ContactPub Date : 2007-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2007.11759063
A. Davey
{"title":"Faithful Cities: Locating Everyday Faithfulness","authors":"A. Davey","doi":"10.1080/13520806.2007.11759063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13520806.2007.11759063","url":null,"abstract":"Summary This paper will examine the report Faithful Cities (CULF, 2006) as a successor to Faith in the City (ACUPA, 1985) in the wider context of how approaches to urban issues have changed in the past twenty years and yet have retained a commitment to a resistive theology.","PeriodicalId":87951,"journal":{"name":"Contact","volume":"23 1","pages":"20 - 8"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88297328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ContactPub Date : 2007-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2007.11759064
J. Atherton
{"title":"Faithful Well-being: Lessons from the Happiness Hypothesis","authors":"J. Atherton","doi":"10.1080/13520806.2007.11759064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13520806.2007.11759064","url":null,"abstract":"Summary This article explores current research on happiness as a basis for critical conversation with Faithful Cities, and particularly its economic section. The happiness hypothesis overlaps with other related concepts like well-being, and has attracted contributions from a variety of disciplines including economics, sociology and psychology. It invites theological, and especially ethical, collaboration. After initial contextual locating of the research question, the article proceeds to define some of the main findings of the research on happiness. These illustrate the paradoxical character of contemporary prosperity and the search for greater economic growth. That character includes connections with marginalization and inequality. Using these definitions as a basis for critical conversation with Faithful Cities, I make five points relating to the tension between economic and social capital, inequality, the changing relationship between nature and nurture, the importance of religion and ethics for happiness studies, and the growing significance of multi- and inter-disciplinary work.","PeriodicalId":87951,"journal":{"name":"Contact","volume":"257 1","pages":"21 - 25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84145975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ContactPub Date : 2006-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2006.11759047
F. Young
{"title":"Beyond story: Letting the Bible Speak","authors":"F. Young","doi":"10.1080/13520806.2006.11759047","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13520806.2006.11759047","url":null,"abstract":"lt has long been a commonplace in Pastoral Studies that the stories of the Bible provide telling insight into the human condition and are a creative way in which the Bible, even in this day and age, can be 'pastor' for those in difficulty. However, this overlooks the problems of using biblical stories in our culture and fails to recognize that there are other aspects of Scripture which can just as well be 'translated' for contemporary use.","PeriodicalId":87951,"journal":{"name":"Contact","volume":"1 1","pages":"31 - 36"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90513385","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ContactPub Date : 2006-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2006.11759044
C. Rowland, Zöe Bennett
{"title":"‘Action is the Life of All’: The Bible and Practical Theology","authors":"C. Rowland, Zöe Bennett","doi":"10.1080/13520806.2006.11759044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13520806.2006.11759044","url":null,"abstract":"(2006). ‘Action is the Life of All’: The Bible and Practical Theology. Contact: Vol. 150, No. 1, pp. 8-17.","PeriodicalId":87951,"journal":{"name":"Contact","volume":"3 1","pages":"17 - 8"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81826895","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ContactPub Date : 2006-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2006.11759056
M. Shabbir
{"title":"Values and Supervision","authors":"M. Shabbir","doi":"10.1080/13520806.2006.11759056","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13520806.2006.11759056","url":null,"abstract":"I am the manager of Sharing Voices (Bradford) (SVB), which is a community development organisation working within local communities to meet the needs of those with mental health issues. Sharing Voices operates within a framework that acknowledges, respects and promotes community expertise, and the cultural and religious heritage of its members. It makes extensive use of art as a means to aid recovery. The work of SVB is based on the premise that people living with distress are experts by experience and that people need to be supported on their road to recovery with their self-defined solutions. Within this dynamic situation arise critical self-reflective practice models of engagement which recognise the value of all those involved in the process of recovery. This involves open and frank sharing of ideas, beliefs and practice between members of staff so that richness and diversity can be celebrated and areas of difference can be acknowledged. This process within our organisation exists is truly organic, as we communicate and the message that all people are valued. Embedding principles of diversity and equality in organisational structures and interactions between people, whether they are paid staff, volunteers, committee members or local people, is a task that needs constant attention. Therefore the interactive, interpersonal supervision and management processes become critical to ensuring that SVB remains rooted in and committed to diversity as a core platform upon which community development mental health work is based.","PeriodicalId":87951,"journal":{"name":"Contact","volume":"50 1","pages":"22 - 26"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83082545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ContactPub Date : 2006-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2006.11759054
A. Faludy
{"title":"In Defence of Personhood: St Benedict and Postmodernity","authors":"A. Faludy","doi":"10.1080/13520806.2006.11759054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13520806.2006.11759054","url":null,"abstract":"For 1 ,500 years the Rule of St Benedict has been the normative document of Western monasticism, a touchstone for subsequent reformers and a comforting inspiration for those vowed to observe its regime. In it Benedict calls the seeker to realise, through a careful process of self-discipline, the fullness of Christian life: enjoying the company of God and fellows in a manner which closely anticipates the heavenly life (Olsen, 1984: 35-45). Throughout history Benedictine communities have played an important part in wider Christian life, providing pastoral and intellectual leadership for the institutional church (lawrence, 1984). However, the relationship between the ideal Christian life pursued within the cloister and the spiritual efforts of ordinary Christians in the world has not always been happily or conveniently expounded. Post-Tridentine spirituality has tended to separate hierarchically 'religious' and 'lay' experience into hermetically sealed compartments, an attitude sometimes mirrored by strict physical enclosure (Knowles, 1969: 228-32; Chittister, 1991; Lavin, 2002). Such an approach is surprising given Benedict's insistence that every outside guest to the monastery should be 'welcomed as Christ' (Benedict, 1980:53, 255-59).' The recent flourishing of oblature, the swelling ranks of friends' associations, and the growing volume of literature on 'lay application' testify to a stronger sense of the Rule's place within the wider baptismal vocation (de Waal, 1996). However, the renewed interest in Benedictine spirituality extends well beyond the Roman Catholic Church, not only into Anglicanism but also into the 'unchurched' population at large (as witnessed by the popularity of BBC2's recent series The Monastery). This wider interest suggests that Benedict speaks to the particular spiritual hunger of our time as well as the fundamental basis of our calling. How, though, might this be so? To answer we must first identify that hunger. The distinguished social theorist Zygmunt Bauman has identified the quest for individuality as a defining characteristic of the postmodern consumer society, a society in which 'people are haunted by the problem of identity' (Bauman, 2005: 6). In this environment the apogee of personal happiness is understood to lie in the holding together of our disparate psychological tendencies, the achievement of decisive autonomy, and the exercise of unobstructed, impulsive free choice amidst a dazzling range of purchasable commodities. Our enjoyment of the last feature serves as an index to the whole project's success (Bauman, 2005: 1-15, 80-116). The indissoluble problem of identity in such a context arises from a hidden reality: the market's manipulative spur to consumption is in fact an","PeriodicalId":87951,"journal":{"name":"Contact","volume":"1 1","pages":"11 - 6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82225440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
ContactPub Date : 2006-01-01DOI: 10.1080/13520806.2006.11759055
T. O’Connor, E. Meakes
{"title":"Understanding, Integration and Transformation: A Canadian Ethnographic Study on the Goals of Theological Reflection in Pastoral Care and Counselling","authors":"T. O’Connor, E. Meakes","doi":"10.1080/13520806.2006.11759055","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/13520806.2006.11759055","url":null,"abstract":"Summary/Abstract What are the goals of theological reflection in the praxis of pastoral care and counselling in Canada? This qualitative study is ethnographic in design. A review of the literature is presented noting themes especially in the work of Stephen Bevans (2004), Robert Kinast (2000) and Elaine Graham, Heather Walton and Frances Ward (2005). Researchers interviewed 75 participants in four categories: chaplains, pastoral counsellors in the Canadian Association of Pastoral Practice and Education (CAPPE), community clergy, and students after internship in a theological reflection course. Interviews were audiotaped, transcribed and then coded for themes. Understanding and meaning, integration and transformation emerged as the strongest themes. Our discussion includes the topic of what ought to be normative goals for theological reflection, focusing on the question: ‘Could theological reflection be faith seeking understanding, integration, and transformation equally?’","PeriodicalId":87951,"journal":{"name":"Contact","volume":"107 1","pages":"12 - 21"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77415925","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}