Crisis Of Christianity Research Articles

Nicholas Roerich: Loud Silence

The article is devoted to the artist and thinker N. Roerich, whose work not only covers the Russian and Soviet periods of our history, but according to its internal logic breaks up into two stages – national and cosmopolitan. If the “early” Roerich turned to the Ancient Slavic theme, to the study of the spiritual roots of Russia, for which he was accused of “leavened patriotism”, in the more mature period of his activity he became an apologist for universal values. According to A. Benoit, he made the transition to broad humanity. However, the author of the article shows that Roerich moved not just to universal values, challenging the opposition of the West and the East, antiquity and modernity, science and religion, but sought to assert universal cosmic values that undermined the idea of human exclusivity. Roerich's synthesizing thinking dissolved not only cultural, but also ontological differences. The success of Roerich's ideas in the Soviet and post–Soviet period of our history, according to the author of the article, indicates not the political reasons – Roerich's own attempts to synthesize Buddhism and communism – but the more fundamental shifts at the anthropological level. The crisis of Christianity, man’s rejection of the church conciliar consciousness, that is the rejection of the usual forms of subjectivity and at the same time the need for these forms, give rise to the phenomenon of a new mysticism. The popularity of Roerich's ideas is the wrong side of a society that organizes external life, but does not offer the completeness of the organization of a person's inner life. The author shows the anthropological fl aws of the phenomenon of new mysticism and reveals the meaning of universal values in terms of “spiritual subtraction”.

Have the Inhabitants of France, Great Britain, Spain, and the US Been Secularized? An Analysis Comparing the Religious Data in These Countries

This paper carries out a comparative analysis of the religious beliefs and practices of residents in France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America, using two waves of the World Values Survey. The main objective is to investigate the impact that secularization has had on the religious experience in these countries. More specifically, the prospection is carried out around the Christian creed in its Protestant and Catholic manifestations, understood as the majority beliefs in these countries. To carry out this task, we compiled a series of data distributed around the following categories: Contextualization: The importance of religion within different aspects of life; level of religiosity and membership in religious denominations; the sphere of beliefs: Belief in God, belief in life after death, belief in hell, and belief in heaven; scope of practices; and the nones. Subsequently, we carry out an explanatory-interpretative analysis articulated around four questions or challenges faced by these religious forms in the context of secularization: 1. The crisis of Christianity; 2. the thesis of European exceptionalism; and 3. the rise of the nones. In conclusion, the data analyzed allow us to affirm—with nuances—the following: 1. The existence of a process of dechurching in the heart of Christianity; 2. the confirmation that the European case is exceptional if we compare it with other trends or other cultural programs of secularization; 3. that the area of greatest dechurching is linked to community practice, something that allows this research to adhere to Davie’s thesis, which defines the current religious situation as believing without belonging; and 4. as a consequence of the process of dechurching, there is a rise of a social group without religious adscription: The nones.

The concept of "despair" by S. Kierkegaard in rationalistic and postmodernist reflection

The concept of "despair" of S. Kierkegaard in the rationalist and postmodern reflection is considered. It is noted that consideration of the reflection on Kierkegaard’s writing heritage demonstrates the contemporality of the ideas of Kierkegaard and representatives of the philosophical trends of the twentieth century. This is due to the relevance of the comparative "re-reading". In conditions of the crisis of Christianity S. Kierkegaard, combining in one person the philosopher, theologian and writer, deliberately violated the classical demand for purity of the genre in the name of the creation of a-system anthropology of change, which involves the movement-formation of an existential subject to faith. Care for the reader, to which S. Kierkegaard ultimately refers, involves the use of an indirect form of communication as the only means of attracting the reader to the aporias of existence. To the same aims serve such concepts — existentials in its negative (pathetic, lyrical) dialectics as fear, despair, repetition, which differ from any formal-logical structures due to rhetorics of the image and character specificity. Representatives of rationalist philosophy, Theunissen and Habermas, categorizing despair in the discourse of negative theology, considered it as a condition for the possibility of intersubjectivity, by asking and solving the problem of the Other, which has become ultramodern one again. The category of despair, which is thoroughly considered by Kierkegaard, becomes a subject of the religious-philosophical description. Increased attention to the very form of the work and the context of its appearance (in the particular case - "Concluding Unscientific Postscript") distinguishes Kierkegaard from contemporaries and synchronously leads him into a deconstructionist camp, that allows some thinkers to mark him as a Christian postmodernist. For Derrida, the aforementioned work is a model of a "high-quality" simulacrum that produces an over-textual excess of meanings. But for Kierkegaard as a Christian, this is another form of despair.

Uniqueness and Universality of Jesus Christ in Dialogue with Religions

The author shows that in the contemporary crisis of Christianity fits crisis of questioning his “claim to the truth.” Skepticism about the truth that bringing Christianity is supported by the achievements of modern science, which intends to overcome thinking about the existence of man and his relationship to God. To contribute two more factors: critical exegesis and critique of classical metaphysics. In the context of these risks, the Author attempts to read the explanatory signs of the times, pointing to the issue of religious truth through the prism of the uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ. The position to be adopted in relation to truth, Author believes for crucial, because it gives rise to this, to talk about the true religion. In this way he desires to make a challenge for Christian thought associated with the current growth and spread of religious movements.

The contested public square: the crisis of Christianity and politics

The contested public square: the crisis of Christianity and politics

Veranderingen in samenleving en kerk en de gevolgen voor het beroep van pastor

This article is an attempt to open up a new perspective on the crisis of christianity and church in the context of Western Europe, especially The Netherlands. Since half a century the secularisation paradigm has been the dominant perspective to explain this development. But a long-term historical perspective offers a wider horizon. Through the ages there have been different types of christianity (E.Troeltsch): the public church in relation to the civil society, the free church emphasizing church membership (the priesthood of the believers) and the more individualized mystic type of faith. Since the separation of church and state untill totday the second type had been the dominant one. A consequence of the cultural shift from modernity to postmodernity is the rise of ‘wild devotion’ conform the third type of a more individualized way of life. This article pays attention to the challenges of these developments to the practice of church life and the pastoral profession.

Dieu courroucé, tout-puissant et bon. Connaissons-nous le Dieu de Jésus-Christ ?

The crisis of Christianity is basically the crisis of its identity. By concentrating on the central message of its founder Jesus Christ, this crisis can be removed. This identity reveals itself in contrast to the two other monotheistic religions. Jesus is the triple revolutionary who reverses the relationship between man and God, between man and his neighbour and between man and himself. Once for ail, he removes, without replacing it, from the notion of God, the corner of shadow which was to be found up till then in ail the religions of the world. Christianity thus reveals itself to be the only religion which could remedy modem man who, in turn, finds himself in a profound crisis of identity. In the depths of this crisis stalks dread, fundamentally the dread of death. Man in search of his deliverance should recognize his sal- vation not only in the message of Jesus but also in the Christ who lives within him and who frees him from ail dread. If Christianity were to recognize that it is basically a mystic and not a moral religion, it could enter the 21st century and model its spirit.