The role of religion and spirituality in transforming society

The role religions play in social transformation is ambiguous. Many wars have been fought, with religion as instigator and motivator. Even so, religions have, over centuries, constantly called out against violence and oppression and motivated the search for peace. Some religious leaders famously fought against apartheid, while others expressed support and legitimated apartheid. The question beckons as to why religion should be burdened with the task of transforming society. Is religion best equipped for this task? Is there no other social institution capable of performing this task? This study presents three potential motivations why religion should participate in social transformation, namely religion is best equipped to bring about social transformation; religion is least equipped to bring about social transformation, and spirituality as an alternative to religion as transformation catalyst. This study wants to understand what transformation is and what role religion can play in contributing to social transformation. To achieve this, a clear understanding of the difference between religion and spirituality is necessary. This study uses the method of critical analysis of available literature on the topic

The case for the multi-species ecological system, with special reference to succession and stability

Multi-species life support system based on ecological theor

Jesus Christ as Ancestor: An African Christian understanding

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Son of Man, Son of David, Lord (Kyrios), Rabbi and Messiah. These are some of the names used by Christians today and even by the people from the era of Jesus Christ to address him or to communicate with him. Others use them because they were taught that this is the way you talk about him or to him. People use all these different names to describe Jesus Christ according to their understanding, knowledge, trust and belief in him. This article will describe how the Sotho, who are African Christians, from the township of Mohlakeng in Randfontein, know, understand, trust and believe in Jesus Christ according to the title of Great Ancestor. Views of the inhabitants of Mohlakeng are used to describe the complexity of the issue. This article discusses what the meaning of the concept of ancestor entails and determines whether Jesus can indeed be referred to as Ancestor. There are different answers to this question

Legislators, organizations and ties: understanding interest group recognition in the European Parliament

What explains Members of European Parliament's (MEPs’) decisions to recognize some interest groups as relevant policy actors? Addressing this question is fundamental for understanding the role of political elites in shaping patterns of interest representation and interest groups’ role in legislative decision making. Building on theories of legislative behaviour and informational theories of legislative lobbying, we argue that MEPs give recognition to those organizations that are instrumental for achieving key political goals: re‐election, career‐progression and policy influence. The pursuit of these goals generates different patterns of MEP recognition of interest groups. We contribute to the literature in three ways. Conceptually, we propose interest group recognition as a key concept for understanding interactions and links between legislative and non‐legislative actors. We illustrate the high conceptual relevance of recognition for interest groups research while noting its conspicuous neglect in the literature. We address this gap and place the concept central stage in understanding legislators’ attention to and behaviour towards interest organizations. Theoretically, we build on a classic framework explaining legislators’ behaviour and refine it through the lenses of informational theories of legislative lobbying. We argue and show that legislators recognize organizations that enhance electoral prospects in their home Member States, and that legislator–group ideological proximity and an interest group's prominence in a specific policy field affect MEPs’ decisions to recognize some organizations as relevant actors. Our argument acknowledges the importance of the broader context in which MEPs operate and pays attention to how they react to and interact with it. Empirically, we propose an original and innovative research design to identify and measure recognition with the help of social media data. Our measurement strategy constitutes a significant improvement insofar that it reduces the challenges of measurement bias usually associated with self‐reported data generated through interviews, surveys, or the textual analysis of newspaper articles and official documents. Our research design allows using fine‐grained measures of key dependent and explanatory variables and offers the very first analysis of MEP interest group recognition that holds across decision‐making events and policy areas. We test our argument on a new dataset with 4 million observations recording the recognition of more than 7,000 organizations by 80 per cent of MEPs serving in EP8. We find that MEPs are more likely to recognize organizations from their Member State, particularly under flexible‐ and open‐list electoral institutions. MEPs are also more likely to recognize organizations that share their ideological affinities and are prominent actors in policy areas legislators specialize in.publishedVersio

Analities-deskriptiewe oorsig van die gebruik van die term sinkretisme: “Die definisie van die probleem en die probleem met die definisie”

An analytic-descriptive overview of the use of the term syncretism: “The definition of the problem and the pro-blem with the definition” Contemplating syncretism entails defining the concept. Definitions of syncretism are many and diverse. This fact does not only suggest a problem with the definition, but also contributes to the perplexity of the issue. Various strategies may be followed to break the impasse: redefining syncretism, abolishing the term or acceptance of a plurality of perspectives. The article aims to illuminate the complexity of syncretism, as well as attempting to reach a useable definition. It proposes a neutral approach and way of defining this complex concept