3,566 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
Church and state in religious education 1944-1984: a critical survey of trends in England from the point of view of the Christian parent with special reference to the Christian schools movement
No full textAt the end of the forty year period 1944-1984 a minority of Christian parents in England and Wales were expressing their disquiet at trends in Education in general, and Religious Education in particular. The five year research project 1979-1984 was primarily aimed at communicating their concept of events, and their aspirations, to those who, having had their attention drawn to the actions of the dissenting parents, wondered what sort of thinking inspired those actions. For those inclined to regard the parents as on the Christian fringe, evidence is presented to show that on the contrary they were mainly the orthodox, and in line with mainstream Christianity, as delineated by the historic creeds. The argument of this thesis is that the parents were a grass-roots reaction to a creeping revisionism that affected Christian thinking on education in the Protestant sector, but did not similarly affect the Roman Catholic sector
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
Lewis Carroll: Author, Mathematician, and Christian
No full textAlthough a Christian, an author, and a mathematician, Charles Letwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) wrote very few works in which these three aspects of his person was present. The only examples of him merging these interests are in Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. This paper will explore what motivated him to make these works and whether or not they were successful
Lewis Carroll: Author, Mathematician, and Christian
No full textAlthough a Christian, an author, and a mathematician, Charles Letwidge Dodgson (better known as Lewis Carroll) wrote very few works in which these three aspects of his person was present. The only examples of him merging these interests are in Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. This paper will explore what motivated him to make these works and whether or not they were successful
L. Christiani Friderici Garmanni Martisburgensis, Physici Chemnicensis Ordinarii Academici Curiosi, Homo Ex Ovo. Sive De Ovo Humano Dissertatio
No full textConversion, continuity, and moral dilemmas among Christian Bidayuhs in Malaysian Borneo
No full textThis is the author's final version of the article (under the title "Speaking of continuity... Religious change and moral dilemmas among Christian Bidayuhs in Malaysian Borneo"). The final publication is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 by the American Anthropological Association.The nascent anthropology of Christianity highlights rupture as central to conversion. Yet thick ethnography of a Bidayuh village in Malaysian Borneo reveals how conversion can also foster modes of thinking and speaking about continuity between Christianity and “the old ways.” Through a study of the shifting moral and religious topography of a community in which three churches coexist alongside a few elderly animist practitioners, I argue that such discourses and practices of continuity highlight the pluralistic and sometimes contradictory nature of Christianization. At the same time, they generate an understanding of conversion as a temporal and relational positioning that encompasses both converts and nonconverts.William Wyse Fund, Evans Fund, Smuts Memorial Fund, and Sir Bartle
Frere’s Memorial Fund at the University of Cambridge and a Horniman/Sutasoma Award from the Royal Anthropological Institute
Christian views of euthanasia: a comparison of Russian and western perspectives
No full textThe following research aims at unfolding an authentic Christian attitude to euthanasia by means of a comparative analysis of Christian bioethical thinking and practice in Russia and in the West. It seeks to establish what is euthanasia, whether it is incompatible with Christianity and, if so, what is the alternative. The first chapter explores the meaning of 'euthanasia', comparing and rethinking a number of definitions from the existing multitude. Through the psychological thicket of slogans such as "mercy killing", "personal autonomy" and "death with dignity" the core characteristic of euthanasia - deadly intention - is hardly ever seen. With some notable exceptions with regard to self-defence, just war, or capital punishment, in Christianity intending to kill has always been regarded as a grave sin of breaking the sixth commandment. The second chapter shows how Western Christian bioethics has gone from the ethics of Paul Ramsey to the ethics of Tristram Engelhardt, from balancing between justifying certain forms of intentional killing while condemning others to purifying one's heart and cultivating one's soul in order to prevent the formation of an intention to kill. The third chapter is dedicated to the development of Christian bioethics in Russia. In a country with over a millennium of Orthodox tradition there is an exceptional opportunity for the bioethical framework of Engelhardt to settle in naturally. The fourth chapter presents a number of well-publicized medical situations in Britain where choices between life and death were exercised. The analysis based on the material of the previous chapters shows most of them to be clear cases of euthanasia, while others have a recognizable potential to be described as such. The history and an ongoing story of the modem hospice movement - a living alternative to euthanasia - are the focus of the fifth and last chapter of this dissertation. Its core ability - to live with suffering - sustains the opposition to euthanasia and is essentially a Christian virtue
Zechariah 9-14 as the substructure of 1 Peter’s eschatological program
No full textThe principal aim of this study is to discern what has shaped the author of 1 Peter to regard Christian suffering as a necessary (1.6) and to-be-expected (4.12) component of faithful allegiance to Jesus Christ. Most research regarding suffering in 1 Peter has limited the scope of inquiry to two particular aspects—its cause and nature, and the strategies that the author of 1 Peter employs in order to enable his addressees to respond in faithfulness. There remains, however, the need for a comprehensive explanation for the source that has generated 1 Peter’s theology of Christian suffering. If Jesus truly is the Christ, God’s chosen redemptive agent who has come to restore God’s people, then how can it be that Christian suffering is a necessary part of discipleship after his coming, death and resurrection? What led the author of 1 Peter to such a startling conclusion, which seems to runs against the grain of the eschatological hopes and expectations of Jewish restoration ideology?
This thesis analyzes the appropriation of shepherd and fiery trials imagery,
and argues that the author of 1 Peter is dependent upon Zechariah 9-14 for his
theology of Christian suffering. Said in another way, the eschatological program of
Zechariah 9-14, read through the lens of the Gospel, functions as the substructure
for 1 Peter’s eschatology and thus its theology of Christian suffering.
In support of this hypothesis, this study highlights the fact that Zechariah 9-
14 was available and appropriated in early Christianity, in particular in the Passion
Narrative tradition; that the shepherd imagery of 1 Pet 2.25 is best understood
within the milieu of the Passion Narrative tradition, and that it alludes to the
eschatological program of Zechariah 9-14; that the fiery trials imagery found in 1
Peter 1.6-7 and 1 Pet 4.12 is distinct from that which we find in Greco-Roman and OT
wisdom sources, and that it shares exclusive parallels with some unique features of
the eschatological program of Zechariah 9-14; that Zechariah 9-14 offers a more
satisfying explanation for the modification of Isa 11.2 in 1 Pet 4.14, the transition
from 4.12-19 to 5.1-4, why Peter has oriented his letter with the term διασπορά,
and why he has described his addresses as οἶκος τοῦ θεοῦ; and finally that 1 Peter
contains an implicit foundational narrative that shares distinct parallels with the
eschatological program of Zechariah 9-14.
We can conclude that 1 Peter offers a unique vista into the way in which at
least one early Christian witness came to understand and to communicate the fact
that Christian suffering was a necessary feature of faithful allegiance to Jesus Christ
Christian Summer Camp (Camp Sankanack)
No full textL-R: Reiko Nakawatase, Kimi Nakashima and Teresa Mukoyama, three members of the Seabrook Christian Church at the Community House enjoy summer camp at Camp Sankanak in Pennsylvania as a reward for memorizing
300 Bible verses
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