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.

Creating an Indigenous Christian leadership in Papua

In eastern Papua, Christian missionaries found a social structure unparalleled in most areas of religious expansion in the world: it apparently lacked chiefs and any identifiable leadership. Nearly all the Massim societies of eastern Papua were matrilineal, and land was passed through females. Here, women enjoyed a higher status than elsewhere in what is now Papua New Guinea. By drawing on the records of missionary agents, both European and Polynesian, this paper shows how the Methodist, Anglican and Kwato (London Missionary Society) missions in eastern Papua all encountered difficulty in fostering a cadre of male leaders, but — as became evident after World War II — they experienced greater success in fostering women's leadership.

Nazi Germany as a christian state : the 'Protestant experience' of 1933 in Württemberg

 This article examines the response of Christians in Germany to the first year of the Nazi state. It responds to Manfred Gailus' call of 'micro-histories' and onsiders how Protestants in Württemberg conceived of 1933 and how they responded to the Nazis' antisemitism. It argues that they drew on a pre-existing myth of national-religious revival in World War I (the 'spirit of 1914') and remained 'actively passive' when it came to antisemitism.

Mediating the good life: prostitution and the Japanese Woman's Christian Temperance Union, 1880s–1920s

This article examines how the Japanese Woman's Christian Temperance Union, in the name of promoting liberty and rights of women in their relations with men, constructed hierarchies to ascribe value to themselves through moral condemnation. The JWCTU used extramarital sex as a political issue to strengthen the position of the legal wife in the household as opposed to the concubine and prostitute. Their efforts to prohibit Japanese women from going abroad as prostitutes, while understood as an attempt to end a system of slavery that violated the inherent rights of Japanese womanhood, was actually a desire to regulate the behaviour of the poor. The JWCTU based its moral reform agenda on the importance of premarital chastity, strict monogamy and the obligation to work for the good of the nation. Its construction of prostitution as evil represents an important strand in the history of the relationship between prostitution and family as a socio-political issue in modern Japan.

The historic religious buildings of Ribeira Grande: implementation of christian models in the early colonies, 15th till 17th century, on the example of Cape Verde Islands

Rui Carita

Anagramas do corpo, processos de repetição e representação da condição humana: um diálogo entre Hans Bellmer e Pina Bausch

La relation entre l`ignorance, l`apprentissage et de la création composent un décor provocant pour nous faire réfléchir sur l`éducation et la science. Pour éclaircir cette réflexion, nous démarrons sur les propositions de Ilya Prigogine (1986), pour qui l`art est une métaphore qui représente la science au XXe siècle, les idées d`Edgar Morin (2004), en soulignant la contribution fondamentale de l`art à l`état humain, et Maurice Merleau- Ponty (1980), qui crédite à l`art la possibilité d`un nouveau regard sur le monde, un regard sensible, esthétique. Ayant par référence la présence de ces arguments, nous réaffirmons la thèse de que l`art peut présenter des métaphores pour considérer la science, l`éducation et la condition humaine sur des bases complexes et transdisciplinaires. Nous nous concentrons sur des catégories particulières de la déformation et de la répétition. La première est considérée comme un désordre nécessaire au corps, à la science et à l`éducation, des lieux de métamorphose constante, d`après les principes de la complexité. La seconde est appréciée comme un opérateur sans lequel la variation, l`écart, le nouveau et l`invention ne peuvent pas émerger. Nos métaphores ressortent des travaux esthétiques de deux artistes de renom: Pina Bausch et Hans Bellmer, les délinquants qui certainement se rebellent contre la trivialité dans l`art et la vie. Ils exploitent des rêves, des démonstrations affectueuses impertinentes, esthétiques inaugurales, antiparadigmatiques et audacieuses. En un mot, ils incarnent ce qu`on appelle une pensée complexe. Nous comprenons que les deux artistes déclenchent des dispositifs qui dialoguent avec le manifeste de Merleau-Ponty lorsque l`on cherche dans l "aisthesis" la possibilité d`une production naturelle qui est en elle-même, créative. Ayant comme horizon cette puissance créatrice nous concentrons notre regard sur les anagrammes du corps proposés par Bellmer et sur la répétition exprimée par Pina Bausch. La déformation et la répétition sont des étapes embryonnaires de la création

Long-Term Safety and Efficacy of Abatacept in Children With Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Objective. We previously documented that abatacept was effective and safe in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) who had not previously achieved a satisfactory clinical response with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs or tumor necrosis factor blockade. Here, we report results from the long-term extension (LTE) phase of that study.Methods. This report describes the long-term, open-label extension phase of a double-blind, randomized, controlled withdrawal trial in 190 patients with JIA ages 6-17 years. Children were treated with 10 mg/kg abatacept administered intravenously every 4 weeks, with or without methotrexate. Efficacy results were based on data derived from the 153 patients who entered the open-label LTE phase and reflect >= 21 months (589 days) of treatment. Safety results include all available open-label data as of May 7, 2008.Results. of the 190 enrolled patients, 153 entered the LTE. By day 589, 90%, 88%, 75%, 57%, and 39% of patients treated with abatacept during the double-blind and LTE phases achieved responses according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Pediatric 30 (Pedi 30), Pedi 50, Pedi 70, Pedi 90, and Pedi 100 criteria for improvement, respectively. Similar response rates were observed by day 589 among patients previously treated with placebo. Among patients who had not achieved an ACR Pedi 30 response at the end of the open-label lead-in phase and who proceeded directly into the LTE, 73%, 64%, 46%, 18%, and 5% achieved ACR Pedi 30, Pedi 50, Pedi 70, Pedi 90, and Pedi 100 responses, respectively, by day 589 of the LTE. No cases of tuberculosis and no malignancies were reported during the LTE. Pneumonia developed in 3 patients, and multiple sclerosis developed in 1 patient.Conclusion. Abatacept provided clinically significant and durable efficacy in patients with JIA, including those who did not initially achieve an ACR Pedi 30 response during the initial 4-month open-label lead-in phase.