Emde, Coolen, dan Istrinya: Analisis Gender dan Relasi Kuasa dalam Pekabaran Injil di Jawa Timur (1812-1848)

This article aims to build awareness of the gender equality issues in the history of Christianity through historical research. The subject of the research is the history of missions in East Java, especially in 1812-1848. Therefore, this study employs an analysis of gender and power relations both through feminist theory initiated by Kwok Pui Lan and also orientalism theory brought by Edward Said in examining the history of mission in East Java on that period. The characters appointed as the research subjects are Johannes Emde and Coenrad Laurens Coolen, along with their wives and children. They are the pioneers in introducing the gospel to the Javanese in East Java, thus become the foundations of the Christian community in East Java. In particular, the life of Emde and Coolen are so intertwined with the history of the East Java Christian Church (GKJW). However, there is a gender gap found in the mission by Emde and Coolen. In response, this research is conducted to keep building the awareness of gender justice as the history of Christianity carry on.AbstrakTulisan ini adalah bentuk upaya membangun kesadaran terhadap keadilan gender atas sejarah Kekristenan melalui penelitian pada sejarah pekabaran Injil di Jawa Timur khususnya pada tahun 1812-1848. Untuk itu penelitian ini menggunakan analisis gender dan relasi kuasa melalui teori feminis yang digagas oleh Kwok Pui Lan dan teori orientalisme yang dibawa oleh Edward Said dalam menelaah sejarah pekabaran Injil di Jawa Timur pada periode tersebut. Tokoh-tokoh yang diangkat adalah Johannes Emde dan Coenrad Laurens Coolen, beserta istri dan anaknya. Mereka memiliki andil besar dalam mengenalkan Injil dan menjadi pondasi komunitas Kristen di Jawa Timur. Utamanya tokoh Emde dan Coolen yang begitu melekat pada sejarah Greja Kristen Jawi Wetan (GKJW). Namun dalam proses pekabaran Injil yang dilakukan oleh Emde dan Coolen lekat dengan ketimpangan gender. Oleh karena itu, penelitian ini dilakukan supaya terus terbangun kesadaran pada keadilan gender dalam membaca dan melanjutkan sejarah Kekristenan di mana saja.

The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Diamper and the Machinations of Religious Colonization

The Synod of Diamper is, arguably, amongst the most significant milestones in the history of St. Thomas Christians in Kerala. This Synod was convened in the church at Udayamperoor, Kochi, Kerala, from June 20 to June 26, 1599. As is documented, it was Archbishop Alexis De Menezes of Goa who convoked this Synod. 200 decrees were passed during the nine sessions which were held during the Synod; these decrees, in toto, became a turning point in the history of Christianity in Kerala. Primarily, the Synod of Diamper was a religious/theological one. However, its subsequent decisive role in the history and culture of Kerala also gave the Synod a social face. A close scrutiny of the canonas [canon] reveals that these decrees were formulated with a consideration of only Christian practices that were prevalent and familiar in the West [Occident]. In a grimly ironic sense, the canonas overtly attempts a coax-hoax, whereby the Christians of Kerala would be coerced to follow the rules of the occidental version of Christianity; and this disciplining would be aided by various methods including expulsions from parish, ex-communication, etc. One big fallout of this scenario was that the Christians of Kerala, who till then had a variegated co- existence with different cultures, were forced to take up an exclusive and singular notion of Christian culture. Through these canonas, many of the existing socio- cultural customs of the Christians of Kerala were abolished; an attempt to sculpt the socio-cultural life of this native populace and bring it in accordance with the image of the Christian that the West upheld. This article aims to reveal the methodology through which the Institutionalized Western Theological-agencies, by means of constant surveillance and an enforced seclusion-exclusion axis, exerted power on regional and native Christian group.

Ikonografia witraży Wiktora Ostrzołka w gdańskim kościele Mariackim (1977–1980)

In 1966, a commemorative decoration appeared inside St Mary’s Church in Gdansk: its main component was the painting showing Poland’s Baptism placed in the chancel. Meanwhile, a pillar by the Priests’ Chapel was decorated with a standard bearing striped concentration camp uniform cloth with numbers of priests -prisoners in Nazi camps. This referred directly to the décor of the Priests’ Chapel created not long before, and in which Polish priests murdered during WW II had been commemorated in 1965. Thus the millennial decoration of the chancel clearly associated the history of the Polish state with the history of Christianity in Poland, while the decoration of the Priests’ Chapel emphasized the martyrology of Polish priests. Both motifs were clearly continued in two large –size stained glass windows installed in the church in the late 1970s: one of them fills in the window in the Priests’ Chapel, while the other is to be found in the window closing the church’s chancel. Both were designed by Wiktor Ostrzołek, a leading stained glass designer in post -WW II Poland. The iconographic programme of the first refers to the martyrology of priests, yet it does not limit itself to priests -martyrs in recent history, but shows those connected with it from the very beginning: St Adalbert, Five Martyr Brothers, St Stanislaus, St John Sarkander, St Andrew Bobola and Maximilian Kolbe. Respective figures are interconnected with the use of a clear red line serving as a metaphor of the martyrs’ blood. Its continuity connecting St Adalbert with St Maximilian, thus the beginnings of the Polish state with the present, at the same time shows the continuity of the presence of the Catholic Church in Polish history. This continuity is even more unequivocally expressed by the iconographic programme of the chancel stained glass. Here it is the figure of Mary that stands out; she enshrouds the presentations referring to the Church’s mission, and in particular to the Church’s mission in Poland, in her protective mantle. A deep interconnection between the history of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church was presented in the three acts of entrusting Poland to God and Mary: the Baptism of Poland in 966, the Lvov Oath of John Casimir in 1656, and the Jasna Góra Pledge connected directly with the 1966 millennial celebrations.

Den mångtydiga ortodoxin

The history of Christianity is marked by frequent debates over doctrinal truth. From an early stage, Christian authors began to use the terms "or­thodoxy" and "heresy" to deal with diversity of faith. While the orthodox faith was seen as the one that had been preserved from the time of the apostles, heresies were seen as later innovations. This idea was expressed in the Ecclesiastical History by Eusebius of Caesarea in the fourth century, and became influential in later Christian history writing. Up until the twentieth century, orthodoxy and heresy were concepts typically associated with doctrinal content. However, with Walter Bauer's immensely influential work Rechtgläubligkeit und Ketzerei im Frühesten Christentum (1934), a socio-historical understanding of orthodoxy and heresy came to be adopted. According to this view, the concepts corresponded to social realities. With the influence from poststructuralist thought from the 1980s onwards, further developments took place in this scholarly area, with a new understanding of the concepts as rhetorical representations. This article argues that even in modern research, orthodoxy and heresy are typically associated with value judgment, and that ancient Christian cat­egorizations of "orthodox" and "heretic", and of the heretics them­selves, have continued to determine the way in which we read the sources today. Giving an example of heresiology produced by Jerome of Stridon during the Origenist controversy, it is suggested that in order to avoid essential­izing the rhetorical constructions of the heresiologists, a greater attention to their strategies as well as to their context is needed.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the history of Christianity in Ireland. Since the arrival of Palladius in Ireland in the year 431, the ‘land of saints and scholars’ has had a long and complex relationship with its dominant religion. Ireland's social, political and intellectual history has always been integrated with its experience of Christianity, for the religion that began to organize in 431 has shaped in powerful ways the island's cultures and languages, as well as its people's conceptions of what it means to be an individual, a family, a community, and a nation. Over one-and-a-half millennia, the Christian faith fashioned ideas about Irish-ness and Ireland, just as Irish missionaries, theologians, ideas, and experiences shaped Christianity as it expanded around the world. Nevertheless, the dominance of Christianity in Ireland was never complete and has never been uncontested.

METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN THE RESEARCH OF PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGIANS IN THE NATIONAL PEDAGOGICAL DRAGOMANOV UNIVERSITY

Within the framework of cooperation of the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University with Protestant seminaries and their associations, more than ten defenses of dissertations on Pentecostalism took place. These defenses prove that Pentecostal theologians were able to overcome the closed nature of their own tradition to the development of theology. The ideological leadership of Protestant theology in Ukraine, especially Pentecostal theology, became possible due to the assimilation and development of the best methodological achievements of Western theology of the beginning of the 21st century. Ukrainian Pentecostal theologians actively use the methodology of theological hermeneutics, taking into account the achievements of post-liberal and post-conservative Western theology, modern biblical studies, mission theology and eschatology. The central point for the entire methodology was the recognition of the narrative character of the religious ideology. The analysis of narratives is complemented by the research of key narrative concepts, the research of the interaction of narrative theology and other post-metaphysical methodologies. The vision of the history of Christianity and the history of theology as processes characterized by periodic paradigm shifts allows us to conceptualize narratives and then create new narratives about these stories and about the prospects of both Christianity and theology. A particularly great achievement is the systematic presentation of the history of the Pentecostal movement as the history of communities that have special narratives, cultivate special virtues, and use special narrative concepts.

Africanization of Christianity: Henry Venn’s indigenization of Christianity

The history of Christianity has always been a two-way process of transformation in any given culture. Christianity and paganism are reciprocal; Christianity is necessary for revelation to be fulfilled, but the actual quality of this fulfillment depends upon the quality of the religious man transformed by revelation. Christianity, as a result of this, needs a natural religion, the same way it needs all human realities as the sole mission is to save what has first been created. The link between Gospel and culture is that Gospel whenever its introduced and established in a new culture, is “transposed” in a particular way a sweet melody into a new key. Moreover, the Gospel, when transposed from its biblical world to other cultural worlds, undergoes change itself as well as causing these other worlds to change. Crowther created an astonishing impact and contribution after his consecration in 1864; as he strived to indigenize or Africanize Christianity to make it possible for the Christian faith to be accepted by Africans without having to give up or disown their cultural values. This work seeks to find what part Henry Venn, the dynamic and accomplished secretary of the Church Missionary Society, played to see how Christian faith can go well together or combine with African beliefs and practices to produce Christianity which may become a religion for Africans. This work has shown that Henry Venn's ideas on native Church organization include: the native Church needs the ablest native pastors for its fuller development and that it should be under a native bishop and that a native Church is organized as a national institution. This work adopted a qualitative method that used historical and content analysis. This work concluded that for the Africanization of Christianity to be actualized, African Church must have its liturgy or incorporate what was good of the native religions to develop an authentically African Christianity. And that reducing the various African vernaculars into writing and developing native literature was a first step in the reforming movement toward Africanization of Christianity; just as Venn urged Crowther to undertake the translation of the Bible into Yoruba and to preach in Yoruba even while still at Freetown.