Search Results (86)

The concept of faith-based sanctuary—congregations providing hospitality and protection to those who have broken unjust laws—has its roots in the biblical passages mandating the creation of Cities of Refuge in ancient Israel. Since the early 1980s, sanctuary movements in the United States have provided refuge to asylum seekers and other immigrants facing potential deportation. The majority of those who have received sanctuary have fled the human rights crisis in Latin America. These movements have been pivotal in achieving regulatory changes in federal policy that saved thousands of lives in the 1980’s as well as saving immigrant families from separation through deportation on an ongoing basis. The popular narrative of the sanctuary movements has tended to focus on white citizens with privilege rescuing Latino/a victims. However, an in-depth examination shows that both Latino/a residents and Latino/a immigrants have played an essential and central role. Current faith responses to mass deportation efforts also involve increasingly important leadership by Latino/a residents and immigrants, largely without broader public awareness or understanding of their role. This paper focuses primarily on the contribution of migrants in the sanctuary movement, but with a particular emphasis on the majority of migrants who receive sanctuary—Latin Americans. It also notes the contribution of Latino/a U.S. residents. The reasons for including the role of Latino/a residents are twofold. First, the broader Latino/a church and community in the United States is roughly 30% immigrant; Latino/a residents are often intimately involved with the Latin American migrant community, and their contributions are intertwined. Secondly, Latino/a engagement in the sanctuary and similar movements, whether by residents or migrants, is also often unarticulated or marginalized. The reality that Latino/a resident and immigrant contributions to sanctuary movements are often invisible in the broader public narrative supports a theological distortion with negative consequences for mission and ministry. In many popular Christian education resources focused on immigration and immigrant ministry, the call to the church to witness to the love of God for the stranger is often framed as an act of hospitality While hospitality is a biblical value, a well-meaning emphasis on hospitality as the key biblical response to immigration obscures the actual and potential contributions of migrants to God’s broader mission in and through migration. This message lowers the likelihood of full collaboration between immigrant and non-immigrant leaders and churches. When the narrative is that the privileged are the savior, the leadership of the marginalized is discouraged and opportunities are missed. Conversely, 1 Corinthians 12:26–30 lays out a pattern in which God utilizes the contributions of the marginalized to inspire the church and world. When we see migrants’ engagement in risky advocacy in sanctuary movements, we see a faith that is radically dependent on God and marvelously courageous. The conversion of victims of injustice into God’s agents for transformation becomes a testimony to the power of the living God. When the world can see Christian migrants and citizens working together in power-sharing mutuality, Paul’s vision of the Body of Christ becomes visible. Applying these theological lenses to a fuller portrayal of shared leadership in the sanctuary movements can undo the damage caused by a distorted image of the sanctuary movements and can increase their positive impact. This paper utilizes a non-traditional and decolonial methodology in its inclusion of personal testimony by the author, a leader in North American sanctuary movements over the past forty-five years, in the broader context of an historical and theological analysis. Full article

The “Lord’s Prayer” is a popular Christian prayer. Notwithstanding variations between Mtt. 6:9–13 and Lk. 11:2–4, it has traditionally guided and inspired a range of religious and social activities. Its exceptional status is because it was formulated and taught by Jesus Christ. Using a critical textual and non–exegetical approach and by applying theological and sociological analysis in the Catholic/Orthodox tradition between the prayers in Mtt. 6:9–13 (Lk. 11:2–4) and Jn. 17:1–26 (traditionally named the “High Priestly Prayer”), this research shows that the early editor or redactor who titled Mtt. 6:9–13/Lk. 11:2–4 the “Lord’s Prayer” inadvertently bequeathed a misnomer. In contradistinction, the prayer (if that title must go to just one of Jesus’ prayers) that deserves that title is Jn. 17:1–26 because its rich contents encapsulate what Jesus Christ is all about: soteriology, eschatology, and evangelical sociology. Furthermore, the radical social implications of this prayer due to its pragmatic and paradigmatic emphasis on love, unity, collaboration, and mutual acceptance inevitably resonates with the crisis–ridden modern world. It is recommended that Mtt. 6:9–13/Lk. 11:2–4 be re–titled, while Jn. 17:1–26 is rightly crowned the “Lord’s Prayer.” The Lord’s Prayer should also receive more attention in Christian faith–praxis and the Holy Mass. Full article

The emergence of algorithmic authority has profoundly reshaped contemporary understandings of truth, knowledge, and human flourishing. As computational systems increasingly assume epistemic authority once entrusted to philosophical, religious, and civic institutions, the church faces a renewed challenge of bearing faithful witness within a culture governed by competing accounts of wisdom and power. This article argues that the apostle Paul’s logos tou staurou constitutes a rival account of reality that reconfigures knowledge, the identity of God, human flourishing, apostolic mission, and ultimately Christian public witness through a distinctively cruciform rationality, thereby challenging both ancient philosophical rationalism and contemporary algorithmic authority. By focusing on 1 Corinthians 1:18–2:16 and 9:19–23, this study demonstrates that the logos tou staurou (“word of the cross”) reconfigures wisdom, power, human identity, and mission through God’s self-revelation in the crucified Christ. Rather than presenting cruciformity as a secondary ethical consequence of salvation, Paul presents the cross as the self-revelation of God from which cruciform discipleship, apostolic mission, and faithful public witness necessarily flow. Bringing Paul’s theology of the cross into conversation with both the Stoic Logos of the first century and contemporary algorithmic authority, this article argues that the logos tou staurou offers a comprehensive theological alternative to rival cultural logoi by relocating wisdom from autonomous rationality to God’s cruciform self-revelation. While Stoicism and algorithmic systems promise human flourishing through rational autonomy and computational certainty, Paul locates divine wisdom in weakness, vulnerability, and self-giving love. The cross, therefore, provides the church with a distinctively cruciform rationality for faithful witness within an age increasingly shaped by algorithmic authority. Full article

This article offers a point-by-point overview of the concept of Christian education as understood by popes Francis and Leo XIV. It could be argued that the writings of these recent popes return to the early Christian idea of paideia Christi. Pope Leo XIV refers directly to the term ‘paideia’ by using the phrase ‘Christian paideia’. Francis’s educational anthropology, on the other hand, is theologically and pedagogically consistent with the tradition of Christian paideia. Although Francis does not use the term ‘paideia’, his understanding of education is also centred on the human person and their integral development. In this theoretical framework, education is no longer viewed merely as a tool for achieving salvation. However, it serves to enable the human person to grow in their humanity and thereby attain integral maturity, the pinnacle of which is union with God. It is within this theoretical perspective that the significance of education for building peace and social order should also be understood. In this view, peace emerges as the result of a humanistic education; hence, to achieve genuine peace among people, the emphasis must be placed on a genuinely humanistic education. The idea is rooted primarily in the ancient Greek understanding of paideia. It has also been taken up throughout history, for example, by Comenius in Pampaedia, Dewey in Democracy and Education (1916), Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968/1970), and, more recently, by Nussbaum in Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities (2010). Pope Leo XIV also sees this perspective of internal coherence between authentic personal development. From the very beginning of his pontificate, one can observe in his teachings a linking of these two issues. In one of his earliest addresses, Pope Leo XIV emphasised that the concern for peace amongst people does indeed stem from the Christian faith. It could be said that building peace within human society is a Christian imperative, arising from the sharing of the gift which the Church has received from Christ himself: ‘Peace be with you!’. In this context, it is worth noting that the mission of bringing about peace is not merely the result of specific human activity, although this is, of course, important, and Leo indicates how it should be carried out. Nevertheless, what is crucial to the fulfilment of this mission is that the surest guarantee of its success is a personal relationship with Christ, from which flows the transmission of Christ’s gift of peace to the world. The Pope addressed the Italian Bishops’ Conference with the following words: “the relationship with Christ calls on us to develop a pastoral focus on the theme of peace”. Pope Leo thus points out that the path to building authentic peace in the world, which “is not the absence of conflict”, is the path of personal growth in one’s relationship with Christ, who is the source of peace. In this way, the maturing of a person of faith is the surest way of building—though in this context it would be more accurate to say: conveying—peace in the world. Full article

James Denney’s insistence that the church’s confession of faith “should be sung, not signed” encapsulates a theology of confession that is as provocative as it is neglected. This essay retrieves Denney (1856–1917)—conservative Scottish Calvinist, pastor, and Principal of the United Free Church College in Glasgow—not as a curiosity of Scottish church history but as a theologian whose work offers a coherent and still-urgent account of the church’s confessional vocation. Organized around Christ’s cross, Denney’s ecclesiology resists every temptation to deploy creeds and confessions as instruments of theological gatekeeping or institutional self-definition. Against such tendencies, he proposes their reorientation: from boundary markers to acts of doxological witness, from mechanisms of exclusion to expressions of trust in a gospel that exceeds the church’s own imagining. The essay traces Denney’s biography and pastoral career before examining his mature ecclesiology—on the nature and unity of the church, the function of creeds and confessions, and the promise and limits of ecumenism—setting his confessional minimalism in conversation with the Barmen Declaration (1934) and the Belhar Confession (1982). Together, these documents illuminate a pattern of Reformed confessional faithfulness in which the church’s identity remains open to the disturbing freedom of the gospel. Full article

Contemporary Evangelicalism faces a paradox: despite its historical and demographic vitality, a soteriological imbalance in many (though by no means all) of its expressions—an overemphasis on afterlife-centred salvation relative to present flourishing—has contributed to a crisis of meaning for believers navigating present-day realities. This gap can leave the faith an insufficient bulwark against secular nihilism and radical ideologies, both of which thrive (however perversely) by addressing present suffering. This article argues not for the replacement of Evangelical soteriology but for its recovery and enrichment through a Theology of Human Flourishing, centred on the human person-in-communion conformed by grace to Christ—what it terms, with deliberate qualification, the Divine Individual. The theotic dimension developed here complements rather than supplants the forensic categories of justification, regeneration, and reconciliation. The argument proceeds in five moves. First, it grounds the Divine Individual in the New Testament “Son of Man” tradition, drawing on Walker’s exegesis of John 1.43–51 and Moule’s argument for Johannine individualism. Second, it deploys Jordan Peterson’s phenomenology of meaning as a modern grammar through which the patristic doctrine of theosis can be re-articulated, while critically assessing where Peterson’s anthropology of the autonomous subject diverges from a theology of grace and must be corrected by it. Third, it shows—with Henrich and Duchesne—that the Divine Individual is not a colonial construct but a long civilizational inheritance with deep biblical and Greco-Christian roots. Fourth, it answers the standard critiques: Pelagianism, syncretism, atomistic individualism, and the post-colonial objection. Fifth, it sketches the missiological implications: mission as the formation of Christ-shaped persons whose transformation ripples outward into the renewal of culture, institution, and civilization. Full article

This article explores the specificity of social assistance conducted by the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) compared to Faith-Based Organizations (FBOs) in the UK, USA, and France. The article is a secondary qualitative analysis of a circumscribed subset of the interview material assembled in a wider mixed-methods study on the professionalization of charity in the ROC, pursuing a different research question—the configurational specificity of the Orthodox model—than the parent study itself. Using Grounded Theory methodology on the corpus of nineteen interviews with clergy, social workers, and experts from Northeastern Romania, the analysis develops the category of the sacralization of social assistance—a configuration of practices and meanings in which the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated, sacramentally obligatory, and clerically authorized. While each of these features has been documented individually in Protestant and Catholic faith-based organizations, their joint configuration in the Romanian Orthodox case differs in degree and arrangement from patterns reported in the Western literature. A theoretically informed contrast with that literature highlights six dimensions along which the ROC configuration, as articulated by providers, diverges from the patterns most frequently reported in that literature: (1) the spiritual dimension is structurally integrated in ROC versus optional in UK/USA or institutionally absent in France; (2) leadership remains predominantly clerical versus secularly professionalized in the West; (3) the beneficiary is conceptualized as a living icon of Christ versus a person with civil rights; (4) the purpose of interventions is soteriological versus immanent social reintegration; (5) professionalization generates anxiety about secularization versus comfortable normalization; (6) volunteerism remains informal-communitarian versus formalized-systematic. The research proposes a dual-axis typology that differentiates between the presence and the nature of the spiritual dimension. Full article

Although identity development is often framed as a task of adolescence, identity continues to evolve across the life course. Midlife, in particular, involves significant role change, reflection, and meaning-making, yet women’s midlife identity development within religious contexts remains understudied. Using life course and narrative identity frameworks, this qualitative study examined how women navigate identity shifts during midlife within a family-centered faith context. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 30 women aged 38–69 who identified as practicing members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in six countries. A grounded theory analysis revealed three interrelated processes, identity disruption, re-evaluation, and revision, while anchoring identity in core sources of meaning. Faith and purpose provided continuity across transitions, supporting coherence, resilience, and growth. These findings challenge deficit-based models and position midlife as a generative period of ongoing identity development. Full article

This article explores how interfaith dialogue, especially involving non-Christian views and interpretations of Jesus, has transformed contemporary understandings of Christology. It also contends how and why such challenges and developments can further reform and expand what is meant by the Church and salvation (ecclesiology and soteriology). To do so, it first highlights three perspectives towards the other that seem most promising for any robust interfaith Christology and why turning to non-Christians for views of Christ can be spiritually and theologically helpful, if not cathartic. To highlight this idea, it then examines some representative Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist interpretations or critiques of Christology. In doing so, the article ambitiously contends that one main aim of transforming Christology is to transform the Church. Thus, the transformation of Christology through interfaith dialogue will also transform the Church because it will transform how Christians perceive and respond to what is salvific in other faiths and revelations. Advocating for a more expansive Christology, therefore, coincides with developing a more expansive ecclesiology and soteriology. Full article

The publication of Richard Wilhelm’s German translation of the Daodejing in 1911 ignited a “Daoist enthusiasm” in German literary circles, offering spiritual solace to a generation disillusioned by World War I. This article explores the creative reception of Daoist thought by the German writer Klabund (1890–1928), arguing that he reinterpreted Daoism not merely as a philosophy but as a religious response to the spiritual and political crises of post-war Germany. Through a comparative analysis of Klabund’s Laotse. Sprüche and Wilhelm’s source text, this study reveals how Klabund, through the selection, reorganization, and substitution of key terms, constructs a “practicable faith” for his contemporaries. The article further examines how this reconstruction extends into his literary works: Li-Tai-Pe aestheticizes Daoist themes like “softness” and “water”, Dreiklang elevates Laozi to a “divine incarnation” within a syncretic religious framework alongside Christ and Buddha, and The Last Emperor applies Daoist political wisdom to critique imperial power. Klabund’s approach illustrates a unique model of cross-cultural dialogue, where ancient Eastern wisdom is transformed into a “revolution of the heart”, serving as a spiritual antidote to the modern Western crisis of faith. Full article

Forgiveness and reconciliation pose significant challenges in post-conflict societies, especially for those directly affected by violence. While legal frameworks of transitional justice are often discussed, the personal and religious dimensions of forgiveness receive less attention. This article seeks to address this gap using René Girard’s mimetic theory to analyze the relationship between religious motivation and the processes of forgiveness and reconciliation. The study’s empirical findings stem from qualitative interviews with 22 individuals who were victims during the Homeland War (1991–1995) in Croatia. Girard’s theory posits that humans imitate not just behavior, but the desires of others, leading to mimetic rivalry that can escalate into violence—a concept known as “negative mimesis.” However, concept of “positive mimesis” is also achievable when individuals emulate Jesus Christ’s model of self-giving love, facilitating a pathway towards reconciliation. The primary research question guiding this inquiry asks how individuals affected by violence navigate forgiveness and reconciliation, especially the role of religion in this process. In this context, forgiveness is conceptualized as a deeply personal and spiritual journey, whereas reconciliation is defined as the restoration of interpersonal relationships within a societal framework that requires forgiveness. Consequently, this research prioritizes exploring individual narratives and personal accounts from participants rather than addressing broader societal implications. Insights from interviews reveal participants’ understanding of both negative and positive mimesis, indicating that mimetic mechanisms can foster tendencies towards violence as well as forgiveness. In this framework, Jesus Christ serves as a vital external mediator, providing a transformative route away from cycles of violence. Most participants indicated that their faith, prayer practices, and the example set by Christ significantly influenced their forgiveness decisions. This paper contributes original insights into the theological and anthropological aspects of forgiveness, demonstrating that Girard’s mimetic theory effectively illuminates the complexities of reconciliation in post-conflict settings. Full article

Explanatio symboli, a true Christian pedagogy lesson, is attributed to Saint Ambrose of Milan. It, was established 1700 years after the Synod of Nicaea, in which the first seven confessional articles of the Orthodox Creed were written. In the current religious context, it aims to resurrect the baptismal faith that was so manifest in the Milanese environment within the first few centuries after the persecutions came to an end. To the great bishop of the Century IV Occident, the Baptism and the doxological confession of the All-Holy Trinity, alongside the Trinitarian doxology, were empirical realities within ecclesial life, and were also associated with the experience of grace in the Trinitarian communion. This was imperative, especially in the context of defending the right-faith against the Arianism’s attacks, whose infiltration spread all the way to the Western borders of the Roman Empire. To Saint Ambrose, as to us living today, life in Christ—shaped by confessing the Trinitarian faith and through Baptism—is one that enlightens humanity to become Christo-morphic until the last moment of our life here, and this is the true existential meaning whose efficacity and reality lead us towards His Kingdom. Full article

The relationship between Scripture and the Liturgy remains one of the most extensively debated subjects in theological discourse. In the wake of the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, a divided Christendom witnessed the rise of a dichotomy between Scripture and Liturgy, as well as between the Word and the Sacrament. This dichotomy, however, is absent from the patristic thought, which perceives the unity and complementarity between Scripture and Liturgy, owing to their shared belonging to the one life of the Church—broadly defined as Tradition—and to the way they are understood and experienced as interconnected modes through which the singular Mystery of Jesus Christ is communicated to the faithful. The present study aims to demonstrate this unity by drawing on a substantial body of patristic writings, highlighting the fact that the life of the Church is one and is lived both as the rule of faith and the rule of prayer, and that through it, one and the same Christ communicates Himself to the faithful both through the Word and through the Holy Sacraments. For the Church Fathers, the Christian faith is not an abstract doctrine about Christ, but a real and personal encounter and communion with Him in the life of the Church. This patristic approach may offer a starting point for contemporary Christianity in addressing the current liturgical crisis and in rethinking and renewing future ecumenical dialogue. Such renewal presupposes a movement beyond secular formalism and nominalism, which have fostered excessive conceptualization and an antithetical view of Scripture and Liturgy, Word and Sacrament. Full article

The theology of deification in the Christian tradition is fraught with misconceptions. Although it embodies the core teaching of the faith, it is not only a neglected theme of theology, but often critiqued as a Promethean distortion of the gospel and/or a semi-Pelagian heterodoxy. Hans Urs von Balthasar, through his examination of the teachings of the early Church Fathers, presents the doctrine in its Christocentric context, emphasizing its kenotic and inherently relational character. Deification is thus revealed as an antidote to the narrowly conceived notion of “justification” as salvation, which is rooted in a juridic understanding of God’s grace. Conceived as the dynamic incorporation of the believer into the life of Christ himself, deification is rightly understood as a present, existential process and thus far more than a mere eschatological hope. Full article

Religious beliefs influence many behaviors and perspectives relevant to well-being and mental health. In Christianity, beliefs about how one attains salvation may be particularly relevant to psychology, but limited scholarship has considered cognitive aspects of religiosity. This study developed and evaluated a new measure of Beliefs about Salvation (BAS) that assesses affirmations of salvation (a) by God’s grace alone and (b) by God’s grace after human repentance/ordinances, as understood by different Christian denominations. We examined the association of the BAS with three measures of mental health and six measures of influences on religiosity. In a sample of 1556 predominantly members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Protestant Christians, which traditionally hold distinct views about the roles of divine grace and human works/ordinances necessary for salvation, the BAS data demonstrated evidence of reliability and validity in exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with two subscales, faith and works. Neither BAS subscale was significantly associated with the other variables measured in this study, except for religious legalism, which was negatively correlated with faith and positively correlated with works. Additional analyses indicated that six measures of influences on religiosity were moderately associated with one another and tended to be more strongly associated with mental health than religious involvement, with spiritual transcendence being the most strongly correlated with well-being. Psychological research can benefit from evaluating multiple aspects of religiosity, including inquiry about the psychological influence of specific religious beliefs. Full article