The Role of Faith in Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution

Excerpt When we speak of the role of faith in cross-cultural conflict resolution, our challenge is to honor the diversity of the world’s humanistic and spiritual traditions while seeking common ground among them. What we aspire towards, in other words, is an agenda for research, dialogue and activism that is global in conception and responsive to common challenges of peacemaking and coexistence within and among the world’s many traditions. It is no longer sufficient for transnational peace agendas to be defined primarily by the cultural experiences and perceived security threats of a particular nation or culture. We need new frameworks for organizing knowledge about religion, culture and spirituality – frameworks that recognize the powerful role that faith and belief play in conflict and conflict resolution, and that do not privilege one culture as ‘normal’ and label another as ‘exceptional’

Christian ideology and the image of a holy land: the place of Jerusalem pilgrimage in the various Christianities

The great majority of the world's holy cities and sacred shrines attract pilgrims from culturally circumscribed catchment areas, and thus host pilgrims united by strong degrees of cultural homogeneity. Jerusalem, on the other hand, draws pilgrims from a vast multitude of nations and cultural traditions. During religious festivals - which tend to be imbricated because of the antagonistic engagement of Judaism, Christianity and Islam - Jerusalem's streets swarm with men and women displaying a rainbow of secular and religious costumes, speaking a cacophony of languages, and pursuing a plethora of divine figures. Other sacred centres which attract pilgrims from areas as heterogeneous as those which provide Jerusalem's pilgrims - eminent among these Mecca (which nonetheless services only the sects of a single religion) - funnel their devotees through ritual routines which mask differences beneath identical repertoires of movement and utterance2. Jerusalem's pilgrims, on the other hand, go to different places at different times where they engage in very different forms of worship. The result is a continuous crossing and diverging - often marked by clashes - of bodies, voices and religious artifacts. Jerusalem does not, in fact, appear so much as a holy city as as a multitude of holy cities - as many as are the religious communities which worship at the site - built over the same spot, operating at the same moment, and contending for hegemony

The Roots, Practices and Consequences of Terrorism: A Literature Review of Research in the Arts & Humanities

This report contains a literature review of Arts and Humanities research on the roots, practices and consequences of terrorism with an annotated bibliography. The literature review was carried out for the Home Office by a team at the University of Leeds between March and October 2006

Marcello Pera: Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians Study Guide, 2012

Marcello Pera’s Why We Should Call Ourselves Christians provides a framework for understanding the moral crisis of our age represented by liberalism’s diversion from its foundations in a Christian culture and its conversion into a corrupter of that culture through what he calls “the secular equation.

\u3ci\u3eTawḥīdic\u3c/i\u3e Allah, the Trinity, and the Eschaton: A Comparative Analysis of the Qualitative Nature of the Afterlife in Islam and Christianity

A theological doctrine of eternal life raises certain qualitative and existential questions. Considering the unfathomable duration, one may rightly ask, what will that experience be like and will it meet the experiential needs of human beings so that there are no intimations of boredom. Eternity, then, creates a potential existential problem for humanity. The problem is potential because eternity creates a certain need, a need which can concisely be stated in this way: quality must overcome quantity. Both Christianity and Islam teach human beings are intended to live forever so both religions must overcome this problem if eternal life within that religion is something to be desired. In this study, the problems of eternity are divided into two distinct classifications: the Qualitative Gap Problem (QGP) and the Teleological Gap Problem (TGP). The QGP is an objective problem and considers the relation of the divine to humanity as a solution to eternity. The TGP is a subjective problem and considers how the ultimate good of the afterlife aligns with human telos and consequently, human flourishing. This study argues that the Islamic afterlife does not have the theological and philosophical resources to meet both gap problems simultaneously and must compromise on one in order to meet the other. Subsequently, the study submits that the Christian view of afterlife overcomes both gaps because of the God/man relationship in Heaven focused supremely on, in, and through the God-man Jesus Christ. It is it our holistic relationship to the Triune God that grants eternal joy for all of redeemed humanity

The myth of senseless violence and the problem of terrorism

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