This article focusses on women and the organisational leadership structures of the Apostolic Faith Mission in Zimbabwe. The aim is to identify the roles, practices and contributions of women to the developmental agenda in the church. The AFM in Zimbabwe identifies leadership positions in their various assemblies as pastor, elder, deacon and lay worker. From these ranks, the provincial and national leadership is chosen. The access to and participation of women in these offices and leadership positions will be investigated to (...) ascertain their input to the development of the church and perception of women in the society. The article discusses the mechanisms for the election of leadership in the AFM in Zimbabwe. It analyses leadership succession and leadership roles within the AFM in Zimbabwe from the perspective of gender equity and the involvement of women in policy-making, decision-making and the management of the church. Four aspects of the Exploratory Descriptive Normative Action research model were utilised from a practical theology perspective. The article shows that women do not have access to top leadership positions in the AFM in Zimbabwe even though there are no explicit policies that regulate their exclusion. It highlights their contribution to the development of the church despite this exclusion and engages critically with the unspoken assumption that women are not fit to take up the presidium offices and develop the AFM. The article finds that unquestioned patriarchal discourse contributes to women’s invisibility, which results in their not being taken into consideration when choices are made to elect people for higher leadership positions in the church. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to inquire whether the paradigma-approach, developed by Thomas S. Kuhn, is able to serve as a useful instrument for the analysis of the dynamics of economic theory. The first part contains a discussion of the rational reconstruction of Kuhns idea, which was formulated by Sneed and Stegmüller. This discussion centers around the question, whether rationality alone can be the only criterion for scientific work. In order to introduce the specific conditions under which economic science (...) takes place, the paradigma-approach has to be extended. This extension has to take account of the non-scientific determination of scientific work. In this connection normal science and scientific revolutions have a concrete function in a process in the course of which non-scientific claims are transformed into scientific norms. (shrink)

Wilhelm Bender was professor of systematic theology in Bonn from 1876–1888. Like many of his contemporaries, he steered a course away from mediatory theology via the ‘Ritschlian school’ to liberal theology. His attempt to sublate Darwin's theory of evolution and scientific materialism into an idealistic system of the history of religion and culture set him in sharp opposition to the conservative currents within the Church, costing him his chair. In his efforts to establish a relative absoluteness of Christianity as the (...) highest value discernible in the history of religion he can be seen as a forerunner of Ernst Troeltsch. (shrink)

In this work, the basic principles of nanotechnology and its most important fields of application are presented and the current state of knowledge and the discussion surrounding the evaluation of the potential dangers associated with nanotechnology are explained. Finally, a legal evaluation of the regulatory needs and the development of benchmarks for an innovation-friendly risk minimization are presented.