1,333 research outputs found
The Christian Right and US Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century
No full textThe thesis discusses the role of the Christian Right in the US foreign policy decision making process. The research revealed that the Christian Right has long been fascinated with some international issues in general and US foreign policy in particular. The Christian Right’s interest in international issues increased markedly during years of the George W. Bush presidency. It successfully widened its activities from domestic social conservative issues to foreign policy issues by participating in, articulating and lobbying for its religious version of American foreign policy. In assessing the role of the Christian Right in US foreign policy making, this dissertation examines three aspects of US foreign policy, namely Israel, international religious freedom and global humanitarianism. Based on these aspects, the Christian Right is seen as skilled in framing and defining issues. The Christian Right seems effective in selecting and prioritizing international issues that have a reasonable chance of being selected by foreign policy decision makers, especially in Congress. Moreover, the Christian Right has shown its maturity in seeking engagement and cooperation with other organizations, secular and religious, in order to advance its international goals. Finally, in pursuing and conveying its international agenda, the Christian Right has adopted a more moderate and less overtly religious approach. Instead of using its traditional religious rhetoric, the Christian Right has successfully projected its foreign policy preferences into the conventional realist discourse of American foreign policy that is largely based on the objective of national interest and national security. Nevertheless, this study does not, in any way, conclude that the Christian Right was able to influence or determine the direction of US foreign policy and its outcomes; however, it does suggest that the Christian Right did contribute and have an impact on the formulation of some US foreign policy. As such, the research contends that the role of the Christian Right is similar to other interest group lobbies and that its perceived influence on US foreign policy should not be exaggerated. Finally, the research suggests that the emergence of the Christian Right as an actor in asserting its global agenda through US foreign policy can possibly provide an example of how religious beliefs and values can become a potential source of “soft power”. Together with the “climate of opinion” of the American public during the Bush administration, the “soft power” at domestic level could serve as a valuable new explanatory variable in understanding how the US foreign policy was formulated in the early 21st century
Journal of African Christian Biography: v. 6, no. 4
No full textA publication of the Dictionary of African Christian Biography with U.S. offices located at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University. This issue focuses on: Tributes to Andrew Walls and Benedict Ssettuuma (Uganda); Samuel T. O. Akande (Nigeria).
This issue of the Journal of African Christian Biography honors the memory of "Prof." Andrew Finlay Walls and Fr. Benedict Ssettuuma, Jr. It also celebrates the contribution of Dr. Michael Adeleke Ogunewu to the work of the DACB both as an author and a mentor-teacher. One of his biographies, that of Samuel T. O. Akande, is included. The issue also includes a serialized chapter from African Christian Biography by Roger Levine and a new section, "Teaching with the DACB," featuring the reflections of a North American student on what the DACB has taught her
Supplemental Material - Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy and Principal Component Analysis to Retrospectively Determine Production History of Plutonium Dioxide
No full textSupplemental Material for Diffuse Reflectance Spectroscopy and Principal Component Analysis to Retrospectively Determine Production History of Plutonium Dioxide by Eliel Villa-Aleman, Jonathan H. Christian Jason R. Darvin, Bryan J. Foley, Don D. Dick, Brent Fallin, and Kimberly A. S. Fessler in Applied Spectroscopy</p
The Symbolics of Death and the Construction of Christian Asceticism: Greek Patristic Voices from the Fourth through Seventh Centuries
No full textThis thesis examines the role which death plays in the development of a uniquely Christian identity in John Climacus’ seventh-century work, the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek ascetic literature of the previous centuries. I argue that John Climacus deploys language of death, inherited from a range of Greek Christian literature, as the symbolic framework within which he describes the ascetic lifestyle as developing a Christian identity. This framework is expressed by thee ascetic practice of ‘memory of death’ and by practices of renunciation described as ‘death’ to oneself and others.
In order to understand Climacus’ unique achievement in regard to engagement with death it is necessary first to situate the Ladder and its author within the literature of the Greek ascetic tradition, within which Climacus consciously wrote. In the Introduction I develp ways Climacus draws on and develops traditional material, while arguing that it must be treated and interpreted in its own right and not simply as his ‘sources.’ I then examine the vocabulary of death and the lines of thought opened up in the New Testament. Chapter One argues that the memory of death plays an important role in Athanasius’ Vita Antonii. Chapter Two surveys material from the fifth- and sixth-century Egyptian and Palestinian deserts in which memory and practice of death are deployed in a wider variety of ways and are increasingly connected to ascetics’ fundamental understanding of self and salvation. Chapter Three examines the sixth-century Quaestiones et Responsiones of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza in which further elaboration of the same thematic is discernible. Chapter Four concludes this thesis with a sustained reading of John Climacus’ Scala Paradisi in which the various thematics centring on memory and practice of death are synthesized into the existential framework and practical response, respectively
The Quest for Rational Agreement: a Critical Assessment of Alasdair MacIntyre's Attempt to Overcome Relativism
No full textPermission from the author to release this work is pending. Please contact the ICS library if you would like to view this work
The Christian eschatological epistemology of Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758
No full textBibliography: pages 232-241.Philosophy and theology combine in Jonathan Edwards in a way that is not usual for either discipline. The field of study is therefore that of historical philosophy and historical theology but only in so far as to give the historical situation and interpretation of Jonathan Edwards' epistemology. The philosophy is Christian, Neo-Platonic and Lockean and the theology is Calvinistic. The author gives the historical background with reference to John Locke,· Isaac Newton and compares Edwards with Kant who was almost contemporary and shows that epistemology is situational and that a philosopher's works can never be studied out of context. He then touches on the massive Puritan heritage of Jonathan Edwards' and shows briefly the epistemological tradition of Calvin but chiefly concentrating on the knowledge of faith. He traces this through the English Puritans to Jonathan Edwards. The author then by means of a detailed commentary from various parts of Edwards' works· places the locus of Edwards' epistemology in the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. · He shows that each Person of the Triune God, was a permanent emotional, devotional, theological and homiletical feature in Edwards' life. The holistic vision of God working in a consciously epistemological way from eternity to eternity, raises the locus of the epistemology far above Perry Miller's comment that Edwards was extrapolating Lockean psychology into the Godhead. The reverse was true, the vision of God in His eternal sovereignty, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient, places the locus in eternity, in the heavens, so to speak, and the ordinary elements of epistemology usually discussed by philosophers, must be considered in that context if they are to be true to Jonathan Edwards. This locus is most clearly seen when the eschatological development of his epistemology into eternity is systematised. Knowledge is bound up with glory, virtue, joy, beauty and with an existential encounter with God, growing into eternity. Knowledge is viewed as being mediated by Christ the God-man to an hierarchy of created spirits. Knowledge is itself in an hierarchy and must be considered in its full implications. The knowledge of the damned involves Edwards in a contradiction as he sees them growing in knowledge, suffering and pain yet cut off from Christ the mediator of knowledge and also growing in stupor
The defender of the good news: questioning Lamin Sanneh
No full text[Lamin Sanneh is the D. Willis James Professor of Missions and World Christianity and professor of history at Yale Divinity School. Gambian born, Sanneh is descended from the Nyanchos, an ancient African royal line. As such, his earliest education, in
the Gambia, was with fellow chiefs’ sons. Following graduation from the University of London with a Ph.D. in Islamic History, he taught at the University of Ghana and at the University of Aberdeen, in Scotland. He served for eight years as Assistant
and Associate Professor of the History of Religion at Harvard University, before moving to Yale University in 1989. The author of a dozen books and scores of
articles, he is an editor-at-large for The Christian Century and a contributing editor for the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.
'Divine Beauty and Excellency: Some Lessons from Jonathan Edwards'
No full textThis is the printed form of a public lecture delivered at Regent College in the July 2008 on the aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). In it the author argues that Edwards's version of Christian aesthetics has application to contemporary theology and praxis, despite the fact that his vision of divine beauty is embedded in his broader metaphysics, e.g. his idealism and mental phenomenalism. In fact, Edwards's metaphysics only makes sense when viewed as part-and-parcel of his Trinitarian theology.This is the printed form of a public lecture delivered at Regent College in the July 2008 on the aesthetics of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). In it the author argues that Edwards's version of Christian aesthetics has application to contemporary theology and praxis, despite the fact that his vision of divine beauty is embedded in his broader metaphysics, e.g. his idealism and mental phenomenalism. In fact, Edwards's metaphysics only makes sense when viewed as part-and-parcel of his Trinitarian theology
Jonathan Edwards a life
No full text"Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the eighteenth century." "In this biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George M. Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared - a frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards' life and thought. Marsden reveals Edwards as a complex thinker and human being who struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular, modern world emerging out of the Enlightenment. In this, Edwards' life anticipated the deep contradictions of our American culture."--BOOK JACKET
Hospitality to the stranger : the experience of Christian Churches in the resettlement of African refugees to the United States
No full textThis thesis explores the role of constituent congregations of Church World
Service (CWS) in the process of resettling refugees in the U.S. It is based upon case
studies built around a series of interviews conducted with members of three
congregations who sponsored African families for resettlement in Minnesota.
Reflecting upon the experiences of those interviewed, the discourse considers the
efficacy of refugee resettlement as a means for Christian congregations to extend
hospitality to strangers.
The thesis explores the broader theme of Christian hospitality as a particular
activity of the church. Hospitality is approached using the scriptural theme of
welcoming the stranger as it is taken up by contemporary theologians. Christine Pohl,
author of Making Room, is regarded as a leading authority on hospitality. Much of
her research is based on the work of Jean Vanier, founder of the L’Arche
communities. This thesis suggests that Pohl’s treatment lacks both a usable
definition of hospitality and a sufficient theological framework in which to locate it.
In redressing these omissions, Pohl’s work is examined in light of Vanier in order to
establish an understanding of what comprises a particularly Christian approach to
hospitality.
Finally, the thesis proposes that as hospitality is understood as an act instituted
by the person of Christ and imbued by the Holy Spirit, it is to be considered an act
constitutive of the Church itself. Therefore it is an act necessary to the life of the
Church as the Body of Christ. While contemporary research engages with hospitality
as such an act, little work has been undertaken how it can be applied at the
congregational level. CWS’s model of refugee sponsorship provides congregations
with the tangible means by which they may offer hospitality to strangers
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