The study maps the journey of Milan Machovec from Christianity to Marxism and on to the Marxist-Christian dialogue which Milan Machovec personified in the 1960’s. In addition to the usual sources the study draws on unfamiliar juvenile texts, minor contributions in press and on his two dissertations at Charles University. – These sources show that his conception of socialism prior to the Communist coup and his first response to it did not conform to the ideology of the new regime. Machovec rejected the role of “martyr for freedom” because he understood his life as a task. He joined the Communist party and adopted the idiom of the time, but continued to strive for joining socialist ideals with the democratic heritage of Masaryk’s republic as even Zdeněk Nejedlý promised. – These early texts also show that Machovec was concerned with the issues he later elaborated already as graduate student. They included freedom, humanity, morality, the meaning of the human lot, the relation of the individual and the whole, sacrifice, the role of religion in society, the role of personality in history and society, ways of working with historic material in relation to pressing problems. – While Machovec may have lost the religious faith of his youth he remained ever loyal to Masaryk’s ideals of humanity, especially the idea that the task of humans is growth to more mature humanity. Masaryk’s bequest never ceased to be a tangent of Machovec’s thought, helping to lay the ground rules by which he moderated the dialogue of Christians and Marxists. The task of the dialogue was not to be persuasion but rather grasping of a common task: Marxists and Christians could meet, each in his way, on the ground of this Masaryk-given task.
The article is prefaces by a biographical note by Jan Zouhar, Remembering Jaroslav Šabata. In the article itself Šabata, “in the outer margins of Czesław Miłosz’s Theological Tract”, offers a profoundly personal confession of lived dynamics of faith, be it Christian or Communist. He understands faith as a stance of willingness to measure oneself by more than personal interest. He speaks of an unconditional trust which makes for a historical catharsis. Rejecting neither the Communist nor the Christian ideal, heraises them to the level of a transformation of historical subjectivity intensified by the struggle for social transformation. Tus his confession transcends the seeming chasm between Christian and communist faith.
The study examines religious motivation in the believers’ attitudes. It seeks to identify contexts in which religious motivation is present or accentuated by the influence of believers’ other social characteristics (religion, locality, age, gender). Social aspect of religion determines, to some extent, social relations, ethical norms, and life goals (intentional strategies, unconscious actions). Study seeks to answer the question to what extent a person’s life is determined by his or her religious preferences and to what extent the faith is involved in the of everyday life. The issue has been studied in traditional and new Christian groups present in the Czech Republic and in South Moravian localities with different historical, cultural, and social development. The research shows that several influences play a role in shaping the views and choices of believers.
By the end of spring 1468, within just a few months of one another, the anti-Ottoman crusade had suffered two grievous losses, both unavoidable or, at least, expected. In mid-January, Skanderbeg passed away. With the exception of a couple of fortresses and the Venetian possessions, Albania came under Ottoman rule. The difficult Hungarian-Ottoman negotiations of February-April 1468 led to the conclusion of a two-year truce between King Matthias Corvinus and Sultan Mehmed II (twice prolonged, in 1470 and in 1472). John Hunyadi’s soon left on his other crusade, against the heretic king of Bohemia, George Podiebrad, whom he accused, like his fellow crusader leaguer of 1463, Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, of also conspiring with the Turk. The paper explores - based on archival material - the Hungarian and Wallachian background that led to this change in the policy of Matthias Corvinus, who had been prepared to attack the Turks, not the realm of Bohemia, in mid-1467. and Alexandru Simon.
The Oromo nationalism becomes one of the most sensitive issues within Ethiopian studies or those groups of social scientists dealing with socio-political development of contemporary Ethiopia. On one hand, especially Oromo authors from the diaspora are very active in redefining and reinventing of Ethiopia’s history, on the other hand, mainly Western social scientist tend to analyze Ethiopia’s “ethnic problem” in broader perspectives. The aim of this study is to present some arguments which modify perceptions on the Oromio nationalism as a homogeneous movement heading to independent Oromia. According to my own fieldwork and by studying contemporary scholarly works I came to a conclusion that there are many strategies within Ethiopia which the Oromo people use in order to co-exist with other ethnic groups in Ethiopia and that the will to secede is rather minor phenomenon. Reasons can be found in a complex nature of the Oromo society where many other variables besides ethnicity come into discussion with religion being probably the most important one. That is why I have used examples from both Muslim Oromos as well as Christian Oromos to support my arguments.
The Oromo nationalism becomes one of the most sensitive issues within Ethiopian studies or those groups of social scientists dealing with socio-political development of contemporary Ethiopia. On one hand, especially Oromo authors from the diaspora are very active in redefining and reinventing of Ethiopia’s history, on the other hand, mainly Western social scientist tend to analyze Ethiopia’s “ethnic problem” in broader perspectives. The aim of this study is to present some arguments which modify perceptions on the Oromio nationalism as a homogeneous movement heading to independent Oromia. According to my own fieldwork and by studying contemporary scholarly works I came to a conclusion that there are many strategies within Ethiopia which the Oromo people use in order to co-exist with other ethnic groups in Ethiopia and that the will to secede is rather minor phenomenon. Reasons can be found in a complex nature of the Oromo society where many other variables besides ethnicity come into discussion with religion being probably the most important one. That is why I have used examples from both Muslim Oromos as well as Christian Oromos to support my arguments.
This contribution analyzes the status and life conditions to which the Aramaic Christians of Iraq, as well as the Iraqi Jews, were exposed to in Iraq; both groups being considered Dhimmis (Protected) by the Muslim majority of the country. It also comments on the temporary social emancipation instituted after the introduction of the civil rights law in 1959, a policy which continued through the 1970s, and on the marginalization strategies employed by the state authorities on members of the Christian community at school and in their daily life. The Aramaic Christian women in particular, due to an internal patriarchal code of behavior based on Christian tradition, were exposed to heavy oppression. The paper concludes by observing that in the years following the American invasion (2003), the threats to the existence of the religious minorities in Iraq were intensified to an even greater extent. The goal of uprooting the Christians in Iraq was pursued in an even more radical way than the persecution and expulsion of the Iraqi Jews in the period from 1941 to 1951.