Suchergebnisse

Are church structures divinely-willed, and consequently both permanent and irreversible? Can Christians modify the polity of their church like they do with that of civil society? What would be the role of the office of oversight in a Christian church democratically organized? What would its relationship with specialized authorities within the community be? Building on a remarkable number of specialist studies in exegesis, church history, political philosophy, canon law, and ecclesiology, this book convincingly fulfils three goals. First, it encourages Christians to determine the political outlook of their faith community. Secondly, it provides some fundamental criteria for judging the ethical value of church structures, on the basis of Bernard Lonergan's cognitional theory and with the help of recent insights from contemporary political philosophy. Thirdly, it outlines a largely novel and groundbreaking understanding of a democratic church.In the process, it engages with some of the most difficult ecclesiological issues faced by most Christian churches.

This study investigates the relationship of top management team (TMT) diversity with performance of Christian churches, a particular type of nonprofit and voluntary organization. Performance measures were based on applying the balanced scorecard to the church setting. Within a sample of 82 churches from a single denomination, the authors found that greater diversity in the spiritual maturity and relationships of TMT members with the senior pastor was positively related with growth in church attendance. TMT diversity in age was positively related with Sunday school attendance. Surprisingly, diversity in TMT attitudes and tenure were positively related with efficiency of internal processes. Greater diversity in tenure in the TMT was negatively related with growth in church revenues. The findings suggest that diversity in the church TMT's may pay off in organizational growth, increased constituent learning, and better operating efficiency, but it may have negative impacts on growth in revenues. The findings related to efficiency suggest that TMT diversity may have different effects within nonprofit settings than it does within commercial business organizations.

This article surveys the main trends in the relations of Jerusalem's historic churches with Israel and the Palestinians since the 1967 occupation and especially since Oslo. It examines the shift from cooperation with the Israeli state in the early period to a closer identification with the Palestinian nationalist position under the impact of Israeli actions and other factors, including pressures from the laity and an increasingly "Palestinianized" higher clergy, and details the growing cooperation among the churches themselves. The article ends with an examination of the various options for a future church role, especially in the light of the churches' proposal for a "special statute" for Jerusalem, and concludes that a holy places administrative regime under Palestinian sovereignty would be more likely to protect long-term Christian interests.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the influence of women-ascetics as described by Jerome of Strydon, whose epistolary heritage together contains the greatest number of letters addressed to women. It is established that the main means of influence are financial resources, the use of which allows the nuns — Fabiola, Paula, Lea — to realize their power in various aspects. The author concludes that in addition to maintaining the material well-being of the monastic communities as a whole, the influence of individual nuns is manifested in their ability to influence the gender composition of monasticism: by creating male and female monasteries in the Holy Land, women ensured that their sisters in faith had access to Christian shrines on an equal footing with men. The work also points out that by patronizing the monasteries, the centers of intellectual activity, and individual church writers, nuns had some influence on theological life. In addition, the author emphasizes that in founding a monastery a woman vested some authority in herself, allowing her to regulate both the relationships within the community and the external interactions.

This paper analyses the dialogue of Churches and EU institutions, with a focus on the Churches' representations at the European Union. These representations are described in accordance with the confessional divisions: Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant. Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) is regarded as the most influential Catholic representation; among the Orthodox representations this status is kept by the representation of the Church of Greece, and among Protestant - the Protestant Church in Germany (EKD). Overall, this paper finds that the existing patterns of cooperation constrain the Churches' ability to influence the process of decision-making in the EU. However, this influence may increase should the practical cooperation on the policy level acquire more intensive forms.