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This volume is the result of an international research project that drew together perspectives from three countries in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe: Croatia, Lithuania, and Poland. It explores the under-researched phenomenon of immaterial values and resources that returning migrants bring with them, as they have the potential to contribute to economic development, together with the social, political, and cultural change in their countries of origin. The authors explore the mechanisms, challenges, and successes of the process of social remitting by returnees to these countries.
When confronted by a range of violent actions perpetrated by lone individuals, contemporary society exhibits a constant tendency to react in terms of helpless, even perplexed horror. Seeking explanations for the apparently inexplicable, commentators often hurry to declare the perpetrators as “evil”. This question is not restricted to individuals: history has repeatedly demonstrated how groups and even entire nations can embark on a criminal plan united by the conviction that they were fighting for a good and just cause. Which circumstances occasioned such actions? What was their motivation? Applying a number of historical, scientific and social-scientific approaches to this question, this study produces an integrative portrait of the reasons for human behavior and advances a number of different interpretations for their genesis. The book makes clear the extent to which we live in socially-constructed realities in which we cling for dear life to a range of conceptions and beliefs which can all too easily fall apart in situations of crisis.
The European Federation of Centers of Research and Information on Sectarianism (FECRIS) unites 25 European organizations to fight against minorities of religion or beliefs that they label as sects. This book focuses on the FECRIS member associations in five European countries: France, the cradle of laicite; Austria and Germany, where public powers and dominant churches lead a common struggle against sects; and Serbia and Russia, two Orthodox countries in which FECRIS member associations include Orthodox missionary departments. Can their activities be reconciled with the public funding granted to FECRIS and its affiliates, as well as the international standards to guarantee freedom of religion and belief? This is the question addressed in this volume. (Series: Religion - State - Society / Religion - Staat - Gesellschaft. Journal for the Study of Beliefs and Worldviews)
Borders and border regions are shaped by many phenomena connected with both co-operation and conflict. The neighbourhood, cross-border contacts, illegal migration, border crossings, prejudices and stereotypes, border guards, and perceptions of borders are some of the key words that characterize the articles in this volume. The book deals with European border regions that have experienced numerous changes over the 20th century. Because of this changeable, frequently painful past, different human stories – mostly tragic or romanticized – individual and collective memories, mythologies with heroes, and divergent perceptions of history developed. Most authors in this volume deal with conflicts and co-operation that can either be remembered or forgotten.
In The Mark of Cain, Katharina von Kellenbach draws on letters exchanged between clergy and Nazi perpetrators, written notes of prison chaplains, memoirs, sermons, and prison publications to illuminate the moral and spiritual struggles of perpetrators after the war.
Sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, this collection of wide ranging case studies and theoretical pieces shows how religious or spiritual factors can play a helpful role in international relations. This important study is written by a distinguished roster of scholars, with a foreword by Jimmy Carter. Includes six maps.
Leading scholars in the field of Holocaust studies place the Nazi era in full historical perspective. This book is a broad overview of the Protestant and Catholic responses, including institutional churches, the theological faculties, and theologians, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Joseph Lortz. Included are assessments of the German Christian movement, the Confessing Church, the German Catholic church, the Vatican, and the free churches. Various responses and individualsvillains, heroes, equivocatorsare highlighted.
Religious conciliators have always faced resistance and critique as they mediate between groups devoted to ideological agendas that leave little room for maneuver and negotiation. From the conciliar to the confessional age, the normal challenges that peacemakers perennially face were magnified. The church was divided, and there did not appear to be any obvious solution to the crisis that had begun in the late fourteenth century with the Great Western Schism (1378-1415). restoration of ecclesial unity, first in the conciliar era, then in the early years of the Protestant reformations, and finally during the confessional age, when the theological and cultural characteristics of competing relig...