Beyond crucifixion : remaining christian after sexual abuse

Christian survivors have frequently likened their experiences of sexual abuse to crucifixion. While it is understandable that many cannot reconcile their experiences within their faith tradition, the question of how it is possible to move forward within a Christian framework which accommodates the experience of sexual abuse has tended to be overlooked. In doing so, this paper considers why identifying with the crucified Christ may be an important step in the process of moving forward, and why the terminology ‘survivor’ may be preferable to ‘victim’. The challenge to move forward may require churches and church personnel to consider whether they need to do some things differently. Above all, this requires integrity for the individuals and communities involved rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Muslim - Christian relations and the third crusade : medievalist imaginings

This article takes as its starting-point the responsiveness of children's literature to socio-political events, considering how contemporary anxieties about relationships between Muslim and Christian individuals and cultures inform three historical novels set in the period of the Third Crusade (1189-92): Karleen Bradford's Lionheart's Scribe (1999), K. M. Grant's Blood Red Horse (2004), and Elizabeth Laird's Crusade (2008). In these novels, encounters between young Christian and Muslim protagonists are represented through language and representational modes which owe a good deal to the habits of thought and expression which typify orientalist discourses in Western fiction. In effect, the novels produce two versions of medievalism: a Muslim medieval world which is irretrievably pre-modern, locked into rigid pracices and beliefs against which individuals are powerless; and a Christian medieval world which offers individuals the possibility of progressing to an enhanced state of personal fulfilment. The article argues that the narratives of all three novels incorporate particularly telling moments when Christian protagonists return to England, regretfully leaving Muslim friends. The impossibility of  enduring friendships between Muslims and Christians is based on the novels' assumptions about the incommensurability of cultures and religions; specifically, that there exists
an unbridgeable gulf between Islam and Christianity.

Admissible Christianity : a study of Christian fundamentalism in the writings of James Barr

An attempt to set forth the essential nature of a theology is a notoriously difficult task. This thesis addresses two questions to a contemporary study of fundamentalism. It asks to what extent has James Barr been able to describe the theology of fundamentalism and to what extent his critical analysis of that theology is philosophically valid? The first chapter identifies the inherent difficulties in a phenomenology of fundamentalism and includes an historical survey of the theology of the movement. This chapter is supported by appendix one which identifies the philosophical culture associated with fundamentalist thought. Barr's description of the theological and religious character of fundamentalism is accepted within the identified limitations. The second and third chapters give an account of Barr's theological evaluation of fundamentalism. He argues the fundamentalists espouse an aberrant form of Christianity. Their religion represents a projection onto the biblical text of a religion foreign to the theological character of the Old and New Testaments. This projection is achieved by an intellectually sophisticated hermeneutical procedure. The doctrines of inerrancy, verbal inspiration and infallibility establish an understanding of Christianity which does not represent the essential character of the Christian faith. Fundamentalist hermeneutics, Barr concludes, allows for a theology indigenous neither to the biblical text nor to the Christian tradition. It attempts to afford biblical justification to the doctrines of a human religion extraneous to the biblical text. The fourth chapter considers the philosophical basis of Barr's understanding of the Bible. He takes the idealist view that the biblical text possesses a theological meaning whose boundaries can be delineated and whose essential content defined. This chapter is supported by appendix two which locates Barr's writings on fundamentalism within his wider concerns about the hermeneutical problems raised by the biblical text and the religious authority of the Bible. The penultimate chapter surveys the insights of contemporary literary theory concerning the perception of written texts. The philosophical validity of an idealist view of the biblical text is questioned. Two major conclusions are drawn. Barr's assessment of fundamentalism is philosophically dependent upon his idealist perception of the biblical text. This conclusion leads to the more general conclusion that the biblical text contains no essential description of Christianity but is capable of being read according to a range of theological interpretations some of which are more defensible than others.

Descartes on the human soul : philosophy and the demands of Christian doctrine

By the 17th century Catholic orthodoxy had defined a range of propositions concerning the human soul as revealed by God and verifiable by natural reason. The writings of Rene Descartes display a consistent adherence to these orthodox propositions. The conclusion presents him as ultimately unsuccesful in convincing his contemporaries that his philosophy provided the rational demonstration of the key soul doctrines and that he was worthy of the title "Christian philosopher"

Entrapping Christian and Muslim Arabs in racial cartoons in Australia : the other anti-semitism

Racial Cartoons are a powerful force disguised as entertainment operating to shape public opinion. During the 1980s, 1990s and after 9/11 in 2001, cartoons in the Australian press were particularly directed against Muslim and Christian Arabs without remorse or fear of redress or accountability. The offensive of such cartoons has essentially been directed on three fronts—oil, politics and religion. The drawback resulting from socio-cultural, historical and other differences are no doubt visible; but equally obvious is that anti-Semitism, which was directed against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, is today mostly directed against the public relations deprived, opinion silenced and undemocratically governed, ethnically diverse Arabs. It is argued in this paper that several forces were behind such distorted visual strategies adopted by the Australian press. Pre-judgement stemming from an inbuilt bias of the cartoonist, or highlighting characteristics which conform to the national interest are likely factors. The debate in Australia as to whether public images and attitudes of a minority “cause” or “determine” policy or whether policy itself changes attitudes is still resting with the jury.

In the name of the Father : God in Lacan, Judaic or Christian?

This essay challenges the widespread notion that Lacanian psychoanalysis represents a 'Christianing' of psychoanalysis. It argues that Lacanian psychoanalysis brings to psychoanalysis a broadly "Averroist" attitude towards religion which develops out of and transcends Freud's position in Totem and Taboo. For Lacan, religious texts are an invaluable source of pre-psychoanalytic insight or another regal road into the champ Freudien: the dynamic of human beings' desire, in its co-conformity with language and Law. The text focuses on trying to decipher the missing content of the Names of the Father seminar: the seminar that "does not exist" (Miller, 2006) beyond its opening, esoteric and dramatic session. The force of doing this will be to show how much, and how fundamental, the things are that Lacan thinks the bible, and the first Abrahamic monotheism in particular, can teach us about human subjectivity and the instance of the Law that shapes it - insights which go to explain Freud's unmistakable attachment, despite himself, to the civilizational importance of his fathers.

Researching Moslem-Christian marriages : extrapolating from mixed-faith couples towards the practices of Convivencia

Moslem–Christian marriage can be seen as a kind of ‘testing place’ for examining and appreciating the practices of difference. This article offers a summary from a recent local research project which investigated these relationships (Ata, 2003). The empirical data from the study was ‘milled’ for its potential to inform practice, a process that generated four themes that practitioners may find useful in their attempts to design practice approaches that are sensitive to alternative anthropologies. Beginning from the contention that the otherness of those for whom we work can be a mirror for our own cultural and practice assumptions, we extrapolate from these themes to practise with other examples of diversity. It is argued that our efforts to practise with diverse populations will be unengaging, even colonising, unless we are able to denaturalise our own positions.

Anger at schools' Christian 'bias'

Buddhist community leader Dr Sue Smith has complained of the ''Christian bias'' in religious education in Victoria, saying if her group had access to government funding, they too could expand to hundreds of schools.