The Common Good,Pluralism and the Small Church

Abstract

This paper discusses the understanding of “Common Good” that has been used by the Church of England, especially over the last five years. It suggests that its implicit universalism and identification of Christian morality with the ethical norms for the nation is premised on an understanding of the role of the Church which is no longer realistic. After a brief discussion of the latest statistics for church attendance and a comparison with other national churches in Northern Europe, I suggest that the Church of England is a “small church” and even that Christians constitute a religious minority. This means that the pursuit of the “Common Good” as defined by the church may simply be a piece of nostalgic longing for the time of the “big church.” The recent exclusions for the churches on same-sex marriage legislation indicate that the gap between most of the churches and the wider society. Rather than defining the common good, I suggest that in a pluralist society the churches which recognize their limited role will need to build alliances and common causes with other groups, both religious and secular.     

Public Faith and the Common Good A Radical Messianic Proposal

Abstract

The article inquires into the implications of Christianity not being a religious perspective among others in the contemporary Western debate on religious pluralism. A quick glance at a recent debate in Sweden serves to demonstrate how Christianity, although marginalized in its traditional forms, remains a dominating cultural interpretative scheme that continues to influence the majority’s view on private and public, individual and collective, rational and irrational. Against this background, the author argues, it is imperative that any Christian theologian who engages in the question of religion in the public sphere in the Western world, also must critically confront the question of Christianity’s particular status. Not least in light of contemporary right-wing rhetoric about the West as an exclusively “Christian civilization,” theologians need to reflect on how to avoid articulations of the Christian vision of the common good that manifest themselves at the expense of other religious traditions. The article ends by sketching a possible direction for such reflection.     

Jean Renoir,The Rules of the Game,Reputation, and Revisionism

Jean Renoir's film La Règle du jeu (The Rules of the Game) was first shown in Paris, in 1939, and is now generally regarded as one of his masterpieces. But there is a strange side to the film. What most critics and reference books say concerning it—and they tend to say much the same thing—does not, to put it bluntly, square with the facts. What they say is that La Règle du jeu is about an aristocratic house-party that is a microcosm of the corruptness and exhaustion of French society on the eve of World War II. Far from perceiving in La Règle du jeu evidence of the “corruption” and “exhaustion” in French society that led to the country's defeat and occupation by the Germans during World War II, however, the author of this essay attempts to see the film for what it is—not for what historicist critics want it to be.     

让人民居住得有尊严——留名世界遗产名录的柏林现代主义公共住宅区

"建筑不仅是与社会最密切相关的艺术,而且它的实现本身就是一个社会结晶。在这一意义上,它是一门完完全全的集体艺术。"——布鲁诺·陶特生活空间是都市化永恒常存的主题。大城市的房价、租金在拥迫的空间压力之下飙升到了令人瞠目咋舌的水平,"蜗居"现象似乎变成了城市发展的常态。然而欧洲     

非洲与现代人的起源

德国慕尼黑和美国宾夕法尼亚两个实验室的科学研究小组,在没有研究一根尼安德特人骨头的情况下,可能一劳永逸地解决了尼人问题。这两个实验室的专家称,他们在1856年发现的尼人骨架上提取了尼人的...