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Christian Communities (christian + community)
Selected AbstractsECCLESIAL EXISTENCE: CHRISTIAN COMMUNITY IN HISTORY by Roger Haight SJNEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1030 2009JOSEPH FITZPATRICK No abstract is available for this article. [source] The new Quest for Healing: when Therapy and Spirituality Intermingle,INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF MISSION, Issue 380-381 2007Bernard Ugeux For some decades one has noted an increased interest in spirituality outside the traditional religions of the West, viz. the three monotheisms. New spiritual quests often develop on the fringes of the churches, and sometimes even as a reaction to the churches' vision of what it means to be human. In this regard, those interested in spirituality often see their spiritual search as something linked to a general care for wellbeing or health, and reproach Christianity for being too disembodied. The association of the spiritual with the therapeutical leads to a certain permeability between the spiritual and therapeutical in terms of the claims each makes. It also leads to the creation of new alternative proposals. This porousness runs the risk of bringing confusion to everything, and using the spiritual and religious to serve therapeutic needs. However, the way in which the claims of the spiritual and therapeutical realms evolve presents a challenge to Christianity. This can be put in terms of, ,What place does Christianity attribute to the body, affectivity, pleasure, and legitimate personal development?' Some individuals and groups in the Christian churches, rather than trying to justify existing approaches, propose more "incarnated" ones that will respond to the new audience in a Christian way. From a theological, pastoral and missiological viewpoint, Christian communities are thus intended to become communities of healing and reconciliation, although not at any price. If Christian spirituality also has to favour the empowering and development of a person , for Christ has assumed everything of humanity, except sin , one should not reduce salvation to healing or ignore the paschal mystery as a way of avoiding the element of pain that this mystery contains. In short, Christianity is invited to do a work of inculturation that not only keeps in mind contemporary developments but also is accompanied by an authentic interdisciplinary discernment. [source] Determinants of termination of breastfeeding within the first 2 years of life in India: evidence from the National Family Health Survey-2MATERNAL & CHILD NUTRITION, Issue 3 2008Rahul Malhotra Abstract The present study assesses socio-demographic and health service determinants of termination of breastfeeding within the first 2 years of life in India by analysing data from the nationally representative National Family Health Survey-2 using Cox regression modelling techniques. While the likelihood of stopping breastfeeding increased with increasing household wealth status, it declined with increasing maternal age at childbirth. The likelihood of stopping breastfeeding was significantly higher among female children compared with male children, and the gender differential was attenuated by increasing maternal educational status. Overall, findings of the present study suggest that breastfeeding promotion programmes in India should focus on certain high-risk mother,child pairs such as female infants, first-born babies, babies born in the private sector and in urban areas, as well as mothers who are literate, have a higher wealth status, are aged less than 20 years and belong to Sikh or Christian communities. Qualitative studies to understand cultural factors or norms and causal pathways responsible for the association of identified factors and early termination of breastfeeding, especially household wealth status and maternal education, are also called for. [source] Command Performance: Rethinking Performance Interpretation in the Context of Divine DiscourseMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2000Shannon Craigo-Snell Nicholas Wolterstorff employs a musical metaphor to describe performance interpretation as imagining, within the specifications of a text and the guidelines of a tradition, what someone might have said by inscribing certain words. This article shifts to a theatrical metaphor, comparing Christian communities interpreting Scripture to theatre companies interpreting scripts. The author asserts that Christian interpretation of Scripture takes place in and through the embodied, communal performance of Christian life and worship. With this understanding of performance interpretation, it becomes difficult to identify Hans Frei as a performance interpreter and possible to fit Wolterstorff's authorial-discourse interpretation within a performance framework. [source] Bringing the church to its knees: evangelical Christianity, feminism, and domestic violence discoursePSYCHOTHERAPY AND POLITICS INTERNATIONAL, Issue 2 2007Janice Haaken Abstract In evangelical Christian communities, there is a small but significant movement to address the issue of domestic violence through the integration of ,biblical feminism' and traditional interpretations of scripture. This paper explores the multiple uses of domestic violence discourse in evangelical churches, including how categories such as domestic violence and family abuse may be used as a discursive strategy in resisting less readily articulated female grievances. Based primarily on participant observation of the Christians Addressing Family Abuse (CAFA) conference, the authors describe key conflicts that emerged between feminist and evangelical Christian frameworks, and the role of counseling principles in mediating conflicting understandings of domestic violence. The analysis explains how domestic violence has emerged as a focal point for women in both resisting and accommodating to church doctrine. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Enjoying the saints in late antiquityEARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 1 2000Peter Brown The discovery at Mainz by Fran,ois Dolbeau of a new collection of sermons of Augustine has enabled us to study, in far greater detail, the attitude of Augustine to the reform of the cult of the martyrs between 391 and 404. This study aims to understand Augustine's insistence on the need to imitate the martyrs against the background of his views on grace and the relation of such views to the growing differentiation of the Christian community. It also attempts to do justice to the views of those he criticized: others regarded the triumph of the martyrs over pain and death as a unique manifestation of the power of God, in which believers participated, not through imitation but through celebrations reminiscent of the joy of pagan festivals. In this debate, Augustine by no means had the last word. The article attempts to show the continuing tension between notions of the saints as imitable and inimitable figures in the early medieval period, and more briefly, by implication, in all later centuries. [source] ROADS TO RECONCILIATION: AN EMERGING PARADIGM OF AFRICAN THEOLOGYMODERN THEOLOGY, Issue 4 2010J. J. CARNEY The heart of contemporary African Christian theology is the notion of "reconciliation." Contextualizing this movement, the article begins by surveying the three major theological paradigms,inculturation, liberation, and reconstruction,that shaped post-colonial African theology. Drawing on the writings of Desmond Tutu, John Rucyahana and Emmanuel Katongole and three grassroots reconciliation ministries, I delineate four principles of African reconciliation theology: interdependence, prophetic advocacy, holistic transformation, and alternative Christian community. The article concludes by addressing outstanding challenges of memory, justice, brokenness, and pluralism and considers how the Catholic sacrament of reconciliation could offer further theological resources for the emerging paradigm. [source] Why Bother With Hebrews?THE HEYTHROP JOURNAL, Issue 1 2002Marie E. Isaacs Few, if any, present-day undergraduate degree courses in Theology include in their syllabus a study of the Epistle to the Hebrews or other New Testament writings other than the Gospels and the Pauline epistles. The result is in effect that we create a canon within a canon. This paper, originally read at a postgraduate seminar, gives reasons why Hebrews in particular should not be neglected. Hebrews provides evidence of the diversity of early Christian tradition, for example, with its teaching that it is impossible to be re-admitted to the community of faith, having once abandoned it, and with its unique use of Israel's day of Atonement rites in its presentation of Christ. Moreover, the very genre of Hebrews merits particular interest. Hebrews also evidences a Christian community which has yet to break with Judaism. Its thoroughly Jewish background illustrates for students of the New Testament the necessity of knowing the Jewish Scriptures as well as the writings of the New Testament. Moreover, a study of the Epistle could make a constructive contribution to present-day Jewish,Christian dialogue, even if in the past it has been enlisted on the side of a thinly-disguised anti-Semitism. Finally, Hebrews (e.g., with its depiction of Jesus as sacrificial victim and as High Priest) brings the student face to face with the metaphorical character of much of the language of the New Testament , a form of language which is not to be taken less seriously than other kinds of language; and in this case, Hebrews' Day of Atonement metaphors issue in new insights , in an innovative theology of access to God. For this and other reasons, the study of Hebrews has an important contribution to make to theology degree syllabuses. [source] | ||||||||||