Search Results (6)

The five acts of jihadist violence between 2012–2020, particularly the 2015 Paris attacks, combined with an increasingly polarized political discourse in France, have pushed jihadist extremism to the center of government policy and public opinion. Approaches to jihadist extremism in the last decade have comprised two characteristics: claims amalgamating Islam and Muslim religious practice—especially in its stricter forms—with extremist violence, along with the idea that such forms of dangerous religious indoctrination are best battled through education. As a result, there has been a renewed debate concerning the principle of laïcité (secularism) within public schools and other public institutions. One of the leading efforts in this context has focused on processes of “deradicalization”. These projects include various educational tools, rehabilitation attempts inside and outside of prisons, cultural and artistic initiatives, and administrative bans imposed on organizations inciting violence. However, the most ambitious of these efforts have also been subject to the greatest criticism. Projects within the public school system have been accused of securitizing education and stigmatizing Muslim students, whereas measures undertaken in prisons are currently limited to risk assessment of inmates linked with jihadist violence, while lacking more meaningful plans for their rehabilitation. Public–private partnerships have developed more promising initiatives, but their moderate success is still recent and requires further study. Full article

In spite of the increasing presence of religion in international relations with various publications observing this presence and numerous authorities calling for the inclusion of religion into mainstream research, there is no universal consent to recognize religion’s role in IR. In our opinion, the only way to reconcile IR with the international reality in which religion has been and will remain present in the foreseeable future is for the researchers themselves to construct—especially those oriented towards broad, non-Western perspective—a new face of the discipline, the face which in this article we call the post-secular identity of IR study. Assuming that identity is first and foremost a form of knowledge that tells us how we can define ourselves against the background of the surrounding world, our purpose is to look at the post-secular identity from two different perspectives which are analyzed in the two distinctive parts of the paper. On one hand, post-secular identity would mean the socio-political but also cultural phenomenon of the “knowledge of the self” expressed in the form of ideas, interests and goals of various state and nonstate actors, both religious and secular ones, that are more or less conditioned by religious determinants. We propose looking at them through the prism of a new kind of “partnership” emerging as a result of post-secular thinking in the area of IR. On the other hand, we want to look at post-secular identity as the badly required transformation within the area of IR study that, as we claim, needs to construct more inclusive views of IR scholars adopting a deliberative and pluralistic approach to the reality they examine based on widening their epistemological and hermeneutical horizons. This redefinition would be framed by recognizing religion as rational and adopting the view that the limits of the scientific methods do not coincide with the boundaries of rationality. We also adopt the view that along with the cognitive expansion of the universe, the concept of transcendence has been broadened. Full article

This paper discusses the types, faith attributes, development characteristics, and limitations of Christian social organizations in China. China’s religious social service organizations mainly include four types of organizations: associations, private non-enterprise units, foundations, and venues for religious activities. From the perspective of faith attributes, they can be divided into faith-permeated organizations, faith-centered organizations, faith-affiliated organizations, faith-background organizations, and faith–secular partnerships. Since the reform and opening up in 1978, China’s Christian social services have been in a period of organizational reconstruction. The main development characteristics are as follows: (a) social services have begun to take on multiple forms; (b) institutional services have transferred their original focus on those with disabilities to the elderly, and the services have been gradually extended from the low-income populations to other target groups; and (c) the basic functions of social services are still in the recovery stage, and the organizational system and service scale are not complete and sufficient. The multiple limitations of Christian social services involve (a) the social development stage and institutional background; (b) government policy text and implementation; and (c) maturity of its own organizational structure and service ability. There is still a long way to go to achieve the basic goals of reconstruction and development. Full article

The introduction of regular religious life in the Nordic region is less well-documented than in the neighbouring kingdoms of northern Europe. In the absence of well-preserved manuscript and material remains, unfounded and sometimes distorting suppositions have been made about the timeline of monastic settlement and the character of the conventual life it brought. Recent archival and archaeological research can offer fresh insights into these questions. The arrival of authentic regular life may have been as early as the second quarter of the eleventh century in Denmark and Iceland, but there was no secure or stable community in any part of Scandinavia until the turn of the next century. A settled monastic network arose from a compact between the leadership of the secular church and the ruling elite, a partnership motivated as much by the shared pursuit of political, social and economic power as by any personal piety. Yet, the force of this patronal programme did not inhibit the development of monastic cultures reflected in books, original writings, church and conventual buildings, which bear comparison with the European mainstream. Full article

“Israeli Hope in Academia” is a program, designed by the president of the state of Israel, Reuven Rivlin. The program is based on the perception that Israeli society is changing, from having a clear majority and several minorities to a society comprised of four principal sectors that are roughly similar in size: secular Jews, religious Jews, Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jews and Arabs. The program acts to encourage a more diverse and culturally competent higher education system that promotes partnership. One of the means to achieve that goal is to create meaningful educational interactions between people from academia and the younger generation of these sectors. Over the past year, students from various faculties in the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) took part in a course called “Green Ambassadors”, which corresponds with the “Israeli Hope” program. This course was considered an action learning course, which is a course that combines academic learning and social involvement that has an impact on the community. In order to illustrate the environmental topics and to achieve high participation levels of the pupils, the students created a mobile laboratory containing experiments and demonstrations in which the pupils took an active part. Thus, the course managed to make a significant impact on the community and achieve the goals set by the “Israeli Hope” program. This paper presents the “Israeli Hope” program, HIT and the “Green Ambassadors” course, as well as the methodology used to achieve the course’s goals. Finally, this paper will discuss the success levels of the course. Full article

This paper describes a developing partnership between a church-based service learning center and a university initiative to build a field station in a low-income community in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. It is a case study of how secular and religious institutions have been collaborating to achieve the shared goal of improving social conditions in specific communities. The theoretical focus of the paper is on how a change from a “glass is half empty” to a “glass is half full” perception of the community opens new possibilities for change. This paper concentrates on the story of one partnership as a case study demonstrating current trends in service learning both within universities and within the Catholic Church in America. Analysis centers on the basic question of why the project had symbolic power for both partners and on the institutional processes within both organizations that helped the partnership grow. We use the framework of Assets-Based Community Development (ABCD), also known as the “strengths perspective”, to conceptualize the contrast. Full article