How can churches empower children-at-risk as ‘vulnerable agents of God’s mission,’ while also protecting them from potential risks for manipulation, exploitation, or spiritual abuse? What is ‘appropriate participation’? What types of manipulation, exploitation, or spiritual abuse might occur in this participation? This essay seeks to define ‘appropriate participation’ in the church and mission, drawing substantially from Hart’s ladder of participation to analyze the participation of children-at-risk as agents of mission. With this as a foundation, spiritual (...) abuse is defined, and a discussion of how this might happen within the realm of child participation in the ministry of the church and mission is presented. Finally, it presents principles and guidelines that the church should consider as they seek to protect children and youth from potential abuse during the process of participating in God’s mission. (shrink)

Specialists on issues of sexual abuse in religious institutions unanimously stress that this kind of experience significantly affects the victims’ spirituality. Particularly devastating and distorting for their spirituality is sexual abuse committed by clergy. In order to explore this issue for the first time in Poland, the authors conducted a qualitative study in the form of semi-structured interviews with five women who had experienced sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and/or religious in adolescence and young adulthood. The interviews (...) were analyzed using the interpretative phenomenological analysis and narrative methodology. The results showed that four respondents experienced or had experienced religious struggles in three areas: interpersonal, intrapsychic, and relationship with God. These struggles are complex and intense enough to be referred to as “spiritual trauma”, “religious trauma”, or “spiritual violence”. The results of the study may be of importance for people helping or having any other kind of contact with victims of clergy sexual abuse. (shrink)

As a distortion of God's created designs, sexual abuse carries a unique devastation-factor. Abuse that is sexual in nature damages a spectrum of internal and external aspects of personhood. In particular, the core realities of: self-identity, community, and spiritual communion with God can be deeply fractured through SA. In light of the significance of the image of God, movement toward healing includes strengthening personal agency, processing profound boundary ruptures, and managing disillusionment with God. Due to the multi-faceted (...) trauma of sexual abuse spiritual formation programs must not only plan for the unique profile of abuse victims, but also need to incorporate a fuller understanding and praxis of the realities of embodiment, ritual, and theocentric metaphor into their transformational goals. Analysis includes first-person experience, anthropological science, and theological reflection. (shrink)

Although there is now some recognition that sexual abuse, particularly that which occurs in religious settings, has spiritual implications for women who have been abused, the spiritual implications of sexual abuse which occurs beyond the confines of specific religious practices and beliefs tend not to be acknowledged. Taking a stance that all people, irrespective of their involvement in a formal religion, are inherently spiritual, this paper identifies the key concepts associated with spirituality as meaning, identity, (...) connectedness, transformation and transcendence. Examples as to how each of these may be issues following the experience of sexual abuse are provided. This approach challenges prevailing notions that sexual abuse only has spiritual implications for women who identify with a particular religious tradition. Instead it is argued that an experience of sexual abuse can be critical for the spiritual life of any woman who is subjected to abuse. (shrink)

Survivors of sexual abuse are frequently met with cultures of silence which make it difficult for their experiences to be acknowledged. Furthermore, many have been subjected to threats and intimidation in efforts to ensure that they remain silent about what has happened to them. One response to such experiences is to keep oneself busy and avoid ever being quiet enough to experience a sense of silence within. However, many spiritual traditions promote the embracing of silence as essential for (...) those seeking spiritual development. This paper explores these diverse experiences of silence for survivors of sexual abuse and considers why spiritualities which promote silence can be problematic. (shrink)

Resumen Este estudio tiene como objetivo perfilar el concepto de abuso de conciencia en vistas a su tipificación en el derecho canónico. Se comienza describiendo la reflexión postconciliar sobre la manipulación de conciencia desde una perspectiva teológico-moral, que anticipa el concepto actual de abuso de conciencia. El centro del artículo es el esclarecimiento del concepto de abuso de conciencia y de su gravedad. Este abuso se da en el contexto de relaciones de cuidado, donde se traspasan los límites de la (...) mediación eclesial que corresponde a dicha relación: el abuso de conciencia implica apropiarse indebidamente de la autoridad de Dios. El presente estudio continúa la línea de investigaciones precedentes para perfilar con mayor nitidez el abuso de conciencia propiamente tal en el contexto católico. Es un paso indis pensable para la necesaria justicia y reparación para las víctimas de este grave delito.This article offers a systematic characterization of abuse of conscience in order to its typification as a canonical crime. We begin exploring the study of conscience manipulation in moral theology after Vatican II as an important background for the understanding of abuse of conscience in more recent studies. The core statement of this study is the definition of abuse of conscience and its gravity. This kind of abuse is set within care relationships, where the abuser steps over the limits of his ecclesial mediation: he appropriates himself of God’s own authority. This study builds on this literature to understand abuse of conscience as a specific type of spiritual abuse in catholic settings. We understand this is absolutely necessary for justice and reparation towards victims. (shrink)

Clergy sexual abuse is both sexual and psychological violence, but it is also a paradigmatic case of spiritual violence that rises to the level of religious trauma. In this paper I argue that the spiritual violence of clergy sexual abuse diminishes, and in some cases may even destroy, a survivor’s capacities for religious faith or other forms of spiritual engagement. I use and illustrate the value of feminist methodology, as developed and advanced by Alison Jaggar, (...) for generating and pursuing philosophical questions about religious experience. Feminist methodology’s sensitivity to theorizing situated subjects who stand to each other in relations of racialized male dominance helps us see the ways in which clergy sexual abuse is gender-based violence in both its causes and effects. It also helps us both ask and answer questions about religious faith in the unjust meantime from the perspective of those who endure spiritually violent faith communities. (shrink)

The article examines how recovering drug addicts employ testimonies of conversion and addiction to develop and sustain personal identity and create meaning from varied experiences in life. Drawing on 31 autobiographies of recovering drug addicts we analyze conversion and addiction testimonies in two European contexts. The analysis shows how existing frames of reference and self-understanding are undermined and/or developed. We first describe the substance abuse in participants’ addiction trajectory. Next, we outline the religious aspects and the primary conception of (...) recovering addicts’ conversions as an example of spiritual transformation and narrative change. Moreover, participants select and creatively adapt cultural practices in their testimonies. In many of these examples converts clearly employ elements from their personal and family histories, their ethnic and religious heritages, and their larger cultural and historical context to create a meaningful conversion narrative. (shrink)

Abuse, when committed by spiritual authority figures, can have far-reaching consequences for church communities well after perpetrators have been removed and held accountable. In attending to survivors, a host of issues may come to light, including but not limited to, organizational complicity in abuse, institutional marginalization of the vulnerable, and the revelation that worship spaces can be traumatically triggering. The work of scholars like Michelle Panchuk, Elaine Heath, and Katharina von Kellenbach all point to the challenging reality (...) that ecclesial repentance­ may demand dramatic changes to restore a safe environment and righteous expressions of worship that honour God's intentions for all. Glen Kinoshita's ‘ministry of reconciliation’ and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's ‘preparing the way’ and ‘religionless Christianity’ are texts that on the surface address this type of process; however, it is not clear that either scholar fully reckons with the issue of a worshipping community or space that has been so marred by abuse as to become an impediment to a survivor's participation in liturgy. In this article, I modify Bonhoeffer's work to move beyond his claims and make recommendations for further steps towards repentance. (shrink)

This article illustrates the practical usefulness of transdisciplinary work for practical theology by showing how input from an occupational therapist informed my understanding and interpretation of the story of Hannetjie, who had been sexually abused as a child. This forms part of a narrative practical theological research project into the spirituality of female adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Transdisciplinary work is useful to practical theologians, as it opens possibilities for learning about matters pastors have to face, but may (...) not have knowledge about. A short retelling of Hannetjie’s story is given to provide information about the context of the research. Next, the transdisciplinary process that was followed is mentioned, and the questions that the transdisciplinary team had to respond to are discussed. Following that, I focus more specifically on the occupational therapist’s answers, and the knowledge gained from her contribution, as an example of how a co-researcher from a divergent discipline can inform a theological study. In this case, knowledge was shared about sensory integration and how the brain processes traumatic stimuli, such as sexual abuse. Lastly, the interrelationship between Hannetjie’s body stories, mind stories and spirit stories is discussed to show how the learning received from occupational therapy affected my thinking about Hannetjie’s stories and the relationships between them. Thus, it is concluded that transdisciplinary work has great value for practical theology, especially in the pastor’s daily work with people who are struggling with difficult stories, because we cannot listen to people’s spirit stories in isolation. They are inextricably intertwined with all our stories about ourselves. (shrink)

Spirituality or religion often presents as a foreign element to the clinical environment, and its language and reasoning can be a source of conflict there. As a result, the use of spirituality or religion by patients and families seems to be a solicitation that is destined to be unanswered and seems to open a distance between those who speak this language and those who do not. I argue that there are two promising approaches for engaging such language and helping patients (...) and their families to productively engage in the decision-making process. First, patient-centered interviewing techniques can be employed to explore the patient's religious or spiritual beliefs and successfully translate them into choices. Second, and more radically, I suggest that in some more recalcitrant conflicts regarding treatment plans, resolution may require that clinicians become more involved, personally engaging in discussion and disclosure of religious and spiritual worldviews. I believe that both these approaches are supported by rich models of informed consent such as the transparency model and identify considerations and circumstances that can justify such personal disclosures. I conclude by offering some considerations for curbing potential unprofessional excesses or abuses in discussing spirituality and religion with patients. (shrink)

Spiritual violence is a modern concept expressing the abusive aspects of religion. This article observes the potential for spiritual violence within the rhetoric of the Gospel of Matthew, a principal text of the dominant world religion. Utilizing the supernatural punishment hypothesis of religion as a theoretical background, this cross-disciplinary analysis opens perspectives on the use of religious power in the past and the present.

This article explores the relationship between hermeneutical injustice in religious settings and religious trauma and spiritual violence. In it I characterize a form of hermeneutical injustice that arises when experiences are obscured from collective understanding by normatively laden concepts, and I argue that this form of HI often plays a central role in cases of religious trauma and spiritual violence, even those involving children. In section I, I introduce the reader to the phenomena of religious trauma and (...) class='Hi'>spiritual violence. In section II, I describe the role normatively laden concepts play in shaping our social experience. I then elucidate how they can contribute to HI. In section III, I provide a brief overview of the history of some significant identity prejudices in the history of Christianity and argue that children can properly be understood as victims of HI within some religious communities. I then return in section IV to the examples of religious trauma and spiritual violence offered throughout the article and demonstrate that HI plays an important causal role in each of them. HIs sometimes constitute spiritual and religious harms; at other times they create an epistemic environment conducive to spiritual abuse. (shrink)

Older people enter the final phases of their lives with well‐established habits and rituals, some of which might be or become substance abuse. This inquiry focused on the relationship between habits, rituals, and the compulsive addictive behaviours evident in older persons' substance abuse. Habits and rituals, examined as adaptive and limiting functions in older persons, revealed changes in autonomy, social inclusion, and emotional responses to such changes as older persons experience declining energy reserves and physical debilities. Older persons' (...) ebbing sense of control and passionate responses to change illustrate the perennial struggle between the will and emotions when habits and rituals transform to compulsive addictive behaviours. Two concepts, germane to this struggle both in older persons' addictive behaviours and nurses' response, emerged from this inquiry: temperance, a balance between the will's freely chosen actions and passionate desire, and discipline, the means to achieve such balance. The focused attention demanded in discipline can be realized in spiritual exercises and daily care of the soul. Disciplined actions engage the older persons' imaginative capacities to manage and abandon the self in goals consistent with end‐of‐life issues: meaningful fulfillment of human potential and the need for daily joy and pleasure in living the final years. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Deep Listening and Virtuous Friendship:Spiritual Care in the Context of Religious MultiplicityDuane R. BidwellA monk asked Zen master Yunmen: “What is the teaching of the Buddha’s entire lifetime?” Yunmen answered:“An appropriate response.”1In a pivotal scene from the 1988 film A Fish Called Wanda, con artist Wanda Gershwitz is fed up—finally—with her partner, Otto West. When his jealousy and ersatz intellectualism repeatedly jeopardize their attempts to steal $20 million (...) in diamonds, Wanda yells: “Now let me correct you on a few things, okay? Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘Every Man for Himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto, I looked them up.”2 It’s a funny moment, of course. But Otto’s (mis)understanding of Gautama’s teaching demonstrates a challenge in translating a spiritual-religious tradition from one cultural setting to another. Too often, and usually without intention, we are like Otto; we colonize and domesticate unfamiliar ideas, assimilating them into our existing worldview instead of experiencing and accommodating their challenging differences. Otto’s facile appropriation of Buddhism confirms rather than confronts his pre-critical, individualistic, and perhaps Darwinist worldview. A Buddhist caregiver might say that Otto was not “listening deeply” to the myriad voices that shaped his perspective.Similar hazards face someone writing about deep listening in relation to religious multiplicity.3 Deep listening, as a caring practice, “belongs” to the emerging field of Buddhist contemplative care,4 in which it has a technical (although perhaps undertheorized) usage richly informed by Buddhist thought and practice. But when I reflect as a pastoral theologian and spiritual caregiver trained in the Christian traditions of cura animarum, the cure or care of souls, deep listening can become unmoored from its origins. Someone marinated in the discourses and practices of Christian care can easily and perhaps unintentionally conflate deep listening with classic Christian [End Page 3] concepts of care such as the ministry of presence, the practice of unconditional positive regard,5 and the giving of oneself to God for the sake of the care seeker. Although I identify as a Buddhist Christian, habitual Christian views shape my thinking the way a canyon or streambed shapes the flow of water; unless I am attentive to the ways that Buddhist thought and practice seek fissures and carve new channels through the sediment of Christian spiritual care, I risk appropriating or erasing the practices that Buddhist caregivers call deep listening.Mindful of these waters, I want to immerse myself and readers in a particular question: In the context of spiritual care, what happens at the confluence of deep listening and a practitioner’s multiple religious voices? In responding to this question I have three aims: to describe deep listening, to provide a theoretical and experiential account of deep listening in the context of religious multiplicity, and to suggest an image from the Pāli canon that can help practitioners engage religious multiplicity in ways that minimize harm, increase compassion, and realize wisdom. A particular moment in spiritually integrative psychotherapy serves as a touchstone for my reflection; thus, I begin where the canyon creates a slender and fast-moving channel for deep listening: psychotherapy with Julie.6violence, karma, and compassionAt twenty-seven years of age, Julie was a soft-spoken, biracial graduate student who radiated mindful presence. She identifies as Asian American, and with her shaved head and tendency to wear dark colors and dramatic scarves, she might seem a typical LA hipster to other passengers on the commuter train she rode to and from our appointments. One year before our psychotherapeutic work, Julie had been beaten and raped by a boyfriend; subsequent thoughts of suicide led to a brief hospitalization. At that time she was assigned diagnoses of bipolar II and post-traumatic stress disorders. Daily, she swallowed a powerful mood stabilizer; monthly, she visited a psychiatrist. The symptoms of bipolar disorder, substance abuse, addiction, schizophrenia, depression, and suicide were present in her extended family. Julie sought counseling because of tension between what she called her “Buddhist identity” and the mental health diagnoses assigned to her. She said she... (shrink)

This article retrieves the contribution of a nineteenth-century proto-feminist activist for the history of the womanspirit movement. But that is not its primary purpose. Above all, the article asks a methodological question: namely, how post-Christian spiritual feminists might claim recent foremothers when most women of spirit have, until the early 1970s, been inspired by Christian patriarchal theology. I argue that Hopkins's direct action can be read as exemplifying female sacrality in action. Her 'rescue' of sexually abused women has, I (...) conclude, a mythical and sacerdotal element that both subverts and transcends its patriarchal context. (shrink)

Childhood sexual, physical, or emotional abuse can result in splitting many aspects of the emotional and rational sides of a person. Commonly the emotions become confused and difficult to name, and the rational side dominates as a survival mechanism. This can be exacerbated by simplistic teaching that suggests people need to choose to act in certain ways and ignore their emotions. Examples of biblical lament provide helpful models of integration between the rational and emotional sides, encouraging the naming of (...) negative emotions before God, turning to God rather than away from God to an abuser. A realistic grasp of forgiveness and repentance enables wounded people to find healing as they work towards integrating emotions, rationality, and spiritual formation. (shrink)

In several European countries former pupils of Catholic nuns have made accusations of physical and emotional abuse. Feminist scholars have tended to perceive nuns as heroines because of their authority and their contribution to raising the social status of women. But there is also a darker side to convent education. Committees established by national governments have identified systemic factors leading to abuse in educational institutions. This article argues that these factors should include a feminist theological explanation: a dualistic, (...) sacrificial spirituality underpinned the Rules of charitable orders and influenced the nuns’ blurred understanding of what constitutes humane treatment. Supporting evidence is drawn from testimonies of privileged pupils of convent boarding schools in the 1910s, from stories of ex-nuns who fled the convent, and from nuns who openly acknowledged the problem during Post Vatican II renewal when at last they were able to revolt against their spiritual value-systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Revolutionary Christianity: The 1966 South American Lectures by John Howard Yoder, and: John Howard Yoder: Spiritual Writings by John Howard YoderJohn C. ShelleyRevolutionary Christianity: The 1966 South American Lectures John Howard Yoder. Edited by Paul Martens, Mark Thiessen Nation, Matthew Porter, and Myles Werntz eugene, or: cascade books, 2011. 193 pp. $18.00John Howard Yoder: Spiritual Writings John Howard Yoder. Selected with an Introduction by Paul Martens (...) and Jenny Howell. Modern Spiritual Masters Series maryknoll, ny: orbis, 2011. 172 pp. $20.00For more than sixteen years after his death in late 1997, John Howard Yoder has provoked, challenged, and inspired a new generation of theologians, ethicists, and pastors—including the editors of these two volumes—many of whom never met Yoder nor heard him speak. Now, just as this new generation prepares to preserve and enlarge his legacy, a series of revelations detailing Yoder’s repugnant behavior against women and against administrators of the Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) in Elkhart, Indiana, compromises that legacy. It has been widely known that in 1992, after some initial resistance, Yoder submitted to a disciplining process initiated by his home congregation for inappropriate advances to women and that he had been reconciled and reunited in worship shortly before his death.1 The new allegations, which have become broadly public only since 2013, are considerably more serious and include coercive—indeed, “violent”—advances toward a number of women over three decades, including many students and others in subordinate positions. Further, Yoder abused the power of his reputation by intimidating the president and other administrators of AMBS, compelling them to keep the matter quiet as he slipped away to a more prestigious appointment at Notre Dame in 1984.2 According to some witnesses, this inappropriate behavior continued at Notre Dame. [End Page 210]These revelations have complicated the process of writing even a simple review.3 Were Yoder an astrophysicist with groundbreaking discoveries regarding dark matter, we would be disappointed with his behavior, but we would not challenge on those grounds the veracity of his discovery. With Christian ethics, the issue is more complicated, especially for someone of Yoder’s stature whose persona suggested that he was committed to and embodied, however imperfectly, what he proclaimed. Reading these volumes a second time has brought several jarring moments. For example, in both volumes, Yoder defines in almost identical language the temptation of “egocentric altruism”:The real temptation of good people like us is not the crude, the crass, and the carnal as those traits are defined in Puritanism. The real refined temptation, with which Jesus himself was tried, was that of egocentric altruism, of being oneself the incarnation of a good and righteous cause for which others are to suffer, of stating our self-justification in the form of a duty to others.(Revolutionary Christianity, 83; Essential Writings, 144)Consider also the following statement on religious liberty, which is certainly prescient in view of the current conflicts being played out in the courts: “Religious liberty is not only a necessary limitation upon the power of the state; it also marks a voluntary renunciation by the church of any capacity to coerce” (Revolutionary Christianity, 11). At the very least, then, perhaps we should read Yoder’s misdeeds as a warning: even we may be tempted by the crude and the carnal as well as by egocentric altruism; when threatened, even we may resort to coercion.The fourteen lectures in Revolutionary Christianity, published here for the first time, are organized into three sections—“The Believers Church,” “Peace,” and “Church in a Revolutionary World”—roughly the order of presentation to predominantly Mennonite and Anabaptist groups in Montevideo and Buenos Aires in May–June 1966. Written and delivered when Yoder was only thirty-eight and not yet a full-time faculty member, it is remarkable how fully they anticipate his later work. Clearly he mined them for later writings. The four lectures titled “The Believers Church” may be the best theological introduction available to the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition. Yoder’s description of the church as a community of forgiveness, discernment, grace; of the mandate to share; and of a morality of participation and community... (shrink)

It is very well known that from the late-1960s onwards Feyerabend began to radically challenge some deeply-held ideas about the history and methodology of the sciences. It is equally well known that, from around the same period, he also began to radically challenge wider claims about the value and place of the sciences within modern societies, for instance by calling for the separation of science and the state and by questioning the idea that the sciences served to liberate and ameliorate (...) human societies. But what is less known is how, if at all, these two sets of challenges were connected, and why Feyerabend felt it important to raise them at all. In this chapter, my aim is to explore these issues by considering why Feyerabend used radical strategies to challenge the authority of science, and what purpose, if any, they were supposed to serve. Why, for instance, did Feyerabend defend alternative medicine, psychical abilities, astrology, magic and witchcraft and why did he argue that ‘Western science’ is complicit in environmental destruction, intellectual imperialism, social oppression, and spiritual destitution. Located in their historical and political context, such defences and arguments seem peculiar, not least because science was recognised not only as a central site of the intellectual and ideological competition between the West and the Soviet Union, but also because Western victory in that site was considered inevitable. What, then, did Feyerabend think he was trying to achieve by raising radical challenges to a central component of the cultural and intellectual prestige of the Western world grounded in appeals to practices and traditions which most would regard as eccentric at best and absurd at worst? My suggestion is that Feyerabend was making a subtler point than one might suppose. For the purpose of these radical challenges was to determine if the members of Western societies would in fact honour the epistemic standards – of tolerance, critical enquiry – which were identified as being characteristic of science and definitive of the social and political values of Western liberal democracy. I suggest that Feyerabend was trying to demonstrate that scientists were, too often, guilty of the same intolerant and dogmatic attitudes which were, according to prevailing propaganda, the property of illiberal totalitarian societies. Science does not reflect the superior epistemic and political values of Western societies but are, in fact, reflective of the same vices ascribed to the Soviet Union. If that is the case, then the sciences are not symbols of our epistemic and political values, but quite the reverse, hence Feyerabend’s talk of the ‘dogmatic’, ‘totalitarian’, ‘ratiofascist’ nature of modern science. But there is a positive upshot to Feyerabend’s challenge. For even if the sciences do not yet reflect the epistemic and political values of liberal democratic Western societies, they might yet be reformed so that they are. And there is a parallel between Feyerabend’s strategy and that of many of the other radicals of the time – student activists, environmentalists, and pacifists – namely to test the commitment to tolerance and deliberative debate of the establishment by asking it to seriously engage with ideas and convictions opposed to its own. For both science and society can become ‘tyrannical’ through the same means: by exempting themselves from critical scrutiny, by promoting self-serving ‘myths’ about themselves, and by derogating and excluding alternatives, including the ‘outsider’ perspectives they offer. The chapter concludes by suggesting that Feyerabend is distinctive in virtue of his willingness to offer radical criticisms of the authority of science such that it can fulfil its legitimate ideological role – namely, of symbolising and instantiating our core epistemic and political values – such that we can offer a sincere and meaningful answer to Feyerabend’s question ‘what’s so great about science?’. (shrink)

Nietzsche, the Godfather of Fascism? What can Nietzsche have in common with this murderous ideology? Frequently described as the "radical aristocrat" of the spirit, Nietzsche abhorred mass culture and strove to cultivate an Übermensch endowed with exceptional mental qualities. What can such a thinker have in common with the fascistic manipulation of the masses for chauvinistic goals that crushed the autonomy of the individual? The question that lies at the heart of this collection is how Nietzsche came to acquire the (...) deadly "honor" of being considered the philosopher of the Third Reich and whether such claims had any justification. Does it make any sense to hold him in some way responsible for the horrors of Auschwitz? The editors present a range of views that attempt to do justice to the ambiguity and richness of Nietzsche's thought. First-rate contributions by a variety of distinguished philosophers and historians explore in depth Nietzsche's attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, Christianity, anti-Semitism, and National Socialism. They interrogate Nietzsche's writings for fascist and anti-Semitic proclivities and consider how they were read by fascists who claimed Nietzsche as their intellectual godfather. There is much that is disturbingly antiegalitarian and antidemocratic in Nietzsche, and his writings on Jews are open to differing interpretations. Yet his emphasis on individualism and contempt for German nationalism and anti-Semitism put him at stark odds with Nazi ideology. The Nietzsche that emerges here is a tragic prophet of the spiritual vacuum that produced the twentieth century's totalitarian movements, the thinker who best diagnosed the pathologies of fin-de-siècle European culture. Nietzsche dared to look into the abyss of modern nihilism. This book tells us what he found. The contributors are Menahem Brinker, Daniel W. Conway, Stanley Corngold, Kurt Rudolf Fischer, Jacob Golomb, Robert C. Holub, Berel Lang, Wolfgang Müller-Lauter, Alexander Nehamas, David Ohana, Roderick Stackelberg, Mario Sznajder, Geoffrey Waite, Robert S. Wistrich, and Yirmiyahu Yovel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:'Difficult Patient':A Reflective EssayDaniel McFarlandThe patient who sat across from me knew too much about all brain tumors. According to her, she would never know enough about the one sitting uncomfortably close to her brain's temporal lobe. In her quest for the 'right' answer to her meningioma problem, she became certain that its surgical removal would upend her life, leaving her in neurological taters.She was a small business owner (...) of a practice dedicated to medical massage. Indubitably, she had helped countless clients heal themselves of medical mishaps and avoid or recover from the tyranny of [End Page E13] a medical community that did not always provide respectable, hospitable care. She was certain a craniotomy would end her business, nullifying everything she had spent her life building. She became fluent in the legalese needed to transfer or sell her business in anticipation of surgery. To stave off losing her life's work from a surgical mishap, she sought opinions from a dozen neurosurgeons. They reassured her that a routine surgery like this would be effective with little chance of neurological collateral damage. She did not believe them. In her business she had treated numerous exhausted professionals. Many surgeons with whom she worked professionally frequently referred patients to her. She had seen the poor self-care that many surgeons and doctors brought on themselves in the form of unrelenting stress, drinking, bad eating habits, and even drugs. This made her nervous and untrusting about the care she could receive at the hands of an overworked or impaired surgeon. She scheduled appointments with every neurosurgeon she could find and interviewed them relentlessly, looking for the slightest sign of incompetence, unprofessionalism, antipathy, or lapse in compassion. Given her insistence and dogged nature, she usually found what she was looking for. She would bring her research to the appointments and interview the neurosurgeons on what other doctors had opined. If they were incredulous of research she brought or a technique on which she inquired, they were summarily dismissed.At first glance, which is likely all that she got from many of her visits, these encounters put a spotlight on a 'difficult' patient refusing care. The deeper look that my patient deserved revealed a personal narrative of the oldest child who survived a broken home riddled with drug use and prostitution. She learned to rely on only herself for protection. She took unapologetic control of her fate. Her own mother had at one time offered my patient work as a prostitute. Her father was no better in providing protection and a decent upbringing. He had left her as an eight-year-old with the neglectful mother and four younger siblings to fend for herself, which she did against the odds. She suffered physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse.As an adult, her strong sense of selfhood and boundaries allowed her to have a guarded relationship with both of her parents at a comfortable emotional distance. Her mission and passionate drive to help others heal saved her life. In healing others, she was healing herself. Importantly, her experience marked for her indelibly that while she could do this for herself, others were not reliable and could not heal her. She had only ever trusted and relied upon herself. She was the only one who had never let her down. She was terrified that this might be the first time. The potential surgery risked her cognition, physical capacities, and ability to care for herself. The risk was too great.We met numerous times, uncovering her past, reliving the stories of her tumultuous background, and examining how she established her place in the world away from the horrors of her insecure childhood. She took in my reaction to her stories and saw the horror on my face when I tried to imagine a world where one's parents were not only neglectful but the source of danger. Through my reaction, she may have begun to have some compassion for her own story and put the pieces together. One several occasions, she became enraged when I didn't meet her expectations, or I didn't entertain the diatribe of neurosurgical scholarly work.On one of those... (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Die Rezension behandelt George Pattisons Phänomenologie eines christlichen, a-spirierten Leben im ersten Band seiner dreibändig angelegten Philosophy of Christian Life. Dabei wird insbesondere Folgendes fokussiert: Die Art, wie Pattison die von Franz von Sales entlehnte Person der Philothea als Figuration frommen Lebens nutzt; die Frage nach der Möglichkeit von a-spirierten Leben in institutionellen Machtstrukturen und die medio-passive Konstitution des devout life.

Integrating appreciative inquiry (AI) and pastoral care may help address the complex issues of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. This article explores the benefits of incorporating AI principles into pastoral care for survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. Commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking involve exploitation, degradation, and violence, making them complex issues. By understanding the sex trade, we can recognise that prostitution is an act of exploitation. Some scholars believe that prostitution and human trafficking are interconnected, with (...) a focus on exploiting the poor, especially women and children. Commercial sexual exploitation can cause mental, emotional, and spiritual distress. Survivors require comprehensive aftercare to address their spiritual, self-esteem, and dignity needs. Organisational development-based AI is constructive and strength-based. Appreciative inquiry promotes positive development, community and individual strength, and resilience by re-contextualizing narratives and envisioning brighter futures. The use of AI could improve pastoral care and holistic rehabilitation. Pastoral caregivers using AI can promote reconciliation, development, and rehabilitation. Using strengths-based strategies, pastoral care practitioners can help survivors regain agency and purpose. Survivors receive spiritual support through the Appreciative Way, which combines contemplative spirituality and inquiry. Narrative exploration can help trauma survivors envision a bright future based on love and resilience. This study suggests that AI principles may benefit pastoral care recipients who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation and sex trafficking. Pastoral caregivers can help survivors regain dignity, calling, and well-being by implementing an appreciative healing approach.Contribution: The article sheds light on the dehumanising consequences of sex trafficking on vulnerable populations in South Africa, particularly women and children. This article aims to explain how AI concepts can be applied to Practical Theology. Specifically, this article will demonstrate how the Appreciative Way can be utilised in pastoral care for healing from sex trafficking trauma. (shrink)

At the annual conference of The American Psychiatric Association (APA) in Miami, there was a workshop entitled "Family Crisis". The results of a study said that in the last 30 years, 60% of families in the United States ended in divorce, and 70% of their children did not develop well, behave deviant or antisocial. For example seen juvenile delinquency, abuse of NAZA (Narcotics, Alcohol, and other Addictive Substances), promiscuity, deviant sexual behavior and so on. It was also stated that (...) divorce rates are increasing, marriages are decreasing because many people choose to live together without marriage or single life and free sex. Disloyalty (abuse) among families in the US turned out not to be the monopoly of husbands alone, but 40% of the wives there were also involved in affair with third parties. Of the five marriages in the first five years, three divorces occurred. The author gives the purpose of writing to discuss the crisis in the household, rebuild the household and give Christian values ​​in counteracting divorce. The author uses descriptive literature research method data and provides research results: How a harmonious family can be established dynamically if we base our family building on the basis of strong Christian spirituality values ​​accompanied by a fabric of good communication between us and our children. Surprisingly few studies have explored the implications of divorce happened because family can not be established, especially in young adulthood. This study addresses several theoretical arguments linking divorce in the side of spiritual value with reduced religious involvement in young adulthood and tests relevant hypotheses using data from a unique sample. Results show that divorce in the side of spiritual value is associated with substantially lower communicate religious involvement among young adults in their families house. (shrink)

Childhood maltreatment is widespread in predominantly Muslim countries. However, the research investigating the impact of childhood maltreatment on the adult survivors’ religious and spiritual lives has mainly focused on Western Judeo-Christian samples. Considering cross-cultural differences in religious beliefs, in this study, we investigated the relationship between childhood maltreatment and god image, and the mediating role of self-esteem in a sample of Muslim Turkish adults. Eight hundred two participants completed Childhood Trauma Questionnaire–Short Form, God Perception Scale, and Self-Esteem Scale. Findings (...) revealed that all childhood maltreatment subtypes predicted negative image of god and self-esteem mediated some of the negative effects of each maltreatment subtype on god image. The study also found that emotional neglect was the most prominent predictor of negative image of god, followed by emotional abuse. Based on attachment theory, we concluded that the emotional component of childhood maltreatment had more long-lasting adverse consequences in survivors’s relationship with god in Muslim adults. (shrink)

A raw, gripping, true-life saga of one mans quest to overcome homelessness, abuse, and extreme poverty to rise to the heights of success. On his epic journey, Marvin learned how to stare down suffering and banish pity and fear, despite dire circumstances. In the midst of tragedy, he rose and discovered life-changing truths about perseverance, self-awareness, and Oneness. Harnessing this hard-earned wisdom, Marvin began sharing his revolutionary message about the true meaning of self-worth, the healing power of interconnectedness, and (...) the keys to authentic wealth, peace, and happiness. Out of the Tunnel offers Marvin Peakes distilled wisdom, life stories, proven solutions, and channeled passions while spotlighting insights and conversations with some of todays wealthiest influencers and most spiritually aware people. Notables featured in Out of the Tunnel includes: Tony Robbins, Michael Jordan, Deepak Chopra, the late Wayne Dyer, former President George W. Bush and many more. Reviewers describe Out of the Tunnel as a hip-hop-flavored Celestine Prophecy meets modern-day Think and Grow Rich. Those who liked Who Moved My Cheese? and A New Earth will also enjoy Marvin Peakes Out of the Tunnel. (shrink)

Jean Vanier's life and teaching bore good fruit, but what is good was wrapped up from the very beginning with manipulative and abusive behaviors justified in theological language. For those of us who do not have access to the voices of the victims themselves, it is important to at least analyze the long-public writings of Fr. Thomas Philippe and Jean Vanier. Until now these were all that was available to those interested in the theology of L’Arche, and in them their (...) erotico-mystical theology was hidden in plain sight. A close reading of these texts points to a deformed eschatology as the fatal theological doctrine Vanier inherited from Philippe. More precisely, eschatological concepts were deployed in order to declare traditionally prohibited sexual activities as licit, in being concieved as taking place beyond the mundane domain of everyday morality. A nuptial union taking place outside the ethics of normal Christian life brought affectionate union with God down into the contingency of everyday ethics in a manner that circumvented well-known church teachings about sexual ethics. (shrink)

Research for this study was served by the hypothesis that the Christian’s lifestyle and witness in a postmodern world will depend on the definition and practice of worship and spirituality. The Old Testament reveals a spirituality that has ‘Yahweh’ involved in all aspects of life. Awareness and experience of the presence of God is linked to obedience to God. New Testament spirituality implies imitation of Christ and an effort to obey Christ's twofold command: to love God and neighbor as self. (...) Christian exhortation (contemplation/meditation) and adoration never take place in isolation from the world because God is active in the world. Adoration leads to action in the world which, in turn, leads to adoration of God. All work done and all life lived for God's sake is, in essence, worship. Being a Christian implies living a life of sacrifice, making a gift of your life to God. As the Christian strives with the Spirit's guidance and empowerment to love God with his/her heart, soul, mind, body - and his/her neighbor as him/her self, in a moment by moment way; as he/she worships God with adoration and action; then he/she is living a true Biblical Christian life and experiencing and practicing true Biblical worship and spirituality. For the postmodernist, religious relativism is incompatible with the objective truth claims of Christianity and the words ‘Christian’ and ‘Church’ mean either empty tradition or abusive totalizing metannarrative. To maintain its identity and practice effective and relevant ministry, the Church should reflect an internal unity in desire, in life, in purpose, and in love. The Church must be the incarnate and engaged love and glory of God to a world that judges Christian truth claims by the lifestyle and witness of Christians. A praxis-orientated apologetic of an incarnational engaged worship and spirituality will demonstrate Christians truth claims. This gives Christianity integrity, credibility, and intelligibility to postmodernists that seek an experiential spirituality in the postmodern era of deconstruction. Evangelism is founded in who God is and what God has done for humanity through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christian’s demonstrate the Gospel as they love their God and their neighbor with devotion and conduct. They proclaim God’s love with plausibility when they reveal God’s love in action as a visual aid for Gods truth. As Christian worship and spirituality produce the actions that give voice to the nature and will of God, Jesus Christ will ‘rise again’ in the postmodern world through an incarnational and engaged Christian faith. Point summary: i. Authentic Biblical Christian worship is a lifestyle that takes place in an interdependent rhythm of both adoration (joyful praise of God) and action (obedient service to God). ii. Holistic spirituality is the lived moment by moment experience of Christian belief in both general and specialized forms (the Christian faith), and the reaction that the Christian’s belief system arouses in religious consciousness and practice moment by moment (the Christian faith). iii. Biblical worship and spirituality is thus conformity of heart and life with the confession and character of Jesus Christ. It is living life in the coram Deo (the presence of God) in obedience to His will out of gratitude for salvation. iv. Worship, spirituality, and the Christian faith become equivalent terms for each other and as defined in i-iii above reflect an incarnational engaged approach to evangelism. v. Worship and spirituality as a praxis-orientated apologetic presented as an incarnational engaged approach (that tells God’s story and your story) in a postmodern world, will be a more effective method of evangelism than rational apologetics and program/method based evangelism. -/- . (shrink)

Bioethics and the stages on life's way -- Bioethical challenges in the new millennium -- The covenantal aspect of Christian marriage -- The use and abuse of human embryos -- The sacredness of newborn life -- On addictions and family systems -- The hope of glory : from a physical to a spiritual body -- Care in the final stage of life.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wildman's Effing Theodicy:The Problem of Suffering, the Ground of Being, and the Worship of SuchnessDemian Wheeler (bio)I. Confronting Suffering: Fictional Gods, Monstrous Evils, and Ghostly WhisperersWesley J. Wildman—"the comparing inquirer,"1 "the man who receives too many emails,"2 "the most original, audacious, creative, encyclopedic, and integrative thinker working within and across the fields of philosophy, ethics, theology, and the scientific study of religion in our time"3—is now a novelist! His (...) recently published first novel, The Winding Way Home, is an astounding and achingly beautiful story about a family searching for healing in the face of unspeakable tragedy and crushing grief. Our protagonist is Jesse, a strangely familiar philosopher, polymath, and professor, whose six-year-old daughter, Becca, is abducted from her bedroom in the middle of the night. Needless to say, Becca's disappearance totally shatters the lives of Jesse, his beloved partner Alexandra, and their two boys, Matt and Josh.On the verge of a complete mental breakdown, and desperate to manage the anxiety, uncertainty, terror, and encroaching despair, Jesse begins to engage in a severe form of meditation, deliberately dwelling on images of what Becca might be enduring, however gruesome and devastating. He pictures her dead in the woods, sold to the highest bidder, imprisoned in an attic, abused physically and sexually, buried alive in a crate desperately praying to be rescued, treating each possible future "as a shard-like perspective on a fear-inducing, darkly humming [End Page 20] crystalline monstrosity." For Jesse, this visualization practice is an act of solidarity, not masochism, a way to love his precious little girl as she really is, no matter what she went through or is still going through. Anything less feels like a betrayal, like a "spineless retreat from the reality of Becca's life." Facing the brutal truth about Becca also becomes an integral part of his piety, his worship. As the saga unfolds, Jesse embarks on a weird but wild spiritual quest, a quest to see and surrender to the world in all its wonder and ambiguity, grace and threat, the world that gave him the greatest gift imaginable, Becca, a "beautiful, perfect little being," only to take her away and hand her over to a fate worse than death.4Later in the story, Jesse and Alexandra become foster parents to an abduction survivor named Maddy. Their worst nightmares about what probably happened to Becca actually did happen to Maddy. Stolen from her family at a young age and chained up in a cold, lonely basement, Maddy was subjected to years of torture, malnourishment, deprivation, disease, and rape, forced to bear the children of her captors. Shortly after Maddy and her kids move in, Jesse schedules a meeting with Father Jimmy, "his favorite delusional priest." Jesse admires and appreciates Father Jimmy's intelligence, lovingkindness, and nonjudgmental nature. But he is not bashful about challenging his "supernatural mumbo-jumbo."5 On this particular occasion, they gather to talk about the theological implications of Maddy's horrific life and whatever unthinkable horrors befell Becca. The conversation gets quite heated. Growing increasingly irate, Jesse asks Father Jimmy if he prays for Maddy, Becca, and other missing children and trusts in a God who permits their dreadful circumstances and could do something to ameliorate them. Father Jimmy nods in the affirmative and gently asks a question of his own: "Why would you be angry at a God you don't believe in?" Jesse thunders back:I'm not angry at your fictional God! … I'm angry at you. You worship and pray to a being who allowed Becca and Maddy to be raped and tortured, and in Becca's case probably murdered. And then you offer solace to me and my family in the form of prayers to change this deity's mind about what to do. As if that's supposed to make any of us feel better! Can't you see? You're commending to me a God whose behavior and decisions are so utterly appalling, so completely opposed to the good as I understand it, that I would devote my life to morally resisting this God's depravity... (shrink)

Presenting an understanding of the mind, emotions, and communication, Calm, Clear, and Loving invites an understanding of the transformation of mind, both in a meditative and therapeutic context. It is relevant to those dealing with histories of abuse and trauma, for those in the fields of mental health, and for those on meditative and spiritual evolution.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's spiritual masterpiece, The Divine Milieu, in a newly-revised translation by Siôn Cowell, is addressed to those who have lost faith in conventional religion but who still have a sense of the divine at the heart of the cosmos. "The heavens declare the glory of God," sings the Psalmist. Teilhard would agree. "We are surrounded," he says, "by a certain sort of pessimist who tells us continually that our world is foundering in atheism. But should we (...) not say rather that what it is suffering from is unsatisfied theism?" He sees a universe in movement where progress is the spiritualisation of matter and its opposite is the materialisation of spirit. Teilhard opts for progress. The Divine Milieu is both the divine centre and the divine circle, the divine heart and the divine sphere. The Divine Milieu is an essay on the notion of grace. It is written for those who listen primarily to the voices of the Earth: its purpose is to provide a link to traditional Christianity (as expressed in Baptism, Cross and Eucharist) in order to demonstrate that the fears prevalent in contemporary world society as it abuses its very foundation - Mother Earth - may be better understood by the Gospel path. Teilhard's primary purpose is to show a way forward which he sees as the "Christian religious ideal". (shrink)

To Wrestle With Demons offers a rare glimpse of a psychiatrist's innermost thoughts about how his work affects patients, deeply move him, and reflects the society in which we live. Describing the unconscious as music, "a silent and explosive score," Dr. Ablow recalls the process of helping patients ferret out the past from the deep recesses of their minds. In so doing, he becomes enchanted with "the subtlety and power of human interaction." He describes the lonely gentleman who, gaining a (...) sense of security from hearing voices, refuses the medication that would take them away...the depressed woman whose extreme dependence on others is rooted in a violent and abusive childhood...the doting husband whose obsessive devotion to his ill wife harks back to the tragic loss of a childhood friend. In delving into the minds of his patients, Dr. Ablow must also wrestle with his own demons. He speaks with unabashed candor about the guilt he feels exchanging empathy for money, his struggle to help a homeless veteran, and the embarrassment of warning a mother of her son's intent to kill her. Through his eyes, the reader confronts a patient's suicide and a close colleague's murder. While sharing these private revelations, Dr. Ablow provides to us all a looking glass to society. Discussed here, among many issues are poverty, the insanity defense, patients' rights, sexual malpractice, and changing medical economics. Captured is the critical moment which psychiatry now finds itself - attempting to integrate technology with spirituality, science with the soul, and economics with empathy. To Wrestle With Demons offers anyone who has ever wondered whether psychiatrists are touched by the lives of their patients a resounding yes. (shrink)

Knight has shown how the moral growth of medical students involves a spiritual journey. He may, however, present too sanguine a portrayal of the extent to which the medical education environment promotes this moral and spiritual growth. Medical school may indeed be more abusive than supportive. Admitting more women to medical school and teaching more humanities courses, while worthwhile, will not necessarily promote the goals that Knight appropriately advocates.

In this study, Consistency and Balance Model (CBM) is proposed and introduced. In the context of the model, the importance of consistency is emphasized in morality just like in Philosophy. Therefore, CBM gives the reason prominence in morality to ensure the consistency and according to CBM the emotion, the intuition and the conscience in addition to the reason, are also important. In order to see the principles determined by the reason in human behaviors, two kinds of classification are developed for (...) the virtues that is defined as the middle of excess and defect. The first of them is the triple classification of virtues that draws attention to the false existence of virtues and determines the opposite of virtues as forming dichotomy. The latter is the tetrad classification, which is based on the duality of two means that propose to consider the virtues together. The Contrast is considered as the central concept in the first classification and the integration is considered as the central concept in the second classification. Then it is offered that the virtues may be evaluated consistently in the social, global and theological contexts. However, the ideal morality with objective qualities and the real morality with subjective qualities are produced in order to reach the universal morality that is determined by the reason, then the consistency and the integration are proposed for them. Similarly, consistency and integration are proposed in the dualities of principle-virtue, abstract-concrete, intention-outcome, universality-locality, objectivity-subjectivity throughout the study. Finally, it is pointed out that the reasonableness of applying consistency in morality has exceptions.Summary: Philosophy is the logical, systematic and consistent thinking that focuses on specific questions and topics to reach the reality. When this basic tendency of philosophy is applied to morality, logical, systematic and consistent actions are expected to emerge. Accordingly, a new model called as Consistency and Balance Model (CBM) is proposed and introduced in this article. By this model, the importance of consistency is emphasized in morality just like in philosophy. Therefore, CBM gives the reason prominence in morality to ensure thought, expression and behavior consistency. According to CBM the human emotion, the divine intuition and the solid conscience in addition to reason are required to determine the virtues. CBM, which is a synthesis of the good intention and the reason, aims to constitute the sensible and good actions. According to CBM, which has a holistic structure, if a person can adopt the virtue as a principle and reflect the virtue in all of his behaviors during his whole life, he can be defined as consistently virtuous.CBM defines the good with the concepts of consistency and balance. According to CBM, the good is the mean of excess and defect. In this respect, CBM is based on Aristotle’s mean idea. However, CBM aims to develop it with new content. Two important questions arise during the identification of the evil: 1. Is it bad that nothing happens? 2. Is it bad that something is wrong? The point of defect represents the absence and the point of excess represents the fallacy in the entity. Both of them are bad in morality. The middle of them is the virtue. In order to see the principles determined by the reason in human behaviors, two kinds of classification are developed for the virtues which are defined as the middle of excess and defect. The first is the triple classification of virtues that draws attention to the false existence of virtues and determines the opposite of virtues as forming dichotomy. The triple classification, which forms a dichotomy as an empty pattern that can be applied to all virtues, is determined as over virtue-virtous-virtueless. According to CBM the opposite of the mean is always clearly the point of defect and implicitly the point of excess. Therefore, it is important to determine extremes of virtues. The point of defect can be briefly denoted as virtueless. The point of excess can be denoted as in fact virtueless, pretending as virtuous, masked virtue and over virtue. The latter is the tetrad classification, which is based on the duality of two means. In this classification, it is possible to produce new and better virtues by considering two virtues together. The Contrast is considered as the central concept in the first classification and the integration is considered as the central concept in the second classification.The principle is seen as a guarantee for the consistency in philosophy. CBM points out that a similar situation should be in ethics. According to Kant, the invisible internal principles of the actions are more important than the actions themselves to determine the moral value. The principle does not vary according to the individual and the condition, on the contrary, the individual is shaped by the principle and all individuals benefit equally from the outcome of the principle. Thus, the abuse of the rights of individuals with arbitrary treatments and double standards are prevented. In this democratic environment formed by the principle not only the owner of the power, but all right holders can get their rights. In this respect, the adherence to the principle is the guarantee of the rights and the freedom by establishing a balance between the rule and the freedom.Aristotle’s virtue and Kant’s principle are discussed in a holistic manner in this study. Thus, it is aimed that the principles in the human mind and the virtues in human actions are consistent in themselves and ultimately the union of the principles and the virtues can be ensured. Besides, the concepts of the ideal morality and the real morality are introduced in this article. The ideal morality takes place on the objective basis of the good and the truth, which is absolute, universally and unarguably accepted by everyone. The ideal morality with its objective qualities can be seen as the target that people know and want to achieve. The real morality is the morality that is shaped in the people or society in all its positive and negative aspects, which also includes the subjectivity of them as their own realities. The real morality with subjective qualities is the morality that occurs in life. CBM aims at the integrity and the consistency between the ideal morality and the real morality to reach the universal morality. In this article, the virtues are divided into two parts as material and spiritual. Then it is offered that the virtues may be evaluated consistently in the principal, individual, social, global and theological contexts. In this context, on the one hand it is aimed that the principal, individual, social, global and theological virtues are consistent within themselves and on the other hand they all are consistent within each other. In this classification the principal and theological morality have objective qualities and the individual and social morality have subjective qualities. CBM aims at an objectivity that incorporates subjectivity within the consistency and integrity of the principal, individual, social, global and theological morality. CBM aims to achieve the ultimate morality by integrating the starting point as the principal morality and the end point as the theological morality and to make them clear in the individual and social morality. As a result, CBM confirms the mean found by reason, by the revelation given by God. In other words, the morality that God has already there and always presents and the morality that the human mind finds here and now coincide. The consistency and integration are also proposed in the dualities of principle-virtue, abstract-concrete, intention-outcome, universality-locality, objectivity-subjectivity in the article. However, consistency, which is the central concept of the article, can form the basis for possible criticisms. But, it can be foreseen that the possible criticisms oriented to CBM would come from an extreme consistency perception that detaches the concept of consistency from reality without careful consideration. For this reason it should be kept in mind that it is wrong to expect excessive consistency in human behavior and to accept the ideal morality as absolute by neglecting the real morality. Finally, it is pointed out that the reasonableness of applying the consistency in morality has exceptions. (shrink)

"This book analyses the contemporary global revival of Nondual âSaivism, a thousand-year-old medieval Hindu religious philosophy. Providing a historical overview of the seminal people and groups responsible for the revival, the book compares the tradition's medieval Indian origins to modern forms, which are situated within distinctively contemporary religious, economic, and technological contexts. The author bridges the current gap in the literature between "insider" and "outsider" perspectives by examining modern Nondual âSaivism from multiple standpoints as both a critical scholar of religion (...) and an empathetic participant-observer. The book explores modern Nondual âSaivism in relation to recent scholarly debates concerning the legitimacy of New Age consumptive spirituality, the global spiritual marketplace, and the contemporary culture of narcissism. It also analyses the dark side of the revived tradition, and investigates contemporary teachers accused of sexual abuse and illegal financial activities in relation to unique features of Nondual âSaivism's theosophy and modern scholarship on new religious movements and cults. This book shows that, although Kashmir âSaivism has been adopted by certain teachers and groups to market their own brand of "High Tantra," some contemporary practitioners have remained true to the system's fundamental tenets and teach authentic forms of Nondual âSaivism. This book will be of interest to academics in the fields of religion and Asian philosophies, especially South Asian, tantric, neo-tantric and yoga philosophies, alternative and New Age spiritualities, religion and consumerism, and new religious movements and cults"--. (shrink)

Explore the aftermath of traumatic stress as it affects various populations, including therapists themselves! This book will educate you about the aftermath of traumatic stress as it impacts people in a variety of settings. It explores the factors that lead to increased or reduced vulnerability to the effects of traumatic stress, emphasizing the impact of cumulative/multiple trauma rather than the effects of a single traumatic incident, to help you design and implement effective prevention and intervention programs. The specific populations and (...) groups addressed in this important book include: adolescent girls involved in armed conflict in Colombia’s guerilla war urban African-American youth—a theoretical model for risk and resiliency people with strong spiritual/religious beliefs—how spirituality can affect a person’s reaction to traumatic stress women in recovery in a community aftercare shelter female trauma therapists—factors affecting vicarious traumatization of helping professionals college students with histories of abuse Providing a framework for understanding traumatic stress-related issues based on a variety of methodologies and measures, Traumatic Stress and Its Aftermath addresses important questions, such as: What is the relationship between the experiences of trauma or other stressful life events, and subsequent traumatic stress? What are the protective factors that can buffer or ameliorate the development of traumatic stress in the face of adverse life experiences, trauma, or other stressful events? How do these questions evolve in different cultural or community contexts, and with different populations? What are the implications for interventions for community institutions and mental health workers? What roles do self-esteem and spirituality play in a person’s reaction to traumatic stress? How do reactions to traumatic stress differ between women who have been sexually abused as children and women who have not? From editor Sandra S. Lee: “Contemporary developments in the study of traumatic stress are shifting. This book reflects an emphasis on the study of traumatic stress in normal community, cultural, or college student populations and groups, while other literature has focused on individuals specifically diagnosed with PTSD. In addition, Traumatic Stress and Its Aftermath: Cultural, Community, and Professional Contexts emphasizes the search for risk and protective factors and factors that can buffer the relationship between trauma exposure and subsequent distress.”. (shrink)

Contrary to the ecumenical spirit of our time, the differences among the Christian religions bring into question what one can say or do in common with fellow Christians. This issue, echoing the program of this journal, accentuates those differences, specifically when we focus on the Christian who is ill and suffering. At the bedside, it is the specifics of a religion, including not only its doctrines, but its informing and sustaining narratives, that must particularly be brought into play for the (...) sake of the patient. Given this, our focus in this article regards what such a view implies for the clinician who is caring for a Christian patient whose religion he mayor may not share, in general or in its specifics. Our basic conclusion is that the tendency for the clinician to act as both the patient's spiritual counselor, as well as his clinician, is generally neither prudent nor appropriate. Both hats should not be worn concurrently. This view is advanced not only because of concerns regarding patient vulnerability and the possible abuse of power, but also because the two roles may collide with or undermine each other. (shrink)

In today's world, with extraordinary force, such religious functions as axiological, moral-regulative, ideological and compensatory are actualized. In the process of successive secularization, the influence of religion on human communities and their way of world perception, world outlook and life significantly decreased. The gradual differentiation of the forms of social consciousness has led to the fact that religions in its variations of different confessions and traditions of expression, the segment of moral and spiritual influence on humanity was left to (...) guard. And such a situation was considered justified and expedient, especially given the harm that human communities have been making attempts to religiously legitimize a purely political decision of specific individual policy makers. Abuse of religion to cover private economic or political interests has led to negative consequences in public life, and sometimes in wars and extremism. However, with the beginning of the 21st century and the event of discrediting contemporary secular values-not-motivated regulatory forms of organization of social reality, it becomes apparent that religions have not exhausted their socio-regulatory potential. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Flight of DesireThe Conversion of Sherman AlexieScott Richard Lyons (bio)Sherman Alexie's audacious arrival onto the Native American literary scene in the early 1990s felt like the start of something new—but it was also the end of something old: namely, the Native American Renaissance (NAR).1 Younger by a generation than the graying canonized figures of preceding decades—N. Scott Momaday, James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerald Vizenor, among others—Alexie assumed the (...) pose of an enfant terrible and suggested that his elders were trying a bit too hard to produce an ultimately inauthentic sense of traditionalism. "We've been stuck in place since House Made of Dawn," he complained to an interviewer in 1997.2 Rather than presenting his readers with sick and/or depressed Indians caught between two worlds who discover healing in cultural restoration—the dominant plotline of NAR novels—Alexie's innovative characters played basketball and blues guitar, obsessed about their crushes and classes, and worried more about fitting into the modern world than healing it with some spiritual return to ancient Indian wisdom. Stylistically and thematically, Alexie was always closer to the likes of a George Saunders or Junot Diaz than he was to the serious modernists who had [End Page 27] inspired his NAR predecessors, and his political outlook more closely resembled the "identity politics" of younger Indian academics than the "sovereignty" discourses of twentieth-century tribal councils. Alexie wielded humor and pathos to great effect and always seemed to have his finger on the pulse of newer audiences, including those of us who call Indian reservations home. Alexie's influence on everyday Native American culture has been underestimated.Born to Salish parents in 1966 and raised on and off an eastern Washing-ton reservation, Alexie has published (as of this writing) twenty-six books of poetry, fiction, and memoir, much of which has been lauded for its dark humor and tender compassion in the face of serious and challenging topics—sexual abuse, chemical addiction, parental abandonment—as well as for its "reservation realism": the sense, often reiterated by Alexie himself, that his work speaks more authentically to real Indian life than most Native American works. His first published fiction was a collection of short stories, The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), followed two years later by his first novel, Reservation Blues (1995). In 1996 Alexie published his second novel, Indian Killer, which moved in a different, darker direction. Departing reservation settings for the city of Seattle and supplanting his humor with a horror sensibility, Indian Killer is about a serial murderer who scalps his white male victims and the subsequent racial tensions that arise. In keeping with Alexie's identity politics, a significant theme of the novel is "ethnic fraud"—the claiming of false Indian identity by non-Indians—a topic that received serious treatment during the 1990s and that supplies another layer of meaning to the novel's title.3 But Indian Killer is primarily about the murder of white men, and the most that anyone could say about the moral questions it raises is that Alexie seems to have left them for the reader to decide. Arnold Krupat decided to call Indian Killer a "warning to whites."4 A decade later, Alexie published two short books, each having a foothold in the lucrative young adult (YA) genre: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007) and Flight (2007). The former was immensely successful, critically and commercially, while the latter has barely been written about at all and has not sold as well. What explains this difference? Is True Diary simply a better book than Flight?Whenever we identify some literary text as good, great, better—or worse—than some other texts, we are obliged to answer the big, implicit question: What makes literature good? For René Girard, the answer to that question was simple: Great literature always announces the "novelistic [romanesque] truth," not the "romantic [romantique] lie" about the mediation of mimetic desire.5 The truth is that our desires are never just our own. We always imitate the desires of others, which leads to mimetic rivalry with those same models, who... (shrink)

In Africa, the human person is the supreme force, the most powerful and dominant among all created beings. While this decreed power makes the lower beings subservient to humanity, it is only intended to be a source of harmony in the advancement of the hospitality and the joy of the human species. Today, however, the traditional lifestyles of Africans are threatened with virtual extinction by insensitive development over which the indigenous peoples have no participation. Africa has not only acquiesced a (...) scientific technology that has developed its own laws far removed from the known system of nature, it has no self-limiting principle in terms of size, speed and violence to nature and humanity. Consequent upon this incongruity, the machine has replaced the human person thus degrading the ecology and resources necessary for harmonious living. This chapter argues that, African endogenous knowledge is strategic heritage resource to salvage the technologically abused environment for sustainable agro-ecological living. The chapter argues further that African endogenous knowledge system encodes environmental management and policies for resource development in Africa’s complex and ageing ecological system. In doing this, we engage in conversation about current and potential land sovereignty work in African Indigenous communities. This will achieve food security and improved nutrition, promote sustainable agriculture and improved economic status of the African indigenous farmer. We conclude that, in seeking the whole from the units of the earth resources through cultivation of the soil, the African derives high credit balance of spiritual good, virtuous life, self-reliance, courage and moral integrity. (shrink)

According to Ibn Khaldūn, man is a social entity deeply influenced by the geo-economics-politics of the environment in which he lives. The effect is seen as so strong that nearly all of these structures in their relationship to human beings are dominated by it. In this system, we see human beings as a creature who is both able to adapt himself to the environment and able to evolve in this harmony. From the perspective of Ibn Khaldūn, man cannot be evaluated (...) or defined separately from the environmental conditions, the technique and architecture he has developed. Ibn Khaldūn sees the primary source of this change to be the desire to make life both more prosperous and bearable. Therefore, the most natural motivations that affect man’s desire to alter the natural world are the environmental challenges that he encounters. The challenges that are imposed upon man in the natural world are those that have led to human progress. From badāwa (nomadic society) to ḥaḍāra (sedentary society) and so to the ceaseless drive of human progress that has served to make life more endurable, every effort in this sense leads to a physical and moral loosening as the incessant struggle to survive that defines human existence is made more bearable. Physical slack by breaking the resistance of man to resist the environmental conditions; and moral looseness by making man more vulnerable to the temptation of desires, pleasures and welfare that are the cause of moral dilemmas. Ibn Khaldūn’s moral thought with its social, political, and other fields of application are all contexts that enable an understanding of the devaluation of money-hedonist morality in all ways. This article aims to analyze the social, political and economic dilemmas and challenges that the capitalist, consumption-based money-hedonist morality (obesity, social media addiction, consumption, and moral devaluation in the face of financial, virtual and imagined valuations, etc.) from the perspective of Ibn Khaldūn. Summary: Man is endowed with both good and evil. Ibn Khaldūn notes that man tends to misuse these two orientations with a higher inclination towards evil, and that social conditions have an effect on this. He sees another characteristic of man, that they develop habits; accordingly, man is the child of his habits. Habits are second nature to man and affects all of his perceptions, particularly notions concerning truth. At the same time, human beings are under the constant influence of both habits, culture, and climate and geography; and all of these together affect our ethics, psychology and characteristics. Thus, man is a historical, social being that is changed, transformed and determined by adapting to these cultural, social, political and ecological conditions. The concept of Money-Hedonism is one that we have created by combining the terms monetarism, an economic concept, and hedonism, a concept in moral philosophy; the resulting term we seek to produce essentially translates as the adoration of Money. As is well known, hedonism refers to a philosophy of life that has its origins in the ancient Greek world which sees the purpose of life as one in which the pursuit of pleasure is the highest good. Whereas, Monetarism is an American-based economic view developed by Milton Friedman in 1970, linking all the balance in the economy to the supply and demand of money. According to this, the demand for money is operation, precaution and motives of speculation of individuals the amount of money they want to keep in cash on them. The power of an exchange tool increases with the amount and quality of what it is achievable in its utilization. In this respect, money has been an unprecedented source of power in modern society as a means by which change can be achieved. The increase in the power of money as an effective means as manifesting power has led to a socio-cultural and socio-economic superstructure around this power. In the life of an individual that is part of such a culture and is unable to isolate himself from the economy in which he lives, the values that can be expressed with money are consequently formed. In this structure, since the measure of life is money, money determines the quality of human life and human pleasure to a far greater degree than at any time in history. Thus, those living in this age have developed a new moral philosophy of value formed by the combination of these two concepts (monetarism and hedonism), which we have defined as Money-Hedonism. The money-hedonist individual is one that is in love with money, the joy of having it, the pleasure of using it, who desires it with immeasurable passion and ambition and is willing to use all legitimate and illegitimate methods of obtaining it. The most prominent characteristics of this type of individual is egoism, a desire to possess, hatred and mistrust. Ibn Khaldūn argues that the inhabitants of a city that live a settled life and who are living in the city have become economically prosperous and absorbed by consumption and pleasure, and, consequently morally degenerate as a result of the abuse of their evil nature. As can be understood from Ibn Khaldūn’s explanations, the basic element that determines the transition of people from the badāwi way of life to ḥaḍāri (settled) is the change in the livelihoods and related needs. He perceives this change as progressing from necessity to luxury, and, with this change, ethical concern in the nature of people being replaced by aesthetic care. In this way, since aesthetic concern reveals the dissatisfaction of the human self, man always pursues what is perceived to be better and more beautiful, and therefore he easily tends to any malignancy that may disrupt his religious and worldly peace. The ḥaḍāra community of Ibn Khaldūn versus the badāwa represent a modern society with a much more heterogeneous population, with a significant increase in lifestyle diversity along with urbanization. However, the determinative effect of the relationship with nature or the way in which society engage in economic activities have not changed. While modern people are urbanized, they are also heterogeneously shaped by psycho-social necessities demanded by urbanization. Man has created a new socio-psychological condition that not only affects the socio-economic but the way of forming a relationship through the accelerated development of new communication methods, facilitating access to information, and the opening of new methods of communication field between institutions. While man’s connection to nature has become disconnected, he no longer perceives himself as human being in nature but as a human within the city, the individual urban life and the law define this perception. The rupture from nature has created an inevitable result of alienation to nature as well as the estrangement of man with his own nature. The liberal policies adopted with capitalism have encouraged competition and free entrepreneurship. In the time that Ibn Khaldūn lived, man who created himself with his struggle in the nature brings himself / herself into the economic structure of competition in the modern period. Unlike in more traditional societies of the past, the modern way of life not only expresses itself in our new way of life and moral values, but also by statistical values. The exploitative and mathematical world, which forms the current economic science, shapes the socio-economic and socio-psychological structure of modern man. It is understood that the life brought by luxury renders the dynamic, subjective, disciplined sense of morality dysfunctional by destroying the moral values of man, particularly by reducing their feeling of shame. As a result, while the world of value of money-hedonism is solid, materialistic and cold; man in trying to exist in this world of value carries a flexible, spiritual and emotional nature. As such, human beings are pushed into social anomaly situations such as a constant conflict, dilemma, suicide, insecurity and solitude in this world of value. (shrink)

Science as Salvationdiscusses the high spiritual ambitions which tend to gather round the notion of science. Officially, science claims only the modest function of establishing facts. Yet people still hope for something much grander from it--namely, the myths by which to shape and support life in an increasingly confusing age. Our faith in science is abused by some scientists whose adolescent fantasies have spilled over into their professional lives. Salvation, immortality, mastery of the universe, humans without bodies, and intelligent (...) self-reproducing computers are just some of the notions and speculations that are now found--not on the pages of science fiction--but on the pages of science itself. The danger is that these concepts are given to a myth-hungry public who turn to science now that religion has lost its ability to create myth. Science as Salvationdiscusses the function and meaning of such fantasies. Midgley examines the need for and the use of myth in science, and how science and religion are related. She argues that we need to develop a realistic understanding of scientific imagination and its importance. Taking them seriously as symptoms of a genuine myth-hunger, it suggests that the proper function of science may need to include wider perspectives, which would make it plain that such desperate, compensatory dramas are unnecessary. (shrink)

Self-Love is an original and insightful study of a much-maligned concept that may in fact hold the key to well being. Author Joseph Magno explores the positive aspects of self-love as well as the destructive consequences that can result when it is lacking. Building on the perspective that human beings are inherently loving by nature, Magno argues that self-love is causally and reciprocally linked to selflessly loving others. By contrast, fear, selfishness, suffering, and even the abuse of others may (...) arise from a dearth of self-love. Magno further maintains that self-love in the sense of self-acceptance provides the essential link between physical and psychological health. Putting theory into practice, Magno also demonstrates how the principles he describes may be applied to recover self-love and ultimately restore wholeness and well being. Self-Love offers a philosophy of holistic health that will be an important resource for psychologists, social workers, health care professionals or anyone seeking physical, psychological, or spiritual renewal. (shrink)