reception of the category of church construction allowing to see new characteristics in Gogol’s poetics. The objective of the study is to establish a link between the category of church construction, which manifests itself in the church symbolism, and Gogol’s text poetics. The research methodology presents an attempt to study “Dead Souls” in the context of the Orthodox tradition. On the external pictorial plane, appears the image of Russia, seen by Chichikov. This is the image of provincial Russia, striving to copy “enlightened” Europe, therefore it appears as its counterpart: now as pseudo-Russia, then as pseudo-Europe. A hotel and a tavern are placed in the foreground in Chichikov’s provincial Russia. Chichikov seems to consciously avoid meeting the real Russia, the symbols of which are the church space, its living soul, embodied in nature, songs, and the Russian language. During the travels through the estates of landowners, the image of this caricatural Russia is overgrown with the motifs of vulgar fashion, vulgar art, caused by the imitation of Europe. The anti-aesthetics of a still life in the poem is intended to symbolise the world of the death of the human soul. The growth of infernality is manifested in the motifs of exaggerated physicality in the paintings in the estates of the landowners, in the organisation of their environment. On the outer plane “Dead Souls” act as a guide to the 92 world of death, in which a person with a dead soul is able to reproduce only a similar dead culture. The image of St. Petersburg Russia in the story about Captain Kopeikin appears as if in a kaleidoscope of illusory images: like Semiramis. Persia. America, India. Genuine Russia is manifested in the inner plane of the poem, in the author’s outlook. Its symbols are the language itself, in which culture is created, the Russian spirit, reflected in the songs, the beginninglessness and infinity of Russia, expanding to the vast Universe, heeding Its Creator.
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Bugge, K. E. "Menneske først - Grundtvig og hedningemissionen." Grundtvig-Studier 52, no. 1 (January 1, 2001): 115–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/grs.v52i1.16400.
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First a Man - then a Christian. Grundtvig and Missonary ActivityBy K.E. BuggeThe aim of this paper is to clarify Grundtvig’s ideas on missionary activity in the socalled »heathen parts«. The point of departure is taken in a brief presentation of the poem »Man first - and then a Christian« (1838), an often quoted text, whenever this theme is discussed. The most extensive among earlier studies on the subject is the book published by Georg Thaning: »The Grundtvigian Movement and the Mission among Heathen« (1922). The author provides valuable insights also into Grundtvig’s ideas, but has, of course, not been able to utilize more recent studies.On the background of the revival movement of the late 18th and early 19th century, The Danish Missionary Society was established in 1821. In the Lutheran churches such activity was generally deemed to be unnecessary. According to the Holy Scripture, so it was argued, the heathen already had a »natural« knowledge of God, and the word of God had been preached to the ends of the earth in the times of the Apostles. Nevertheless, it was considered a matter of course that a Christian sovereign had the duty to ensure that non-Christian citizens of his domain were offered the possibility of conversion to the one and true faith. In the double-monarchy Denmark-Norway such non-Christian populations were the Lapplanders of Northern Norway, the Inuits in Greenland, the black slaves in Danish West India and finally the native populations of the Danish colonies in West Africa and East India. Under the influence of Pietism missionary, activity was initiated by the Danish state in South India (1706), Northern Norway (1716), and Greenland (1721).In Grundtvig’s home the general attitude towards missionary work among the heathen seems to have reflected traditional Lutheranism. Nevertheless, one of Grundtvig’s elder brothers, Jacob Grundtvig, volunteered to become a missionary in Greenland.Due to incidental circumstances he was instead sent to the Danish colony in West Africa, where he died after less than one year of service. He was succeeded by his brother Niels Grundtvig, who likewise died within a year. During the period when Jacob Grundtvig prepared himself for the journey to Greenland, we can imagine that his family spent many an hour discussing his future conditions. It is probable that on these occasions his father consulted his copy of the the report on the Greenland mission published by Hans Egede in 1737. It is a fact that Grundtvig imbibed a deep admiration for Hans Egede early in his life. In his extensive poem »Roskilde Rhyme« (1812, published 1814), the theme of which is the history of Christianity in Denmark, Grundtvig inserted more than 70 lines on the Greenland mission. Egede’s achievements are here described in close connection with the missionary work of Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg in Tranquebar, South India, as integral parts of the same journey towards the celestial Jerusalem.In Grundtvig’s famous publication »The Church’s Retort« (1825) he describes the church as an historical fact from the days of the Apostles to our days. This historical church is at the same time a universal entity, carrying the potential of becoming the church of all humanity - if not before, then at the end of the world. A few years later, in a contribution to the periodical .Theological Monthly., he applies this historicaluniversal perspective on missionary acticity in earlier times and in the present. The main features of this stance may be summarized in the following points:1. Grundtvig rejects the Orthodox-Lutheran line of thought and underscores the Biblical view: That before the end of time the Gospel must be preached out into all comers of the world.2. Our Lutheran, Biblically founded faith must not lead to inactivity in this field.3. Correctly understood, missionary activity is a continuance of the acts of the Apostles.4. The Holy Spirit is the intrinsic dynamic power in the extension of the Christian faith.5. The practical procedure in this extension work must never be compulsion or stealth, but the preaching of the word and the free, uninhibited decision of the listeners.We find here a total reversion of the Orthodox-Lutheran way of rejection in principle, but acceptance in practice. Grundtvig accepts the principle: That missionary activity is a legitimate and necessary Christian undertaking. The same activity has, however, both historically and in our days, been marred by unacceptable practices, on which he reacts with forceful rejection. To this position Grundtvig adhered for the rest of his life.Already in 1826, Grundtvig withdrew from the controversy arising from the publication of his .Retort.. The public dispute was, however, continued with great energy by the gifted young academic, Jacob Christian Lindberg. During the 1830s a weekly paper, edited by Lindberg, .Nordisk Kirke-Tidende., i.e. Nordic Church Tidings, became Grundtvig’s main channel of communication with the public. All through the years of its publication (1833-41), this paper, of which Grundtvig was also an avid reader, brought numerous articles and reports on missionary activity. Among the reasons for this editorial practice we find some personal motives. Quite a few of Grundtvig’s and Lindberg’s friends were board members of the Danish Missionary Society. Furthermore, one of Lindberg’s former students, Christen Christensen Østergaard was appointed a missionary in Greenland.In the present paper the articles dealing with missionary activity are extensively reported and quoted as far as the years 1833-38 are concerned, and the effects on Grundtvig of this incessant .bombardment. of information on missionary activity are summarized. Generally speaking, it was gratifying for Grundtvig to witness ho w many of his ideas on missionary activity were reflected in these contributions. Furthermore, Lindberg’s regular reports on the progress of C.C. Østergaard in Greenland has continuously reminded Grundtvig of the admired Hans Egede.Among the immediate effects the genesis of the poem »First the man - then the Christian« must be mentioned. As already observed by Kaj Thaning, Grundtvig has read an article in the issue of Nordic Church Tidings, dated, January 8th, 1838, written by the Orthodox-Lutheran, German theologian Heinrich Møller on the relationship between human nature and true Christianity. Grundtvig has, it seems, written his poem in protest against Møller’s assertion: That true humanness is expressed in acceptance of man’s fundamental sinfulness. Against this negative position Grundtvig holds forth the positive Johannine formulations: To be »of the truth« and to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd. Grundtvig has seen a connection between Møller’s negative view of human nature and a perverted missionary practice. In the third stanza of his poem Grundtvig therefore inserted some critical remarks, clearly inspired by his reading of Nordic Church Tidings.Other immediate effects are seen in the way in which, in his sermons from these years, Grundtvig meticulously elaborates on the Biblical argumentation in favour of missionary activity. In this context he combines passages form the Old and New Testament - often in an ingenious, original manner. Finally must be mentioned the way in which Grundtvig, in his hymn writing from the middle of the 1830s, more often than hitherto recognized, interposes stanzas dealing with the preaching of the Gospel to heathen populations.Turning from general observations and a study of immediate impact, the paper considers the effects, which become apparent in a longer perspective. In this respect Grundtvig’s interpretation of the seven churches mentioned in chapters 2-3 of the Book of Revelation is of crucial importance. According to Grundtvig, they symbolize seven stages in the historical development of Christianity, i.e. the churches of the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the English, the Germans and the »Nordic« people. The seventh and last church will reveal itself sometime in the future.This vision, which Grundtvig expounds for the first time in 1810, emerges in his writings from time to time all through his life. The most impressive literary monument describing the vision is his great poem, »The Pleiades of Christendom« from 1856-60.In 1845 he becomes convinced that the arrival of the sixth stage is revealed in the breakthrough of a new and vigourous hymn-singing in the church of Vartov. As late as the spring of 1863 Grundtvig voices a contented optimism in a church-historical lecture, where the Danish missions to Greenland and to Tranquebar in South India are characterized as .signs of life and good omens.. Grundtvig here refers back to his above-mentioned »Roskilde Rhyme« (1812, 1814), where he had offered a spiritual interpretation of the names of persons and localities involved in the process. He had then observed that the colony founded in Greenland by Hans Egede was called »Good Hope«, a highly symbolic name. And the church built by the missionaries in Tranquebar was called »Church of the New Jerusalem«, a name explicitly referring to the Book of Revelation, and thus welding together his great vision and his view on missionary activity. After Denmark’s humiliating defeat in the Danish-German war of 1864, the optimism faded away. Grundtvig seems to have concluded that the days of the sixth and .Nordic. church had come to an end, and the era of the seventh church was about to commence. In accordance with his poem on »The Pleiades« etc. he localizes this final church in India.In Grundtvig’s total view missionary activity was the dynamism that bound his vision together into an integrated process. Through the activity of »Denmark’s apostle«, Ansgar, another admired mis-sionary, the universal church had become a locally rooted reality. Through the missions of Hans Egede and Ziegenbalg the Gospel was carried out to the ends of the earth. The local Danish church thus contributed significantly to the proliferation of a universal church. In the development of this view, Grundtvig was inspired as well as provoked by his regular reading of Nordic Church Tidings in the 1830s.
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Županov, Ines G. "Antiquissima Christianità: Indian Religion or Idolatry?" Journal of Early Modern History 24, no. 6 (November 17, 2020): 471–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15700658-12342653.
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Abstract The Jesuit mission among the “ancient Christians” on the Malabar coast in today’s Kerala was one of the watershed moments—as I argued a decade ago—in their global expansion in Asia in the sixteenth century, and a prelude to the method of accommodation as it had been theorized and practiced in Asia. In this article I want to emphasize the invocation of comparisons with and the use of Mediterranean antiquity in crafting the identities, memory, and history of Indian Christianity. Jesuit ethnographic descriptions concerning the liturgy, rites, and customs of māppila nasrānikkal, also known as St. Thomas Christians, triggered a series of debates involving various missionaries, Catholic Church authorities in Goa and Rome, as well as Syrian bishops and St. Thomas Christian priestly families. Caught up in the contrary efforts at unifying and homogenizing Christianity under two distinct helms of the Portuguese king and the Roman pope, the missionaries generated different intellectual tools and distinctions, all of which contributed to further jurisdictional struggles. The St. Thomas Christian community became a model of “antique” Christianity for some and a heretical or even idolatrous sect for others. It became a mirror for the divided Christianity in Europe and beyond. In India, it was precisely the vocabulary and the historicizing reasoning that was invested in analyzing and defining these Indian homegrown Christians that would be subsequently applied by comparison, analogy, or contrast to formalize and reify other Indian “religions.” The dating and the autonomous or derivative status of Indian (“pagan”) antiquities emerged, a century later, as a major orientalist problem.
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STOTT, ANNE. "Hannah More and the Blagdon Controversy, 1799–1802." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 51, no. 2 (April 2000): 319–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046999002869.
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The Blagdon controversy is the name given to the dispute between Hannah More, the conduct-book writer and prominent Evangelical, and Thomas Bere, the curate of Blagdon, a village in the Mendip hills in Somerset, where she had set up a Sunday school in 1795. It began quietly as a purely local affair in 1799, blazed into national notoriety in 1801, and petered out in the summer of 1802. It was the most problematic episode in More's career, seriously jeopardising her reputation as a loyalist. According to M. G. Jones, her most substantial biographer, the controversy centred on two issues: ‘ whether the lower orders should be educated, and if so, by whom?’, and ‘Was Miss More a Methodist? Were her schools Methodist schools? Had she established them with or without the consent of the clergy in whose parishes the schools were set up?’ To Ford K. Brown the controversy ‘was at first simply a dispute between a country parson and Mrs Hannah More over the alleged “Methodism” of the teacher of one of her schools”. However, ‘taken up by the London journals, it roused national interest when the Orthodox party saw it correctly as a symbol of Evangelical aggression’. Brown's analysis is part of his controversial thesis in which the Evangelicals are portrayed as an almost Leninist vanguard movement, intent on a fundamental revolution in Church and Nation. More recently, however, attention has focused on the gender issues behind the controversy. Viewed from this perspective, More has been seen as the embodiment of a revisionist female ideology, replacing the accommodating female ideal with an activist model: hence the virulent chauvinism of her opponents' attacks. Though the gender aspect of the controversy will be briefly mentioned, and its importance acknowledged, this article focuses on the theological and ecclesiological factors which, with the partial exception of Brown's tendentious account, have been neglected in previous studies. These are the light thrown on the inadequacies of diocesan structures; the particular problems of the Mendip parishes; the issues dividing Evangelicals and High Churchmen; the tensions between the Church and Methodism; the rival, but overlapping, agendas of Evangelical Sunday school pioneers and itinerant Methodist preachers; and ultra-loyalist fears of a cultural attack waged by William Wilberforce and his associates, interpreted as a front for ‘Jacobinism’. Three questions are posed about the controversy, all of which centre around Evangelical–High Church relationships. What aspects of More's work in the Mendips particularly disturbed some High Churchmen? Why, given these facts, did other High Church clergy rally to her defence? Why did her opponents retreat in the spring and early summer of 1802?
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Petek, Nina, and Jan Ciglenečki. "Prvi koncili u kršćanstvu i budizmu Strukturne analogije i povijesne sličnosti." Obnovljeni život 74, no. 1 (January 19, 2019): 15–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.31337/oz.74.1.2.
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It is well known that the ecumenical councils convening throughout the history of the Church — the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D., the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D., the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A.D.— were of great import. It is much less known, however, that centuries before the first Christian councils, a similar process was taking place in ancient India. At the Councils of Rajagrha in 486 B.C., Vaishali in 386 B.C., Pataliputra in 250 B.C., Sri Lanka in 29 B.C. and Kashmir in 72 A.D., Buddhist monks resolved to set forth dogmas, to put them in writing and to draw the line between orthodox and false doctrines. Generally speaking, the first councils, both in the West and in the East, were convened due to the need to preserve original doctrines. In addition, original teachings had to be canonised and systematised. Also, the process of including religious doctrines into imperial politics is characteristic of two royal personages, namely, the Indian king Aśoka and the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. Both were actively involved in the councils of their day and contributed decisively to the further development and consolidation of both Buddhism and Christianity respectively.
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Greene, Robert H. "Cross and Kremlin: A Brief History of the Orthodox Church in Russia. By Thomas Bremer. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013. xii + 178 pp. $26 paper." Church History 85, no. 1 (February 29, 2016): 161–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0009640715001419.
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Gerogiorgakis, Stamatios D. "Wenn die Möglichkeit in Notwendigkeit umschlägt." Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter 10 (December 31, 2005): 21–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/bpjam.10.03ger.
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Aristotle produced several arguments to vindicate the futura contingentia and to refute the conception of modalities which do not allow incidental facts. This conception was coined mainly by Diodorus Cronus and implied the view that whatever may happen, is to happen necessarily. Although Aristotle condemned this view and refuted the theology which it implies, Diodorean modalities were employed by the scholastics (at least since Abaelard, as Leibniz pointed out) to support their theology. Abaelard’s Diodorean formula reads: God wishes (and ultimately cannot but do) no more and no less than what He is able to do – i. e. God’s ability to do something implies necessity. In the Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas employed Diodorean modalities along with this result of Abaelard’s. Leibniz himself confessed his debt to Diodorean modalities as well as to the work of Abaelard in formulating his own ontological proof. Kurt Gödel was under the influence of Leibniz when he wrote his »Ontological Proof«, which employs Diodorean modalities. — For the Greek-speaking scholars of the Middle Ages, however, Aristotelian influences were stronger than Diodorean as regards theory building on modalities. Philosophers from the East from the 2nd to the 11th century A.D., such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, John Philoponus and Michael Psellos, condemned Diodorean modalities as fallacious. In the same period, Greek Church Fathers such as Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus Confessor and John of Damascus gave an orthodox account of God and the modalities, according to which (contrary to what Abaelard says) God is able to do whatever He wishes. The absence of Leibniz-like modal ontological proofs in the Greek tradition seems more plausible under these circumstances.
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Heller, Dagmar. "Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya (eds.), Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church. Explorations in Theology and Practice, Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock Publishers), Eugene, Oregon, 2020, 210 Seiten, ISBN 978-1-5326-9578-0 (e-book 978-1-5326-9580-3)." Materialdienst 72, no. 1 (April 1, 2021): 45–48. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/mdki-2021-0008.
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Heller, Dagmar. "Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya (eds.), Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church. Explorations in Theology and Practice, Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock Publishers), Eugene, Oregon, 2020, ISBN: 978-1-5326-9578-0 (e-book: 978-1-5326-9580-3), 210 p. Review." Russian Journal of Church History 3, no. 2 (July 30, 2022): 156–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.15829/2686-973x-2022-106.
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Leibo, Steven A., Abraham D. Kriegel, Roger D. Tate, Raymond J. Jirran, Bullitt Lowry, Sanford Gutman, Thomas T. Lewis, et al. "Book Reviews." Teaching History: A Journal of Methods 12, no. 2 (May 5, 1987): 28–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.33043/th.12.2.28-47.
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David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum, eds. Oral History: An Interdisciplinary Anthology. Nashville: American Assocation for State and Local History, 1984. Pp. xxiii, 436. Paper, $17.95 ($16.15 to AASLH members); cloth $29.50 ($26.95 to AASLH members). Review by Jacob L. Susskind of The Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg. Salo W. Baron. The Contemporary Relevance of History: A Study in Approaches and Methods. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Pp. viii, 158. Cloth, $30.00; Stephen Vaughn, ed. The Vital Past: Writings on the Uses of History. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1985. Pp. 406. Paper, $12.95. Review by Michael T. Isenberg of the United States Naval Academy. Howard Budin, Diana S. Kendall and James Lengel. Using Computers in the Social Studies. New York and London: Teachers College Press, 1986. Pp. vii, 118. Paper, $11.95. Review by Francis P. Lynch of Central Connecticut State University. David F. Noble. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. xviii, 409. Paper, $8.95. Review by Donn C. Neal of the Society of American Archivists. Alan L. Lockwood and David E. Harris. Reasoning with Democratic Values: Ethical Problems in United States History. New York and London: Teachers College Press, 1985. Volume 1: Pp. vii, 206. Paper, $8.95. Volume 2: Pp. vii, 319. Paper, $11.95. Instructor's Manual: Pp. 167. Paper, $11.95. Review by Robert W. Sellen of Georgia State University. James Atkins Shackford. David Crocketts: The Man and the Legend. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Pp. xxv, 338. Paper, $10.95. Review by George W. Geib of Butler University. John R. Wunder, ed. At Home on the Range: Essays on the History of Western Social and Domestic Life. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1985. Pp. xiii, 213. Cloth, $29.95. Review by Richard N. Ellis of Fort Lewis College. Sylvia R. Frey and Marian J. Morton, eds. New World, New Roles: A Documentary History of Women in Pre-Industrial America. New York, Westport, Connecticut, and London: Greenwood Press, 1986. Pp. ix, 246. Cloth, $35.00. Review by Barbara J. Steinson of DePauw University. Elizabeth Roberts. A Woman's Place: An Oral History of Working-Class Women, 1890-1940. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1985. Pp. vii, 246. Paper, $12.95. Review by Thomas T. Lewis of Mount Senario College. Steven Ozment. When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London: Harvard University Press, 1983. Pp. viii, 283. Cloth, $17.50; Paper, $7.50. Review by Sanford Gutman of State University of New York, College at Cortland. Geoffrey Best. War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. 336. Paper, $9.95; Brian Bond. War and Society in Europe, 1870-1970. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. 256. Paper, $9.95. Review by Bullitt Lowry of North Texas State University. Edward Norman. Roman Catholicism in England: From the Elizabethan Settlement to the Second Vatican Council. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. 138. Paper, $8.95; Karl F. Morrison, ed. The Church in the Roman Empire. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Pp. viii, 248. Cloth, $20.00; Paper, $7.95. Review by Raymond J. Jirran of Thomas Nelson Community College. Keith Robbins. The First World War. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984. Pp. 186. Paper, $6.95; J. M. Winter. The Great War and the British People. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Pp. xiv, 360. Cloth, $25.00. Review by Roger D. Tate of Somerset Community College. Gerhardt Hoffmeister and Frederic C. Tubach. Germany: 2000 Years-- Volume III, From the Nazi Era to the Present. New York: The Ungar Publishing Co., 1986. Pp. ix, 279. Cloth, $24.50. Review by Abraham D. Kriegel of Memphis State University. Judith M. Brown. Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. xvi, 429. Cloth, $29.95; Paper, $12.95. Review by Steven A. Leibo of Russell Sage College.
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Haight, Roger. "Faith and Evolution: A Grace Filled Naturalism." Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 73, no. 1 (March 2021): 52–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.56315/pscf3-21haight.
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FAITH AND EVOLUTION: A Grace Filled Naturalism by Roger Haight. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2019. 241 pages. Paperback; $30.00. ISBN: 9781626983410. *Roger Haight is a Jesuit priest, theologian, and former president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. He is the author of numerous books and has taught at Jesuit graduate schools of theology in several locations around the world. In 2004, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) barred Haight from teaching at the Jesuit Weston School of Theology in response to concerns about his book Jesus Symbol of God (1999). In 2009, the CDF barred him from writing on theology and forbade him to teach anywhere, including at non-Catholic institutions. In 2015, Haight was somewhat reinstated and when Faith and Evolution was published, he was Scholar in Residence at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He is regarded as a pioneering theologian who insists that theology must be done in dialogue with the postmodern world. His experiences with censorship have led to widespread debate over how to handle controversial ideas within the Roman Catholic church. *The main presupposition of this book is that Christian theology must be developed from the findings of contemporary science in general and from the process of evolution in particular. In chapter one, Haight briefly summarizes five principles about our world that can be drawn from science. These principles include the following: (1) our universe is unimaginably large; (2) everything exists as constantly dynamic motion and change; (3) everything in motion is governed by layers of law and systems conditioned by randomness; (4) life is marked by conflict, predatory violence, suffering, and death; and (5) science is constantly revealing new dimensions of the universe. *Haight seeks to explain how the disciplines of science and theology relate to each other in chapter two. He begins by summarizing the four positions proposed by Ian Barbour which include conflict, independence, intersection (dialogue), and integration. After presenting several differences between scientific knowledge and faith knowledge, he concludes by suggesting that the independence model is the one that best describes the practices of most scientists and theologians. Any integration between the two disciplines can occur only within the mind of a person who is able to see things from different points of view, and entertain them together. *The next two chapters deal with creation theology: chapter three focuses on what we can "know" about God, and chapter four describes how God acts in an evolutionary world. Several theological conceptions of God are summarized in chapter four. These include the following: God is pure act of being (Thomas Aquinas), God is ground of being (Paul Tillich), God is serendipitous creativity (Gordon Kaufman), God is incomprehensible mystery (Karl Rahner), and God is transcendent presence (Thomas O'Meara). This last definition of God is the one that Haight latches on to, and he mainly refers to God as "creative Presence" throughout the rest of the book. While acknowledging that God is personal, he emphasizes that God is not a "big person in the sky," but a mysterious and loving presence within all material reality. He insists that all anthropomorphic language about God needs to be discarded as it not only misrepresents scientific knowledge but also offends religious sensibility. God is the "within" of all that exists which emphasizes God's immanence, but God is also "totally other than" created reality, which allows for God's transcendence. Haight's understanding of God is basically a form of panentheism, a term that he introduces in chapter three and then revisits in later chapters of the book. *Chapter four, entitled "Creation as Grace," attempts to answer the question of how God acts in an evolutionary world. Haight states that "one can preserve all the assertions of tradition without the mystifying notions of a supernatural order or interventions into the natural order by following the path laid out by creation theology" (p. xi). His answer to the question of how God acts in history is to be found in the classic notion of creatio continua, God's ongoing dynamic presence within all finite reality. God does not act as a secondary cause but works as the primary agent present to and sustaining the created world. This concept of God as creative Presence is then compared to the scriptural understanding of God as "Spirit," which Haight concedes is the most applicable way of talking about how God works in history. A third way that God acts in the world is then developed from a brief history of the theology of grace. These three sets of theological languages that include God's ongoing creation, the working of the Holy Spirit, and the operation of God's grace in people's lives are, according to Haight, different ways of referring to the same entity. *Chapter five examines the doctrine of original sin in light of evolution. Haight argues that this doctrine in its classic form contains serious problems and therefore needs to be discarded. The Genesis account of Adam and Eve is nothing more than an etiological myth which has no historical basis. Consequently, "when original sin becomes unsteady, the whole doctrine of salvation in terms of redemption begins to wobble" (p. 121). Human beings have not "fallen" and, even though they retain the influences of past stages of evolution, they cannot be born sinful. While Haight admits that humans are sinners, the sins that we commit are nothing more than social sins derived from our participation in sinful institutions that are a part of our evolutionary heritage. It is these sinful social structures that are primarily responsible for corrupting our moral sensibility, rather than some innate propensity to sin. *The person of Jesus Christ and the doctrine of Christology are the subjects of chapters six and seven respectively. Haight introduces chapter six by contrasting the different ways of interpreting Jesus of Nazareth that are presented by Marcus Borg and N. T. Wright. He obviously sides with Borg's perspective as he suggests that one should think about Jesus as simply a "parable of God." Jesus was not an intervention of God in history, but a human representative of God who was "sustained from within by the Presence of the creator God in a way analogous to all creatures and especially human beings" (p. 202). While Haight admits that God was present within Jesus in a unique and more intense way, this same God can also be more powerfully present in others, making them in some measure true revelations of the divine Presence. Jesus provides salvation by "revealing God" and, although this particular revelation of God is meant for all humankind, it does not exclude the likelihood of similar kinds of revelation within other religious traditions. *The last chapter of the book, chapter eight, is a response to the question of what we can hope for in an evolutionary worldview. Haight discusses the following possibilities: faith in a creator-finisher God who injects purpose into the process of the universe, hope for a cosmic preservation of the value and integrity of being, hope for a restoration of meaning relative to innocent suffering, and hope for the preservation of the human person and personal resurrection. He describes resurrection as a passing out of materiality into the sphere of God that transcends the finite world, or in other words, eternal union with God. The resurrection of Jesus was not a historical event, but a spiritual conviction developed by his followers after his death. It was this "Easter experience" which became the basis for the written witness to the resurrection of Jesus that is recorded in the New Testament. In death, Jesus was "received into God's power of life; he did not cease to exist as a person, but lives within the sphere of God" (p. 179). Our hope for an analogous form of personal resurrection ultimately comes down to faith in a creator God who is the "lover and finisher of finite existence." *For whom then is this book written? As stated in the preface to the book, it is not written for scientists, as one will learn very little actual science from its pages. Haight writes that he is mainly addressing Christians who are affected by our present scientific culture and who do not know how to either process their Christian faith in this context or call it into question. However, most of those who fall into this category will likely have difficulty understanding the ideas that are presented in the book without some type of graduate-level training in theology. The book appears to be written primarily for like-minded theologians who are associated with the more liberal wing of the Roman Catholic church. (Many of the footnotes in the book cite publications written by fellow Catholic priests such as Teilhard de Chardin, John Haught, Hans Jung, Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, and William Stoeger.) *While Haight's main purpose for writing this book is admirable, it is doubtful that many outside of academia will take the time and put in the effort that is needed to read it and actually understand it. Christians with more conservative, biblically based faith commitments should probably bypass it altogether, as there is very little, if any, orthodox Christianity that is upheld within its pages. *Reviewed by J. David Holland, Clinical Instructor, Department of Biology, University of Illinois at Springfield, Springfield, IL 62703.
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Larson, H. Elliott. "More Than the Pandemic." Christian Journal for Global Health 7, no. 5 (December 18, 2020): 1–2. http://dx.doi.org/10.15566/cjgh.v7i5.493.
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It is fitting for this issue of the Christian Journal for Global Health to come to you just before Christmas. We remember the birth of the Christ child, God with us. God with us not just in the ordinariness of human life, but in the calamities, defeats, and suffering entailed in that ordinariness. The coronavirus pandemic, as well as myriad of other human afflictions, is a reminder of those aspects of life. Surely the greatest spiritual lesson of the pandemic is that we are not the masters of our own destiny. The pandemic is a rebuke to the hubris of our age – that human knowledge is the remedy for all ills. Responses to the pandemic have exposed the fissures in our societies as well. While the healthcare community has responded heroically to the challenges, churches have served as a much-needed solace and source of health information, as well as, at times, sources of spread. Some who consider faith non-essential and are antagonistic to it have proposed severe restrictions to much-needed fellowship.
In the providence of God, we are able to rejoice at the arrival of effective vaccines to prevent SARS CoV-2 infection, the world-wide calamity that has dogged us for nearly an entire year. The vaccines come out-of-time, as it were, having been developed, produced, and tested with a speed that is astonishing. Hopefully, they will enable this devastating infectious disease to be put behind us. If that proves to be possible, it is salutary to ponder what is able to be anticipated and to appreciate the perspicacity of someone like Dr. Jono Quick, whose book, The End of Epidemics, foresaw in 2018 what came to pass in 2020. For additional insights, we are pleased to feature in this issue a guest editorial by Dr. Quick which surveys some of the challenges that the release, use, and equitable global distribution of the vaccines hold for us, as well as the Christian responsibility to follow the data for both individualized whole-person care and community care as acts of love for our global neighbor.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted systemic vulnerabilities, health inequities, and the ongoing diseases and conditions that continue to threaten individuals and populations. The response to the pandemic has affected the global economy and exacerbated hunger and extreme poverty. Progress in global health to control the remaining poliovirus, HIV, malaria and tuberculosis has also been tragically impaired due to the pandemic.1
Two original articles describe efforts to evaluate health needs for chronically impoverished villages and then to train Christian health workers in the ways to most effectively service those needs. Claudia Bale reports that the results of surveying Guatemalan villages for health needs and barriers to health produced a variety of themes that provided guidance for the organizations seeking to meet these needs. Sneha Kirubakaran and colleagues evaluated a short course in global health from Australia that sought to prepare Christian health workers for international service.
This issue features three reviews. Samuel Adu-Gyamfi and his colleagues from Ghana completed an extensive systematic review of the role of missions in Sub-Saharan Africa, finding that although the scope of work changed over time, the aim of sharing the gospel motivated work in a broad scope of activities in development, education, and healthcare which continues to be relevant. Omololu Fagunwa from Nigeria provides a history lesson based on original source documents on how the 1918 influenza pandemic affected the growth of Pentecostalism in Africa. Alexander Miles, Matthew Reeve, and Nathan Grills from University of Melbourne completed a systematic literature review showing evidence of the significant effectiveness of community health workers in dealing with non-communicable diseases in India.
Two commentaries offer fresh approaches to persisting healthcare issues. Richard Thomas and Niels French describe the population health model and explain how it is particularly suited to a role in the future for mission hospitals and to address a variety of global health concerns. Melody Oereke, Kenneth David, and Ezeofor Onyedikachukwu from Nigeria offer their thoughts on how Christian pharmacists can employ a model for prayer, faith, and action in their professional calling. The coronavirus pandemic has required healthcare and aid organizations to come up with creative solutions to completely novel circumstances if they were to be able to continue their ministries. Daryn Joy Go and her colleagues from International Care Ministries describe their employment of social networking technologies in the Philippines to continue their work in extreme poverty alleviation as well as spiritual nourishment despite lockdown conditions and severe limitations on travel and communication.
Finally, Pieter Nijssen reviews Creating Shared Resilience: The Role of the church in a Hopeful Future, by David Boan and Josh Ayers. In our world of short-term gain and short attention spans, resilience is a commodity in tragically short supply. Pastor Nijssen’s discussion helpfully expands on an ongoing discussion of how faith and justice must be integrated in any faithful gospel ministry and how this, itself, promotes resilience in the face of crises.
We call our readers’ attentions to our current call for papers, Environmental Concern and Global Health. Our stewardship of the earth and its resources was part of God’s first command to Adam and Eve and an important aspect of human flourishing throughout the Bible. That stewardship has implications for global health that deserve study and explanation. Click on the link to the call for a list of the subjects we hope to see in submissions on this topic and many others within the unique and broad scope of the journal.
During this season of both widespread challenge and enduring hope, we pray for peace on earth, and good will to all people.