战争与社会转型中的中国基督教会——中华基督教会全国总会边疆服务研究

1930年代后期,中华基督教会全国总会发起了一场旨在服务西部民族地区以巩固抗战后方的运动,号召教会内外有为之士,到当时被称为“边疆”的西南少数民族地区,开展生计、教育、医疗卫生等多方面的服务工作。此外,总会还联络研究机构及学者从事边疆研究,形成服务与研究的互动,促进了边地尤其是川康地区的社会进步以及与边地相关学术的发展。边疆服务是基督教自1807年传入中国以来第一次在中国政府支持下从事的大规模社会活动。这场运动延续到1955年,不仅经历了战争的洗礼,也经历了新中国建立之初剧烈的社会转型。边疆服务的历史,对于认识基督教传教活动在近代中国经历的变化,提供了一个为以往的研究忽略了的重要例证。     

Christian Capital: Singapore,Evangelical Flows and Religious Hubs

Recent scholarship has pointed out the ways in which religions are increasingly commodified, primarily through two mechanisms: the monetisation of religious objects and practices, and the materialisation and extension of religious-symbolic power through new technologies and practices. These two mechanisms of monetisation and materialisation provide very concrete ways of understanding religious commodification, but they do not provide a complete picture of how religious capital is created and sustained in the holistic context of society, city and nation considered in relation to international capital flows. “Christian Capital” includes not only the commodity, consumerist and media empires particularly associated with global-reach “megachurches”, but also the less-tangible situational, relational, human-social and influential wealth created between religious agencies and their urban-national contexts. Using the case of Christian agencies in Singapore and their strategic creation of transnational influences, this paper offers a conception of Christian capital that incorporates not only the materialisation of religious influence in terms of finances and commodities, but also its expression in less tangible but significant ways in terms of the creation of an international “brand” of Singapore Christianity.     

中世纪前期的英国封建王权与基督教会

中世纪前期英国封建王权与基督教会的关系 ,处于“二元统一、对立”的状态中。从总体上看 ,英国封建王权和基督教会基于共同利益的政治联合 ,必然居于支配地位 ,而双方权益的纷争则处于从属地位 ,最后常常以相互妥协而告结束。这种看似矛盾而实则存在合理性的状态 ,稳定着英国封建社会的统治秩序 ,推动着社会的发展。     

Pivotal Politics,Presidential Capital,and Supreme Court Nominations

We analyze the Supreme Court nomination process in order to provide a general explanation of presidents' propensity to win confirmation battles even in the face of an ideologically hostile Senate. The analysis serves two purposes. First, we argue that employing the conventional measure of the Senate's power to constrain the president's choice of nominees–the median senator–provides an inaccurate picture of this process. In its stead we argue that the filibuster pivot (or the sixtieth most liberal or conservative senator) more accurately captures the Senate's power over the president (Krehbiel 1998). Second, we argue that even under this more stringent spatial constraint, presidents still have the ability to win most confirmation battles with the Senate. Indeed, our results indicate that presidents often overcome situations where the Senate should reject their nominees, or where it should force them to make a less desirable choice, by invoking political capital.     

September 11: A Christian Fundamentalist Interpretation

Abstract

This article analyses sermons preached by Free Presbyterian ministers in the United States following the World Trade Centre tragedy and the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It explores how these religious fundamentalists made sense of the event theologically. While terrorists carried out the attack, ultimately God was believed to have been responsible. It was considered God's way of punishing the American nation for its sin. Ministers' use of the Old Testament and God's covenantal relationship with ancient Israel is both the theological and historical backdrop to their explanation of September 11. Concentration on the Old Testament and fundamentalists' exegetical approach means that politics and religion are tightly intertwined. Emphasis on the militaristic portions of the Old Testament also helps justify the war in Iraq. Although Free Presbyterian doctrine is based on institutional separatism and believers' withdrawal from "the world" the sermons connect parishioners to their wider society through a shared sense of patriotic loyalty and national loss.     

华人新移民社会资本构建与基督教会——美国P州P市本土教会与华人教会的比较分析

论文对美国当地两家基督教会进行长达一年的实地研究,考察了其社会网络的特点及其对华人新移民构建社会资本的影响,同时分析了基督教会对华人新移民思维方式与生活习惯的影响。认为华人教会将发展出紧密的闭合网络,有利于华人新移民发展出科尔曼式的闭合型社会资本,从中获得归属感、情感慰藉以及更加实际且有执行力的帮助。本土教会将形成富于结构洞的稀疏网络,有利于华人新移民发展出波特式的结构洞型社会资本,从中获得异质性信息、多样化的观点以及潜在的创新机会。     

A generational attitude: young adults facing the economic crisis in Milan

Abstract

For almost 10 years there has been talk of the economic crisis affecting the European area, with more evident effects in the Mediterranean countries. Yet the expression ‘economic crisis’ has become too wide and blurred to be useful for describing how the current socio-economic conjuncture is affecting different categories of young people in different ways. Precariousness and reduced job opportunities, with their consequences for social mobility, constitute only the more explicit and raw evidence of the lived experience of the crisis among young people. Although families remain the all-solving institution, the consequences of the crisis are diversified according to the economic, cultural and social capital of each individual, to gender and generation position, and to subjective and contextualized perceptions. This article presents research conducted to investigate how young people living in the urban area of Milan locate, react, readapt and reinvent themselves in the present economic context by analysing their aspirations, expectations and practices. We develop a comparative analysis of the main structural bias (gender, education, social class position) in order to shed light on the effects and perceptions of the crisis among young people in the city of Milan.     

Unravelling Church Land: Transformations in the Relations between Church,State and Community in Uganda

Christian churches control substantial areas of land in Africa. While intensifying struggles over their holdings are partly due to the increased pressure on land in general, they also reflect transformations in the relations through which churches’ claims to land are legitimized, the increased association of churches with business, and churches’ unique positioning as both institutions and communities. This article presents the trajectory of relations between church, state and community in Uganda from the missionary acquisition of land in the colonial era to the unravelling of church landholding under Museveni. Drawing on long‐term ethnographic fieldwork, the authors argue that claims to church land in contemporary Uganda draw on: 1) notions of belonging to the land; 2) views about the nature of churches as communities; 3) discontent regarding whether customary land owners gave churches user rights or ownership; and 4) assessment of the churches’ success in ensuring that the land works for the common good. The article develops a novel approach to analysing the changing meaning of the landholdings of religious institutions, thus extending ongoing discussions about land, politics, development and religion in Africa.