CME Stirling workshop, spring 2009
March 7th, 2009
A workshop was held at the University of Stirling’s School of Languages, Cultures and Religions on 6. February 2009. Individuals working in a variety of ways on the general topic of ‘Christians in the Middle East’ participated. The CME network aims to facilitate cross-disciplinary connections in study of the period between the late 18th century and the contemporary era, and this first event clearly fulfilled this aim. Participants were invited to consider a wide range of topics, including:
- local and other Christians
- ecclesial formations
- ecumenical structures
- mission studies
- gender understandings
- social and political engagement
- understandings of categories such as ‘religion’, ‘Christianity’/’Islam’ etc.
- colonial and postcolonial history
- the context of global Christianity
- communal relations/’interfaith’ dialogue
- etc.
The following individuals presented:
- Fiona McCallum (Integration Strategies Towards Christians in the Middle East: the Syrian and Jordanian Case Studies)
- Noriko Sato (Memory and Political Identity of Syrian Orthodox Christians in Syria)
- Will Stalder (Palestinian Christian Hermeneutics of the Old Testament)
- Julia Droeber (Closing the gender gap: Christian and Muslim women in Jordan)
- Elizabeth Iskander (Coptic Media Spaces)
- Alex Henley (The politics of clerical leadership in Lebanon)
- John Bradley (The Catholic Church in Lebanon)
- Michael Marten (Napoleon, Antonius, Said: modernity and (rewriting) western missions to the Middle East)
- Julia Hauser (“Jostling in the Vineyard of the Lord”: The Impact of Missionary Pluralism on the Pedagogical Mission of the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses in Beirut)
- Christine Lindner (Re-examining the Use of Religion as a Term for Identity in Ottoman Syria)
Warm thanks to all the participants for stimulating and energising papers.
The original Call for Papers can be downloaded here (PDF file).
