Gerrie ter Haar, James J. Busuttil (eds.) Bridge or barrier: religion, violence and visions for peace Ed. Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands, 2005.

Peace literacy shows why public philosophy and activism for peace and justice are better together while providing a practical framework designed to make the collaboration stronger and more effective. In this chapter, the authors begin with an overview of peace literacy and then show how it operates as an effective lens through which to read the strengths of various approaches to public philosophy and activism for peace and justice, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries and (...) into the contemporary period. Then, they turn to the development of peace literacy themes as we find them in the work of philosophers dedicated to publicly engaged activism for peace and justice, especially in American movements for the abolition of chattel slavery, anti‐war and nonviolence, and civil rights. (shrink)

The article questions concepts of ‘democratic peace’ that presuppose an intrinsic relation between pacifism and democracy. This view lacks from both, empirical evidence and historical insight. Instead, pacifism as political and personal virtue can be better linked to the Deweyan idea of democracy as the basic way of life, that is, mutual cooperation and self-realisation. But not only pacifism but also warfare and aggressive conduct often are rooted and result in an ethos of solidarity and cooperation. Therefore, the task (...) for any realistic concept of democratic pacifism is at least two-fold: finding ‘moral equivalents’ (W. James) to war and cultivating an ethos of self-criticism and self-restraint as already the Old Testament’s prophets have proclaimed. (shrink)

The issues of tithes and seed sowing have taken a central focus in contemporary Christianity in Nigeria among the preachers. Many a time, it is assumed that tithes and seed sowing are requirements for salvation, prosperity and total well-being of the members. Making many to believe that Christianity is a money-venture business one can succeed if he knows how to hoodwink the gullible. Many have been deceived that by parting with a substantial amount of money in the name (...) of sowing seed, their problems would be solved. Unfortunately, the person’s problem may remain the same or even be compounded. This paper evaluates the activities, attitude and their inordinate ambitions. It examines the impact of tithe and seed sowing on Christianity in Nigeria. The research method adopted for this work is the qualitative phenomenological method. The paper observed that the value of tithe and seed sowing has changed from what is prescribed in the bible to what is preached on the pulpits. The study recommends among other things, that these preachers should preach the gospel with decorum and as it were in the bible so that its influence on Nigerians will bring about a reduction in crime, corruption and other immoral activities in Nigeria. Contribution: The article is focused on the issues of tithes and seed sowing. It underscores the fact that the message of tithe and seed sowing has become a means of siphoning members and enriching the preachers. It further reveals its negative and positive impacts such as, the promotion of corruption and fraud in the church and society, contribution to the decline of morality in the church and the society, increasing crime rate and increasing poverty rate in Nigeria among others. (shrink)

One of the demands facing the church is the call for unity with Christians with profound intellectual and physical impairments. As the church becomes a community of justice with and for people with impairments, she is an instrument of God's shalom. However, too many of our sisters and brothers with impairments find themselves on the outside looking in. How can the church continue to move toward a more complete welcome and participation? Responding to this theological question precedes clinical or legal (...) concerns. The best the world has to offer is not what the church needs, though she can learn from reasonable professional approaches. The message and peace of Christ can undo the walls of separation that keep Christians with impairments out. Such a transformation would be a sign that the church is being built up in peace, and would offer a model of true communion among a diversity of people. (shrink)

Writing The History of the Sevarambians in the 1670s, the Huguenot Denis Veiras borrowed many ideas from Garcilaso de la Vega, also known as El Inca, whose Royal Commentaries of the Incas was published in 1609. Both works describe the history of an empire and justify it on the ground that it brought peace and unity. While Garcilaso’s book purported to be a history, his selection of facts reflected his goal of improving the treatment of the Incas by the (...) Spanish. Veiras’s story also claimed to be a history, but it was transparently a fiction, even to the point of lifting many elements from Garcilaso’s book. What both works equally emphasized was that empires could aim at, and could be justified by, the benefits they provided their subjects. Both tell stories of benevolent and paternalistic rulers who founded nearly ideal societies in the countries they conquered. These were models of empire for peace and unity rather than merely promoting toleration of differences or concord among differing parties. Veiras’s utopia thus offers an instructive case study of the effects of cross-cultural borrowings of literary and political ideas. (shrink)

Die Transformation der Kernphysik aus dem akademischen Labor über die Großforschung hin zum gescheiterten großtechnologischen Projekt war eng verknüpft mit der Implementierung transnationaler Wissensströme. Christian Forstner zeigt am Beispiel Österreichs, wie Industrie, Wissenschaft, Politik und Zivilgesellschaft interagieren müssen, um erfolgreiche Innovation möglich zu machen. Zunächst analysiert er die frühe Radioaktivitätsforschung bis zur Kernspaltung und dem NS-Forschungsverbund Uranverein. Anschließend folgt der Weg von den österreichischen Forschungsreaktoren im Rahmen des US-amerikanischen Atoms for Peace-Programms bis hin zum Bau des Kernkraftwerks Zwentendorf, das (...) nach dem „Nein zu Zwentendorf“ als Ergebnis einer Volksabstimmung im November 1978 nie in Betrieb ging. Der Autor: PD Dr. Christian Forstner ist Physiker und Wissenschaftshistoriker und derzeit Privatdozent für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main. Er leitet den Fachverband „Geschichte der Physik“ der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics by Robert Benne, and: The Way of Peace: Christian Life in the Face of Discord by James M. Childs Jr.Bruce P. RittenhouseGood and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics Robert Benne Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2010. 127 pp. $14.00The Way of Peace: Christian Life in the Face of Discord James M. Childs Jr. Minneapolis: (...) Fortress Press, 2008. 149 pp. $19.00A comparison of Robert Benne’s Good and Bad Ways to Think about Religion and Politics and James Childs’s The Way of Peace illustrates the current divisions in political theology in the US Lutheran tradition. Benne’s book is a polemic aimed at the leadership of the mainline Protestant denominations and their mode of engagement with the American political process. In Benne’s account, these denominations draw too direct and exclusive a line between Christian faith and liberal political commitments; conversely, he sees greater agreement between core Christian norms and conservative political concerns. By contrast, Childs’s book provides an exegetical development of Christian norms of peace and peacemaking, followed by direct applications of Christian norms to public issues of economic justice and war that parallel the positions of secular liberals.Benne seeks to explore anew the issue of how Christians should interact with the political process. Unlike H. Richard Niebuhr, who undertook a similar project in Christ and Culture, Benne engages contemporary secular interpretations and critiques of religious engagement in politics. Benne rejects the strict separationist positions of the new atheists such as Richard Dawkins and the fusionist positions he attributes to Paul Tillich and the leadership of the contemporary mainline denominations in favor of a critical engagement model based on the Lutheran two kingdoms doctrine. Benne’s passion is not matched by the strength of his arguments. There is a straw man quality to his characterization of his antagonists. For example, Benne describes Tillich as seeing no difference between the demands of the Christian faith and democratic socialism. But Tillich explicitly recognizes the limitations of democratic [End Page 195] socialism in expressing Christian ideals and makes clear that his preference for this form of government is conditioned on a historical situation in which the alternatives are laissez-faire capitalism, fascism, and communism. Benne displays epistemological hubris when he questions mainstream scientific judgments. For example, he mocks the “alleged global warming consensus” (35) without offering any evidence that he possesses the necessary evidence or expertise to judge that consensus. He adds questionable historical claims, exaggerating Nazi persecution of Christians and minimizing the religious motivation of the European wars following the Reformation.Childs’s treatment of the question of how Christians are to engage in the US political process is even more problematic than Benne’s. His political prescriptions are written as if the problem did not exist, as if there existed a unified Christian polity fully faithful to its ideals that could express those ideals directly in the nation’s public policies. In this, there is a lack of the moral realism that Lutherans traditionally express through the doctrine that Christians are simul justus et peccator (at the same time justified and sinner). It is telling that the only sins that Childs acknowledges in the church are those that correspond to secular liberal norms: “racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of discrimination” (110). Childs’s representations of the church as holy, a community of peacemakers, and a sign of peace are normative not descriptive, effacing the traditional Lutheran distinction between the visible and invisible church. Childs also demonstrates a lack of political realism with respect to the influence of Christians in the American political process. In proposing that public policy be directed by Christian ideals, Childs either presupposes a significant conversion of our pluralistic society or he imagines that those not presently acting in the political process according to Christian moral principles can be persuaded to selflessness without conversion. The former position is not an empirical reality, and the latter contradicts the traditional Lutheran understanding of original sin, which holds that in the absence of faith human beings are curvatus in se, curved in upon themselves.Benne makes a... (shrink)

An important way to become self-deceived, omitted by Mele, is by intentionally ignoring and avoiding the contemplation of evidence one has for an upsetting conclusion, knowing full well that one is giving priority to one's present peace of mind over the search for truth. Such intentional self-deception may be especially hard to observe scientifically.

Applied Christian Ethics addresses selected themes in Christian social ethics. Part one shows the roots of contributors in the realist school; part two focuses on different levels of the significance of economics for social justice; and part three deals with both existential experience and government policy in war and peace issues.

City-scale urban greening is expanding wildlife habitat in previously less hospitable urban areas. Does this transformation also prompt a reckoning with the longstanding idea that cities are places intended to satisfy primarily human needs? I pose this question in the context of one of North America's most ambitious green infrastructure programmes to manage urban runoff: Philadelphia's Green City, Clean Waters. Given that the city's green infrastructure plans have little to say about wildlife, I investigate how wild animals fit into urban (...) greening professionals’ conceptions of the urban. I argue that practitioners relate to urban wildlife via three distinctive frames: 1) animal control, 2) public health and 3) biodiversity, and explore the implications of each for peaceful human– wildlife coexistence in ‘greened’ cities. (shrink)

Europe's economic constitution is obviously affected in a very fundamental way. There is every reason to depart from an historical reconstruction of the origins of the economic constitution in the early 1920s, to consider its remarkable renaissance in postwar Germany, and to explore against this background its emigration to the European level of governance as well as its development and metamorphosis in the integration process. This chapter focuses on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), which, once hailed as the crowning (...) achievement of Europe's market building and the precursor of a more truly political Union, has become the epicenter of the present crisis. Ordoliberalism and the social‐market economy managed to coexist peacefully and dominated public opinion. The chapter also discusses the practices of Europe's crisis management and the specifics of the governance modes that they are generating. (shrink)

Denis Diderot’s ideas about war and peace crystalize many of the contradictions in the world that he identified. On the one hand, war is a natural product of contradictions between natural law and human developments. On the other hand, it can and should always be subject to moral judgment based on a wide-ranging knowledge of history and context. War can be good if it eliminates tyranny, and bad if it limits freedom, equality, and prosperity. Peace can be good (...) if it cultivates the latter, and bad if it freezes inequality. Diderot never allows himself to rest on universal judgments for all times and all places, but insists upon never-ending comparisons and contrasts between the moral world and the natural world. Philosophical materialism provides the basis for his understanding of the world, but morals provide the instruments of judgment. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill had strong sympathies with a liberal form of market socialism based on worker-owned and worker-managed firms. He thought that only very few government interventions were needed to trigger a peaceful and spontaneous transition to such an economic system. This article recapitulates his thesis and argument by focusing on his major workPrinciples of Political Economy, which is rather neglected by philosophers, especially in the German-speaking world. I will argue that Mill was too optimistic in his hope for a (...) spontaneous transition without government intervention. Since it is possible to reconstruct how Mill thought this transition would proceed, it is also possible to identify at what point the transition did not advance in the way envisioned by him, but was blocked by antagonistic forces. I will argue that this insight is not only of historical value, but still poses a serious problem for John Rawls’s theory of justice. Rawls follows Mill closely in his discussion of the proper economic system and he faces the same problem of transition. (shrink)

This article questions whether enmity is always bad and trust always good. In the borderlands between Ikland in northern Uganda and Turkanaland in Kenya, sometimes violent enmity combines with friendly barter relations between the Ik, a subsistence agricultural people that also hunts, and their goat-and-cattle herding neighbors, the Turkana and Dodoth peoples. “Half-trust,” as some of the Ik call it, works to prevent the escalation of conflict. While the Ugandan groups have been disarmed by their government, the Kenyan Turkana, armed (...) with AK-47s, are allowed into Ugandan territory for pasture during drought, and some Turkana take violent advantage of this power imbalance as they leave. Paradoxically, intervention by Ugandan state institutions that, in the name of peaceful coexistence, welcome the Turkana in Uganda has led to the escalation of conflict, while tribal “half-trust” has kept it relatively limited. (shrink)

In this essay, I reflect on the divergent arguments about limited force made by Daniel R. Brunstetter and Samuel Moyn in their respective monographs. Arguing that their positions can be reconciled, I agree with Brunstetter that limited force has a role to play in establishing and maintaining a just world order. At the same time, however, I am mindful of Moyn's warning that limited force may lead to perpetual war. The way to ensure that limited force both works toward justice (...) and does not result in perpetual war, I argue, is to focus more on considerations of jus ante bellum (right before war) and jus post bellum (right after war), the so-called “growing edges of just war theory.” I hold that the responsible use of statecraft, which just war thinking seeks to inform, accepts that limited force constitutes a legitimate tool to facilitate order, justice, and peace. However, any justifiable use of force must be restrained and limited and aim for a just peace. The embrace of limited force should thus be complemented with an effort by state leaders to bolster the edges of just war in order to facilitate a security environment that requires the use of limited force less frequently. (shrink)

Le Projet kantien d’une paix perpétuelle fondée sur le droit trouve son origine dans les différents débats et thèmes de la philosophie juridico-politique et des relations internationales des Modernes (guerre juste, contrat entre États, paix perpétuelle, etc.). Kant les systématise dans son idée cosmopolitique visant à construire la paix suivant trois niveaux d’intégration du droit public : le niveau intraétatique, le niveau interétatique et le niveau transnational ou cosmopolitique. Cette triple intégration fonde l’identité cosmopolitique, et répond au premier souci de (...) Kant de construire juridiquement la paix en unissant les États afin de mettre fi n à l’état de nature éthique qui demeure présent même après la formation de la société civile. Cet état de nature éthique peut prendre plusieurs formes (violences, guerres, terrorisme, esclavage, etc.), et il est accentué par la méconnaissance du caractère multiculturel et pluriel de nos sociétés. La vitalisation de l’identité cosmopolitique passe par une cosmopolitisation basée sur la tolérance culturelle ; sur notre humanité partagée et plurielle ; et sur l’accueil quotidien de l’autre homme au nom de son humanité. (shrink)

Eine globale Friedensordnung kann nur nachhaltig sein, wenn sie auf entsprechenden Wertvorstellungen und Normen begründet ist, die ihrerseits auf säkularen Friedenskonzepten und religiösen Friedens- und Heilsvorstellungen beruhen. Darum gilt es, friedenfördernde Seiten der Religionen und insbesondere auch des Islams herauszuarbeiten, zu vertiefen und theologisch zu reflektieren. In den meisten Fällen wird Gewalt nicht primär durch Religionen verursacht, aber oft religiös oder theologisch legitimiert, instrumentalisiert oder gar mithilfe religiöser Argumente eskaliert. Der Band thematisiert Fragen zu einer politischen Ethik und zu Friedensvorstellungen (...) aus der Perspektive des Islams. (shrink)

This is a short, but complex and ambitious book. It is argumentative in style and in many places written in the first person. It appeared first in German in 2003, and in 2016 in English translation, to which the two translators added a detailed and informative introduction. The overall aim of the book is to describe and explain how human beings, as users of propositional language and with the ability to refer to themselves, develop into egocentric beings, who find themselves (...) confronted with the world as a whole, and who turn to mysticism or religion in order to find some peace of mind. A wide range of themes and arguments are interwoven along on the way from being an "I"-sayer to... (shrink)

Conflicts are commonplace in human relationships. The Bible is replete with narratives and proverbial statements which border on conflict scenarios and conflict resolution strategies. Conflict cannot be severed from relationships between biological brothers and sisters, Christians, friends, colleagues and husbands and wives. In this qualitative study, the researchers examined the menace 'conflict between husbands and wives'. There is no husband and wife relationship which is devoid of disputes and conflicts. In husband and wife relationship, conflict situations could arise from lack (...) of sexual discipline, lack of sexual satisfaction, finance, lack of communication and other areas. The thrust of this article was to examine conflict resolution principles in the light of biblical proverbs. Biblical proverbs refer to concise and wise sayings in the Bible, which give pieces of advice about everyday life. This article utilised the descriptive research methodology to analyse the primary and secondary data. The major finding of this work are numerous biblical proverbs which are veritable means for resolving conflicts between husbands and wives. CONTRIBUTION: The article brought to fore the major factors which lead to conflict between husbands and wives. The authors exegetically studied the chosen proverbs in order to ascertain its relevance to conflict situations. The major contribution of this article is that the messages of certain proverbs in the Book of Proverbs are very useful in resolving conflicts between husbands and wives. (shrink)

In this introduction to part 4 of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means,” the journal's editor assesses the argument made by Peace, the spokesperson of Erasmus in his Querela Pacis, that the desire to impute and avenge wrongs against oneself is insatiable and at the root of both individual and social enmities. He notes that, in a symposium about how to resolve and prevent enmity, most contributions have to date expressed caveats about how justice and truth (...) must take precedence over peace, how recovery from ill treatment may be impossible, how quietism is not a moral option, and how realism demands a national policy and a personal strategy of, at best, contingent forgiveness. He concedes that the attitudes of those opposed to quietism are healthy but suggests that there may be goods worthier than health of human devotion. This essay concludes that the main differences between what it terms “judgmental” and “irenic” regimes are disagreements over anthropology and metaphysics. The presumptions that truths are objectively knowable and that human beings are moral and rational agents characterize judgmental regimes; irenic regimes are characterized by disillusionment with those assumptions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Just Peace:A Buddhist-Christian Path to LiberationKyeongil JungThe primary goal of religion is liberation from suffering, and the state of liberation is peace. In that sense religion is a salvific and peace-seeking path. But just as many rivers flow into one great ocean, there are many paths to liberation, that is, to peace. Since the destination is the same, peace-seekers may walk on one path, (...) two paths, or more. I don't know whether it is due to good karma or divine grace, but I have been walking on two paths, Buddhist and Christian, since I began to pursue a spiritual-social transformation of the self and the world. This is possible, as my late friend Praveen Chaudhari said, not because the two paths are the same but precisely because they are different.The contrasting difference I have experienced is that while Buddhism is a path of peace to peace, Christianity is a path of justice to peace. This difference has become more apparent to me as I have studied and practiced both socially engaged Buddhism and liberation theology. Engaged Buddhists seek to achieve peace through "being peace," which is an impartial and nonadversarial way of proceeding, whereas liberative Christians seek to achieve peace through working for justice, which entails a preferential and confrontational attitude. But in these differences I believe that the two approaches can complement, not contradict, each other. They can do so because Buddhism and Christianity are differently but equally salvific paths on the common ground of human suffering.I walk on the two paths to peace at the same time. While this may not be possible intellectually and logically, in my experience it becomes possible through praxis. Liberation theologians are right that theological reflection is a "second act" that follows the first act: the praxis of liberation. In this essay I reflect on four major oppositions that have arisen in the course of my dual praxis: compassion language and justice language, peace and justice, nonviolence and violence, and meditation and action. In each case the opposition is resolved through mutual correction in view of the salvific purpose of both emphases.Compassion Language and Justice LanguageThere are two languages that inspire people to respond to human suffering, namely, the language of compassion and that of justice. Though the two languages are spoken [End Page 3] by Buddhists as well as Christians, compassion language is often attributed to Buddhism and justice language to Christianity. Buddhists draw mainly on compassion language to respond to human suffering. Such language is impartial: it does not discriminate between victims and victimizers, but encourages Buddhists to be compassionate toward both. Thich Nhat Hanh gives a striking illustration of the impartiality of Buddhist compassion: "I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving."1The two italicized "be" verbs challenge me. Though it is not always easy, I have no problem with the first "am" in the poem. I am compassionate toward the poor twelve-year-old girl. I feel her pain, shame, and despair. The compassion language does not allow me to distance myself here from her there. The girl's suffering is my suffering; I am the twelve-year-old girl. But, the second "am" takes my breath away. It is unthinkable and even immoral to identify myself with the sea pirate and to be compassionate toward him. I am not the pirate. Instead of compassion, I feel anger. The pirate should be punished for his heinous crime. I must take sides with the girl against the sea pirate. Why on earth is Nhat Hanh compassionate toward the evil sea pirate?Nhat Hanh was also angry when he heard of the girl's cruel fate. However, after meditating on the tragedy, he realized that he could not simply take sides: "If I had been born in his village and brought up under the same conditions, I would be exactly like him."2 He cannot take sides because he is aware of conditions in which a poor... (shrink)

At the end of the 16th century and early 17th century, France emerges from thirty years of extreme violence and a series of massacres. During these Religious wars, both sides, using the literal religious meaning of the word, referred to the notion of holocaust: if Protestants tend to practice this biblical reference from the point of view of the victims, the Catholics, particularly the members of the catholic League, have rather used it in the sense of a (necessary) Holocaust against (...) the Protestants. Anyway, the two sides are mutually bleeding themselves white: they imposed on the whole people, involved or not, an incredible horror, and unforgettable for all the individuals who lived after this period. Therefore, during the period of relative peace which followed Henry IV’s accession to the throne (1593-1594), and even if the Edict of Nantes forbids to recall it, the collective consciousness of a just passed disaster remains, especially in theatre and in the tragedies. This disaster is seen as a radical event for the world, as an absolute worst the humanity can generate in terms of inhumanity. Do people must forget this disaster or do they have to look back on it to think and judge what occured some years before? (shrink)

This article provides an overview of the contributions to this special issue. It organizes the contributions through three conceptual lenses: the person, the state, and the church.

The aim of this essay is to show that Erasmus’s concept of peace should be understood as a form of irenicism rather than pacifism. I argue that Erasmus’s basic claims on war and peace do not qualify him as a pacifist, first of all because his concept of peace is non-universal: it is exclusively Christian since it does not include Muslims and Jews unless they have converted to Christianity. Secondly, Erasmus’s willingness to fight the Turks and (...) his call for a Christian war against them suggests that he was not a pacifist. Since the peace Erasmus preached for was exclusively Christian, it cannot be identified as pacifism in its accepted universal sense, but rather as a commitment to the peace of Christendom, and therefore his concept of peace should more precisely be described as irenic. By shedding new light on Erasmus’s notion of war and peace, this essay suggests that his alleged religious tolerance should be considered anew. (shrink)

Gretchen J. Reydams-Schils - Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation - Journal of the History of Philosophy 40:2 Journal of the History of Philosophy 40.2 255-256 Book Review Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation Richard Sorabji. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. x + 499. Cloth, $45.00. In his latest magisterial study Richard Sorabji casts his (...) net much wider than the title suggests, to give an overview of ancient theories on emotion, including views of the Presocratics, Plato, Aristotle on catharsis, the Pyrrhonists, and the Epicureans, in addition to the material from the Stoics and Christian authors... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 147-148 [Access article in PDF] Buddhists and Christians: Praying for Peace in the World Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue Dear Buddhist Friends:As the new president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, the office of His Holiness the Pope for relations with people of different religious traditions, I wish to greet you and send this congratulatory message on the occasion (...) of the feast of Vesakh. This gesture of friendship, initiated in 1995 by my predecessor Cardinal Francis Arinze, has almost become a tradition. I wish to continue this good tradition and express my hearty congratulations to each and every one of you.In this message, I would like to invite you, my dear Buddhist friends, to join in prayer for the cause of peace in the world. Observing the current international situation, we cannot but be aware of the acuteness of the question of peace in our world. Since the beginning of this new millennium, marked by the dramatic events of September 11, 2001, we witness every day fresh scenes of bloodshed, violence, confrontation, and crisis in almost all parts of the world. In the midst of this grave situation, we cannot lead our lives without committing ourselves to advancing the cause of peace in the world.We Christians and Buddhists are convinced that the origin of all conflict is ultimately located in human hearts characterized by selfish desire, specifically by desire for power, domination, and wealth, often at the expense of others. It is also our common conviction that peace must inhabit people's hearts before it can become a social reality. For us, therefore, the most fundamental and efficient way to advance peace is to do our best to see that the deep-rooted selfishness of human hearts is overcome, so that people may be transformed into true artisans of peace.Pope John Paul II has proclaimed the year from October 2002 to October 2003 the Year of the Rosary of the Virgin Mary. He has earnestly encouraged the frequent recitation of the Rosary in order to pray for peace in the world. His wish to revive the practice of the Rosary is closely connected with the present historical circumstances, which need more than ever-constant supplication for the great gift of peace.My Buddhist friends, is it not a wonderful coincidence that you also have a lengthy tradition of using the Mala for prayer? The Rosary for Catholics and the [End Page 147] Mala for Buddhists are simple yet profound and meaningful prayer, despite essential differences in their form and content, based on our distinct doctrines and practices. For Catholics, the Rosary represents a most effective means of fostering contemplation of Jesus Christ. For Buddhists, the Mala is used to overcome the 108 Sinful Desires in order to reach the state of Nirvana. By virtue of their meditative character, these two prayers have in common a calming effect on those who pray them; they lead them to experience and to work for peace, and they produce fruits of love. For Catholics, the repetition and meditation of the holy names of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity and the Virgin Mary in the recitation of the Rosary makes us more willing to assimilate their love and compassion for others, especially for the poor and afflicted. In your Buddhist tradition, praying the Mala helps one to become a peacemaker.Dear Buddhist friends, these are the thoughts I wish to share with you this year. I am convinced that by persevering in prayer we will contribute to advancing peace in the world both now and in the future. May this peace be with you and your families on the feast of Vesakh and at all times.Archbishop Michael L. Fitzgerald, President © by Michael L. Fitzgerald. Reprinted by permission.... (shrink)

Richard Sorabji presents a ground-breaking study of ancient Greek views of the emotions and their influence on subsequent theories and attitudes, Pagan and Christian. While the central focus of the book is the Stoics, Sorabji draws on a vast range of texts to give a rich historical survey of how Western thinking about this central aspect of human nature developed.

Today there are over 90,000 Small Christian Communities in the eight AMECEA countries in Eastern Africa. Kenya alone has over 35,000 SCCs.Increasingly SCCs are promoting reconciliation, justice and peace, the three main themes of 2009 Second African Synod. This essay treats the following headings: “Tracking the Historical Shifts of SCCs,” “SCCs’ Increasing Involvement in Justice and Peace Issues,” “Case Study of SCC Involvement in the Kenya Lenten Campaigns 2009 and 2010,” “Involving Youth in Small Christian Communities,” “SCCs Using (...) the Internet Especially Facebook” and “SCCs as Facilitators of Reconciliation, Justice and Peace in Africa.” One major change is the increasing use of a Pastoral Theological Reflection Process such as the “Pastoral Circle” to help SCCs to go deeper. Now more and more SCCs in Africa are reflecting pastorally and theologically on their experiences, often using the tools of social analysis. (shrink)

Spiritual energy and power can be purposefully used to create structures and conditions that allow religious communities to co-exist. In the context of South Asia and particularly of India, can the very presence of Christians become a gift to the community? A useful pointer could be revisiting the concept of Jubilee Year as described in Leviticus, Isaiah and Luke that portrays the message of atonement, restoration, hospitality and renewal of the divine covenant - all of which are essential for inter-religious (...) dialogue. The following paper seeks possible answers by addressing the concerns of the Christian layman and building up a framework for inter-religious dialogue, with a focus on being faithful to the Christian Gospel. The aim is to create conditions in which different accounts of the world of human experience can flourish together. (shrink)

Just war's engagement with pacifism has shaped the discourse of war within and beyond Christian ethics. Less attention has been given to Christian realism's relationship to just war thought or to the possibilities such a dialogue might disclose. This essay examines certain features of the Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr's moral, theological, and political thought to consider the promise of a Christian realist theory of justifiable war.