Editorial

Essays in this issue are thematically varied and thus exhibit the range of concerns demarcating current theological conversations on the Canadian scene and beyond. The authors have a connection in one way or another with Canada, though not all of them are professional theologians.

Consider, for example, the first essay by a research team in Switzerland, which documents the importance of religiosity for people with schizophrenia, studying patients in psychiatric hospital units in French Canada and Switzerland. On the basis of that documentation, it is proposing the integration of religious topics in the education of the clinician and mental-health caregivers in hospital. Does the proposal make sense? Two Canadian clinicians respond with questions of their own about the study, which seems to be urging an integration of Jerusalem and Athens, a meshing of science and religion.

The second essay, by Schweitzer, deals with flaws implicit in Western Reformed Christian identities that Dalit theology exposes. It does that by introducing critiques of Indian Christian theologians such as Aleaz and Nirmal who see such identities as cultural imperialism (political domination, commercial interests, and cultural superiority), and hence a distortion of the Gospel message.

The essay by Toulouse is a step forward in interfaith dialogue at an institutional level in Canada. It offers a rational for the undertaking by Emanuel College to educate Muslims wanting to perform hospital chaplaincy among adherents of their own faith tradition. The development is in keeping with a tradition of scholarship in Canada to understand those of another faith tradition as they wish to be understood.

The set of three essays introduced by David Goicechea represents a spectrum of ideas marking engagement of interdisciplinary reflections in philosophy and theology by members of the Brock Philosophical Society. Each essay has for its background the theme of violence. Each employs Kierkegaard as a resource for thinking through its own problematic in relation to violence, whether it be the sacrifice of Isaac, the virtues of the crucifix, or the overcoming of violence through a repetition of love and compassion. In a way, they anticipate the essay that follows.

Leo Stan’s essay considers Žižek’s reliance on Kierkegaard’s religiousness for his secularistic reading of Christian theology. The congeniality with Kierkegaard, Stan claims, is based on Žižek’s misplaced fondness of Protestant Christianity and misunderstanding of Kierkegaard, if not a dismissal of Kierkegaard’s edifying goals.

Sweet’s essay revisits a theme in Anglo-American philosophy of religion: the intelligibility of religious language. Its aim is simply to show that the many critics of religion, including the so-called New Atheists, have failed to recognize the complexity of particular religious beliefs and systems of religious belief.

The final essay, by George Willis Williams, III, considers irony as more than a rhetorical device in Kierkegaard’s thought. Without it there is no formation of genuine community as distinct form the crowd; thus it plays an essential role in matters of social justice and politics.

Onward, to the essays themselves.