Protestant Theological University

About: Protestant Theological University is a education organization based out in Kampen, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Religious education & Protestantism. The organization has 86 authors who have published 188 publications receiving 889 citations.

Dutch Cooperation Schools as Democratic Communities: A Constructive Perspective from Dewey’s View on Democracy in Education

Abstract: In this article, the authors reflect on the results of their previous research at cooperation schools in the Netherlands, where students and teachers from nonaffiliated and Christian backgrounds come together. Dewey’s perspective on educating democratic values is combined with empirical results of this research, answering the question what Dewey’s concept contributes to the reflection on the relation between values and religious education at these schools. This article shows that this reflection and the implementation of value-based religious education offers opportunities for schools that face the challenge of practicing encounter between students from different backgrounds.

Missional church and local constraints: A Dutch perspective

Abstract: The missional church concept promises to guide local churches in the direction of a new identity and mission. It is a response to a sense of ecclesiological and congregational urgency that is felt all over the world. In Africa, North America and Europe, churches and local faith communities have been challenged by the changes in the religious state of affairs since the 1960s. Whether we still call it ‘secularisation’ or rephrase it as ‘differentiated transformation’, the face of religion is changing globally. In many parts of the world, this raises a feeling of crisis that gives way to the redef nition of the mission and purpose of the church. ‘Missional church’, however, is a precarious concept. Nobody disagrees with the intention but can it be more than an inspiring vision? In order to realise this vision, a multi-layered and multi-dimensional analysis of ‘culture’ is essential. We should move the analysis beyond the philosophical interpretation of relatively abstract and evasive macro-level processes, such as ‘modernity’ and ‘post-modernity’. The future of the missional church depends on a differentiated and empirical, informed perspective on culture. For this purpose, this article proposes the concept of ecology: A system of diverse populations, including populations of congregations and faith communities, that interacts with these populations and with their specific environments. Preparing a missional congregation for the future should be accompanied with a thorough empirical investigation into the ecology of the congregation. We should be thinking intensively about and looking for vital ecologies.

Why participation matters to understand ritual experience

Abstract: Two cases in which researchers take part in religious ritual show how being a participant enhances the researcher’s understanding of what is happening. Through these cases the authors attempt to shed light on the methodological problems concerning the “intersubjectivity” of research on ritual. Ritual goes beyond the verbal and pulls bodily sensations, emotion and gestures into the domain of intersubjectivity established through fieldwork. Experiencing the emotional and physical sensations that accompany ritual give the researcher a clue as to what other participants experience. But maybe more importantly, the participation of the researcher also triggers reflections on the meaning and efficacy of the ritual. These verbalized interpretations of what has happened may further strengthen the researcher’s understanding. The authors argue that it is exactly through putting this intersubjectivity at the centre of both the actual fieldwork and the subsequent analysis that the ever flexible and contested nature of ritual and the dynamic tension between semantic and tacit meaning can be most fruitfully explored.

The Background of ‘A Common Word’

Abstract: This article sketches the contents of the open letter of 138 Muslim Scholars to Christians. In addition it provides a reflection of the common ground the authors construct between the faith of Muslims and Christians. Maybe this common ground lies, more than either Christians and Muslims may be aware, in their joint roots in Judaism. The present article concludes with some reflections on the presupposition that it is fertile to start a dialogue on the basis of a (supposed) common ground.

The Relative Good of Work: Reconsidering Vocation Eschatologically

Abstract: Vocation, interpreted as the calling of every individual believer to serve God in ordinary life, has been an important feature of Protestantism. However, not only has the notion of vocation gradually disappeared from the late modern understanding of work and profession, the identification of vocation and work has also been criticized by theologians such as Karl Barth, Miroslav Volf, Jacques Ellul, and Gerrit de Kruijf. From their eschatological perspective, these theologians hold that because our true vocation is to be citizens of God's kingdom, work is a relative good or even a necessary evil. Although this criticism is in various respects justified and relevant, it tends to overlook the particularity of callings included in the Protestant conception of vocation. Therefore, an alternative approach is presented, in which vocation as a particular calling from God's side can be reconnected to everyday life, including the life sphere of work and profession. From this approach, this article explores t...