Best-range flight conditions for cruise-climb flight of a jet aircraft

The Breguet range equation was developed for cruise climb flight of a jet aircraft to include the climb angle and is then maximized with respect to the no wind true airspeed. The expression for the best range airspeed is a function of the specific fuel consumption and minimum drag airspeed and indicates that an operational airspeed equal to the fourth root of three times the minimum-drag airspeed introduces range penalties of the order of one percent

Constructing Protestant and Catholic Peters : a comparative study in the literary use of the New Testament and ecclesiastical tradition

The original publication is available at http://www.ve.org.zaJust as literary authors have long taken liberties with the biblical accounts of Jesus Christ and shaped Him to fit their own agendas, they have also appropriated considerable artistic licence in enhancing the meagre information about Peter in the New Testament when constructing fictional narratives about him. A comparison of The Big Fisherman by the theologically liberal American Congregationalist Lloyd C Douglas and Simon Peter the Fisherman by the Austrian Catholic Kurt Frieberger illustrates how two accomplished novelists, drawing in part on similar sources, created markedly different and to some extent predictable images of this apostle. Neither novel is fully faithful to the New Testament evidence; both evince the influence of extrabiblical sources.Publisher's versio

The gospel of reconciliation and healing in the Alps: Johanna Spyri’s Heidi reconsidered

Johanna Spyri’s renowned novel of 1880, “Heidi”, is best known internationally through countless translations, abridgements, cultural adaptations, and film adaptations since the late nineteenth century. In many of these permutations of the original German text, the fundamental Christian message has been either significantly reduced or eliminated entirely. As an active member of the Reformed Church in Zürich whose early life was influenced by Pietism, Spyri imbued many of her works for children and adults with explicitly religious dimensions. In “Heidi”, these are manifested in the protagonist’s spiritual maturation, her grandfather’s reconciliation with God and his neighbours through the parable of the prodigal son, and the restoration of health and mobility aided by Christian charity and a wholesome lifestyle. It is argued that the religious currents in “Heidi” and Spyri’s other works have been fundamentally misunderstood by earlier critics such as Wolgast and Doderer

Rehabilitating the traitor in Taylor Caldwell’s I, Judas

During the course of the previous century, authors from various genres attempted to clear the name of Judas Iscariot, or alternatively, tried to explain why he betrayed Jesus Christ. One of the most ambitious attempts at this was that of the wellknown British-American author Taylor Caldwell in her book called 'I, Judas? (1977). The strategy supporting Caldwell?s partial exculpation of Judas is analysed against the background of various early descriptions of Judas. The conclusion is that Caldwell's excessively fertile literary imagination, combined with the encroachment of postbible traditions in this apparent first-person narrative of the accused disciple undermines the credibility of her alternative perception of Judas

Debating igbo conversion to christianity: a critical indigenous view

Since the 1970s the dynamics of conversion have been a focal point of research with regard to the impact of Christianity on traditional African societies. Much of the scholarly debate about the matter has concentrated on West Africa. Such academic authorities as Elizabeth Isichei, Robin Horton, and Caroline Ifeka-Moller provided different theories about the relative importance of various factors. Within the genre of the novel, West African writers like the Ibgos Chinua Achebe, John Munonye, and T. Obinkaram added their voices to the debate through their fictional reconstructions of the confrontation of missionary Christianity and traditional cultures. That of Onuora Nzekwu is explored in this article

Baptist ethics of conscientious objection to military service in South Africa: the watershed case of Richard Steele

Although the Baptist Union of Southern Africa included relatively few outspoken critics of the apartheid system, during the 1970s and 1980s a small number of its younger members confronted the military system which supported that system of social engineering by refusing to comply with military conscription. Particularly noteworthy among these dissenters was Richard Steele, who had been influenced by the Anabaptist traditionof pacifism in the United States of America. Like his cousin and fellow Baptist, Peter Moll, he countered prevailing sentiments and practices within his denomination by going to prison rather than serve in the South African Defence Force. Steele’s action met with little support in the Baptist Union

Contours of Pacificism: Ramsden Balmforth’s Advocacy of Peace in the Union of South Africa and Beyond

Among the many dimensions of Christian pacifism in South Africa which remain underexplored is the ministry of the Unitarian minister Ramsden Balmforth (1861-1941). For approximately four decades beginning shortly after his arrival in Cape Town in 1897, this Christian socialist devoted part of his time to efforts to promote peace both in southern Africa and on a broader, almost global, scale. It is argued that Balmforth was not at any time an absolute pacifist, and that the distinction between “pacifism” and “pacificism” which was advanced by inter alia the British historians A.J.P. Taylor and Martin Ceadel is particularly useful for interpreting Balmforth and placing him on the spectrum of positions with regard to the ethical defensibility of taking up arms

The critique of Gikuyu religion and culture in S.N.Ngubiah's a curse from God

The relationship between missionary Christianity and traditional African cultures was a prominent theme in post-colonial literature during and for many years after the era of decolonisation. In contrast to the nostalgic defensiveness of many Kenyan and other post-colonial African writers, perhaps most notably Ngugi wa Thiong'o, the Gikuyu novelist S.N. Ngubiah found not salvation but a burden in certain aspects of his precolonialist indigenous culture. In his novel A curse from God (1970) Ngubiah challenges obliquely but unmistakably the long-accepted position of his fellow Gikuyu (and first national leader of independent Kenya) Jomo Kenyatta, particularly as argued in Facing Mount Kenya, that a return to tribal folkways was a precondition to economic and social upliftment. This clash between a traditionalist and a modernist exemplifies the larger predicament facing African societies as they undergo rapid religio-cultural transformation.Acta Theologica Vol. 1 2007: pp. 46-5

Dissecting modernist religion in Gottfried Keller’s Das verlorene Lachen

In the wake of the Enlightenment and heavily influenced by serious challenges in Biblical scholarship to conventional doctrines, various kinds of liberal theology emerged in European Protestantism of both the Reformed and Lutheran traditions. Within the Calvinist-Zwinglian churches of Switzerland, this came to expression in, inter alia, progressive religion which stood in marked contrast to confessional orthodoxy. The novelist Gottfried Keller had been influenced by the German atheistic philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach in the 1840s and shortly thereafter gained prominence as one of the most gifted Swiss writers of his era. In his novella “Das verlorene Lachen”, Keller systematically rejected confessional Reformed orthodoxy, liberal currents in the Reformed churches, Roman Catholicism and Protestant nonconformity as intellectually archaic and out of harmony with the democratic and egalitarian spirit of the times, either products of supporters or a stratified social system which he found unacceptable