The Kingdom of God is wherever the Triune God is worshipped as Lord. It exists beyond time and place, but breaks into our time and place wherever creation worships the Triune God as Lord. The local church, in its present time and geographical place, is the microcosm of the Kingdom of God. As such, the local church contains within it all the resources necessary for the Kingdom of God to be established. Therefore, the local church is called to lead creation to worship the Triune God as Lord. It does this by fulfilling three specific works as specified in Scripture: the work of evangelism; the work of discipleship and the work of reconciliation. The modern day church must start a revolution to discover afresh these works and become what Scripture describes as the ecclesia of the hodos: the local church extending the Kingdom of God. / Systematic Theology & Theological Ethics / M.Th. (Systematic Theology)

Text in German / The impulse for this research comes from the present crisis of the penitential practice within the Roman Catholic communities of Germany, where notwithstanding all pastoral efforts the practice of sacramental confession has dropped to almost nothing. The procedure adopted is based on the method of R. Zerfass. 1" step: An investigation on the present practice has been done with a previous research: 2nd step: The present research, in the first chapter deals with the New Testament origins of penance and the historical development up to the present time. An essential result attained is the insight that conversion (Mk 1,14 f.) does not consist of a message of doom but urges the audience to pursue the salvation of the reign of God. As a consequence the believer experiences an ethic motivation whereby he takes as orientation the rules of the kingdom of God. 3rd step: The sociological situation of the target group is the topic of chapter two. The study is based on the work of G. Schulze. The central point made by his analysis is the affirmation that people in contemporary society are basically experience orientated and that all opportunities and offers are assessed according to their experiential value. Because of the confusing oversupply of experiences and the avoidance of disappointments caused by unfulfilled expectations homogeneous groups (milieus) emerge. People, in search of experience orient themselves according to these experiences and shape them in their turn. In the realm (market) of experiences which cannot be controlled supply and demand come together. The supplier who do not follow the laws of the market is ousted because of failing to supply what is demanded. 4th step: In chapter 3 a practical theological theory is developed that present penitential crises is routed in a crises of faith. For this reason an updated pastoral approach to conversion needs to take as its starting point the liberation message of Jesus and at the same time to take into consideration the rules that govern the market, the contemporary segmentation of the milieu included. The final step will consist in a pastoral concretisation / Philosophy, Practical & Systematic Theology / D.Th. (Practical Theology)

The Kingdom of God is wherever the Triune God is worshipped as Lord. It exists beyond time and place, but breaks into our time and place wherever creation worships the Triune God as Lord. The local church, in its present time and geographical place, is the microcosm of the Kingdom of God. As such, the local church contains within it all the resources necessary for the Kingdom of God to be established. Therefore, the local church is called to lead creation to worship the Triune God as Lord. It does this by fulfilling three specific works as specified in Scripture: the work of evangelism; the work of discipleship and the work of reconciliation. The modern day church must start a revolution to discover afresh these works and become what Scripture describes as the ecclesia of the hodos: the local church extending the Kingdom of God. / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / M.Th. (Systematic Theology)

Text in German / The impulse for this research comes from the present crisis of the penitential practice within the Roman Catholic communities of Germany, where notwithstanding all pastoral efforts the practice of sacramental confession has dropped to almost nothing. The procedure adopted is based on the method of R. Zerfass. 1" step: An investigation on the present practice has been done with a previous research: 2nd step: The present research, in the first chapter deals with the New Testament origins of penance and the historical development up to the present time. An essential result attained is the insight that conversion (Mk 1,14 f.) does not consist of a message of doom but urges the audience to pursue the salvation of the reign of God. As a consequence the believer experiences an ethic motivation whereby he takes as orientation the rules of the kingdom of God. 3rd step: The sociological situation of the target group is the topic of chapter two. The study is based on the work of G. Schulze. The central point made by his analysis is the affirmation that people in contemporary society are basically experience orientated and that all opportunities and offers are assessed according to their experiential value. Because of the confusing oversupply of experiences and the avoidance of disappointments caused by unfulfilled expectations homogeneous groups (milieus) emerge. People, in search of experience orient themselves according to these experiences and shape them in their turn. In the realm (market) of experiences which cannot be controlled supply and demand come together. The supplier who do not follow the laws of the market is ousted because of failing to supply what is demanded. 4th step: In chapter 3 a practical theological theory is developed that present penitential crises is routed in a crises of faith. For this reason an updated pastoral approach to conversion needs to take as its starting point the liberation message of Jesus and at the same time to take into consideration the rules that govern the market, the contemporary segmentation of the milieu included. The final step will consist in a pastoral concretisation / Philosophy, Practical and Systematic Theology / D.Th. (Practical Theology)

This report analyzes the Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (Universal Church of the Kingdom of God)—a Brazilian neo-Pentecostal church—by its capacity to enchant everyday life in modern, disenchanted worlds. It provides a history of the church, a cultural biography of its founder, and a description of the church’s demonology and ritual life. It argues that through ritual performance, members come to embody the church’s discourse of biblical sacrifice. This process enchants their lives and sanctifies their participation in modern, disenchanted institutions such as late capitalism and medical science. It further argues that previous scholarship has interpreted neo-Pentecostal churches from an implicitly ethical perspective that is rooted in Western modernity. This perspective, in turn, has led to unwarranted dismissiveness toward church members’ self-reports of the empowerment they experience through their religious life. / text

O crescimento do pentecostalismo no mundo constitui uma das principais mudanças religiosas do Século XX e a América Latina possui um papel importante nessa expansão. Naquela região, houve uma acelerada redução na proporção de católicos e crescimento dos protestantes nas últimas décadas, com forte participação de igrejas pentecostais. Os pentecostais brasileiros diferem dos católicos em várias dimensões em relação às suas atitudes e visões do mundo, sendo no geral religiosamente mais ativos e mais conservadores em questões sociais como aborto, casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo, meios contraceptivos artificiais, sexo fora do casamento, divórcio e consumo de álcool; eles também são mais propensos a acreditar que os líderes religiosos devem ter influência na política. Nesta tese, contribuímos para o entendimento da expansão pentecostal no Brasil focando em uma das maiores denominações pentecostais, a Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus (IURD). Examinamos, em dois estudos, o impacto de duas estratégias principais de expansão da IURD, cobrindo um ramo ainda pouco explorado na literatura econômica sobre religião e procurando entender como cada uma delas contribuiu para a expansão dessa igreja desde sua fundação. No primeiro estudo, examinamos os impactos das redes de rádio e televisão ligadas à IURD (a Rede Aleluia e Record TV) sobre suas afiliações, explorando uma variação possivelmente exógena na qualidade do sinal daquelas redes devido aos acidentes geográficos entre as antenas transmissora e as áreas receptoras. Com dados da Anatel e modelos técnicos de densidade de sinal, analisamos os efeitos da cobertura das mídias nas áreas de ponderação do Censo Demográfico de 2010 (IBGE). Nossos resultados de benchmark mostram que a Rede Aleluia tem um impacto de cerca de 13% do número médio de afiliações no interior dos estados (fora das capitais e Regiões Metropolitanas), enquanto a Record TV tem um impacto geral de 26%. Esses efeitos são mais fortes para grupos que são descritos na literatura como mais propensos a frequentar a igreja. A robustez dos resultados é verificada com teste de placebo com uma rede de rádio não religiosa. Encontramos evidências de que a competição entre veículos de mídia pode ter um papel importante nos efeitos da mídia religiosa e da existência de complementaridade entre templos e mídias religiosas em áreas rurais. Além disso, encontramos efeito positivo da Rede Aleluia sobre empreendedorismo, impacto negativo da mídia religiosa sobre a fertilidade, o que é consistente com a posição da IURD sobre o aborto e o uso de métodos contraceptivos, e impacto positivo na proporção de votos para o Partido Republicano Brasileiro, com o qual a IURD possui uma forte ligação. No segundo estudo, estimamos o efeito da presença de templos da IURD sobre as afiliações. Exploramos a diferença no tempo de entrada e nos anos de permanência dos templos nos municípios brasileiros entre 1991 e 2010, com uma especificação de diferenças-em-diferenças e dados do CNPJ (Receita Federal) e dos Censos Demográficos (IBGE). A presença de templos da IURD aumenta os adeptos dessa denominação em 15%, comparando com a média da amostra, e esse efeito é devido ao interior dos estados. Nossos resultados também mostram que leva alguns anos para os templos da IURD começarem a ter impacto positivo depois que entram. Testamos a robustez de nossos resultados usando dados de outra fonte, a Relação Anual de Informações Sociais, e com um teste de falsificação no momento da entrada da IURD no município. / The growth of Pentecostalism in the world is one of the major religious changes of the 20th Century and Latin America plays an important role in this expansion. In that region, there has been an accelerated reduction in the proportion of Catholics and a Protestant growth in the last decades, with strong participation of Pentecostal churches. Brazilian Pentecostals differ from Catholics in various dimensions regarding their attitudes and views of the world, being generally more religiously observant and more conservative on social issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, artificial contraceptive methods, sex outside marriage, divorce and alcohol consumption; they are also more likely to believe that religious leaders should have influence in politics. In this thesis, we contribute to the understanding of the Pentecostal expansion in Brazil focusing on one of the largest Pentecostal denominations, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG). We have examined the impact of two major strategies of expansion of the UCKG, covering a branch still little explored in the economic literature on religion and trying to understand how each of them contributed to the expansion of this church since its foundation, in two studies. In the first study, we examined the impacts of the radio and television networks linked to UCKG (Aleluia Network and Record TV) on its affiliations, exploring a possibly exogenous variation in the signal quality of those networks due to geographical accidents between the transmitting antennas and the receiving areas. With data from Anatel and technical models of signal density, we analyzed the effects of media coverage on the weighting areas of the 2010 Demographic Census (IBGE). Our benchmark results show that Aleluia Network has an impact of about 13% of the average number of affiliations on the countryside (outside state capitals and Metropolitan Regions), while Record TV has an overall impact of 26%. These effects are stronger for groups who are described in the literature as more likely to attend church. The robustness of the results is verified with placebo test with a non-religious radio network. We find evidence that competition among media vehicles can play a significant role in the effects of religious media and evidence of complementarity between temples and religious media in rural areas. In addition, we find a positive effect of Aleluia Network on entrepreneurship, a negative impact of religious media on fertility, which is consistent with UCKG\'s position on abortion and the use of contraceptive methods, and a positive impact on the vote share of the Brazilian Republican Party, with which UCKG has a strong connection. In the second study, we estimated the effect of the presence of UCKG temples on affiliations. We explored the difference in time of entry and in the years of residence of UCKG temples in Brazilian municipalities between 1991 and 2010, with a specification of differences-in-differences on CNPJ (Federal Revenue Office) and Demographic Censuses (IBGE) data. The presence of temples of UCKG increases the adepts of this denomination by 15%, compared to the average of the sample, and these effects due to the countryside. Our results also show that it takes a few years for the UCKG temples to start having a positive impact after their entry. We tested the robustness of our results using data from another source, the Annual Social Information Report, and with a falsification test at the time of UCKG\'s entry into the municipality.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-29T14:27:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Sergio Blain.pdf: 2160462 bytes, checksum: 7793d21b6c2f73815ab5df9ec53ce907 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-02-24 / The aim of this work is to explain, based on the art of painting, the contribution of distinct peoples and their cultures (the Brazilian culture, in the present case) in building the kingdom of God among us. The mankind was raised in order to live in fraternal communion. The solidarity doctrine, which is consummated within the incarnation of the son, extends the will and the path of salvation. According to Paul it should have unit within the diversity of the Christian community. Anyone and every culture such as, Jews, Greeks, slaves, freemen, men and, women, can find a place in the Church. (Cf Gl 3,28) shows the contribution of the Catholic Church in forming the Brazilian thoughts, mainly the ones expressed by the firsts painters, sculptors, architects and, educators of Brazil. The Catholic Church also contributed to the fight for a progressive mentality of assimilation of different cultures (inculturation), based on the respect for ethical values, moral and artistic values of each ethnic group. The Catholic Church also tries to indicate that when the moral values of any culture are oriented to the common good, we can find all the elements of humanity necessaries to the deployment of respect and universal brotherhood, or as it was said before, the kingdom of God in the men life / O estudo demonstra, pela relação que estabelece entre teologia e pintura, a contribuição dos povos e suas culturas específicas, no caso a brasileira, para a construção do Reino de Deus entre nós. O homem foi criado para viver em comunhão fraterna. Na encarnação do Filho se consuma a doutrina solidária, estendendo a todos o agir e o caminho da salvação. Segundo Paulo, deve haver unidade na diversidade que deve ser clara na comunidade cristã. Na Igreja encontram lugar todos os homens e todas as culturas, judeus e gregos, escravos ou livres, homens ou mulheres. (Cf Gl 3,28) Procura deixar claro o contributo da Igreja na formação do pensamento brasileiro, principalmente no que tange a seus primeiros pintores, escultores, arquitetos e educadores. Também a luta por uma progressiva mentalidade de inculturação, direcionada ao respeito pelos valores éticos, morais e artísticos de cada etnia. Deixando claro que na própria forma de ser de cada povo, quando norteada para o bem, podem-se encontrar todos os elementos humanitários, para a implantação do respeito e da fraternidade universal, ou seja, o Reino de Deus na vida dos homens

Esta dissertação, de abordagem qualitativa, e situada no campo dos Estudos Culturais em Educação, analisou nas falas dos apresentadores de um artefato cultural da televisão, o programa The Love School, os temas mais discutidos por eles. Como primeira técnica da metodologia utilizada, esse recurso gerou a fonte de material empírico registrado no que nominei de caderno de transcrições. Para realizar esta investigação selecionei 24 (vinte e quatro) edições do programa entre o período de novembro de 2014 a abril de 2015. O casamento é o principal tema que orienta a pauta deste programa e faz uma aliança direta com os princípios que fundamentam a Igreja Universal do Reino de Deus. Quanto ao programa The Love School foi possível entender que a Universal desenvolveu uma nova forma de falar de religião fazendo uso de outras linguagens como a linguagem própria da televisão, pois esse novo produto da grade de programação da Record TV, pode ter dado início a uma nova sequencia de programas televangelizadores, que, nas versões mais tradicionais e mais religiosas, parecem monótonos e desinteressantes pelo uso da linguagem comum aos púlpitos das catedrais e pelos horários de exibição cansativos das madrugadas. A categoria da pedagogia cultural, como um conceito caro para o campo da educação, nesse artefato cultural, pode ser percebida com uma outra dinâmica que não apenas a de ensinar modos de ser e de viver, pois demostrou que, conjuntamente a isso, pode também apontar o contraexemplo de outras pedagogias culturais em outros artefatos culturais, dessa vez os do entretenimento comercial. Compreendi essa atuação do conceito nesse objeto pela introdução da cultura religiosa com origem na Igreja criticando a cultura profana de outros produtos da mídia. Essa mesma discursividade molda um modelo de casal que prioriza o casamento acima de qualquer problema, devendo superar o menor dos desafios para impedir uma separação, e que se inspira no homem e na mulher presentes no texto bíblico, no Antigo Testamento, inspiração que é vista no contexto da análise aqui empregada como um retrocesso para a vida real das mulheres. A ideia de retrocesso ou de backlash (Faludi, 2001) parece ser um elemento que adere facilmente à cultura religiosa da Universal, aliando-se à pedagogia cultural ensinada pelo The Love School. O backlash tem como característica operar como uma política cultural em forma de ciclos. Ciclicamente, a cultura parece nos fazer viver muitos momentos de intenso retrocesso (backlash), tanto por meio de determinados produtos da mídia quanto pelas reações de determinados grupos políticos nos impondo seus interesses. Consequentemente, pelas análises que aqui empreendi e por essas características assumidas pela IURD, penso que vivemos no Brasil contemporâneo um ciclo religioso de backlash (retrocesso) para as coisas da vida e para as relações amorosas, para dizer o mínimo. / This qualitative approach master‘s dissertation on Educational Cultural Studies has analyzed the lines of the presenters of a cultural artifact of television, The Love School show, and the subjects most discussed by them. As the first technique of the methodology used, this resource generated the source of empirical material registered in what I named ―The Transcription Notebook‖. For the research, I have selected 24 (twenty four) editions of the show from November, 2014 to April, 2015. Marriage is the central theme of the show‘s agenda which is directly related to the principles underlying the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Through The love school show it was possible to realize that the Universal Church has developed a new way of talking about religion, by making use of other languages, such as the proper language of television, since this new product offered by the Record TV channel may have initiated a sequence of new evangelizing shows, which tend to be monotonous and uninteresting in their most traditional and religious versions due to the use of a language common to the cathedrals‘ pulpits as well as the tiresome show times. Such cultural artifact allow us to understand the concept of cultural pedagogy category, dear to the field of education, as a different dynamic that does not only teach ways of being and living, but also show the counterexample of other cultural pedagogies in another cultural artifacts, such as the commercial entertainment. I have understood this concept in such object through the introduction of the religious culture originating in the Church that criticizes the unholy culture of media products. This same discourse frames a standard of couple who prioritize marriage above any problem so as to overcome challenges to prevent a separation, and who is inspired by the men and women described in the biblical text, the Old Testament. Such inspiration has been considered here as a backlash to the real life of women. The idea of a backlash (Faludi, 2001) seems to be an element that easily adheres to the religious culture of Universal Church, allied to the cultural pedagogy taught by The Love School; it characteristically operates as a cyclic cultural policy. And, cyclically, the culture seems to make us live several moments of intense regression both through certain media products and through the reactions of certain political groups imposing their interests. Hence, I believe the contemporary Brazil is living a religious cycle of backlash regarding life and love relationship issues to say the least.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2003. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 193-198).

Chapter 1 introduces the need for an updated study on the inheritance in the Pauline epistles, examines the history of research on this topic, and states the thesis of this dissertation. Then it explains the method that will be employed to examine the relevant inheritance texts and provides an overview of the dissertation. Chapter 2 argues that typology and intertextuality are significant for interpreting the inheritance in Paul. Thus it explains these hermeneutical concepts before moving on to an analysis of the pertinent texts. Chapter 3 contends that in Genesis to Chronicles the central understanding of the inheritance is the land of Canaan promised to Abraham and his descendants (e.g.Gen 15:3-5, 17:8; 21:10), the territory to which Israel sojourned and established a kingdom. Subsequently, chapter 4 displays that the Psalms and Prophets expand the inheritance to include the eschatological world (e.g., Ps 2; Isa 54, 65-66). When God's people enter their inheritance, David's royal descendent will reign over them forever (Ezek 36-37; cf. Dan 7). Chapter 5 demonstrates that the Second Temple literature, in line with the Psalms and Prophets, expands the inheritance to include the whole world (e.g., Sir 44:21; Jub. 22:14, 32:19). This is the place to which God's people will be resurrected to dwell (e.g., 4 Ezra 7) and over which Messiah will reign (e.g., 1 En. 51:1-5; 1QHª 14:29-31). Chapter 6 argues that Paul's interpretation of the inheritance in Galatians follows that of the Old Testament and Second Temple literature, for he views this theme to be the renewed world (3:15-29; 4:21-31) where God will establish his lasting monarchy (4:1-7). Paul also suggests that the Spirit will see to it that believers receive their future inheritance (4:1-7). Chapter 7 then examines the pertinent passages in Romans and other Pauline texts, confirming the observations about the inheritance in Galatians. Chapter 8 summarizes the findings of each chapter and affirms the thesis of this dissertation.