Retrospective Speculative Philosophy: Looking for Traces of Zizek's Communist Collective in Emerging Christian Praxis

Abstract

In the closing chapter of Living in the End Times, Slavoj Zizek endeavours to "look for traces of the new communist collective in already existing social or even artistic movements." This article explores what Zizek might see if he were to turn his cultural-critical gaze towards emerging Christianity, which is presented as an artistic and social, as well as religious (or irreligious), "movement." His work is increasingly used by emerging church practitioner Peter Rollins to retrospectively explain his own thought and practice. This article examines some of the ways in which Zizek's atheological speculative philosophy and John D. Caputo's theology of the event are impacting contemporary Christian praxis.     

论黑死病期间的英国教会

在教会看来,黑死病是上帝因世人的罪孽而降下的惩罚,故而对之主要的防治也应该以忏悔为主.这些对策的确没有起到令人满意的效果,但这是当时科学水平有限的情况下教会所能采取的最好选择,并且,对这种解释迅速的传达和有关措施周密的布置本身就证明了教会面对瘟疫的积极态度,对社会的稳定也不无裨益.另外,教会还积极的进行临终抚慰、开辟墓地等稳定社会秩序的活动.尽管有一些教职人员的确有腐败的行为,但对此我们必须辨证地看待,因为他们相当多数并非原来教会的成员,而是在原有教士大量死亡之际紧急补充进来的人员.     

中古教廷财政收入动态考察

中世纪教皇的财政来源由属世与属灵两种收入构成。前者是教皇担当世俗封建宗主而获得的收入 ,主要反映教皇与教皇国的财政关系 ;后者是教皇充当天主教世界首脑而获得的收入 ,反映教皇与西欧各国教会的财政关系。通过对两种财源不同时期在教廷总收入中所占比重的量化分析 ,证明以教会大分裂为界 ,教皇的财源发生了从依赖于属灵收入到属世收入的转变。教廷属灵财权的萎缩为近代民族国家的兴起与宗教的改革铺平了道路     

High justice in fifteenth-century Normandy: the prosecution of Sandrin Bourel

By the fifteenth century the seigneurial exercise of high justice had become less common because of the growth of royal jurisdiction. The ancient and wealthy Benedictine nunnery of Montivilliers retained the right to high justice only during the octave of the Holy Cross. In 1493 Sandrin Bourel, a young man who had twice before been imprisoned for theft, was apprehended in the act of stealing from a bourgeois of Montivilliers. As the crime occurred during the octave of the Holy Cross the abbey claimed jurisdiction. A special tribunal was created to prosecute him. After having been tortured, Bourel was found guilty and hanged. The documents generated by this event provide the basis for a case study of the application of criminal procedure at the close of the middle ages. The condemned man's confession, rich in biographical detail, gives us a profile of a petty thief and vagabond on the margin of society. The financial account of the abbey's receiver-general documents in detail the total cost of the prosecution of a single medieval criminal.     

From Empires to Nation-State: Remaking the Roman Catholic Church in an Independent Poland

ABSTRACT

Roman Catholicism is most often imagined as an element of continuity in Poland’s turbulent history: even when a Polish state was absent from the map of Europe from the late eighteenth through early twentieth centuries, a recognizably ‘Polish’ church has been presumed to provide a robust institutional anchor for the Polish nation. This article, however, argues that the creation of a ‘Polish’ Roman Catholic church was a belated and protracted process, one that was only getting started in the years following the achievement of Polish independence in 1918. The church’s ‘Polonization’ was only partially a matter of emancipation from imperial-era restrictions. It often also involved the defence and attempted extrapolation of laws, practices and institutions that had developed under the auspices of the German, Austrian or Russian states and that the Catholic hierarchy viewed as healthy and desirable building blocks for a future Polish church. These imperial precedents continued to provide crucial points of reference in ongoing debates about what ‘Polish’ Catholicism was and what it should become.     

十九世纪末鲁西南地方权力结构与民教冲突

19世纪末鲁西南地区频繁发生的教案、民教冲突与地方权力结构有着极其密切的关系,正是楔入乡土社会的教会势力破坏了地方上的权力结构,并与传统的地方权力结构分享乡土社会的控制民众权,使得以官绅为代表的地方权力阶层权势和利益受损,才导致了由地方权力阶层领导的反洋教运动。因此与其说双方的冲突是一种侵略与反侵略斗争或宗教与文化的冲突,不如说是双方利益和权力的争夺保卫战。     

Agriculture in sixth‐century Petra and its hinterland,the evidence from the Petra papyri

Since their discovery in 1993 the Petra papyri have drawn the attention of both historians and archaeologists because of the amount of information they contain. They deal with the property of Theodoros, son of Obodianus, and his family in Petra and its vicinity in the period between AD 537 and 593. This paper focuses on agriculture and its importance in Petra and the surrounding area in the sixth century AD, according to the information derived from the scrolls. It appears that agriculture played a major role in the economy of Petra and its hinterland at the time these documents were written. The papyri repeatedly mention agricultural lands throughout the region and in many cases specify their locations and toponyms. Some of the latter are significantly still in use. There is also information about springs, some of which are still active and contribute to local agriculture. Some papyri even contain information about the type of plants grown in the area. Finally, the authors present the current state of agriculture at selected places and compare it with the state of agriculture in the sixth century AD in the study area.     

The rhetoric of science and the critique of imperialism in British social anthropology,c. 1870–1940

In this article I discuss issues of memory and historicity in a contemporary African prophetic movement, the Tokoist church. I do so by focusing on the multiple processes of “biographization” of the prophet’s (Simão Toko) life from the different allegiances within the movement. I suggest that, despite recent critiques on the biographical method, the ethnography of those (unstable and heterogeneous) processes can be very helpful to understand the place of memory and historical consciousness in contemporary Christianity.     

The Limits of Mastery: Slaveholders,Slaves, and Baptist Church Discipline

Existing scholarship describes early southern evangelical churches as racially radical institutions that, as the eighteenth century surrendered to the nineteenth, capitulated to slavery, implementing accommodations intended to make them more attractive to respectable, slaveholding churchgoers. This essay argues that that transition was never as complete as suggested. Based on a set of 65 Baptist church minutes from congregations located in 4 different southern states, it shows how evangelical churches continued to exercise a degree of authority over slave-owning members and their treatment of bondpeople from the late eighteenth century through the end of slavery itself.     

Regulating Church Property in Late Imperial China

In recent years,religion in China has attracted increased attention,both domestically and internationally.A core aspect of this attention has been the role of church real estate,a contemporary issue with historical origins.After the Second Opium War,France—the self-proclaimed protector of Catholicism—took on the cause of obtaining additional rights and freedoms for Western missionaries in China,albeit with only mixed results.Constant disagreements between China's central and local governments made it difficult to implement nation-wide regulations.     

Archaeological microgravimetric prospection inside don church (Valencia, Spain)

The microgravimetric surveying technique is applicable to the detection of shallow subsurface structures if a lateral density contrast is presented, and thus, it is a valid technique for archaeological prospection. In this paper, this technique has been revealed to be an efficient tool for archaeological studies, such as those performed inside Don Church (18th century), located in the urban area of Alfafar town, Valencia (Spain), where a buried crypt, suggested by different boreholes drilled during the second restoration process in 1993, is expected. Details of the site’s characteristics, topographic survey procedures, microgravimetric field operations, data collection and gravity reduction operations (where the inner building effect of walls, pillars and the altar is confirmed as one of the most important) are also presented. Finally, the results confirm the buried crypt.     

美国华人教会的社会功能初探

近年来,美国华人基督教教会组织发展迅速,其在帮助华人新移民群体,整合华人社会资源等方面的作用已经超越了传统华人社团。本文依据实地考察并结合文献研究,探索美国华人教会组织的多方面社会功能。作者认为,华人教会在华人社会中的作用及其影响值得关注。     

Maintaining the absent other: the re-use of religious heritage sites in conflicts

This article explores the relationships between heritage and conflict by focusing on the re-use of religious architectural heritage in conflicts that resulted in the displacement of communities. Such re-uses place the autonomy of buildings in the absence of their original users under question. The study focuses on three churches in the northern part of Cyprus, which had new functions assigned by the actual community after the displacement of the original users. The article argues that when heritage is conserved by the mandate of the community, it reveals attempts to maintain the ‘absent other’ reflected by the way churches are adapted with minor alterations. Accordingly, it aims to contribute to theories that question how architecture can maintain its autonomy following conflicts and seeks to offer a new perspective on the debate regarding heritage-conflict relations by interpreting heritage as a sign of peace rather than conflict.     

Gramsci and the issue of religion: Catholic modernism and the Italian Partito Popolare

ABSTRACT

Gramsci's interest in Italian politics led him to tackle a key issue in the present-day discourse: the relationship between the Holy See and the national State. Additionally, he paid close attention to internal issues of Christianity, from its origins to his own times and – similar to many other socialist thinkers – he believed that there were several echoes between the early Christian experiences and contemporary socialism. From this arose his concern with the religious crisis of the early twentieth century – so-called ‘Modernism’ – as well as the story of the Partito Popolare (Popular Party, PPI), the organization founded by the priest Luigi Sturzo after the First World War, which was marked – especially amongst its left-wing components – by its anti-fascist positions.     

The custom of the English Church: parish church maintenance in England before 1300

A division of responsibility for parish church fabric and contents between rector and parishioners first appeared in English ecclesiastical legislation in the early thirteenth century and was to remain in place until the mid-nineteenth century. It is often suggested that this responsibility was forced onto parishioners by a clergy keen to limit their own financial liability and that this marks the point at which parishioners first become involved in their local churches. This article looks at the development of these statutes from their origins in the Anglo-Saxon period through to their full realisation in the later thirteenth century. It argues that there were many among the thirteenth-century ecclesiastical hierarchy who were opposed to this change, and that far from being forced on parishioners, allowing parishioners to take responsibility for part of the church was a pragmatic solution to problems brought about by changes to both parishes and parish churches.     

晚清政府对待教会医疗事业的态度和政策

教会医疗事业是基督教在华传教事业中的特殊部分,它与晚清政府有着特殊的关系。清政府对待它的态度和政策几经变化、在禁教政策下,清歧府对教会医疗事业采取了容忍的态度和政策。两次鸦片战争之际,清政府在不平等条约的压制下被迫接受教会医疗事业,但是仍想加以抗拒。第二次鸦片战争后,条约制度得以建立;与此同时,清政府对外来化的态度发生变化。此后,清政府对教会医疗事业的态度和政策虽有变化．但基本上持保护、支持和利用的态度和政策．并在一些方面体现了特殊性。     

晚清政府关于外国教会在华持有武装政策述论

关于外国教会在华持有武装问题,晚清政府实行的是有限禁止政策。这种政策由不同层次的基本政策和具体政策构成。造成这种政策的表面原因是《大清律例》自身的法律弹性和近代中外大局下的政教互动关系,根本原因还是晚清时期国力孱弱,政府无能。实施这种政策的目的是为了实现社会控制、维持中外相安、借用先进技术三个方面。该政策从1853年起步,至1908年成形,实施到1912年清政府灭亡结束。其中,以1901年为界,分为前后两个阶段。两阶段相比较,政策呈现出类型由简单而丰富、内容由粗疏而详明、执行由松弛而严格的三大特征。     

The custom of the English Church: parish church maintenance in England before 1300

A division of responsibility for parish church fabric and contents between rector and parishioners first appeared in English ecclesiastical legislation in the early thirteenth century and was to remain in place until the mid-nineteenth century. It is often suggested that this responsibility was forced onto parishioners by a clergy keen to limit their own financial liability and that this marks the point at which parishioners first become involved in their local churches. This article looks at the development of these statutes from their origins in the Anglo-Saxon period through to their full realisation in the later thirteenth century. It argues that there were many among the thirteenth-century ecclesiastical hierarchy who were opposed to this change, and that far from being forced on parishioners, allowing parishioners to take responsibility for part of the church was a pragmatic solution to problems brought about by changes to both parishes and parish churches.