Theology and Sustainability in Oil-Producing Norway

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 265-281 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Bjelland Grønvold
Keyword(s):  
Western Country ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Oil Exploration ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Environmental Commitment ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This article attempts to draft the constructive role religion can play in a rich, oil-producing Western country. The article presents a brief history of environmental commitment within the Church of Norway, and shows how this commitment is making an impact both theologically and politically. Theologically, the result is a reorientation of classic, anthropocentric theology toward a more biocentric theology in which all of creation is viewed as equally important. As a concretization of such a theology, this article looks to the circle of life advocated by the Sami theologian Tore Johnsen. Bridging theology and politics, this article also presents the commitment of Bishop Tor Berger Jørgensen in the political debate about oil exploration in certain areas off the coast of his diocese. Jørgensen's commitment and Johnsen's work are examples of how Christian churches can address the global ecological crisis using their best tool: theology.

scholarly journals The “Slavic-Russian Nation” in the Historical Literature of Ukraine and Russia from the 1600s to the mid-1700s

Slovene ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-447
Author(s):  
Petr S. Stefanovich
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
17Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Slavonic Language ◽  
Imperial Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Church ◽  
Century Literature

The article analyzes the history of the concept of a “Slavic-Russian nation”. The concept was first used by Zacharia Kopystenskij in 1624, but its wide occurrence starts in 1674, when Synopsis, the first printed history of Russia, was published in Kiev. In the book, “Slavic-Russian nation” refers to an ancient Slavic people, which preceded the “Russian nation” (“rossiyskiy narod”) of the time in which the book was written. Uniting “Slavs” and “Russians” (“rossy”) into one “Slavic-Russian nation”, the author of Synopsis followed the idea which was proposed but not specifically defined by M. Stryjkovskij in his Chronicle (1582) and, later, by the Kievan intellectuals of the 1620s–30s. The construction of Synopsis was to prove that “Russians” (“rossy”) were united by both the common Slavic origin and the Church Slavonic language used by the Orthodox Slavic peoples. According to Synopsis, they were also supposed to be united by the Muscovite tsar’s authority and the Orthodox religion. The whole conception made Synopsis very popular in Russia in the late 17th century and later. Earlier in the 17th-century literature of the Muscovite State, some authors also proposed ethno-genetic constructions based on Stryjkovskij’s Chronicle and other Renaissance historiography. Independently from the Kievan literature, the word “Slavic-Russian” was invented (first appearance in the Legend about Sloven and Rus, 1630s). Both the Kievan and Muscovite constructions of a mythical “Slavic-Russian nation” aimed at making an “imagined” ethno-cultural nation. They contributed to forming a new Russian imperial identity in the Petrine epoch. However, the concept of a “Slavic-Russian nation” was not in demand in the political discourse of the Petrine Empire. It was sporadically used in the historical works of the 18th century (largely due to the influence of Synopsis), but played no significant role in the proposed interpretations of Russian history.

Toward a Pastoral Reading of the Bible Not Confined to the Church

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 579-587
Author(s):  
Jorge Pixley
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Study Groups ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Biblical Study ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Composition ◽  
The Church

AbstractUsing the experience of the network of popular biblical study groups in Latin America and the biblical scholars who accompany them, this article outlines the basic requirements for a pastoral reading of the Bible. Special emphasis is given to the need for using the history of composition, necessarily hypothetical, in order to recover the political dynamics of the texts. The resulting pastoral reading will serve a public as well as a church function.

Einleitung Christliche Glaubenswelten im 20. Jahrhundert

2005 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-146
Author(s):  
Friedrich Wilhelm Graf ◽  
Lutz Raphael
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Precise Knowledge ◽  
Current Perspective ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Primary Dimension ◽  
The Church

Spheres of Christian Belief in the 20th Century From the current perspective, religion, Christianity and the Church have been gaining greater importance for 20th century European history than had been accorded them for a long time by contemporary historians. The articles in this periodical take up some key themes of the history of religion: A primary dimension addresses interrelations of religion and politics, the state and Christian Churches, political and religious movements; the presence of religion and the Church in the new media of the century, that is, radio, film and television, opens up a second dimension. A third key topic of a history of European religion of the last four decades addresses the interaction of social change with the genesis of new forms of belief and religiosity. Investigating all these subjects as well as numerous other themes requires opening up the methodology of the study of the history of religion to approaches of «religious economics», the precise knowledge of theological approaches to and interpretations of problems and the intensive intellectual exchange with the other disciplines of religious scholarship.

Convention and Conversion: Patterns in Late Medieval Piety

1998 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kieckhefer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Materialism ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Liberal Protestantism ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Teachings ◽  
Ernst Troeltsch ◽  
The Church

Ernst Troeltsch is known to church historians largely for his classic threefold distinction of church, sect, and mysticism. In The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, Troeltsch describes the church as an institution enmeshed with society and making accommodations to the world's imperfections; the sects, driven by a quest for purity, refuse to make accommodations or compromises, while the mystics stand aside from this conflict and concern themselves with “a purely personal and inward experience” in which “the isolated individual, and psychological abstraction and analysis become everything.” Troeltsch sees mysticism not as a phenomenon naturally at home within the church but rather as one that leads away from the establishment, and it is perhaps this perception in particular that gives his work lasting relevance. The assumption that mysticism veers naturally in an antiecclesial direction, and that its more orthodox manifestations are anomalies requiring explanation, remains very much alive in the literature. Indeed, from the perspective of cultural materialism, it is the political, antiecclesial, subversive bite of mysticism that is its most interesting feature. On this point liberal Protestantism and postmodernism have come together, theology and cultural studies have embraced. Troeltsch's schema thus retains relevance well beyond the sphere of historiography.

The Human and the System

1978 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-24
Author(s):  
José MÍGuez Bonino
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Dimension ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

“Christians have in the last few years begun to rediscover the political dimension of the prophetic message and to search in the history of the church for the sporadic surfacing of that prophetic stream. But we have to confess that we are just at the beginning of such a search and that we are far from having either adequately pondered or theologically articulated these insights.”

The Disintegration of the Tory-Anglican Alliance in the Struggle for Catholic Emancipation

1960 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clyde J. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Environment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church ◽  
Established Church

The late 1820's, particularly the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, marked the end of an era in the history of the English Established Church. Earlier, for more than a century, the Anglican hierarchy had served as an appendage of the political system dominated by the landed interests; and since the younger Pitt's time, the Church had functioned politically as an ally of the Tory Party. By the year 1827. however, churchmen faced a rapidly changing political environment.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Singing the Te Deum Laudamus in the Postmodern Era

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Phemelo Olifile Marumo
Keyword(s):  
Church History ◽  
Missio Dei ◽  
Te Deum ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
God's Mission ◽  
Pertinent Question ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Universe ◽  
The Church ◽  
Te Deum Laudamus

This paper investigates the relevance of singing and performing the Te Deum Laudamus in the postmodern Christian era, especially in view of changing enactments and perceptions of the purpose of the hymn. The Te Deum has been used in various ways in church history, sung as a confession of praise and regularly used since the time of St Benedict during Matins (morning service). While the Reformers were critical of the late medieval worship, they did not query incorporating the Te Deum into their liturgies, because it brought meaning to the glorification of a benevolent God. This explains its use also by most Christian churches in their liturgies in the postmodern era. However, the pertinent question remains: Is the Te Deum still applicable to the postmodern church, which is characterised by secularism, charismatic sermons, and commercialised worship. The question is instigated by events and conceptions of the universe from the era of Gregorianism to Darwinism. In answering this question, the paper highlights the history of the Te Deum and its application within the church, and seeks to find out whether the hymn addresses the present needs of Christians, which have been affected by postmodernism. The paper contends that the Te Deum is still relevant and contributes to the glorification of God’s mission (missio Dei).

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.

Oedipus Rex as a philosophical and political strategy

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 1092-1107
Author(s):  
José Luis Moreno Pestaña
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
History Of

This article studies Michel Foucault’s interpretation of the tragedy Oedipus Rex. The analysis seeks to uncover the various intellectual strategies around his study. First, Foucault takes a position in the political debate about prisons in France in the early 1970s. Second, his analysis of the tragedy contributes to position his work in the field of the philosophical history of truth, by singularising his project and separating it from the dominant models of the history of philosophy. Third, Foucault aims to differentiate himself from the results of the historical work of the Paris School. This article analyses how Foucault depends on these interpretations and how it helps him to acquire philosophical relevance. Through the sociology of intellectual history’s perspective, the article elaborates the contributions and limits of Foucault’s perspective.

Ethnicity, Confession, Nation – The Development of Concepts in the History of Transylvania in Religious Life

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-162
Author(s):  
Ioan Chirilă
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Orthodox Christian ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
National Division ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

"The church has had to accept the national division of Europe since the Middle Ages and adapt to this situation. This issue is relatively unclear in the case of Tran-sylvania. N. Iorga stated about the Orthodox Christian consciousness that “it was so strong that it hindered the creation of a strong national consciousness”, and this would allow us to see in the ecclesiastical organization a form of expression of uni-tary organization of Romanian ethnicity in Transylvania. The time of Transylvani-an principalities and voivodeships shows us that most often the ecclesiastical leaders were also the political leaders (see the case of Prince Andrew Báthory who was Archbishop of Warmia – Poland); so, the two concepts of ethnicity and confession reflected the same historical reality during those times. The two concepts will be-come separated only later, after the emergence of confessions other than the Eastern rite. In support of our statement, we have the correspondence between the Hungar-ian kings and officials and the papacy. Before dealing with these perspectives, we shall pin down the terminology to grant the reader the possibility to understand the historical situations through a kind of thinking marked by the imprint of the Holy Scripture. Keywords: ethnicity, people, confession, dynamic status, national consciousness, Transyl-vania, the church. "

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