Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss papers 1908-1973

Consists of correspondence, documents, speeches, reports and other writings, photographs, film and other records of Admiral Strauss' involvement with Jewish organizations and causes, as well as miscellaneous personal items.

Kirkon vai valtion kirjat? : Uskontokuntasidonnaisuuden ongelma Suomen väestökirjanpidossa 1839-1904

The Population Register – run by the Church or the state? The problem posed by the obligation to belong to a religious community in the registration of births and deaths in Finland between 1839 and 1904 The Lutheran Church of Finland is the nation’s largest church; approximately 82 per cent of Finns were members in 2007. The Church ran an official register of its members until 1999, when the state then undertook this task. The registration of births and deaths by the Church has a long history dating back to the 17th century, when Bishop Johannes Gezelius Sr. decreed that all parish members would have to be recorded in parish registers. These registers were used to control how well parish members knew the Christian doctrine and, gradually, also if they were literate. Additionally, the Church attempted to ensure by means of the parish registers that parish members went to Holy Communion annually. Since everyone was a member of the Lutheran Church, the state also took advantage of the parish registers and used them for the purposes of tax collection and conscription. The main research theme of “The Population Register – run by the Church or the state?” goes back to these times. The actual research period covers the years of 1839–1904. At that time Finland was under Russian rule, although autonomous. In the late 19th century the press and different associations in Finland began to engage in public debate, and the country started moving from a submissive society to a civic one. The identity of the Lutheran Church also became more prominent when the Church Act and the General Synod were realised in 1869. A few years earlier, municipal and parish administrations had been separated, but the general registration of births and deaths was left to the Church to see to. In compliance with the constitution of the country, all the inhabitants in principle still had to be Lutheran. In practice, the situation was different. The religious and ideological realms diversified, and the Lutheran concept of religion was no longer acceptable to everyone. The conflict was reflected in the registration of births and deaths, which was linked to the Lutheran Church and its parish registers. Nobody was allowed to leave the Church, there was no civil register, and the Lutheran Church did not consent to record unbaptized children in the parish registers. Therefore such children were left without civil rights. Thus the obligation to belong to a religious community had become a problem in the registration of births and deaths. The Lutheran clergy also appealed to the 1723 privileges, according to which they had been exempted from the drawing up of additional population registers. In 1889 Finland passed the Dissenters Act. By virtue of this act the Baptists and the Methodists left the state Church, but this was not the case with the members of the free churches. The freethinkers had to retain their church membership, as the law did not apply to them. This meant that the unbaptized children of the members of the free churches or those of freethinkers were still not entered in any registers. The children were not able to go to school, work for the state or legally marry. Neither were they able to inherit property, as they did not legally exist. The system of parish registers was created when everyone was required to be a member of the Lutheran Church, but it did not work when liberal attitudes eventually penetrated the sphere of religion, too. The government´s measures to solve the problem were slow and cautious, partly because Finland was part of Russia, partly because there were only about 100 unbaptized children. As the problem group was small and the state´s resources were limited, no general civil register was established. The state accepted the fact that in spite of the problems, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the congregations of dissenters were the only official establishments to run populations registers in the country, and for social purposes, too. In 1900 the Diet of Finland finally approved a limited civil register, which unbaptized children and unregistered foreigners would be recorded in. Due to political reasons the civil register did not come into existence until 1917, after the actual research period.

Valoa itään? : Kansanlähetys ja Neuvostoliitto 1967-1973

Light to the East? The Finnish Lutheran Mission and the Soviet Union 1967 1973 The Cold War affected the lives of Christian churches, especially in Europe. Besides the official ecumenical relations between east and west, there existed unofficial activity from west to east, such as smuggling Bibles and distributing information about the severe condition of human rights in the USSR. This study examines this kind of unofficial activity originating in Finland. It especially concentrates on the missionary work to the Soviet Union done by the Finnish Lutheran Mission (FLM, Suomen Evankelisluterilainen Kansanlähetys) founded in 1967. The work for Eastern Europe was organised through the Department for the Slavic Missions. FLM was founded within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, but it was not connected to the church on an organisational level. In addition to the strong emphasis on the Lutheran confession, FLM presented evangelical theology. The fundamental work of the Department for the Slavic Missions was to organise the smuggling of Bibles and other Christian literature to the Soviet Union and other countries behind the iron curtain. They also financed several Christian radio programmes produced and aired mainly by the international Trans World Radio. The Department diversified its activity to humanitarian help by distributing material help such as clothes and shoes to the unregistered evangelical and baptist groups, which were called the underground churches . In Finland the Department focused on information services. It published its own magazine, Valoa idässä (Light in the East), 5 to 6 times per year. Through the magazine and by distributing samizdat material received from the unregistered Christian groups, it discussed and reported the violations of human rights in the Soviet Union, especially when the unregistered Christian groups were considered the victims. The resistance against the Soviet Union was not as much political but religious: the staff of the Department were religious and revivalist young people who thought, for instance, that communism was in some way an apocalyptic world power revealed in the Bible. Smuggling Bibles was discussed widely in the Finnish media and even in parliament and the Finnish Security Police (SUPO, Suojelupoliisi) and in the Lutheran Church. From the church s point of view, this kind of missionary work was understandable but bothersome. Through their ecumenical connections, the bishops knew the critical situation of churches behind the iron curtain very well, but wanted to act diplomatically and cautiously to prevent causing harm to ecumenical or political relations. The leftist media and members of parliament especially accused the work of the Department of being illegal and endangering relations between Finland and the Soviet Union. SUPO did not consider the work of the Department as illegal activity or as a threat to Finnish national security.

Pablo Hannemann Collection.

Various photographs of sculptures with explanatory notes, all connected with experience during WW II

Silva Fennica Vol. 7, 1973.

Julkaistu Silva Fennica Vol. 8(1) -numeron liitteenä.

Vesilaitosten veden laatu vuonna 1973

Water quality in water utilities in 1973.

Vesistöjen veden laadun muutoksista vuosina 1962-1973

Engl. summary: Changes in water quality in Finnish lakes and rivers 1962-1973

Uutta, vanhaa ja lainattua : Tampereen Kaupunkilähetyksen kristillissosiaalisen työn asemoituminen hyvinvointivaltion rakentumisessa vuosina 1939−1973

The main purpose of this study was to provide a full account of the Christian social work carried out at the Tampere City Mission (TCM) as well as the Missions sphere of operations from the Second World War to the early 1970s, comprising a period of significant change. The study consists of charting the processes of change and connections within the activities of the TCM and how examining these were linked to the general tendencies of the period, in lay work, social work, professionalization and the representation of gender. The positioning of the activities is described on the basis of these tendencies. The main sources for the study were the archives of the Mission, for example the minutes of meetings, correspondences as well as annual reports, and the archives of its partners, such as the City of Tampere, the Evangelical Lutheran parishes of Tampere and the State Welfare Administration. The archives of the Helsinki, Turku and Stockholm Missions supplied comparison reference and other material. In particular, social welfare and Christian social work technical journals of were used as printed sources. The principal method used was the genetic method of historiology. The research subject was also evaluated from the point of view of third sector research in addition to that of professionalization studies and gender studies. By the beginning of the research period, the TCM had turned more and more dedicatedly into a multipurpose social service organization maintaining social services such as old people s homes and children´s homes. This development continued, even though new areas of activity emerged and older ones fell into disuse. Social innovations sprang up, marriage counseling being one of them. On the national level, the TCM pioneered the provision of sheltered industrial work for intellectually disabled persons as well as housing services for them. As new activities were initiated, they overlapped with the established ones, and the TCM handed some of its child protection functions over to the municipality, in accordance with the current adaptation theory. The use of its own property to produce ever-changing social services may be the reason why the association s work continued on with vitality. Functional networks and political aid in the field of social services also bolstered the association. As in other Nordic countries, nonprofit organizations served as partners rather than competitors, with the State establishing institutional welfare arrangements. In the 1960s the municipal takeover of social services impacted the TCM activities. Rules for government subsidies and municipal allowances were not well established; hence these funds were not easily available, making improvements difficult. The TCM was a community in which women had a relatively strong position and an opportunity to make a difference. Female staff were reasonably equal to men, and women worked as heads of a several institutions. Care work employed a number of men, which went against the traditional segregation of labour between the sexes. The TCM s operations were from early on very professionalized, and were developed with particular care. Keywords: Christian social work, third sector, professionalization, gender

El tertium narrativo de los Evangelios : paradigma de un lenguaje nuevo desde la óptica ricoeuriana de Adolphe Gesché

Introducción: En las obras de Adolphe Gesché (1928-2003) aparecen temáticas que echan sus raíces en la teología dogmática y en la fundamental. Realiza su camino académico de licenciatura en filosofía y letras en la Universidad Católica de Lovaina, donde también, posteriormente, se licencia y doctora en teología. Más tarde realiza su magíster con una tesis sobre patrología. Si bien nunca faltarán en su madurez bibliográfica estos recursos de la primera hora, enfocará sus investigaciones y desarrollos hacia horizontes más dogmáticos. Estos últimos serán tratados desde abordajes múltiples, como la moral, la antropología, la psicología, filosofía y estética, la literatura y la teología comparada. Es precisamente en esta nota o personalidad de su “teologizar desde el encuentro” donde radicará la disertación presente, subrayando la riqueza de variados afluentes y detectando esas pistas de enlaces o convergencias que abren la posibilidad de la aplicación interdisciplinaria y del diálogo entre esos campos. Cabe destacar en Gesché el sustrato de diálogo con otras áreas humanísticas debido a sus estudios en humanidades y en filosofía y letras realizados en la Facultad de Saint Louis, Bruselas, previos a su ordenación sacerdotal. Gesché se esfuerza en sus obras por proveerse de un método interno y, al mismo tiempo, de una propuesta metodológica para futuras investigaciones. Lo confirmará el teólogo mismo al decir que “este recorrido constituye una experiencia que deseo realizar, tanto más que, a mi juicio, resulta decisiva para nuestra postmodernidad”. Se utilizará como material fuente su obra teológica magna sistematizada en siete tomos que llevan por título “Dios para pensar”, pero esto no impedirá recurrir a textos de algunas otras obras de su autoría y a su Fichero temático personal. La disertación apuntará al estudio de la importancia que Gesché confiere a la dimensión narrada del evangelio como principal fuente de luz sobre la persona e identidad de Jesucristo, constituyéndose en un modelo de relato que configura la identidad de aquel que narra, ejerciendo, también, una eficacia para aquel que lo lee. Texto, sujeto y lector serán, entonces, los ejes de su estudio y, también, la estructura de la disertación. Es el evangelio, en su esencia “narrado”, el que confiere identidad a la persona de Jesucristo. Esta dimensión narrativa del texto evangélico supera dos polos generados en la tradición teológica apoyados uno en la historia y el otro en el dogma. Ésta será la principal tesis sostenida por el teólogo y planteará el advenimiento de un tercero para resolver el ahogo de los encierros narcisistas...

La cuestión de los fundamentos en la ética de Lonergan

Resumen: En este artículo se explica cómo a partir del método trascendental de Lonergan surge una comprensión de la ética cómo ética existencial, la cual nos invita a dejar a un lado las categorías metafísicas-abstractas y reflexionar éticamente usando categorías que surjan de los actos de nuestra conciencia. La conciencia moral se presenta distintiva en cuanto a la decisión, inclusiva en cuanto que integra los niveles del entender y del juzgar y elevada en cuanto que está abierta a la posibilidad de una integración superior, puesto que la noción trascendental de valor puede ser enriquecida intrínsecamente con la experiencia religiosa de estar enamorado de un modo irrestricto.La explicitación de los fundamentos a partir del método trascendental permite tener en cuenta la realidad del hombre como ser histórico en devenir e integra la experiencia moral y religiosa a la comprensión del actuar ético. De este modo la reflexión ética surge a partir de la historia vividaen la cual se manifiesta el hacerse a sí mismo de los sujetos y la auto-constitución de lavida moral de una comunidad o de un pueblo.