Prophets of the Round Table: The Protestant Church in the Netherlands and the Public Domain

2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 393-409
Author(s):  
Frits de Lange
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Round Table ◽  
Moral Formation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Constitutional State ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Church

In the current Dutch public debate on the public role of religion, three political options are defended: secularism, pacified pluralism and social cohesionism. They correspond to three types of ecclesiology: the church as witness, the church as a platform of moral deliberation and the church as a community of moral formation. In the document ‘The Church and the Democratic Constitutional State’ (2009) the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PCN) set out its vision on its own public role. The church is presented as ‘prophet at the round table’; a combination of the first two types of ecclesiology. It results in a ‘polder-ecclesiology’, fully understandable within the Dutch context of a radically secularized, democratic constitutional state, but probably inadequate as a response to its reigning political, ethnic and social instability.

scholarly journals Theology in Public Space and Social Movements: Notes from Alain Badiou’s Concept of Event

Open Theology ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 395-406
Author(s):  
Felipe Gustavo Koch Buttelli ◽  
Clint Le Bruyns
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Social Order ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
The Social ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Church

Abstract The debate over the public role of religion and of theology has become quite urgent. Not only by the evident religious presence in the party politics sphere, nor by its influence in the Brazilian social culture and life, but by the role that theology and, in this case, the churches can have to transform the social order. The present work reinforces the emancipatory potential of theology and the action of the church in the public space, pointing to a priority locus, from which both reflection and practice can be emancipatedly formulated, namely, social movements. Social movements, it will be argued, are the space in which the spark that gives rise to social and political change emerges in reality. In this sense, some notes will be made from the notion of Event of Alain Badiou, which recognizes, so to speak, the unique epiphanic character of the Events that can divide history between before and after, which effectively have a radically transforming character. In this sense, the heuristic potential for the church and theology will be emphasized to engage in the struggles of movements in the experience of the Badiousian Events that we could characterize as based on the paradigm of revelation.

Rome, Religion, and Christian Emperors

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-139
Author(s):  
Mattias P. Gassman
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Religious Tolerance ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
Competing Ideas ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
Public Decision

The controversy over the altar of Victory shows how pagans and Christians expressed competing ideas on the public role of religion in an increasingly Christian empire. In 382, Gratian revoked funding from the Roman state priesthoods and removed the altar from the Senate house. Following Gratian’s death in 383, the Senate appealed to his brother, Valentinian II, through the urban prefect, Symmachus, whose communiqué was successfully countered by Ambrose of Milan. Recent scholarship has favoured Symmachus’ account, which it sees as an appeal for religious tolerance, and argued that the affair was decided by the power politics of a child emperor’s unstable court. In response, this chapter argues that Symmachus was actually trying to exclude the emperor’s Christianity from public decision-making. All religions may, for Symmachus, lead to God, but the old cults are Rome’s divinely appointed defence, as well as the bond between Senate and emperors. Ambrose put Valentinian’s duty to God at the heart of his appeal. Ambrose’s Senate contained many Christians, and Ambrose was bound to resist an emperor who endorsed pagan sacrifices (the closest either work comes to explicit political gamesmanship). Together, their works show how malleable Rome’s public religion still was, more than seventy years after Constantine embraced Christianity.

scholarly journals The role of prophetic action in public theology – the implications for addressing corruption in a context of sustainable development

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich W. De Wet
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Public Space ◽  
South African ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
African Churches ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
The Church

After almost two decades of democratic rule in South Africa, patterns of withdrawal and uncertainty about the complexities involved in defining the contents, rationality and impact of the public role of the church in society seem to be prevalent. As unabated levels of corruption and its sustained threat to sustainable development point out, a long-awaited reckoning should take place – at least in the circles of South African churches from reformed origin – regarding its rich tradition of critical and transformational prophetic involvement in the public space. In this article, the author places different models for the public role of the church in the field of tension that is generated when the private and public spheres meet each other. The author anticipates different configurations that will probably form in this field of tension in the cases of respectively the Two Kingdoms Model, the Neo-Calvinist Approach and the Communicative Rationality Approach.Die rol van profetiese prediking in publieke teologie: Die implikasies vir die hantering van korrupsie in ‘n konteks van volhoubare ontwikkeling. Na bykans twee dekades van demokratiese regering in Suid-Afrika blyk dit dat patrone van onttrekking en onsekerheid oor wat die inhoud, rasionaliteit en impak van die publieke rol van die kerk in die samelewing presies behels, steeds voortduur. In ‘n situasie waaruit dit blyk dat daar geen werklike teenvoeter is vir die hoë vlakke van korrupsie asook vir die bedreiging wat dit vir volhoubare ontwikkeling inhou nie, is dit hoog tyd dat die kerk, ten minste in die geval van die Suid-Afrikaanse kerke van reformatoriese oorsprong, diep oor sy profetiese rol in die samelewing moet besin. Hierdie kerke kom uit ‘n ryke tradisie van kritiese en transformerende betrokkenheid in die publieke sfeer. In hierdie artikel plaas die outeur verskillende modelle vir die publieke rol van die kerk in die spanningsveld wat gegenereer word wanneer die private en publieke sfere mekaar ontmoet. Die outeur antisipeer verskillende konfigurasies wat waarskynlik na vore sal tree in hierdie spanningsveld in die gevalle van onderskeidelik die Twee Koninkryke Model, die Neo-Calvinistiese Benadering en die Kommunikatiewe Rasionaliteit Benadering.

Wall of Separation? Debating the Public Role of Religion

2000 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
James M. Penning ◽  
Mary C. Segers ◽  
Ted G. Jelen
Keyword(s):  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Role Of Religion

Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) and Early Christianity

1994 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 661-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. C. Frend
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
Role Of Religion ◽  
The Church

Thus Gibbon opened the thirty-seventh chapter of the History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, a lengthy chapter devoted to the twin topics of ‘the institution of monastic life’ and ‘the conversion of the northern barbarians’. The connection between the history of the Roman Empire and the Christian Church was indeed indissoluble. The Church was destined to follow the pattern of the empire by gradually degenerating as it grew in strength from original purity in the life of Christ and the Apostles to become a corrupt and baleful influence on the fortunes of secular society. Looking back over twenty years of research and writing (1767–87) he wrote near the beginning of his final chapter, ‘In the preceding volumes of this History, I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion and I can only resume in a few words, their real or imaginary connection with the ruin of ancient Rome.’ He goes on to list ‘potent and forcible causes of destruction’ by barbarians and Christians respectively. As he finally laid down his pen on 27 June 1787 at Lausanne, he concluded with a sentence whose strict accuracy has sometimes been doubted: ‘It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public.’ The date of this decision was 15 October 1764. Here we survey briefly the role of ‘religion’, i.e. Christianity in the ruin of the Roman Empire.

scholarly journals Longitudinal, Transverse or Centrally Aligned? In the Search for the Correct Layout of the ‘Protesters’ Churches

2017 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Harasimowicz
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Art History ◽  
Church Architecture ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Protestant Church ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The University ◽  
The Church

The article was written within the framework of a research project “Protestant Church Architecture of the 16th -18th centuries in Europe”, conducted by the Department of the Renaissance and Reformation Art History at the University of Wrocław. It is conceived as a preliminary summary of the project’s outcomes. The project’s principal research objective is to develop a synthesis of Protestant church architecture in the countries which accepted, even temporarily, the Reformation: Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Island, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Sweden and The Netherlands. Particular emphasis is placed on the development of spatial and functional solutions (specifically ground plans: longitudinal, transverse rectangular, oval, circular, Latin- and Greek-cross, ground plans similar to the letters “L” and “T”) and the placement of liturgical furnishing elements within the church space (altars, pulpits, baptismal fonts and organs).

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