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| Author: | Jan Štefan
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| Original title: | Non-violent Resistance in the Reflection of a Protestant Theologian from the Czech Republic
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| English title: | Non-violent Resistance in the Reflection of a Protestant Theologian from the Czech Republic
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| Abstract: | Classical theme of Christian approach towards non-violence in traced from the specific perspective of Czech protestant theologian and on the background of Czech history since reformation to the very present time. The question can not be solved definitely once for ever. If the Christian makes a choice for violence, he does it with the consciousness that here and now he cannot make a better testimony about Christ, or rather, cannot achieve this by other means. If he makes a choice for non-violence, then with the consciousness that he decides so only for himself, not on behalf of his neighbour. I can sacrifice my own life. To put obstacles in the way of others in their self-defense is nothing else but violence. Decision will be in both cases the act of a sinner, who has no other hope than to believe that God will be merciful to him.
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Keywords:
| non-violence, Czech protestant theology
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| Author: | Erskine Clarke
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| Original title: | The Mission of the Church in an Age of religious violence,
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, U.S.A. Campbell Scholars Seminar 2004
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| English title: | The Mission of the Church in an Age of religious violence,
Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, U.S.A. Campbell Scholars Seminar 2004
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| Abstract: | For over a hundred years a common assumption of modernity has been the steady displacement of religion by a secular worldview. Events of recent years, however, have profoundly challenged such an assumption. Religions worldwide, especially Christianity and Islam, are growing at remarkable rates and religious passions are fueling intense hatreds. What we see at the beginning of the twenty-first century is not only religious vitality throughout much of the world but also religious violence as a startling and terrifying reality of our age. In combination with powerful economic, ethnic and nationalistic forces religion become a source of violence in global world. Christians and the Church played and continue to play a part in this violence. What is the mission of the Church in the age of religious violence?
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Keywords:
| religions, history, violence, Christian church, mission
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| Author: | Eberhard Busch
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| Original title: | God´s Reconciliation of the World in Christ
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| English title: | God´s Reconciliation of the World in Christ
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| Abstract: | We cannot understand the message of reconciliation in the New Testament in contrast to Old Testament insistence on righteousness. Christ, in whom God reconciled the world is the same, who governs the highest tribunal. We have to understand that God cannot alternate from being kind to being hard. „In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself“ (2.Cor. 5:19) God has done it. This reconciliation is a work of God, which calls forth our response but which needs no supplementation. We can rely on it without the obligation that we first fulfill some conditions. It is not an idea of reconciliation, and thus it does not matter whether ideas about it derive from a deity or from humankind. The reconciliation is a fact, bound to a date in the world-history. The reconciliation has happened by an act of justice, in which Christ in his death has put away our injustice, while he in his death made himself alone responsible for our injustice. There is no reconciliation outside of this fact. But thanks to this fact the reconciliation of the world is in force.
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Keywords:
| reconciliation in Jesus Christ
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| Author: | Fahed Abu Akel
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| Original title: | A Palestinian View
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| English title: | A Palestinian View
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| Abstract: | The early church lived and survived without any military, economic, or political power. With the conversion of the Emperor Constantine to Christianity began an ongoing struggle with its relationship to the state. The state managed to marry the church, using violence and military might for its economic and political purposes. The usurpation of the name of God and Christian religion in the cause of violence has been often repeated in history, and it is still being acted out now in the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem and in the birthplace of church in Jerusalem, Palestine. How does the Palestinian Arab Christian reflect the violence in the Holy Land?
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Keywords:
| history, Palestine, Zionism, State of Israel, Palestinian Christian Church
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| Author: | Gabriel Habib
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| Original title: | The Middle East Context
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| English title: | The Middle East Context
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| Abstract: | Middle Eastern Christians continue their presence and witness despite internal, contextual, and international problems they have faced since Pentecost. Presently there are about 15 million Christians in the Middle East, grouped into five families of churches. Two percent are in the Assyrian church of the East (Nestorian), 58% in the Oriental Orthodox churches; 22% in the Eastern orthodox churches; 16 % in the Eastern-Rite Catholic churches and 2% in the Protestant churches. The Middle East has always been a mosaic of religious, ethnic, and cultural communities who have experienced wars between each other, causing great human suffering and destruction of life and property. However, despite their occasional use of violence to assert their particular identity and because of the importance of religion in their life, the people of that region have always longed for peace, which for them is „inclusive of justice and rooted in the Divine Truth“as mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud.
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Keywords:
| history, Middle East Christians, State of Israel, The Islamic Revivalist Movement
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| Author: | Violeta Rocha
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| Original title: | On the „Violence of Love“
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| English title: | On the „Violence of Love“
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| Abstract: | How can one be a Christian in a world of violence and injustice? What role does Christianity have to play? How can one hope that the forces of reconciliation and peace are really working transformation in our world? These are the great questions for the people of Latin America who not only live in poverty, but who are also in the majority Christian. Liberation Theology has taught Latin Americans to do critical theological thinking. A renewed rapport with biblical literature and a call to develop a new praxis take us to „liberating religion“, which brings continuity between action and words.
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Keywords:
| Latin America, Liberation Theology, violence, Hannah Arendt : On violence
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| Author: | Judo Poerwowidagdo
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| Original title: | Called to be the Church
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| English title: | Called to be the Church
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| Abstract: | The children of God are in the New Testament called ecclesia, the assembly of the people of God, who are called to be a koinonia, a community and an instrument of God´s continuing work of salvation for the whole of God’s creation. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ are called together to be members of the community - koinonia. They are called to be the Church, to be kyriakel. Thus there is continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Koinonia, martyria and diakonia are three inseparable functions or missions of the church. The church is a genuine koinonia only if it fulfills the function of selfless martyria and diakonia; and the martyria of the church is genuine when it is done through diakonia within the context of the koinonia; and the diakonia is pure when it is served by the koinonia and for the purpose of martyria.
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Keywords:
| church, ekklesia, kyriake, koinonia, martyria, mission
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| Author: | Maake J. Masango
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| Original title: | To reverse the Paradigm
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| English title: | To reverse the Paradigm
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| Abstract: | Through the history of the Christian church, violence has been part of its extension in the developing world. Often Christian theology itself has shaped the people to respond with violence. Many who opposed a God-given missionary approach have been treated with harsh violence to the extent of being tortured or killed. Although some good things certainly emerged from mission work – missionaries created schools, hospitals, and churches – this paper is focused on mission as an agent of cultural and social violence. It touch briefly on the mission of Crusades and its inherent violence, especially the mission of forcing people to accept the „truth“and a foreign God.
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Keywords:
| mission, violence, mission of Crusades, history
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| Author: | Catherine Taylor
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| Original title: | Rediscover the Word of Reconciliation
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| English title: | Rediscover the Word of Reconciliation
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| Abstract: | This article concentrates on the context of ministry in North America. In the background of the seemingly peaceful lives of American Christians there is a deeply felt sense of unease or even fear. This fear can be seen as a symptom of a "pervasive ailment" associated with want of meaning in North American life; a loss of hope in the lives of many people in developed countries that theologian Douglas John Hall describes as "covert despair" - an emptiness experienced by people who have witnessed (or are witnessing) the end of modernity. Modernity has passed and what is left are increasingly meaningless remnants such as "techlicalized" rationalism, unchecked capitalism, consumerism, and unlimited exploitation of the natural order. Lives are lived in abundance, yet in the illusion of deprivation. The false fear of deprivation is created by the media that make money by drawing a large audience to sensationalized news stories and that plays an important role by providing a false sense of scarcity. The consumerism needed to fuel the North American national economy is supported by endless advertisements for endless amounts of goods.
Catherine Taylor talks of the need for a concept of "enough" by which North Americans could measure their lives and declares that the despair and helplessness in the USA must be the objects of intense mission efforts. There must be a rediscovery of the Word that we are participants in Gods ongoing reconciliation, both as receivers of the good news and as ambassadors of what we continue to receive.
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Keywords:
| media, North America, September 11. 2001
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| Author: | Erskine Clarke
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| Original title: | Religion in an Age of Religious violence
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| English title: | Religion in an Age of Religious violence
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| Abstract: | The terrors of September 11, 2001, stand as the most visible and startling challenge to a secularization theory. The attacks by the terrorist became an inescapable lens through which questions of religion and modern society must now be addressed. And the most pressing question would be the relationship of religion to violence in an age that possesses many different weapons of mass destruction.
Fundamentalism (as religious extremism that leads to and supports violence) has become a major source of religious violence around the world. As examples may serve Christian Fundamentalists with its apocalyptic visions and holy wars, Jewish Fundamentalists with murder of Prime Minister Rabin, Islamic Fundamentalists with suicide attacks against thousand of innocent civilians or Hindu Fundamentalists with attacks on Moslem neighborhoods killing and burning in the name of religion.
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Keywords:
| Religious violence, fundamentalism, secularization
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