This study explores the theological contributions ofAruna Gnanadason, a leading feminist theologian and ecumenical activist, focusingon her efforts to integrate gender justice and environmental stewardship within the Indian context. It examines how Gnanadason's ecofeminist theology, informed by Indigenous wisdom, critiques the patriarchal and anthropocentric limitations of traditional theological frameworks. The work highlights her significant role at the World Council of Churches, where she advanced women's rights within Christian communities, particularly in areas such as ordination and addressing gender-based violence. Gnanadason has consistently advocated for a theology that transcends patriarchal binaries, emphasizing the interconnectedness of women's liberation and ecological sustainability. This essay argues that her work represents a critical methodological intervention in feminist and postcolonial theology, offering an alternative theological framework that is rooted in Indian feminist experience, Indigenous cosmology, and contextual ecological ethics. By centering the lived experiences of women, especially in India, this essay presents a holistic vision of liberation theology that combines feminist insights with a profound respect for the divine presence in nature, thereby challenging eurocentric theological norms and proposing a new model of justice that holds gender and ecological liberation together.
This essay reconsiders the South Korean Protestant experience of modernity by complicating the widely accepted view that Protestantism marked a clean rupture from traditional society and religious culture. While often portrayed as a symbol of Western modernity and individualism, Korean Protestantism continues to preserve and refract enduring elements of Korea's pre-Christian religious ethos. Drawing on literature in global/world Christianity and ethnographic research with Korean Protestant immigrants in the United States, I argue that Protestant modernity in Korea emerges not as a total break but as an entangled process shaped by tensions between old and new religious identities. Migration, to the U.S. in particular, has served as a meaningful avenue through which many South Korean Protestants seek both religious and social salvation. These lived experiences highlight how Western modernity is reinterpreted and localized within Korean religious life, offering a more nuanced understanding of religious change in the global context.
This essay examines four major interfaith declarations-Nostra Aetate (1965), Dabru key sites where religious leadership negotiated the tension between tradition and change. Rather than assessing their effectiveness, this study uses these declarations as a lens to explore how religious leaders navigate authenticity, sincerity, and representation in a globalized world. Despite emerging from distinct religious traditions and historical contexts, all four declarations grapple with the challenge of balancing theological authority with adaptation to contemporary political and social realities. The analysis demonstrates how religious leaders leverage these texts to assert legitimacy both within their own communities and in broader interfaith discourse. The essay concludes by examining how recent shifts toward religious particularism and the retreat from universalistic frameworks present new challenges for interfaith engagement, requiring innovative approaches that reconcile religious distinctiveness with meaningful dialogue. By contextualizing these declarations within broader transformations in religious authority, this study highlights the dynamic interplay between and among institutional power, competing forms of authority, and evolving communal recognition in shaping contemporary interfaith engagement.
This essay examines howAbraham Kuyper (1837-1920), Dutch Neo-Calvinist theologian and statesperson, and Kadir M & imath;s & imath;ro & gbreve;lu (1933-2019), Turkish Islamic apologist and polemicist, deployed the concept of "worldview" as a framework for resisting secular modernity. Rather than a set of doctrines, both presented "worldview" as a comprehen-sive system ordering knowledge, society, and politics. Through comparative textual anal-ysis of Kuyper's Stone Lectures (1898) and M & imath;s & imath;ro & gbreve;lu's 2000 study, & Idot;slam D & uuml;nya G & ouml;r & uuml;& scedil;& uuml; (Islamic Worldview), which shows that, while both rejected the neutrality of reason, Kuyper channeled this stance into pluralist institutional reform, whereas M & imath;s & imath;ro & gbreve;lu advanced revelatory absolutism and called for civilizational rupture. Kuyper's model emphasizes confessional scholarship, sphere sovereignty, and pillarization; M & imath;s & imath;ro & gbreve;lu's insists on tawhid as the sole epistemic axiom and the restoration of Sharia as public law. The findings highlight two contrasting modalities of religious response to modernity: reformist continuity and revolutionary replacement. The essay contributes to political theology and comparative religion by offering a typology of these modalities and reas-sessingsecularism's claim to universal legitimacy.
There are many political and historical studies of Christian Zionism. However, scholars have largely ignored the religious writings of Christian Zionists, and especially their biblical interpretations, though these contain the most explicit presentations of their views. I analyze writings by prominent contemporary Christian Zionists in order to understand their arguments and their hermeneutical and theological assumptions. I show that, despite expressingstrong opposition to supersessionism, these writers have all sharply circumscribed the biblical covenant(s) with the Jews. They value the continuing existence of Jews as Jews (against supersessionism) and employ a so-called literal hermeneutic (reading biblical references to "Israel" not as allegorical references to the Christian church). However, they are narrowly and almost exclusively interested in theAbrahamic covenant and its land promise. They effectively negate other aspects of Jewish identity because of their aversion to the Mosaic covenant, their universalization (and effective abrogation) of the biblical promises, and their endorsement of the Jews' conversion. These authors resist any reckoning with traditional Christian theologies that encouraged negative perceptions of Jews and Judaism, despite their claims to have done that.
