Crisis Of Faith Research Articles

Providentia Missio Dei Amid Adverse Global Conflicts

Since its reinterpretation in the second half of the 20th century, the Missio Dei has become a primary missiological framework that embraces human redemption as the direct work or by-product of God’s intervention. Accordingly, or under the premise of divina providentia (divine providence), the Missio Dei then emphasizes God’s absolute stewardship and preservation of all of His creation, which includes but is not limited to human creation. Although the idea of divine providence may understandably at times be questioned, it may equally be invoked by those in desperate search of divine salvific intervention or protection in the face of tragedy and adversity. That is to say, faith in divine providence may be relied upon perhaps to reinforce the much-desired salvivic hope amid hardships such as destructive conflicts of the world. That being said, or to the extent that global conflicts not only damage the very nature of human societies but also worsen a crisis of faith in divine existence, constant theological justification of the divine providential plan encompassing salvation remains an absolute necessity. Consequently, this paper combines both missio Dei and divine providence to form the providentia missio Dei as a systematic framework in missiology redefining divine salvific acts amid global chaos. Accordingly, both the systematic and integrative literature research methods are utilized to reconcile Divine Providence and the missio Dei into Providentia missio Dei. Keywords: Missio Dei, Missionary God, Active Presence, Divine Providence, Providentia Missio Dei, Global Conflicts

THE MODEL OF ENTREPRENEURIAL SELF-DETERMINATION (BASED ON NARRATIVE INTERVIEW)

Questions of professional self-determination are increasingly concerning the younger generation. Choosing entrepreneurial activities and running one’s own business are gaining popularity among young people. In this regard, there is a need for a more detailed study of entrepreneurial self-determination (hereinafter - ESD). To identify possible socio-psychological factors of ESD, an exploratory study was conducted using the narrative interview method followed by qualitative analysis. 29 respondents aged 18 to 40 who have or had their own business participated in the study. The author developed a model of ESD including 9 stages: observation, premature identity crisis, first trial, start crisis, project start, leap of faith crisis, scaling, plateau crisis, and stability. It was concluded that the entrepreneurial path has a spiral nature. Groups of socio-psychological factors of ESD that encourage and hinder entrepreneurial activity were identified.

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A DUAL RELIGIOUS IDENTITY : CONFUCIAN CHRISTIAN IN JULIA CHINGS SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

This essay explores the spiritual journey of Julia Ching (1934-2001), a prominent sinologist who sought to reconcile her Catholic faith with Confucian philosophy. Raised in a Catholic tradition, Ching faced crises of faith that led her to abandon her nun identidy and engage deeply with Eastern spiritual practices. This essay examines the fundamental theological and philosophical differences between Confucianism and Christianity, highlighting the inherent contradictions in attempting to maintain a dual religious identity. While Confucianism emphasizes moral philosophy and social harmony without a central divine figure, Christianity is rooted in the worship of one God and adherence to the teachings of Jesus Christ. This essay argues that the exclusive doctrines of Christianity and the ritual practices of Confucianism are ultimately incompatible, making it impossible to fully integrate these two traditions into a single religious identity. Julia Chings experience thus illustrates the complexities and challenges of navigating multiple spiritual allegiances.

Kierkegaard, Spiritual Crisis, and Anxious Faith: Battling for Faith in Fear and Trembling and Strengthening in the Inner Being

Abstract This study shows that, for Kierkegaard, the crisis of faith plays an essential role in the life of faith. To demonstrate this, it compares pseudonym Johannes de silentio’s portrayals of religious crisis in Fear and Trembling with similar sketches in Strengthening in the Inner Being, an edifying discourse published on the same day as Fear and Trembling. Kierkegaard agrees with de silentio that the life of faith is tethered to struggle, but unlike his pseudonym, who is baffled by the source of Abraham’s bold trust, Kierkegaard is more confident about identifying that which gives him strength: an inner, divine affirmation.

Unfulfilled Future Perfect? Comics as a Site of Liberty in Post-Mao China

ABSTRACT This study examines the changing ideological landscape of post-Mao China through the prism of the science fiction work, The Three Courts, published in the late 1970s. This work and its comic adaptations are not landmark works of literary history and popular culture but rather a utopian fable addressing the profound issues of the reform. We demonstrate how the comic version received a temporary ideological license to support the popular liberty movement, which reflects the cooperation of officials and civil society in the face of the socialist faith crisis and how such collaboration broke down in 1979. By analyzing the two revisions made to this work, we argue that the comic can be seen as a site of liberty that contains radical political content, but its visual output has not been censored. Thus, before the new myth of post-socialism took shape, this text reveals the unfulfilled expectations of democratized reforms by pro-democratic knowledge elites and cultural bureaucrats standing among the ruins of Mao-era China.

Auschwitz Survivor and Nobel Prize of Peace, Élie Wiesel as Theologian

Abstract This article examines the life and work of Elie Wiesel (1928–2016), a Francophone writer of Romanian origin, Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor, American citizen, Nobel Peace Prize laureate of 1986. It specifically explores Wiesel’s complex engagement with the divine and the faith, which remained a central concern throughout his life, following his return from the Nazi extermination camps. This is most evident in his seminal book, Night, where he recounts the experience of God’s death in the death camps. Despite such profound crisis of faith, Wiesel remained a deeply religious Jew till the end. On the 16 July 2006, Oprah Winfrey dedicated her Book Club to The Night and called it “one of the greatest books of the century”. More than 3 million copies were sold in a few weeks in the United States. This study proposes that Wiesel’s confrontation with the divine can be best understood through his response to mysticism, expressed as a spiritual song of a fervent yet torn soul. It further suggests that his rejection of Nietzsche’s proclamation of “God’s death” and his alignment with Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav’s idea of a “broken faith” underscores his profound spiritual resilience.

Crisis of Faith: Today's African Christians and Mami-Wata (Mother-Water) Spirituality

precis: This study provides an analysis of the impact of Mami-Wata spirituality on an understanding of the place and fate of Christianity in Africa today. A section of the Christian population negotiates their Christian beliefs through the prism of their traditional African religious cosmology and worldviews. This new Christian African spirituality is generating waves of faith crises. While previous scholarship has investigated the crises of African Christian faith from the dominant point of view of African culture and context, from Christian-Muslim interaction, or from the influence of Western elements, there are no works that show the multidimensional impacts of Mami-Wata spirituality on Christians and their faith, identity, and theological discourses. Departing from past works, the present work investigates how rudimentary constructs of African spirituality have engaged Christianity on several fronts, from the problem of faith crisis and the engagement of the Mami-Wata deity to how some African Christians wrestle with their devotion to the Virgin Mary vis-à-vis the traditional Mami-Wata deity. This analysis also demonstrates the indispensability of the female divine in spiritual and religious discourses, and it provides a pathway to construct a theology that is both truly Christian and grounded in African realities.

On the Necessity of Strengthening Thanksgiving Education for College Students

The basic content of gratitude education is to cultivate college students to love their country, cherish life, be filial to their parents, respect their teachers, care for others, respect nature, and so on. Gratitude education can encourage college students to think critically, approach life correctly, cultivate good habits, improve their quality of life, and enable them to not only face personal values but also consider others. It can also teach gratitude and make them more open-minded and have a more complete personality. In today's world of diverse values, it is necessary to strengthen gratitude education for college students, so that they can understand gratitude and learn how to be grateful. Economic globalization, political diversification, and information networking have become important features of the new era, gradually forming the diverse values of current Chinese society. Especially for contemporary college students with strong curiosity, outstanding personality, and strong acceptance ability, if they do not have gratitude towards their family, school, and their motherland, and cannot realize the importance of understanding gratitude and learning to be grateful for their current and future lives, it will be difficult to resist the misleading and erosion of various negative values in society. The phenomena of spiritual emptiness, moral deficiency, and crisis of faith that have emerged in society have been reflected in some college students. This requires us to timely and effectively provide gratitude education to the group of college students who are the driving force of socialist modernization construction, help them establish correct values, and form a healthy and upward spiritual outlook.

Religious Transitions of Faith

Navigating complicated relationships with his religious upbringing and his faith-zealous father, the author of this critical autoethnography explores experiences of identity loss and reformation, sexual abuse, and shame. Raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—also known as Mormonism—the author reflects on how his own crisis of faith, and the moments of silence where answers never came, influenced his views on meaningful relationships, self-worth, and sexuality. The author ends the piece by discussing how autoethnography not only gives individuals a chance to share their stories but also creates a community where they need not navigate trauma, loss, and heartache alone.

Research on "hollow disease" of Chinese university students based on the perspective of logotherapy

With the rapid development of human civilisation in the turn of the twentieth century, the spiritual crisis and an existential vacuum gradually become almost universal. Frankl's logotherapy, from the early twentieth century, is centred on helping people discover the meaning and value of living. It is an effective complement for treatment of neurosis. In recent years, a phenomenon known as "hollow disease" has gained widespread attention in China. Its causes are inseparable from the general environment of global change and the inevitable crisis of faith brought about by the rapid development of China's compressed space and time. From the perspective of logotherapy, this article analyses the causes of "hollow disease" amongst Chinese university students, focusing on the premise that "human existence is meaning-driven" and is an "encounter with the world to realise the value of life". Causes of hollow disease are as follows: the two-fold loss of both instinct and tradition during the social transformation; the impediments to "encountering others" during growth; and dependence on material things that obscures the integrity of human nature. In addition, the author offers advice on individual, organisational, and social levels to help young people to awaken to meaning in their spiritual lives and to fill the void of their internal emptiness.

Crisis of Faith and Sleep Quality in the United States: A Literal Dark Night of the Soul?

A crisis of faith is an intrapersonal struggle with ultimate meaning that occurs when one's supramundane reality is called in question. We propose a theoretical model which suggests that a crisis of faith will contribute to poorer sleep quality by undermining a general sense of meaning and purpose in life, especially among women. We use national survey data from the Wave 5 of the Baylor Religion Survey United States (N = 1395). Ordinary least squares regression models with robust standard errors are utilized. Sobel-Goodman mediation techniques are used to test the proposed mediating pathway. Our results suggest that a crisis of faith is associated with lower sleep quality, and that this pathway is partially mediated by a lower sense of meaning and purpose in life. Finally, we found that the relationship between a crisis of faith and lower sleep quality was weaker for women. We discuss the implications of our results and suggest how future research may explore the relevance of a crisis of faith for well-being as well as other aspects of the human condition.

Pengaruh Internet dan Media Sosial Terhadap cara Mencapai Kekudusan Kaum Muda Katolik di Paroki Santo Vinsensius A Paulo, Malang

This study pays attention to the Influence of the Internet and Social Media on the way of centering the Holiness of the Youth of the Parish of Saint Vincentius A Paulo, Malang. The author's observation of several human phenomena that experience a crisis of faith due to social media. This study uses a qualitative approach and the type of research is a questionnaire (questionnaire). This qualitative approach was chosen because the authors assume that using this approach can describe the problem under study as a whole. The author distributes a questionnaire with fourteen (14) questions. This question is divided into two parts, the first question is answered directly, the second question is answered using a brief explanation. The research data was distributed to OMK (Young Catholics) of St. Vincentius A Paulo Parish, Malang. The process and analysis used in this research is an interactive data analysis model by Miles and Huberman. The analysis consists of four stages, namely data collection, data reduction, data presentation, and conclusion and verification. The results of the research on the Holiness of Catholic Youth, the Identity of Catholic Youth, and the Influence of the Internet on Catholic Youth.

The Abolition of Democracy

Democracy seems shaky in the contemporary United States. In recent polls, an overwhelming 70 percent of Americans say that democracy is under threat, in crisis, and at risk of failing. Conventional wisdom tends to lay the blame for those findings—and the underlying fragility of democracy in America—at the feet of discrete political actors or at growing “polarization” in the electorate. But in The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis gives us reason to look deeper—at the difficult relationship, in practice, between modern democracy and enduring values. This essay shows how Lewis helps us better understand the crisis of democracy in America (including the crisis of faith in democracy in America) today.

St. Benedict: a response to the crisis of faith and culture in Europe according to Pope Benedict XVI

Toward the end of Cardinal Ratzinger’s mandate as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he reflected upon the crisis of faith and culture in Europe and its causes, particularly the refusal by European Union ruling classes to put God’s name in the new European Constitution or acknowledge Europe’s Christian roots. Moreover, his writings reveal a personal and thoughtful approach to Benedictine monasticism and St. Benedict as a model for the spiritual renewal of Europe. The aim of this paper is to analyze places in Joseph Ratzinger’s works as a theologian, and later as Pope Benedict XVI, on the importance of imitating St. Benedict and studying his testimonies in response to Europe’s current crisis of faith and culture. Analyzing the Enlightenment culture that led to the secularist understanding of a Europe in which the place for faith is only found through political compromise and a tolerance of faith as long as it remains on the margins of social action, rather than serving as the spiritual driving force, Pope Benedict sees Europe’s fundamental disorder in the reductionism of the Enlightenment, in which reason is limited to empirical positivism. The ultimate consequence is the loss of the foundations of public morality, the negation of human dignity and the loss of freedom in a dictatorship of relativism that contradicts the fundamental starting points of the Enlightenment—namely, the desire for open-mindedness to the whole of reality in which God is encountered as the basis of all that exists, true humanity, open to true freedom through obedience to the Word of God, and the restoration of the foundation of democracy.

Research Supervision as a Spiritual Ministry: A Confluence of Object Relations, Psychodynamics and Grace

Abstract The changes in the pedagogy of research supervision in the university context are now reflected within the practices of theological seminaries and accredited colleges. A neglected analytical framework that could illuminate the supervisory relationship is provided by Winnicott’s Object Relations Theory and Bion and Diamond’s Organizational Psychodynamics, as they interconnect identity, stress and creativity – factors that are germane to the researcher experience. Object Relations also parallels faith development. Given the significant personal investment demanded by research, a crisis of identity for the religious student is simultaneously a crisis of faith. Conversely, a Christian faith experience could sustain the research journey through the appropriation of divine Grace. Some suggestions are provided as to how this could be manifested within the research culture.

Returning to Faith: A Q Methodology Analysis of Messages that Resonated with Individuals Who Had Experienced and Resolved a Faith Crisis

Returning to Faith: A Q Methodology Analysis of Messages that Resonated with Individuals Who Had Experienced and Resolved a Faith Crisis

A. N. Prior’s journey to ‘real’ freedom

Arthur Norman Prior (1914–1969) discovered a way to formalise the tenses into the system now known as ‘tense-logic’. His discovery made it possible for him to defend two strong beliefs of his: tensed realism and real freedom. His analysis and work on the philosophical and theological problems related to these two beliefs constitutes what is perhaps his greatest legacy in analytic philosophy. Recent research in Prior’s nachlass has revealed that he already pondered and wrote on the two issues from his years at Wairarapa High School in New Zealand. With these recent discoveries, it is possible to draw a clearer picture than has hitherto been drawn with regard to Prior’s journey to what he termed ‘real freedom’. The view of freedom he ended up defending as ‘real freedom’ comes close to William James’ view of free will, which Prior termed ‘modern Arminianism’ in 1931 and, during his crisis of faith from 1941 to 1943, viewed as the actual state of affairs. This conclusion is substantiated using Prior’s two models of future contingency as a framework for comparing his own early description of William James’ view of ‘real freedom’ as being grounded in the difference between the past and the future. Prior’s early adherence to James’ view of ‘real freedom’ provides us with an explanation for why he, in 1945 rejected, the theory of middle knowledge; this explains why, even though he knew of an Ockhamist model of the true future, he did not include it in Past, Present and Future (1967) but instead opted for an Ockhamist model in which the contingent future is branch relative.

Prior’s early reflections on sense and sentences

We present here an introduction and a discussion of A.N. Prior’s ‘Sense and Sentences’ in light of the context of publication in the journal National Education, written upon his return from Europe and while he was undergoing a crisis of faith. We argue that ‘Sense and Sentences’ is the article referred to by Kenny in his Obituary on Prior as an article written “on the relations between logic and grammar (with reference to Popper, Wisdom and Carnap)”. Furthermore, we argue that Prior was working his way into philosophy, by demonstrating his familiarity with the work of key persons within analytic philosophy such as Rudolf Carnap, John Wisdom and Karl Popper. We also argue that Findlay’s – and, thus, indirectly: Wittgenstein’s – influence is also visible in this period where Prior was transitioning from being a religious journalist to the future philosopher he would turn out to become. In particular, we argue that, while Findlay’s influence on the relationship between grammar and metaphysics would win the day with A.N. Prior, when he discovered tense-logic, it was not an evident feature of Prior’s work on the relationship between logic and grammar in sense and sentences. We argue that Sense and Sentences is interesting because it seems to have expressed a stage in Prior’s thinking on logic that he later came to modify, thereby distancing himself more from the anti-metaphysical tenets of analytic philosophy.

Кризис веры подростка на примере героя рассказа Джона Апдайка «Голубиные перья»

В настоящее время вырос интерес к личности подростка, что во многом продиктовано доминированием антропоцентрического подхода в современной науке и расцветом подростковой литературы, начиная с середины ХХ века. Центральной темой произведений, посвященных такой важной и уникальной фазе взросления, становится поиск ответа на вопросы о смысле жизни и обретении самоидентичности (социальной, исторической, культурной, национальной, расовой, сексуальной и т. д.). Данная статья посвящена исследованию кризиса религиозной веры молодого человека и его дальнейшего самоопределения на материале рассказа Джона Апдайка «Голубиные перья» (1962). Научная новизна исследования заключается в выборе произведения: ранее этот текст не рассматривался в отечественном литературоведении с точки зрения философии бытия. Для анализа рассказа Дж. Апдайка автор обращается к представлениям об обретении идентичности датского философа С. А. Кьеркегора, который предполагал, что процесс самоидентификации заключается в проживании критических ситуаций с обретением своего личного жизненного опыта. В тексте на примере определенных эпизодов рассказа «Голубиные перья» прослеживается постепенное разочарование главного героя в религии. Особое внимание уделяется переломному моменту в жизни молодого человека — обретению веры в бессмертие через смерть. At present, we observe growing interest in a teenager’s personality. This is largely due to the dominance of the anthropocentric approach in modern science and to fiction for young adults that has experienced flourishment since mid-twentieth century. The central theme of books devoted to this important and unique phase of life is the search for answers to questions about the meaning of life and the acquisition of self-identity (social, historical, cultural, national, racial, sexual, etc.). This article focuses on study of the crisis of religious faith in the young hero and further, on his self-determination, as illustrated in John Updike’s short story Pigeon Feathers (1962). The novelty of our study lies in the choice of the work: Russian literary critics have never discussed this story from the point of view of the philosophy of being. In order to analyze Updike’s story, the author refers to the concepts of identity acquisition of S. A. Kierkegaard. This Danish philosopher suggested that the process of self-identification consists in living through critical situations and thus gaining one's personal life experience. Looking into certain episodes of the story Pigeon Feathers, one can trace the protagonist’s growing disappointment in religion. The turning point in the life of the young man occurs when, burying the dead pigeons, he gains faith in immortality.

Развитие взглядов К. Маркса на историческую свободу в трех социальных формах

Nowadays, under the order of the logical expansion of Western capital, human beings are faced with various survival problems. Whether it is the natural environment, ecology, energy or social, financial, economic crisis, crisis of faith, etc., the root causes of unfavorable scenarios are closely related to the lifestyle dominated by the logic of capital. By analyzing and modernly exploring the Marxist concept of freedom in three major social forms, the authors have tried to find a new way to resolve the above-mentioned existential crisis. At the same time, the discussion of Marx’s concept of historical freedom is significant for the modern theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Marx’s view of freedom is the theoretical system of Marx’s (Engels) basic views on the root of human freedom, the essence of freedom, the basic content of freedom, the value function of free-dom and the way to realize freedom. To fully understand K. Marx’s point of view on this issue, it is necessary to associate his theory of three social formations with the study of human freedom in the process of historical de-velopment. The theory of the three major social formations is an extremely important content of Marx’s view of history.