The Architecture of Eco-Theology: Towards a New Typology for Christian Sacred Space

This paper will begin by exploring the underlying scriptural and theological foundations for a Christian response to the ecological crisis with particular focus on the writings of cultural historian, Father Thomas Berry, CP. It will then describe the first worship space in Canada that attempts to embody the emergent “Eco-theology” to invoke both the transcendental and imminent presence of the divine by reconsidering every design decision from first principles. As articulated in its architecture, the traditional elements of Roman Catholic sacred space have been re-imagined and given unique expression to emphasize that when we gather for Christian worship, we do so within the greater context of creation. St. Gabriel’s Passionist Parish church therefore represents a distinctly new typology for Christian Worship that contributes towards an understanding of early scriptural teachings which emphasized the sacredness of all creation and not just the sacredness of humankind. The new building as sacred space presents a “Gestalt whole”, and like the medieval cathedrals of Europe, becomes itself a form of Catechetical pedagogy, engaging the senses, demanding reflection, and inviting transformation.

Between Commemoration and Living Memory: Symbolic Acts of the Teutonic Knights in Light of Cultural Theory

The present article investigates the function of ritual acts as a form of communication vis-à-vis cultural meaning in the life of the Teutonic Knights. As a condensed form of communal expression, rituals exhibit an acute potential to render present collective identity and shape the lives of the communities that practice them. Such potential is manifest in the institutional arrangement of the Teutonic Order in various forms with particular reference to their dual standing in society, insofar as they drew upon the societal models of the oratores and the bellatores. Particularly relevant to the current study, considerations of cultural historian and social analyst Jan Assmann regarding symbolic acts and collective living memory assist in creating the theoretical framework for the study’s deliberations. With Assmann’s insights in mind, ritual is understood as a communicative vector of cultural meaning – so to speak – of living memory. The analysis then turns to an examination of select representative examples from diverse scenarios in the existence of the Teutonic Knights, thereby taking into account internal, public, and participatory contexts of symbolic moments. The study thus explores how, while rituals can commemorate memorialised events from the past, they are also able to enact the living memory of a collective entity, ultimately claiming that the examined symbolic acts exhibited both communicative and transformative potential.

The Relevance of Thomas Berry for 21st Century Catholicity

The ecological crisis continues to be identified as the most significant social breakdown in the world. One of the important foundational influences on the development of an adequate religious response is the thought of cultural historian Thomas Berry. He affirmed the critical role that the world’s religions have in developing a spirituality that supports the sacrifices, visions, and dreams needed to live in an integral way with the Earth’s community of life. Such a spirituality provides the psychic energies we need to adequately respond to the crisis. The author of this article argues that Berry’s thoughts continue to be relevant, especially in the context of the emergence of a renewed sense of Catholicity. This article presents an overview of the breadth and depth of the study that led to Berry’s articulation of a new human orientation needed to reverse the path of devastation. It offers Berry’s insights into the reasons why it is difficult for Christianity to effectively respond to the present crisis and calls for a new Catholicity that functions out of the comprehensive context of an evolutionary and emergent universe.

The black box of delegated writing: Early Modern scribes and female literacy in The Netherlands

Apart from literacy rates and reading and writing acquisition, the actual writing practices of the past, which include the phenomenon of delegated writing, belong to a history of literacy. Delegated writing occurred when illiterate or partly literate individuals wanted to keep in contact with relatives at a distance and had to rely on the assistance of professional or social scribes. The details of this process and the role played by the sender of a letter and its actual, usually unknown, scribe often remain unclear, although different scenarios may be assumed. Cultural historian Lyons explored scenarios for delegated writing in France, Italy and Spain in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the writing of ordinary people during the First World War and in the age of mass migration. For the Dutch language area, we have the opportunity to delve further back in time by exploring the late-seventeenth-century part of the Letters as Loot (LAL) corpus. This corpus previously allowed us to establish linguistic differences between autographs and non-autographs. For a detailed view of the delegated writing process, however, the LAL corpus also provides us with instances of two types of letters written by the same, identified, female scribes: their own letters and the letters they wrote for others. A comparative analysis of these different letters will be shown to contribute to opening the black box of Early Modern delegated writing.

Theological Imagination in a Throwaway Society: Contending with Waste

This article treats the topic of consumer waste by beginning with a contemporary story that illustrates the reality and complex dynamics of throwaway culture. Noting the dynamic quality of waste, it offers a brief review of the development of throwaway society. Beginning in a preindustrial world in which the battle against “moth and rust” required habits of reuse and repair, or what cultural historian Susan Strasser refers to as bricolage, it then traces changes in “natural” and “temporal” imaginaries, as well as economic and technological factors, that rendered obsolete the cultural skills and imaginative capacities of bricolage. Having argued that forgetting and loss of imagination are key to waste-making, it offers two Christian responses that schools and faith communities might practice: “material anamnesis” and “redemptive vision.”

Reconfiguring Regulation: Towards an Empathic, Person-Centred Highly Compulsory Course of Study

This paper offers a model for a highly compulsory course designed to be empathic and person-centred within the parameters of the regulatory environment. Highly compulsory courses are those which require undergraduate students to study general subjects, in addition to subjects in their chosen academic degrees, and to satisfy the requirements within the duration of a first-degree course programme. Students who fail to comply must either remain at university until all highly compulsory courses have been successfully completed or to leave university without a degree. A relatively recent phenomenon, the highly compulsory course blueprint is being reproduced in university settings across Asia. The empathic person-centred highly compulsory course model described in the paper emerged through the interplay of three elements: an understanding of the modern regulatory environment informed by the work of philosopher-historian, Michel Foucault; an approach to writing ordinary lives extrapolated from the work of cultural historian, Catherine Hall; and real life-like scenarios based on a knowledge and understanding of the ordinary lives of students conscripted to the course that accrued in an 18-month period between 2015 and 2016. The resulting course is predicated on four principles: challenge; openness and transparency; availability; and flexibility. The first is a response to the regulatory environment’s requirement that the highly compulsory courses within its purview be meaningful from a pedagogical perspective; the other three are designed to support student-conscripts through the challenge. If neither the detail of the course nor the principles on which it is predicated convince, the three elements introduced in the first part of the paper offer a possible approach for the development of highly compulsory courses that are sensitive to, and which mitigate against conflict with, learners’ lives outside the classroom.

“Lithuanian Athens”. Ludwik Janowski’s versions of the history of Vilnius University

The subject of this article is scientific reflection about the works on the history of Vilnius University had written in the first two decades of the twentieth century by the cultural historian, Ludwik Janowski (1878-1921), who was associated with the scientific community in Kiev and Krakow, and in 1919-1921 he was a professor at The Stefan Batory University in Vilnius. Janowski’s interest on the history of Vilnius University was a kind of a research passion all his life. Though he failed to write a historiographic synthesis that it has been planning. In his works he tried to correct and supplement the research on the history of Vilnius University. His studies and books compose a specific synthesis in fragments, which shows in a multi-variant narrative the most important stages and factors in the development of this great center of science and culture.

De tuinman, de geldschieter, de koelie-werver en de mandoer

The Hungarian planter László Székely was active as a painter on Sumatra during the first decennia of the 20th century. In 1923 he painted four portraits of people from the plan­ters’ community: The Mandoer, The Moneylender, The Toekang-kebon and The Koelie recruiter, which appeared in the weekly paper De Zweep. In this article I will give an over­view of the cultural life in Deli and place Székely’s work in this context. Further­more, I will explain the uniqueness of Székely’s portraits, using the theory of the English cultural historian Peter Burke.