Christian Mindfulness and Mental Health: Coping through Sacred Traditions and Embodied Awareness

Mindfulness is increasingly implemented as a tool in mental health practice for coping and self-care. Some Christians worry that these practices might be in conflict with their own tradition, while other Christian contexts are reclaiming the contemplative aspects of the faith. Though clinicians are not trained to teach on religious topics and ethically must avoid pushing religion onto clients, conceptualization and research extend the benefits of mindfulness practices for religious clients. This paper will discuss the evidence for using mindfulness in mental health treatment and connect mindfulness to the Christian tradition. The authors explore how intentional awareness and embodiment of the present moment are supported in Christian theology through the incarnation of Jesus and God’s attention of the physical body in the Christian scriptures. The authors also discuss how sacraments and prayer naturally overlap with mindfulness practices for the dual purposes of emotional healing and spiritual growth. To bolster the benefits of mindfulness in the psychological and religious realms, the purpose of this paper is to empower therapists to address client concerns of whether mindfulness is in conflict with Christianity, support clients in expanding current Christian religious coping, and provide Christian leaders with more information about how mindfulness elements are already present in Christian rituals and beliefs.

Lordship and Humanity Principles for The Peace of Indonesia: An Integrative Study of Theology and Ideology

This study is stimulated by the background of the gap regarding the understanding and application between the Indonesian ideology of Pancasila and theology (religion) among both Muslims and Christians. This research aimed to study the integration between Christian theology and the Indonesian ideology of Pancasila. This research was based upon the naturalistic paradigm with a qualitative approach and integrative research method to find a model for solving religious intolerance and violence, which is often manipulated by political interests. This integrative study, especially integral dialectical synthesis, is to find a holistic knowledge of the doctrine of the principle of One Lordship, just and civilized humanity according to Christian theology and ideology of Pancasila as a model of integration. The integrative study between theology and ideology confirms that each of the five principles of Pancasila is theological, and even a mandate that believers (the Christians community) must obey. The relationship between Christian theology and the ideology of Pancasila is an integrative relationship because God and humanity are also integrative. These findings suggest that all Christians live in love and respect to their fellow humans, both Christian and non-Christian. Loving God and others means loving the Indonesian people by participating in overcoming the nation's problems and building the Indonesian nation's welfare for the welfare of the nation is our (all Indonesian citizens) wellbeing.

Ecofeminist Theology of Interdependence. A Constructive Theological Approach to Contemporary Environmental (in)Justice and Vulnerability

This article addresses the issue of social and environmental (in)justice through the lens of Christian ecofeminism and its ethic of interconnectedness and ecological responsibility for all of creation. Because ecofeminism connects the exploitation of women with the exploitation of creation (nature), I use the central research methodology of Christian ecofeminist hermeneutics to formulate a central research question: first, an analysis of Christian ecofeminism’s position on social and ecological (in)justice, then an analysis of the positive implications for Christian theology and for the pursuit of social and ecological justice. Although climate change disproportionately impacts female populations, in particular the reproductive health of poorer women, women are often excluded from environmental decision-making processes. Women around the world are already more affected by polluted air, limited access to clean water, and increased exposure to toxic chemicals, and climate change exacerbates these threats. Sensitivity to the impacts of climate change also provides women with a unique experiential knowledge that they can use to make an important contribution to efforts to increase climate resilience and sustainability, as well as to improve awareness and attitudes toward environmental issues and nature in the world’s religions. For ecofeminists, the environmental crisis is a reality, a threat, and a warning to modern humanity. Climate change, global warming, loss of biodiversity and other processes that are supposedly the result of pollution and long-term overuse and exploitation of natural resources are certainly a reflection and consequence of man’s global consumer-imperialist attitude towards nature.

Gadamer, Barth, and Transcendence in Biblical Interpretation

The essay reflects on how Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Barth view interpretation of the Christian Bible. It proceeds in three main sections. The first contends that Gadamer secularizes Christian theology, and that this has drawbacks for the sort of reading his hermeneutic can give to Christian Scripture. The second part turns to Barth, arguing that the whole structure of his approach to the Bible factors in theological commitment, with benefits for the readings he can deliver. The final part makes a case that contemporary reflection on interpretation can nonetheless glean important insights from Gadamer, especially regarding the readerly reception of texts, because his perspective has a certain sort of richness that Barth’s cannot match. The overall suggestion emerging from the interrogation of these two thinkers is that phenomenology and theology might learn from one another, that they each contribute something valuable to discussions of biblical interpretation.

Legal Roots of Christian Anthropology

Purpose of the article is to reconstruct the legal sources of Christian anthropology. Theoretical basis. The methodological basis of the article is the understanding of the fundamental foundations of Christian anthropology in the context of Roman legal understanding. Originality. From the point of view of the Christian religion, man is a dual being: his body is part of the material world, but his soul is not from this world, he is born directly from God. The transcendent origin of the soul gives it the right to communicate with God, but this right can be realized only with the help of the Church, which is seen as the "bride of the Lamb" and the mystical "body of Christ". Interpretations of the essence of church organization correlate with the principles of organization of the Roman community. The principle of universal priesthood correlates with the idea of "post-Tarquinian democracy", recognizing the people of Rome as the supreme bearer of the empire of Jupiter; catholicity – with the idea of the senate as a meeting of the most deserving leaders of the community; apostolic succession – with the institution of republican magistrates, who even though received their power from the community, but through "consultations with the gods" (auspices). In essence, Christian dogmatism is Roman law applied to the Middle Eastern religion; the Bible was interpreted as a legal document, and theologians acted as lawyers. Conclusions. In the ancient Churches (Catholic, Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic, etc.) the ideal of Roman law was realized as the right of impersonal law, standing outside and above the individual. The latter has no ontological value, it is a "servant of God", but the union of men into the mystical "body of Christ" makes the latter empowered to represent God on earth and to act on his behalf. The Renaissance paved the way for the Reformation, in which a powerful "Greek" ("philosophical") lobby declared itself. Despite the fact that many leaders of the Reformation had a personal dislike for philosophy, they were spontaneous philosophers, believing themselves entitled to interpret the will of God independently, regardless of the authority of the councils. They were strict rationalists who only changed the object of their reason: if the ancient Greeks tried to comprehend the world rationally, the Protestants set themselves the goal of rationally comprehending the Book. Ultimately, the main question of Christian theology is the question of man’s attitude to God, and the differences between the anthropological systems within Christianity are the options for answering this question.

Doing African Christian Theology: Some Non-negotiable Essentials

Missionary Christianity was introduced into Africa by Western and American missionaries whose theological framework shaped Christianity in Africa. Since theology is contextually informed, missionary theological formulations failed to meet Africa’s needs in many respects. In response, the African church began a quest for an African-brewed theology that is culturally sensitive and contextually relevant. For some time now this quest has engaged many African scholars; yet, no scholarly consensus has been reached regarding the nature and methodology for African Christian theology. This article contributes to the ongoing discourse by examining the emergence and development of African Christian theology and afterward, outlining some essential features that must characterize African Christian theology to make it accessible to and acceptable by the African Christian community. It is a literature research based on critical examination of related publications on African Christian theology. The article offers a model for contemporary Christians who are engaged in or desire to undertake theological research for the benefit of Christianity in Africa. Keywords: Africa, Christian, Pan-Africanism, Theology, Worldview

Life in This World and For the Life of the World: Natural Science and the Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church

For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (FLOW) is an admirable and important document, not least because it affirms natural scientific insights as valuable resources for Christian theology and social teaching. Given the current Ecumenical Patriarch's extensive engagement with environmental concerns, this affirmation is especially apposite. However, I do not believe FLOW fully recognizes the implications of such insights for its conception of God's creation or its social ethos. In particular, FLOW maintains that scarcity, competition, violence, and death are distortions of God's creation due to human sin and that human beings are commissioned and capacitated by God to strive to overcome them. By contrast, I contend that contemporary scientific understandings of planetary forces and ecological processes—and indeed Christian scripture—give Christians cause to consider scarcity, competition, violence, and death aspects of God's creation. I further claim that striving to overcome scarcity, competition, violence, and death would be environmentally disastrous and spiritually deleterious since it would domesticate the rapidly disappearing wilderness that biblical wisdom literature depicts as delighting and glorifying God. Happily, allowing natural scientific insights to inform Orthodox conceptions of God's creation in this way would render FLOW's injunction that human beings redress the environmental implications of their sin an imperative to reduce and remedy pollution and to minimize and restore anthropogenic habitat degradation and destruction, thereby fostering the ecological sustainability Orthodoxy champions and the respect for wilderness Christians have multiple reasons to commend. Although this abandons FLOW's aspiration that human beings wholly civilize God's creation, such respect for wilderness does not imply acquiescence to human deprivation and distress, for just as it is inappropriate to impose cultural values on all of nature, it is wrong to regard all natural dynamics culturally normative. Similarly, attributing scarcity, competition, violence, and death to God's creation rather than its sin need not undermine Christian hopes for freedom from these and all other maladies, for Christians await not only God's salvation from sin and its effects but God's new creation too. Thus, in addition to honing Orthodoxy's social ethos, heeding FLOW's embrace of natural scientific insights as constructive theological resources foregrounds a commonly neglected dimension of Christians' traditional depiction of the divine economy.

«Lemma»: Jay Wright’s Idiorrhythmic American Theater

This essay presents Jay Wright’s play Lemma as a historiographical challenge and also as a piece of idiorrhythmic American theater. Consonant with his life’s work of poetry, dramatic literature, and philosophical writing, Lemma showcases Wright’s expansive intellectual framework with which he constructs vivid, dynamic, and complex visions of American life. The “America” conjured here is steeped in many traditions, traditions typically kept distinct by academic discourse, such as West African cosmology, Enlightenment philosophy, jazz music theory, Ancient Greek theater, neo-Baroque modifications of Christian theology, pre-Columbian indigenous ways of knowing, etymological connections between Spanish and Gaelic, the materiality of John Donne’s poetry, and the lives of enslaved Africans in the New World. What is the purpose of Wright’s theatrical conjuration? How do we approach a text with such a diverse body of intellectual and literary sources? The author answers these questions and ends with a call to treat Lemma as a much needed point of view that opens lines of sight into Black and American theater far outside the well-worn territory of the Black Arts Movement.