scholarly journals Dialogue as a Strategy of Struggle: Religious Politics in East Germany, 1957–1968

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
Heléna Tóth

AbstractThis article argues that the topos of dialogue between Christians and Marxists fulfilled a key role in the creation and maintenance of power relations in religious politics in East Germany. Three case studies illustrate the topos of dialogue as a strategy of struggle: 1. the campaign against ‘revisionism’ and ‘politicised religion’; 2. the church policy strategy of ‘differentiation’; 3. the critique of the phenomena commonly associated with the Christian–Marxist dialogue outside East Germany in the mid-1960s. These instances of socialist religious politics, while having their own dynamics, were closely related through specific actors and argumentative strategies.

Author(s):  
Detlef Pollack ◽  
Gergely Rosta

The case of East Germany raises the question of why religion and church, which had fallen to an unprecedentedly low level after four decades of suppression, have not recovered since 1989. The repressive church politics of the SED were undoubtedly the decisive factor in the unique process of minoritizing churches in the GDR. However, other external factors such as increasing prosperity, socio-structural transformation, and the expansion of the leisure and entertainment sector played an important role, too. In addition, church activity itself probably also helped to weaken the social position of churches. The absence of a church renaissance after 1990 can be explained by several factors, such as the long-term effects of the break with tradition caused by the GDR system, the political and moral discrediting of the church by the state security service, and people’s dwindling confidence in the church, which was suddenly seen as a non-representative Western institution.


Author(s):  
Rosamund Oates

This chapter explores how the forces holding the Jacobean Church—Matthew’s broad-based conformity—were shattered by the increasing power of Laudian clerics, while his anti-Catholicism was undermined by a pro-Catholic foreign policy. As Matthew grew older, his influence in the Church waned as did his ability to protect Puritans within it. From 1615 onwards it became apparent that Matthew was a marginal force in the Church and his brand of Elizabethan Puritanism was seen as increasingly unfashionable. However, for Matthew, there was a keener tragedy—his eldest son, also called Tobie Matthew, became a Jesuit priest. This chapter concludes by looking at Matthew’s personal struggle to convert his son and sets that in the wider context of early Stuart politics. Matthew’s story ends with a family and a country deeply divided by religious politics in the years before the English Civil Wars.


2020 ◽  
Vol 113 (3) ◽  
pp. 933-980
Author(s):  
Heinz Ohme
Keyword(s):  

AbstractThis essay examines the main sources on the attitude of the Church of Cyprus in the so-called monoenergetic-monotheletic dispute. It is shown that the Church of Cyprus was a loyal and active partner in Constantinople’s policy of reconciliation with the Antichalcedonian churches of the East. Cyprus was also, especially under Archbishop Arkadios (624/25-641/2), a place of exile for opponents of this reconciliation, and in 636 also the venue of an important synod which was attended by legates of almost the whole church. The resulting Ekthesis was approved also in Rome and Jerusalem. Even Maximos did not succeed, after 636, to influence the position of Arkadios through the Cypriot priest monk Marinos. His six letters to Marinos offer no evidence for a dyenergetic or dyotheletic position of the Church of Cyprus. A letter from 643, written by the successor of Arkadios, Sergios (642-655), clearly shows that there was until then no protest against the Constantinopolitan church policy in Cyprus in this time. This letter, which demonstrates the firm dyenergetic and dyotheletic position of the whole Church of Cyprus, was presented at the Lateran Synod of 649, but forged or completely rewritten for this Synod. Even after 643, there is no evidence for public dissent in the Church of Cyprus, nor should it actually be expected.


Author(s):  
Patricia Lewis ◽  
Nick Rumens ◽  
Ruth Simpson

Mobilising postfeminism as an analytical device, this article re-examines how women business owners discursively engage with the identity of the mumpreneur. Drawing on interviews with women business owners, this article reconceptualises the compatibility between motherhood and entrepreneurship associated with the mumpreneur, in terms of a hybrid identity that interlinks feminine and masculine behaviours connected to home and work. Study data reveal the discursive practices present in interview accounts – choosing family and work, strategic mumpreneurship and enhancing the business without limits – which draw on postfeminist discourses to constitute hybrid entrepreneurial femininities associated with the mumpreneur category. The article contributes to the gender and entrepreneurship literature, in particular, the scholarship on mumpreneurship, by first, showing how engagement with the mumpreneur identity is implicated in the reproduction of masculine entrepreneurship; second, demonstrates how encounters with the mumpreneur contribute to the creation of a hierarchy of entrepreneurial identities which reinforces the masculine norm; and third considers how the mumpreneur as a hybrid identity mobilises entrepreneurship in children in gendered ways. While the emergence of the mumpreneur as a contemporary entrepreneurial identity has positively impacted how women’s entrepreneurship is viewed, the study demonstrates that it has not disrupted dominant discourses of masculine entrepreneurship or gendered power relations in the entrepreneurial field.


2017 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Zida ◽  
John N. Lavis ◽  
Nelson K. Sewankambo ◽  
Bocar Kouyate ◽  
Kaelan Moat ◽  
...  

1995 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-187
Author(s):  
Ehrhart Neubert

Abstract The author examines the consequences of dictatorship upon the conciousness of law and justice in the postsocialist society of East-Germany. This society and even the Church are characterized by a moralizing thinking of justice- according to the German tradition of paternalistic state: the state grants justice and represents community. Ever after theseGermans regard themselves as inferiors, who want to get adjusted into a disciplined order. This leeds to disappointments and radical criticism of the democratic constitutional state. Law is not able to realize ultimatejustice. For the aceptance ofthe constitutional state it will be necessary to restore civil society and overcome a fundamentalistic criticism of civilisation.


Author(s):  
Adam Mohr

The goal of this chapter is to explain how healing and deliverance practices were instituted in the Presbyterian Church of Ghana (PCG). The first half of this chapter examines the PCG’s initial transformation, which was driven by three factors: the decision by the leadership to introduce healing practices into the church, the creation of the Bible Study and Prayer Group to manage the afflicted within congregations, and the influence of two parachurch organizations. The second half of this chapter focuses on Catechist Ebenezer Abboah-Offei, who since 1996 has been leading Grace Presbyterian Church in Akropong, the primary site of healing and deliverance practices within the PCG. With regards to Abboah-Offei, this chapter describes how he came to teach and practise deliverance and the process by which Grace Presbyterian was established. Finally, this chapter describes the various healing and deliverance activities that occur at Grace Presbyterian Church.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-63
Author(s):  
Shanthini Pillai ◽  
Bernardo E. Brown

This article examines the emergence of the Catholic Church in Malaysia and Singapore in the modern period through an exploration of the Apostolic Vicariate of Western Siam (1841–1888). The establishment of this Catholic institution—a temporary territorial jurisdiction in missionary regions that precedes the creation of new dioceses—was key to advancing the transition of the Church from its older colonial model towards a modern national Church. Focusing on the work conducted by French missionaries of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (mep) over these five decades, we analyze the process of developing a local clergy and setting up the socio-cultural scaffolding of the contemporary Catholic Church in the Malay Peninsula. We pay special attention to howmepmissionaries skilfully navigated their missionary activities through encounters with Malay rulers and British colonial officers to secure the creation of a Catholic elite independent of the PortuguesePadroado. Our argument suggests that the apostolic vicariate and the dynamism of the Frenchmepmissionaries in colonial Malaya opened up the pathway for the rise of the ethnic Catholic elites in modern-day Malaysia and Singapore.


Author(s):  
Johan Buitendag

Marriage, according to Martin Luther, is an institution both secular and sacred. It is secular because it is an order of this earthly life. But its institution goes back to the beginning of the human race and that makes marriage sacred, a divine and holy order. It does not – like the sacraments – nourish and strengthen faith or prepare people for the life to come; but it is a secular order in which people can prove faith and love, even though they are apt to fail without the help of the Word and the sacrament. The author applies this view of Luther in terms of two unacceptable extremes: the creation ordinances of Brunner and the analogy of relation of Barth. The dialectic of Law and Gospel should never be dispensed. Marriage is necessary as a remedy for lust, and through marriage God permits sexual intercourse. Similar is the allegory which Paul employs: that Adam and Eve, or marriage itself, is a type of Christ and the church.


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