Church Struggle Research Articles

Gereja Memperjuangkan Keadilan dalam Kajian “Theory of Justice” John Rawls

This article talks about the political and ethical duties of the Church in fighting for justice and the contribution of Rawls' Thought to the Church's struggle. The issue of justice is the responsibility of all social institutions. The church as a social institution is involved in it. The presence of the Church in social society has raised questions about whether it is appropriate for the Church to be actively involved in fighting for justice. The Church's struggle in overcoming social problems is not due to social demands themselves but rather the Church's initiative to embrace them as brothers. The value that the Church strives for is justice. Justice as an integral part of the mission of the Kingdom of God. Justice is the main problem in national and state life. The priority of justice is poverty. Poverty is caused by structures that ignore human equality and human dignity. Human dignity is the Church's mission in fighting for justice through the values of the kingdom of God. These values of the Kingdom of God are actualized by the Church in its mission.

Судьба григорианского архиерея: митрополит Виссарион (Зорнин) (по материалам архивноследственного дела)

One of the structures into which the Russian Orthodox Church split up in the 1920s was the Provisional Supreme Church Council, nowadays commonly referred to as the Gregorian Schism, which is equated with Renovationism. In our opinion, such an approach is not entirely objective, and the VVC can rather be attributed to the right-wing opposition to Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), along with the Josephites, "true OrthodoX Christians" and "non-remembering". Founded in 1925, this movement existed for about 12 years and in 1937 was defeated by the state security agencies, which was accompanied by the physical destruction of the vast majority of its figures. The pretext for this was a case fabricated by the chekists about the so-called "All-Union Anti-Soviet Church Organization", allegedly headed by the head of the Moscow Patriarchate, Metropolitan Sergius (Stragorodsky), the head of the Renovationist Church, Metropolitan Vitaly (Vvedensky) and the chairman of the Supreme Church Council, Metropolitan Vissarion (Zornin). At the same time, the first two of the listed figures were not subjected to repression — presumably due to the fact that the chekists had other plans for them. The VCU was significantly inferior to them in terms of the number of supporters, and, obviously, the "authorities" recognized that its further use in the internal church struggle was inappropriate. For the entire period of the existence of the VVCC/VCC, it was headed by only two people: Metropolitans Grigory (Yatsovsky) (1925–1932) and Vissarion (Zornin) (1934–1937), and the second of them is relatively little known. Interesting information about him is contained in the investigative case of 1937, now located in the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia, the materials of which have not been published anywhere until now. This work, in particular, contains the full text of a very voluminous protocol of the bishop's interrogation from this case, dated October 20, 1937. Metropolitan Vissarion (Zornin) was shot on November 25, 1937, on the basis of a resolution of the Troika of the NKVD in the Moscow region. To date, his life and work should be recognized as worthy of further study by historians.

Analisis Perubahan Nama Gereja Dayak Evangelis Menjadi Gereja Kalimantan Evangelis: Studi Histografi

So far, the history of the Kalimantan Evangelical Church (GKE) has always been associated with the efforts of the Dayak Evangelical Church (GDE) to become GKE, only looking at it from an ecumenical perspective, despite the fact that there is something very important, namely the removal of the Colonial roots behind the embedded Dayak word. In the struggle for independence that existed at that time, the word "GDE" was identified with the role of the Dayak people, who were considered to be supporting the Dutch colonial government. Historical research is classified in the "Historical Method,", which is a research method specifically used in historical research that passes through certain stages. Heuristics, data collection, and (historical) criticism, namely investigating whether historical traces are genuine both in form and content, Interpretation, and history. Historiography or presentation, namely presenting the synthesis obtained in the form of a narrative, The removal of the name Dayak was an attempt by the church to wash from the burden of past history, which identified Dayak and Colonial power. The church also tried to transform so that the ideals of the church's struggle were no longer just tribal interests but also those of a nationalist church.

Divided Devotion: A Historical Exploration of Bismarck's Kulturkampf and its Impact on German Society

This study examines the Kulturkampf, a major 19th-century German event in which Otto von Bismarck fought to limit Catholic influence in politics. Catholicism remained a powerful influence in German society despite Bismarck's efforts, posing a difficult challenge to the mid-1800s political scene. Start with the Kulturkampf, the Catholic Church's fight to adapt to liberal ideals, democracy, nationalism, socialism, and the industrial revolution. Liberal Catholicism's answer to modernity is analyzed, focusing on Ignaz von Dollinger, who strove to reconcile faith with intellectual currents. The paper discusses the First Vatican Council in 1870, which introduced papal infallibility, and liberal Catholicism's downfall. Germany is highlighted because Catholicism suffered ideological struggles and gained academic support as a secular, Protestant-influenced religion. Bismarck's Catholicism onslaught from 1853-54 to the Kulturkampf of the 1870s is examined. Bismarck's fears of Catholic violence and a Catholic plot are examined in the study. The issue deepened in 1873 when the May Laws sought state control over the Catholic Church. The Prussian bishops' resistance to the May Laws led to incarceration, penalties, and institution closures. Bismarck's authoritarianism failed to suppress Catholicism despite overwhelming opposition. Conclusions highlight the Kulturkampf legislation' impact on church-state relations and the reduction of anti-Catholic measures. This paper analyzes historical events to reveal Bismarck's political maneuvers, the Catholic Church's struggles, and the Kulturkampf's lasting effects on 19th-century Germany's religious and political landscape.

Proliferation of the Subject of Christ Cleansing the Temple in 16th Century Painting: The Urban-Sociological Context

This paper aims to provide the urban-sociological context for the significant proliferation of the topic of Christ Cleansing the Temple in 16th-century painting. Widely accepted interpretations of this phenomenon consider it exclusively in the context of the Counter-Reformation, i.e. the Catholic Revival, considering the topic to be a symbol of the rejection of Protestant dogma or, otherwise, the Church's struggle against the demoralization of its clerics. The Counter-Reformation context is indisputably significant. However, certain socioeconomic processes that mark the 16th century, such as the development of protocapitalism in Italy, i.e. the establishment of year-round trade in the city and the emergence of a new, politically and economically dominant class of merchants and bankers, also emerge as an aspect worth examining. French sociologist Henri Lefebvre considered the 16th century to be a turning point in the development of urban forms and pointed out the connection between this biblical story and the disdain for the restructuring of the city which was due to those changes. Owing to his theses on the production of space, we will observe a dual involvement of the Church in the motions of inhibition and initiation of processes which, by producing a new type of space, disrupt the balance that ensured its material and symbolic power.

Reconstruction Pastoral Ministry Concept of the Assemblies of God Church in North Sulawesi Indonesia

Abstract: This study aims to determine the problems of pastoral care that occur in the Assemblies of God Church in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. Assemblies of God's efforts are reconstructing (providing a solution proposal) regarding pastoral care in an effort to develop the Assemblies of God congregation. To obtain research data, the authors used documents, both books and journals as a theoretical basis and conducted interviews with 14 church leaders as respondents/research subjects from regional organizational leaders, pastors and academics. The research was conducted using qualitative research methods by conducting interviews with 14 Assemblies of God leaders in North Sulawesi. Retrieval of research data using probability sampling with purposive sampling technique. The results showed that there were problems in Assemblies of God's pastoral care, especially with regard to pastoral care. The problem that occurs is the wrong paradigm regarding the concept of pastoral care in pastoral care caused by the old theoretical concept of pastoral care among church leaders, and the church's struggles in terms of independence. Therefore, in this study, two new theories were proposed in the form of proposed solutions, namely; 1) reconstruction of theological education (contextual pastoral care development), and 2) Striving for church independence. Keywords: reconstruction, pastoral care, church

Protestantism without Reformation: Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Indictment of American Christianity

Bonhoeffer's critique of American Christianity reveals how he came to see his own understanding of the church's role in political resistance as foreign to the American context in which he had found himself during his brief sojourn in the United States in 1939. Bonhoeffer's understanding of the two kingdoms, of the church's relation to the state, and of the history of American Protestantism came together in his fateful decision to return to Germany. He came to see that Americans could not understand the church struggle in which he had engaged in Germany, that he could be of no service to American Christianity, and that he would be of better use in his homeland. This article examines Bonhoeffer's short essay, “Protestantism without Reformation,” which he completed upon his return to Germany, and which was published only after his death. Reading this essay helps us better understand Bonhoeffer's motives for returning to Germany in 1939 rather than remaining in the United States in safety. Bonhoeffer did not see his own understanding of political resistance as easily applicable to the US context. His critique of American Christianity has much to teach us today.

Mediated Faith Coping with COVID-19: A Case Study of a Megachurch in South Korea

While the Republic of Korea coped well with COVID-19 prior to the development of the vaccines, the major outbreaks of the virus in the country were largely caused and/or facilitated by several controversial Christian groups. There have also been many cases of smaller local churches spreading the virus due to their refusal to follow the government's guidelines for religious gatherings. Meanwhile, major Korean media outlets have mostly focused on cases of uncooperative churches with the short disclaimer 'the majority of Protestant churches are following the rules.' What kind of experiences did those 'cooperative' churches have to go through then? This paper is a micro in-depth case study which explores a megachurch in South Korea that has supported the government's safety measures. It pays particular attention to the church's struggles, perceived challenges and positive discoveries while practicing what can be called 'online Christianity.' It concludes with some theological questions to reflect upon for future Protestant Christianity in a time when religion may always have to be ready to be practiced in a highly technologically mediated fashion.

Zur Ambiguität von Religion und Politik in Deutschland: die Evangelische Kirche in der NS-Zeit

During the Nazi era, the Protestant Church in Germany was challenged by the so-called church struggle between the German Christian Movement and the Confessing Church. This article interprets the church struggle in a new way by taking up concepts from Niklas Luhmann’s Systems Theory and ambiguity research. It becomes clear that the church struggle was ultimately about the fundamental problem of the relationship between the religious and political system.

Het Herderlijk Schrijven van de Nederlandse Hervormde Kerk in 1941

The Pastoral Letter of the Dutch Reformed Church of 1941 The defeat of the Dutch army in 1940 was followed by five years of German occupation. As Dutch churches were not directly under control of the state, they retained the freedom to present their critical views to the occupier. This article analyses an early public request by the Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) to withdraw antisemitic policies, followed by a public declaration of its position under German occupation in the Summer of 1941. The DRC was well aware of the successes and failures of the German church struggle. Given this background, the General Synod developed a careful but critical attitude towards the German authorities.

Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence

Mormonism and White Supremacy: American Religion and the Problem of Racial Innocence

The Heresy of Relevance: Bonhoeffer's Warning to Preachers

Amid a crisis in biblical interpretation brought to a head by the Church Struggle in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer delivered an address in August 1935 to a group of Confessing Church pastors entitled “Contemporizing New Testament Texts.” Bonhoeffer sounded a clarion call for the retrieval of a thoroughly theological hermeneutic that would liberate preachers for the bold proclamation of the Gospel within a culturally compromised church. This paper will present a reading of Bonhoeffer's daring address that seeks to both situate it within its unique historical context and attend to the ways that it calls into question many of the cherished hermeneutical and homiletical assumptions that dominate contemporary preaching for the sake of a more faithful proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Allan Boesak

This article attempts to exhibit the theology of prophetic resistance presented by Allan Boesak during the church struggle against apartheid and how it influenced the theological landscape. Firstly, the methodology applied in this article is to place Boesak against the backdrop of the significant historical events of the 1960s and 1970s. The purpose of this is to illustrate both the growing resistance of the oppressed black people and the unjust rule of apartheid against which Boesak will assert himself. The article goes on to focus on the theological contribution of Boesak between 1976 and 1990. The author will investigate specific events during the 1980s to showcase Boesak’s involvement within the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and beyond.

“To Struggle Against the Tree of Life”: Reading Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall in the Anthropocene

ABSTRACT Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall guides readers through a “theological” exegesis of Genesis chapters 1–3 and was an early manifestation of the “German Church Struggle” (Kirchenkampf) against National Socialism. In this paper, I propose a re-reading of Creation and Fall attentive to contemporary environmental and political conditions. Drawing on the work of William E. Connolly, I outline points of affirmation, critique, and supplementation. Just as Bonhoeffer recognized the need for a “crisis theology” in the face of Nazism, so now global warming and the rise of “aspirational fascism” demands analogous efforts. I argue that Bonhoeffer’s focus on biblical myth as a counter to fascist myth, his articulation of a relational ontology and embrace of “incarnational humanism,” are all relevant to the task of Christian political theology today. There is a need, however, to transcend Bonhoeffer’s anthropocentric bias, supplementing his readings of Eden’s mythic symbols to encourage forms of “entangled humanism” that are essential to Creation’s defence.

The reception and relevance of Karl Barth in South Africa Reflections on “doing theology” in South Africa after sixty years in conversation with Barth

The article traces the reception of Barth’s theology from the Second World War through to the present in ecumenical and missiological circles, and in theological education. But the major focus is on the resistance to Barth on the part of theological advocates of apartheid, and his positive influence of key participants in the church struggle against apartheid. In addition, there is discussion of the black theological response to Barth and the significance of his legacy for democratic transformation in post-apartheid South Africa.

Writing the Kingdom of God in South Africa

John de Gruchy’s The Church Struggle in South Africa was a bold attempt to write the story of the kingdom of God in his native land. While it stood toward the beginning of his written work, the themes laid down in it have followed De Gruchy’s writings up to the present. They have also sketched the story of South Africa from the climax of the struggle to end Apartheid to the present travails to realize its promise. This article takes up the final chapter in that work, comparing it to another great theological attempt to write the kingdom of God: H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Kingdom of God in America. It follows that chapter through its disappearance in the third edition of The Church Struggle, to its re-emergence in The End is Not Yet. The article is especially interested in De Gruchy’s eschatological retrieval of Bonhoeffer’s tension between the ultimate and the penultimate, and in the question of God’s trinitarian reality shaping the world – and us as community of anticipation.

Plurality in the Theological Struggle against Apartheid

AbstractThe church struggle against apartheid remains a key case study in ecumenical public theology, with particular relevance for the Reformed tradition. The importance of Christian theology in both the justification of and opposition to apartheid is well known. Also, the process of ecumenical discernment for responding to apartheid became a significant marker in global ecumenical reflection on what today we might describe as public theology. However, the idea of a theological struggle against apartheid risks ironing out the different theological positions that oppose apartheid. This article highlights some of the attempts to analyze the theological plurality in responses to apartheid. Then it proceeds to present an alternative way of viewing this plurality by focusing on the way in which different classic theological questions were drawn upon to analyze apartheid theologically. Using as examples the important theologians David Bosch, Simon Maimela, and Albert Nolan, it highlights how apartheid was described as a problem of ecclesiology, theological anthropology, and soteriology. It argues that this plurality of theological analyses allows us to rediscover theological resources that might be of particular significance as race and racism take on new forms in either democratic South Africa or the contemporary world. Simultaneously, it serves as a valuable example in considering a variety of theological questions when theologically reflecting on issues of public concern.

Church, theology and the holiness of God

AbstractThis paper addresses the identity crisis of Christian churches under the conditions of late modernity. With Jürgen Moltmann, I describe the dilemma of the contemporary church and of its theology as a crisis both of relevance and identity. I suggest that churches have responded to the loss of their stronghold in the Western world in three ways: liberal Protestants embrace modernity, evangelicals oppose it and a third group, whom I identify as church theologians, try to ignore it. I argue that none of the three approaches successfully solves the church's crisis in late modernity and especially in a consumer culture with its commodification of religion. I trace these struggles of the contemporary church to its loss of alterity, both of God and of the human other, and suggest that we can regain a sense of God's otherness by rediscovering God's holiness.

John de Gruchy’s Understanding of the Kingdom of God as Articulated in “The Church Struggle in South Africa”

In 2019, John W. de Gruchy turns 80 and it will be 40 years after his influential The Church Struggle in South Africa was published. This contribution reflects on the last chapter of De Gruchy’s book, titled The Kingdom of God in South Africa. In this chapter, De Gruchy engages with well-known theologians such as Niebuhr, Bonino, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Pannenberg and Moltmann. He enters into conversation with liberation theologians from South America and Africa. His interpretation of the kingdom of God within the context of South Africa, with all its socio-political challenges, became a seminal text in the theological critique of apartheid. De Gruchy concludes with a “theology of hope” with reference to Bonhoeffer’s letters from prison in which he reflects on Christian hope.

Secularization reform in the Russian Empire in the 18th century and closing of Sloboda-Ukrainian monasteries of the Belgorod Diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church

The article is devoted to the historically determined process of closing of Sloboda-Ukrainian monasteries of the Belgorod diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church during the so-called secularization reform of the 18th century in the Russian Empire. The general historical context of church secularization in Russia in the 18th century is analyzed. It is shown that Russian secularization was a logical consequence of establishment of state control over church, which was done by Peter I. Church became an integral part of the state apparatus of Russia. Since then, state intervention in church affairs has became a legal norm. In fact, the power over the Russian Orthodox Church was concentrated in the emperor’s hands. Given the strengthening of the absolutist imperial power under Catherine II, any struggle of church against the state church became hopeless. Thus, the Russian secularization reform of the 18th century actually turned out to be persecution of the church. It is noted that with the loss of independence by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and its transfer by the Patriarch of Constantinople Dionysius IV to the Moscow Patriarchs, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church became trapped between the hammer and the anvil of state-church opposition in Russia. The author sought to show that the events of the second half of the 80s of the 18th century during the closure of the Sloboda-Ukrainian monasteries were closely related to the general situation of the enslaved Ukrainian lands within the Russian Empire. The destruction of the Orthodox monastic environment of the Sloboda Ukraine (Slobozhanshchyna) concerned not only the church life. It directly affected the basics of the Ukrainian colonization of the “Wild Field” lands. According to the author, the Ukrainians made not only a military and economic contribution to the development of the future of Sloboda Ukraine during the colonization of the “Wild Field” lands, but also a spiritual and religious one. The author states that it completed the institutionalization of the concept of “Ukrainian Slobozhanshchyna”. The article states that in 1786–1788 the secularization measures were extended to the Ukrainian lands of the Russian Empire. The peculiarity of the religious life of Slobozhanshchyna at that time was that it was administratively subject to management by the Belgorod bishops. Despite this subordination to the ROC, certain Ukrainian peculiarities in the organization of life and ritual were preserved in the Sloboda-Ukrainian lands. The secular and ecclesiastical authority of the empire sought to eliminate this difference. The policy of secularization of the suburban monasteries with their massive closures was intended to establish complete uniformity in the Orthodox-religious sphere throughout the empire. In 1787 the Russian authorities began to close the Sloboda-Ukrainian monasteries of the Belgorod diocese of the Russian Orthodox Church. The closure of the Sloboda-Ukrainian monasteries was accompanied by a sharp reduction in the number of Orthodox monasteries on the territory of the Ukrainian Slobozhanshchyna with a simultaneous sharp decrease in the number of monks. As a result of the secularization reform of the Russian model, the monastic life of Slobozhanshchyna was almost destroyed. The leading Orthodox monasteries of the region did not escape the closure either. Due to confisc ated monastic property, the Russian treasury was replenished with land, crafts and considerable finances. As in the Russian lands, in Slobozhanshchyna enhanced state control over monastic life was provided, more strict church orders were established and the remnants of Ukrainian Orthodox traditions were destroyed.Keywords: Sloboda Ukraine, monasteries, secularization, orthodoxy, church, state, power