„Úgy veszem, hogy itt jártak…” Egy elmaradt püspöki látogatás margójára

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-162
Author(s):  
Alfréd Somogyi
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Political Connections ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

"“I Take It as If They Were Here…” A Side-Note on a Cancelled Episcopal Visitation. The study examines a letter which has extraordinary importance for the Reformed community in Czechoslovakia. It was written on behalf of President Tomáš Garrique Masaryk to the bishops of the Reformed Church in 1922. At that point in history, the Hungarian Reformed people, who came under the new rule of an entirely new state, Czechoslovakia, were able to form their new ecclesiastical dioceses. However, an independent Reformed Church of Czechoslovakia had not yet been proclaimed since they were not able to convene a synod. The leaders of the church tried to make use of all kinds of political connections to serve the need of the church. Therefore, they initiate a meeting with President Masaryk, who was having a holiday in Kistapolcsány (Topolčianky) during the autumn of 1922. All preparations made seemed to be organized well and go smoothly, even the lobby executed in the political arena indicated that the much-expected meeting would take place. However, the audience was cancelled by the office of the head of the state during the very last meeting. This study investigates the preparations of the meeting, tries to assess on the basis of historical sources its assumed significance, and offers a reflection about the possible reasons why the hearing had been cancelled. Keywords: Czechoslovakia, Reformed Church, ecclesiastical policy, audience of the president of the state, state and church relations, Tomáš Garrique Masaryk, István Pálóczi Czinke "

The Indirectly Political Word of the Church

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. DeJonge
Keyword(s):  
Word Type ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
The Political ◽  
The World ◽  
Type 3 ◽  
The Church

This chapter continues the examination of Bonhoeffer’s first phase of resistance through an exposition of “The Church and the Jewish Question,” turning now to the modes of resistance proper to the church’s preaching office. Because such resistance involves the church speaking against the state, it appears to stand in contradiction with Bonhoeffer’s suggestion earlier in the essay that the church should not speak out against the state. This is in fact not a contradiction but rather the coherent expression of the political vision as outlined in the first several chapters of this book, which requires that the church criticize the state under certain circumstances but not others. The specific form of word examined here is the indirectly political word (type 3 resistance) by which the church reminds the messianic state of its mandate to preserve the world with neither “too little” nor “too much” order.

The Political Theory of the Disruption

1916 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Laski
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Secular Society ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Political Principles ◽  
The Church

“Of political principles,” says a distinguished authority, “whether they be those of order or of freedom, we must seek in religious and quasi-theological writings for the highest and most notable expressions.” No one, in truth, will deny the accuracy of this claim for those ages before the Reformation transferred the centre of political authority from church to state. What is too rarely realised is the modernism of those writings in all save form. Just as the medieval state had to fight hard for relief from ecclesiastical trammels, so does its modern exclusiveness throw the burden of a kindred struggle upon its erstwhile rival. The church, intelligibly enough, is compelled to seek the protection of its liberties lest it become no more than the religious department of an otherwise secular society. The main problem, in fact, for the political theorist is still that which lies at the root of medieval conflict. What is the definition of sovereignty? Shall the nature and personality of those groups of which the state is so formidably one be regarded as in its gift to define? Can the state tolerate alongside itself churches which avow themselves societates perfectae, claiming exemption from its jurisdiction even when, as often enough, they traverse the field over which it ploughs? Is the state but one of many, or are those many but parts of itself, the one?

Constantine as a ‘Bishop’

1947 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 127-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Seston
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Obiter Dictum ◽  
The Church ◽  
As If

The author of the Vita Constantini (traditionally and persistently identified with Eusebius, despite the silence of St. Jerome), tells us that Constantine ‘at a banquet he was giving to the bishops declared that he too was a bishop. He added these words which I heard with my own ears: ἀλλ᾽ ὑμεῖϛ μὲν τῶν εἴσω τῆϛ ἐκτὸϛ ὑπὸ θεοῦ καθεσταμένοϛ ἐπίσκοπϛ ἂν εἴην ’.In attempts to define the relations between the first Christian emperor and the Church, no phrase is more frequently quoted than this obiter dictum. In the sixteenth century the French scholar Henri de Valois rendered τῶν ἐκτόϛ as if it were the genitive of τὰ ἐκτόϛ, and since then it has been the practice to regard Constantine as an ‘évèque du dehors’: the Emperor either exercised episcopal functions though not consecrated, or supervised mundane affairs (that is, the State), after the fashion of a bishop, or else held from God a temporal commission for ecclesiastical government, the bishops retaining control of dogma, ethics and discipline. Each of these three distinct interpretations is equally admissible.

scholarly journals �The hastening that waits�: A critical assessment of the tangebility of unity within the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rothney S. Tshaka ◽  
Peter M. Maruping
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Church Of Christ ◽  
The Political ◽  
Racial Categories ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Tradition

The tale of the Reformed Church tradition in South Africa remains conspicuous with challenges also within the current democratic context. Whilst the political past of South Africa contributed towards a Reformed church divided along racial lines, a struggle continues for a genuinely unified Reformed church today. Conceding to the present discussions about the possibility of uniting all Reformed congregations that were divided along racial categories of Black, Coloured, Indian and White, this article aspires to delve into the intricacies pertaining to the already achieved unity between the �Coloured� and a huge portion of the �Black� Reformed congregations, that is to say, the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa. This article will argue that although it is fundamental that the church of Christ must be united, it is equally imperative that the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa (URCSA) waits and assesses whether it has already achieved tangible unity.

The Trocadéro

2021 ◽  
pp. 193-246
Author(s):  
Jennifer Walker
Keyword(s):  
Religious Right ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Religious Music ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
French Republicanism ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Concert Programs ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Church

This chapter takes for its focus the high point of the Parisian musical season in 1900: the ten state-sponsored concerts officiels of the 1900 Exposition Universelle de Paris. As had been the case in 1878 and 1889, the goal of these concerts was to promote specifically Republican ideals through music. Yet in 1900, these ideals had transformed into a secular construction of Frenchness that absorbed Catholicism as a foundational trait of national identity. Although the Church was not represented in any official capacity either on the musical planning commission or on the concert programs themselves, the repertoire performed throughout these concerts created a narrative that centered around a sense of reconciliation between Church State. The carefully crafted vision put forth by the State relied heavily on transformations of the Church for the formation of a cohesive Republican identity such that the Church was present in its displays, theaters, and concerts in a way not seen in any previous Exposition. In the heart of Paris, the Trocadéro hosted a significant amount of explicitly religious music that, when mediated through actors deployed through the state apparatus on an international stage, transformed the Church into an integrated facet of French Republicanism that could be proudly displayed to the Exposition’s international audiences. These concerts functioned not as nostalgic emblems of a Revolutionary past nor as attacks against the political and religious right, but, rather, as a site of transformation at which the Republic co-opted Catholicism as an indispensable aspect of its own French identity.

Soviet Atheism and Its Aftermath

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Luehrmann
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
World War ◽  
Freedom Of Conscience ◽  
The Church

If Soviet atheism is a variety of secularism, it more resembles eliminationist movements viewing religions as obstacles to the political integration of citizens into the state. Before World War II, the Bolshevik government issued decrees to disentangle the state from the church. Later, Khrushchev emphasized atheism and closed churches as part of a general populist, mobilizational approach to promoting communist values. By the 1970s, religious practices were not precluded but were assigned a marginal space outside of public engagement. The post-Soviet era has seen self-reported religiosity increase, while self-reported atheism has diminished, although remaining significant. Russia’s 1997 law on Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations requires a denomination to exist in a region for fifteen years to enjoy the full legal and tax status. Today, Russia differentiates between “good” religions that help to promote particular moral visions and “bad” religions that create social strife, promote violence, and endanger public health.

scholarly journals Violence as development? A challenge to the church

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Landman
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
The State ◽  
African Women ◽  
Local Leadership ◽  
Health And Wellbeing ◽  
Reformed Church ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Church

Dullstroom-Emnotweni was the site of protests against the lack of service delivery by local government in 2009. The local leadership of the Uniting Reformed Church in Southern Africa was confronted with challenges when its members got involved in acts of violence both from the side of the community and from the side of the police. Viewing itself as an asset to the community and an agent in its development towards health and wellbeing, the church was challenged by the situation in its prophetic capacity as well as in its relationship with the �state�. In an attempt to negotiate answers to the church�s relationship with the �state� in situations of violence, the uprising in Dullstroom-Emnotweni is used as a case study, and Calvin�s notion of the church as a world-transforming agent, the views of African women theologians on nonviolence, the practical piety of local religiousness, and the memory of systems of governance as �evil� are used as intertexts to define the church�s position vis-�-vis violence as an option for development. A position of caution is taken, a position in which the church retains both its political distance and its prophetic voice, remains true to its calling as an asset to community development, and condones violence cautiously when development is at stake.

scholarly journals Everyday Life of the Russian Nuns in the Holy Land at the Time of Changes in the Middle East, 1940s–1950s

2021 ◽  
pp. 190-200
Author(s):  
N.A. Beliakova
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This study aims at providing an overview of the everyday life of Russian nuns in Palestine after World War II. This research encompassed the following tasks: to analyze the range of ego-documents available today, characterizing the everyday life and internal motivation of women in choosing the church jurisdiction; to identify, on the basis of written sources, the most active supporters of the Moscow Patriarchate to examine the nuns’ activity as information agents of the Russian Orthodox Church and Soviet government; to characterize the actors influencing the everyday life of the Russian nuns in the context of the creation of the state of Israel and new borders dividing the Holy Land; to present the motives and instruments of influence employed by the representatives of both secu-lar and church diplomacies in respect to the women leading a monastic life; to describe consequences of including the nuns into the sphere of interest of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR; to show the specific role of “Russian women” in the context of the struggle for securing positions of the USSR and the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the region. The sources for the study were prodused by the state (correspondence between the state authorities, meeting notes) and from the religious actors (letters of nuns to the church authorities, reports of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, memoirs of the clergy). By combining the methods of micro-history and history of the everyday life with the political history of the Cold War, the study examines the agency of the nuns — a category of women traditionally unnoticeable in the political history. Due to the specificity of the sources, the study focuses exclusively on a group of the nuns of the Holy Land who came under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Patri-archate. The majority of the Russian-speaking population of Palestine in the mid-1940s were women in the status of monastic residents (nuns and novices) and pilgrims, and in the 1940s–1950s, they were drawn into the geopolitical combinations of the Soviet Union. The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem, staffed with representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, becomes a key institution of influence in the region. This article shows how elderly nuns became an object of close attention and even funding by the Soviet state. The everyday life of the nuns became directly dependent on the activities of the Soviet agencies and Soviet-Israeli relations after the arri-val of the Soviet state representatives. At the same time, the nuns became key participants in the inter-jurisdictional conflicts and began to act as agents of influence in the region. The study analyzes numerous ego-documents created by the nuns themselves from the collection of the Council on the Affairs of the Russian Orthodox Church under the USSR Council of Ministers. The study shows how nuns positioned themselves as leading a monastic life in the written correspondence with the ROC authorities and staff of the Soviet MFA. The instances of influence of different secular authorities on the development of the female monasticism presented here point to promising research avenues for future reconstruction of the history of women in the Holy Land based on archival materials from state departments, alternative sources should also be found. The study focused on the life of elderly Russian nuns in the Holy Land and showed their activity in the context of the geopolitical transformations in the Near East in the 1940s–1950s.

scholarly journals STUDENT POLITICS IN URBAN TERNATE, NORTH MALUKU

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Basri Amin
Keyword(s):  
University Students ◽  
Ethnic Groups ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Arena ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Student Politics ◽  
New Formation

This article examines student politics articulated by university students in contemporary Ternate, North Maluku. The involvement of students in the political arena in the region is mostly organized through regional (ethnic) organizations.The larger context of such political process is decentralisation, which make religional resource resources dominated by the state. At the same time competition among local elites and ethnic groups flourish. This is the main background of a new formation of group interests in local level -including local university students-- to gain group advantages. The case of Ternate, North Maluku, is an example of how groups of students organize their practical interests in the arena of politics by exploiting youth associations and ethnic organizations.Artikel ini mengkaji tentang politik yang diartikulasikan oleh kalangan mahasiswa dalam percaturan politik lokal di Ternate, Maluku Utara. Keterlibatan mahasiswa dalam arena kekuasaan di kawasan ini lebih banyak dilakukan melalui instrumen organisasi kedaerahan (etnis). Konteks besar yang menjadi landasan dari proses sosial ini adalah desentralisasi yang menempatkan sedemikian rupa sumberdaya pembangunan lebih banyak didominasi oleh negara, tapi pada saat yang sama perkembangan politik etnis terus menyertai persaingan kelompok dan elit lokal. Kasus Maluku Utara adalah sebuah contoh bagaimana kaum muda memainkan kepentingannya sendiri dalam percaturan kekuasaan dan dalam hal memanfaatkan kesempatan-kesempatan praktis untuk mereka.

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