Articles

Previous: Justification for Violence in Islam, Part V: The Law of Rebellion [43] Undoubtedly, Islam provides a complex relationship between the principles undergirding private acts of self-defense with principles supporting public legal systems to promulgate order. It is important to bear in mind that even when concerns such as proportionality and self-preservation are present in […]

Previous: Justification for Violence in Islam, Part VI: Pacifist Activism in Islamic Legal System [56] In the legal heritage of Islam, as discussed above, it emerges that majority of the Muslim community maintains pacifist activism, ‘striving’ (literal sense of jih_d) for peace by upholding the religious-moral law of Islam that promises lasting peace by redressing […]

Previous: Justification for Violence in Islam, Part VII: Martyrdom, the Peak of Activism in Islam [60] I have traversed a long way to demonstrate that Islam is not monolithic in its response to the central question about the relationship between Islamic ideals for an ethical world order and the obstacles that were encountered by those […]

Previous: Justification for Violence in Islam, Part VIII: Quietism rather than Pacifism in Islam [64] The readiness to give up one’s life for a goal beyond oneself presupposes a free human agent who could engage in risk- benefit analysis and decide to risk his life for a just cause. There is considerable agreement among Muslims […]

Previous: Justification for Violence in Islam, Part IX: Quietist Authoritarianism and Activist Radicalism [83] Historical development of Islam as a power-faith tradition with its ideology firmly based on creating the ethical order that embodied divine will on earth provided a detailed and thoroughly developed vision of peace with justice. The basis for such a commitment […]

Authority in General [1] The term “authority” has many possible meanings.1 In regard to our topic here, however, the list of possibilities is relatively short. When a person speaks of the authority of the church in the world (as distinct from the church’s authority among its own members), he or she is likely to be […]

(Author’s note: This article extends some earlier work that Shannon Jung has done in formulating a Biblical–theological foundation for understanding eating as a spiritual and moral practice. Food for Life: The Spirituality and Ethics of Eating (Fortress 2004) claims that God had two purposes in creating food: to contribute to delight, and for sharing. In […]

We have lost our moral compass… The ethical consensus of our society has been steadily eroding… The church urgently needs to speak clearly and forthrightly to this situation of growing moral anarchy…. [1] Such concerns and convictions are common today. Moreover they have been a perennial complaint in virtually all societies. Within the church, however, […]

[1] The so-called “Two Kingdoms Doctrine” is the label under which a particular framing of the relationship between God’s grace and everyday life in the midst of its institutional realities has been presented in 20th century Lutheranism. For over half a century it has been the way Lutherans framed the relationship between justification and justice. […]

The following paper was presented at an International Symposium on “Religions, Morality and Social Concerns” at Fudan University, Shanghai, China in April 2003. The university’s newly established Institute of Religious Studies brought together Christians (Protestant and Catholic), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Marxists and others from China, other Asian countries, Europe and the United States. According to […]