Transformation
of the Church
~ A Database of Historical and Current Data on the
Strategic Partnerships &
Interlocking
Directorates of Organizations in the Global Ecumenical
Movement
The Association of Theological Schools:
Intersection of Religion, Science and Cloning
The devolution of strategic partnerships:
• North Park Theological
Seminary's LINKS page: NPTS link to Association of Chicago Theological
Schools/ACTS [all are ATS members]
• Association of Chicago
Theological Schools’ “institutions related to ACTS”
• “ACTS Cooperating
Institutions”:
Center for Advanced Study in Religion and
Science / Templeton Prize
Seminary Consortium for Urban
Pastoral Education / City Transformation
• Center for Advanced
Study in Religion and Science renamed
the Zygon Center for Religion and
Science
• The Molecular Logos /
Cloning Jesus - Man as God: The first human cloning
company
• “Cloning: As
Quintessential Human Act” by ATS's Phillip Hefner
• Ecumene: A Meeting
Place for World Religions and Meta-Religion's Spiritual
Diversity
North Park
Theological Seminary [ATS
member]
…Seminary
Affiliations
Top of
List:
• The Association of
Chicago Theological Schools/ACTS -
Consortium of 12 Chicago-area theological schools
Note: The NPTS LINKS page is maintained by Eric Pement who is “currently attending North Park Theological Seminary”:
‘Please send any comments about or
problems with this site to pemente@northpark.edu
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This
site is maintained by Eric Pement.
Last
updated: June 14, 2001
Eric Pement is president and
board member of Evangelical Ministries to New Religions [EMNR].
See
http://www.emnr.org/our_board.html
Pement and EMNR are
Facilitators of the Lausanne
Consultation.
The Association of Chicago Theological
Schools
The Association of Chicago Theological Schools, known as ACTS, was formed
in 1984 by 12 theological schools
located in the Chicago area to provide means for cooperation among the member
institutions in the areas of student cross-registration, library access and
acquisitions, interchange among faculty members in the disciplines of
theological education, and communications between the schools. Prior to 1984,
these schools had had many years of successful ecumenical cooperation,
primarily through the Chicago Cluster of
Theological Schools, the Chicago Theological Institute, and the Library
Council. In addition to ACTS, various agreements between two or more
institutions further cooperation on the basis of geographic proximity or an
interest in specific programs (see Clusters and
Cooperative Activities).
All 11 schools
that currently make up ACTS are accredited members of the Association of
Theological Schools in the United States and Canada. Each is affiliated with or sponsored by a denomination, a
diocese, a religious organization, or several religious orders. Each offers
professional degree programs for ministry at the master's and doctoral levels,
and most also offer other academic degrees. All offer a variety of opportunities
for continuing education for clergy and lay leaders, as well as conferences, lectures, and other
programs of interest to a wider public.
Together, the schools within ACTS offer a rich network of
resources for theological education, making the association one of the
outstanding centers of theological education in the world. Available to the
approximately 3,000 students currently enrolled at its member schools is a
faculty of more than 350… In addition, ACTS makes it possible for students and
faculty to pursue their work, study, and reflection in interaction with people from
many different cultural and theological traditions.
Students in ACTS schools also have access to other
resources pertinent to theological education through institutions
related to ACTS [see below]. Many also
draw on the vast resources of other institutions of higher education and the numerous religious organizations
and agencies in the Chicago area related to one or more of the institutions in
ACTS.
ACTS Member
Schools:
Catholic Theological Union
[ATS
member]
Chicago Theological Seminary
[ATS
member]
Garrett-Evangelical Theological
Seminary [ATS member]
Lutheran School of Theology at
Chicago [ATS member]
McCormick Theological Seminary
[ATS
member]
Meadville/Lombard Theological
School [ATS member]
Mundelein Seminary [ATS
member]
North Park Theological
Seminary [ATS
member]
Northern Baptist Theological
Seminary [ATS member]
Seabury-Western Theological
Seminary [ATS member]
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
[ATS
member]
Again we see that Eric Pement
maintains this web page [see bottom of the page].
Important note: By
clicking on the link >>> institutions
related to ACTS <<<
[as found on the ACTS
web page above] the reader arrives at:
Center for
Advanced Study in Religion and Science
The Center for Advanced Study in
Religion and Science (CASIRAS) is an
independent corporation, consisting of scientists and theologians. Although
it is national in scope, it concentrates a number of its activities, as well as
its administrative office, in Hyde Park and has developed an effective working relationship with
neighboring theological schools. The founder was Ralph Wendell Burhoe,
professor emeritus at Meadville/Lombard Theological School [ATS member] until
his death in 1997 and recipient
of the 1980 Templeton Award for Progress in
Religion. CASIRAS's activities are held chiefly in cooperation with
the Zygon Center for Religion and Science (ZCRS) at
LSTC, of which it is a cofounder. For
information about ZCRS, see the current catalog of LSTC.
CASIRAS and ZCRS seek to achieve a greater integration
between the scientific and religious models or images concerning the nature,
destiny, and moral behavior of humans.
Dimensions of CASIRAS's work include seminars, courses, conferences, symposia,
and guided research as well as the publication of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.
In cooperation with LSTC and M/L, CASIRAS offers the advanced Seminar in
Religion and Science (T-672) each year, usually in the spring quarter.
For further information contact
Philip Hefner, LSTC [Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago - ATS
member]… [emphasis added]
Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education
See: The Association of Theological
Schools and City Transformation***
The Chicago Center for Religion
and Science [Homepage]
Note found on CCRS web site about
name/web site change:
Chicago Center for Religion
and Science
has changed its name to
Zygon Center for Religion and
Science
…The Center is dedicated to relating religious traditions
and scientific knowledge in order to gain insight into the origins, nature,
and future of humans and their environment, and to realize the common goal of a world
in which love, justice, and ecologically responsible styles of living prevail.
The purpose is to provide a place of research and discussion between scientists, theologians,
and other scholars on the most basic issues pertaining to:
* how we understand the world in which we
live and our place in that world,
* how traditional concerns and beliefs of
religion can be related to scientific understandings,
and
* how the joint reflection of scientists,
theologians, and other scholars can contribute to the welfare of the human
community.
CASIRAS, founded by Ralph Wendell
Burhoe, Sanborn Brown, Hudson Hoaglund, and others, is a continuation of the work of the Committee
on Science and Human Values, of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
of which Burhoe was the first full-time executive officer. This committee
included George Wald (biology), Theodosius Dobzhansky (genetics), Kirtley Mather
(geology), Hudson Hoaglund (neurosciences), Harlow Shapley (astronomy, president
of the Academy) and others. CCRS thus
represents the confluence of traditional religion, in LSTC, and contemporary secular science, in
CASIRAS.
Philip Hefner (Professor of
Systematic Theology at LSTC) is Director of the Center; Thomas L. Gilbert
(retired from a career in theoretical physics and environmental research at
Argonne National Laboratory and now Adjunct Professor of Religion and
Science--"Resident Scientist"--at LSTC) is Epic of Creation Project
Director. The Center's two Senior Associates are Ralph Wendell Burhoe (Meadville/Lombard
Theological School [ATS member], Emeritus, and
1980 recipient of the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion) and Langdon
Gilkey (University of Chicago, Emeritus, and Georgetown). The Center's
activities are fashioned largely by the Center Associates. The overall program
of the Center includes research, teaching, and outreach. Solomon Katz is
president of CASIRAS and of the CCRS board; he is Professor of Anthropology at
the University of Pennsylvania.
[CCRS articles focus on cloning,
bio-ethics, theology and common ground:]
Ingrid Shafer's reflections on the August
1996 Mars discoveries
Philip Hefner's reflections on the February
1997 announcement of the cloned lamb
Ingrid Shafer's reflections on the February
1997 announcement of the cloned lamb
Philip Hefner's statement on cloning for the
President's Bio-ethics Commission
CCRS Discussion Seminars: An Ethical,
Effective Medical System
CCRS Discussion Seminars: Theology and the
Common Ground
AGNUS
DEI : YHWH = ATGC : BIO LOGOS
Lamb of God :
Yahweh = DNA : Molecular Logos
See
picture of clone: http://www.usao.edu/~facshaferi/clone5c.jpg
ATGC = alphabet of the genetic
language representing the 4 chemicals of DNA.
DNA stores information in
the form of four chemicals: "A" (adenine), "T" (thymine), "G" (guanine) and "C"
(cytosine).
About the Human Genome
Project
What's
a genome? And why is it important?
· A genome is all the DNA in an
organism, including its genes. Genes carry information for making all the
proteins required by all organisms. These proteins determine, among other
things, how the organism looks, how well its body metabolizes food or fights
infection, and sometimes even how it behaves.
· DNA is made up of four similar chemicals
(called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G) that are repeated millions or
billions of times throughout a genome. The human genome, for example, has 3
billion pairs of bases.
· The particular order of As, Ts, Cs, and
Gs is extremely important. The order underlies all of life's diversity, even
dictating whether an organism is human or another species such as yeast, rice,
or fruit fly, all of which have their own genomes and are themselves the focus
of genome projects. Because all organisms are related through similarities in
DNA sequences, insights gained from nonhuman genomes often lead to new knowledge
about human biology.
Note:
Concealed within genetics research is man’s presumption to act as God through
the work of co-evolution — the perceived capability of man to design himself and
his descendants. The cloning of Dolly the sheep in 1996 was considered by modern
gnostics to be the “Molecular Logos,” comparing the white sheep
to Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. One bioethicist stated that the cloning of
Dolly elicited in him the idea of cloning Jesus from a drop of blood from the
cross.
The
cloning of Dolly occurred at Geron Biomed, the commercial arm of
the
Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, which is also the site of a very
famous Knights Templar shrine, the Rosslyn
Chapel.
The following is probably a hoax since it's source was CA Berkeley and the author/student requested that donations for the project be sent to a PO Box. However, it is likely there was some truth to the scheme, since the source for the cloning technique was Roslin Institute in Scotland which is involved in genetically engineering a false Christ for false Second Coming. See: The Merovingian Dynasty: Identity of the False Christ
See: THE SECOND COMING PROJECT
The Second Coming Project is a not-for-profit organization
devoted to bringing about the Second Coming of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, as
prophesied in the Bible, in time for the 2,000th anniversary of his birth. Our
intention is to clone Jesus, utilizing techniques pioneered at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, by
taking an incorrupt cell from one of the many Holy Relics of Jesus' blood and
body that are preserved in churches throughout the world, extracting its DNA,
and inserting into an unfertilized human egg (oocyte), through the now-proven
biological process called nuclear transfer. The fertilized egg, now the
zygote of Jesus Christ, will be implanted into the womb of a young
virginal woman (who has volunteered of her own accord), who will then bring the
baby Jesus to term in a second Virgin Birth.
If all goes according to
plan, the birth will take place on December 25, 2001, thus making Anno Domini
2001 into Anno Domini Novi 1, and all calendrical calculations will begin anew.
How Can This Be Possible?
a.
Modern cloning technology enables us to clone any large mammal - including
humans - using just a single cell from an adult specimen.
b. Throughout the Christian world are churches that contain Holy Relics of
Jesus' body: his blood, his hair, his foreskin. Unless every single one of these
relics is a fake, this means that cells from Jesus' body still survive to this
day.
c. We are already making preparations to obtain a portion of one of these
relics, extract the DNA from one of its cells, and use it to clone Jesus.
No longer can we rely on hope and prayer, waiting around futilely for Jesus to return. We have the technology to bring him back right now: there is no reason, moral, legal or Biblical, not to take advantage of it.
IN ORDER TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM SIN, WE MUST CLONE JESUS TO INITIATE THE SECOND COMING OF THE CHRIST.
The Second Coming Project is soliciting contributions and donations to help us is our quest. Time is short! We must have a fertilized Jesus zygote no later than April of 2001 if Baby Jesus is to come to term on the predicted date. Please send all contributions to:
The
Second Coming Project
P.O. Box 295
Berkeley, CA 94701
See:
First Human Embryo Cloned**
“Considering the
sheep/shepherd metaphors in the Bible along with the Hermetic/Masonic axiom ‘as
above, so below’ and also the significance placed on ‘sacred’ geometry that a
mathematical science like DNA must involve, cloning seems a natural pursuit for
modern-day alchemical Knights Templar.” [Chey Simonton]
“Many of biotechnology's
specific products and areas of research are aimed at creating new forms in
reality---new species--- by asexual means, that reflect esoteric doctrine, such
as Rosicrucian alchemical precepts as androgyny and man’s transcendence of all
moral absolutes and even physical fixity; perfectibility as preached by the
Cathari; and Valentinian gnosticism’s teaching regarding man's return into
the ‘one’ via gnosis and enlightenment. All of these are part of the same
centuries’ old gnostic streams. The esoteric goal of the ‘new world order’ is a
contra-Genesis anti-civilization whose emblem is a gnostic garden of Eden in
which man is perfect and incorruptible. Some of the newest technologies, such as
organ farming using totipotent stem cells of human embryos are aimed at
immortality, at least for the few.” [Suzanne Rini, author, Beyond
Abortion: A Chronicle of Fetal Experimentation]
CLONAID – The first
human cloning company
RAËL
-- the founder of a religious organization called the Raelian Movement which
claims that life on earth was created scientifically in laboratories by
extraterrestrials whose name (ELOHIM) is found in the Hebrew Bible and was
mistranslated by the word “God”, and which also claims that Jesus'
resurrection was, in fact, a cloning performed by the ELOHIM -- announced
today that he and a group of investors have set up a company named Valiant
Venture Ltd which will offer a service called CLONAID® to provide assistance to
would be parents willing to have a child cloned from one of them. This service
offers a fantastic opportunity to parents with fertility problems or homosexual
couples to have a child cloned from one of them.
The
Bahamas-based Company plans to build a laboratory in a country where human
cloning is not illegal and will offer its services to wealthy parents
worldwide. In a first phase, CLONAID® will subcontract existing laboratories
to perform the cloning. The company may also sponsor American laboratories
working on human cloning and whose government subsidies have been cut by
President Clinton.
CLONAID®
will charge as low as $200,000 US for its cloning services. The
recent cloning of the sheep “Dolly” in Scotland has proven that the technology
is now available to complete the operation successfully.
CLONAID®'s
Scientific Director, the French scientist Dr. Brigitte Boisselier-Ph.D., sees no
ethical problems with the procedure. “Who, today, would be scandalized to the
idea of bringing back to life a 10-month old child who died accidentally? The
technology allows it, the parents desire it, and I don’t see any ethical
problems….” She said.
CLONAID®
will also offer a service called INSURACLONE® which, for a $50,000 fee,
will provide the sampling and safe storage of cells from a living child or
from a beloved person in order to create a clone if the child dies of an
incurable disease or through an accident. In the case of a genetic disease,
the cells will be preserved until science can genetically repair it before
recreating the child (or an
adult).
CLONAID®,
the first company in the world to offer human cloning, expects to have over a
million customers worldwide interested in its services as well as many
laboratories to seek partnership with in this venture.
RAËL
said: “Cloning will enable mankind to reach
eternal life. The next step, like the ELOHIM with their 25,000 years of
scientific advance, will be to directly clone an
adult person without having to go through the growth process and to
transfer memory and personality in this person. Then, we wake up after death in
a brand new body just like after a good night sleep!”
IN MEMORIAM: Karl Schmitz-Moormann
IN MEMORIAM: Ralph Wendell Burhoe
LINKS TO RELEVANT SITES
STAR ISLAND--Images from the annual Religion and Science
Conference:
CHICAGO CENTER FOR RELIGION
AND SCIENCE
Cloning: As
Quintessential Human Act
By Philip
Hefner
Note: Author Hefner is director
of CCRS based at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago [ATS
member].
[ Philip Hefner's
statement on cloning for the President's Bio-ethics Commission
]
Cloning reveals
the human situation today.
The recent appearance of Dolly,
the cloned sheep, as well as both the reports and the debate about cloning
humans, provide us glimpses into the
quintessential character of the human situation today. We are created co-creators (some will
say created by God, others, by nature): creatures of nature who themselves
intentionally enter into the process of creating nature in startling ways. We
face even the prospect of creating ourselves, in ways that are startling and
troubling.
The significance of this
revelation:
(1) The character of the cloners.
What is the significance of
cloning as revelation of the human situation? In the first place, the scientific
knowledge that underlies cloning and the technological ability to clone are no
more and no less morally charged than is our basic human nature itself. Cloning is neither unnatural or
bizarre. Rather, it is in principle an unsurprising exemplification of what
we have known for a long time about ourselves. A creature that can, through
genetic engineering, totally rearrange the life-forms that constitute our
agricultural enterprises could also, almost predictably, be expected to learn
eventually how to make itself. The most significant revelation deriving from
Dolly will prove to be what it tells us about the cloners, ourselves. In cloning, we are in fact addressing
ourselves, and it is about ourselves that we have the greatest questions. We
often talk as if to clone is "playing God," when in fact, it is to playing the
role of human co-creators, and we have no clear ideas about what that
entails. A salutary place to begin would be to ask : What sorts of persons ought
to be allowed to control the cloning process? What character and what set of
virtues would we want cloners to possess?
(2) Cloned humans are real persons.
The life we engineer in the laboratory is really
life. Inasmuch as the cloner of humans is
itself a natural creature, cloning must
be considered to be a process of nature. As such, cloning humans would
finally be more like nature's process of creating identical twins than some
Frankenstein horror story. A cloned person would grow and develop through the
fundamental processes that govern the development of every other person: a
genotype giving rise to a phenotype, a person emerging through the interaction
with physical environment and culture. Parenting and schooling would continue to
be critical in the development of a personal identity, since no human being can
survive by genes alone. Those of us who
believe that God started this whole process in creation and sustains it from
day to day would conclude that this
cloned person is, like the rest of us, in the image of God and possesses a
soul (given that there are several different theological notions of what it
means to have a soul)…
[emphasis added.
Article continued on CCRS web site.]
Include:
AAAS Program of Dialogue Between
Science and Religion (DBSR)
American Scientific Affiliation
(ASA)
Boston Theological Institute:
Religion and Science Program
Center for the Study of Values in
Public Life
Center for Theology and the
Natural Sciences
Counterbalance: Integration
of Science and Religion
Discover Magazine: Online
Edition
European Society for the Study of
Science and Theology
Global Brain / Superorganism
Global Ethic Center
Global Ethic Foundation
Journal of Memetics: Evolutionary
Models of Information Transmission
Institute for Theological
Encounter with Science & Technology
Institute on Religion in an Age of
Science
John Templeton Foundation
http://www.templeton.org/
Pascal Centre for Advanced Studies
in Faith and Science
Principia Cybernetica Web
Science and Religion at Southeast
Missouri State University
Science and Christianity - Allies
or Enemies?
Science and Spirit Resources
Star course
Teilhard de
Chardin
The Vatican Observatory
Ultimate Reality and Meaning:
International Society and Journal
This site created and maintained
by Ingrid H. Shafer,
Philosophy and
Religion, Interdisciplinary Studies,
University of
Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
Last
updated 5 April 1999
Copyright ©
1997-1999 Ingrid H. Shafer
Chicago Center
for Religion and Science
Note found on CCRS web site about
name change:
Chicago Center
for Religion and Science has changed its name to Zygon Center for Religion and Science
Be sure to visit our new domain at
http://zygoncenter.org/
Note: The Zygon Center web site
is under construction while the
transition is being made from the Chicago Center, but the information found on
both web sites represents the thinking of this merged entity––Chicago Center/Zygon
Center.
Note the Flash/cultic images
after web site has loaded.
Zygon Center for Religion and
Science
Introduction
to the Zygon Center for Religion and Science
The
Parliament of the World's Religions, Cape Town, 1999:
a
Pictorial Chronicle
http://zygoncenter.org/parliament99/
Note: a single link from the
Parliament of the World Religions links to:
Ecumene: A
Meeting Place for World Religions
http://www.ecumene.org/
For this domain I have
deliberately chosen the name ECUMENE, evoking the image of a house or household,
since it neatly links several major aspects of human life that can help or
obstruct the building of a global
community: Ecology, Economics, Ethics, and Religion. The term economy" is
derived from the Greek word OIKONOMIA (management of the houshold or
stewardship). OIKONOMIA contains the word OIKOS (inhabited house) which also gives us the term "ecumenical" --
pertaining to the OIKOUMENE, the inhabited earth or earth household as well as
the terms "ecology" and "ecological" -- dealing with the relationships of living
organisms and their environment. The notions "household" and "stewardship"
contain implicitly the expectation of human kinship and mutually beneficial
exchange of goods and services.
The ECUMENE domain provides cyber-homes for
organizations dedicated to bridging the ideological boundaries that divide
humanity and have been used for millennia to rationalize
suspicion, proselytism,
hatred, aggression, and warfare. The
Internet is giving us the opportunity both to focus on what human beings
have in common and to discover, come to respect, and celebrate our many faces
and varied ways. People from all over
the world can now collaborate on countless projects to "build the earth," in the
words of Teilhard de Chardin. Knowledge can be shared across borders and all
can be simultaneously learners and teachers. From the perspective of cyberspace
the world of communication and human relationships is as much one as the
physical earth is when viewed from outer space. But unity does not mean uniformity and
genuine globalization does not mean loss of what is best in a culture's
tradition; it means enrichment, healing,
cross-fertilization, and growth. It means that all human beings can finally begin to
see themselves as members of one
big, sprawling, diverse, noisy, argumentative, but ultimatly caring and mutually supportive
family.
[The following letter posted on
the Ecumene web site was written in 1974 by Ingrid Shafer, who maintains the Zygon
Center web site.]
Planting Seeds of Loving
Kindness:
A Meta
Religion
to bridge chasms and celebrate creative
spiritual diversity
Ingrid Shafer 1974
Date: Fri, 22 Aug
1997 01:48:39 -0500
Sender:
The Global Ethic Project
<G-ETHIC@VM.TEMPLE.EDU>
From: Ingrid
Shafer <ihs@IONET.NET>
Subject:
meta-religion
Dear Vatican2ites and G-Ethicists:
I am digging through old
boxes. The following draft comes from a 1974 layer, an especially painful
period of my life. It seems relevant to the concerns of both lists.
Besides, it's been buried for 23 years!
The time has come for a new religion--not to
supplant or replace the religions of old, but to connect, complete, and complement
them. The time is ripe for a new faith--a faith without a church,
without an anointed priesthood, without offerings and buildings and material
trappings, without all the symbols of wealth and power which have polluted the
waters of religious intention since times immemorial. This new faith transcends all religions by
accepting their partial validity while denying that there is any One True Path
or exclusive mode of salvation. This new faith can be followed by adherents
of all religions and none, simply by appealing to their own basic tenets of love
and mutual cooperation. It demands
of them only a deepening of their commitment to the highest ideals of their
particular faith (in the broadest sense
to include secular humanism, for example) and the willingness to accept truth both as having
a transcendent ground and as an organic, dynamic function of space and time…
There are no church services, no sacraments, no
sermons, no specific commandments--apart
from the insistence on leading our lives in the spirit of truth and love, and on
treating others fairly, as equals, as person worthy of respect, the way we would
want them to deal with us. There are no prayers for personal gain or
miraculous intercession into the inexorable workings of nature. The only prayer wich [sic] followers
might find helpful is a quick thought which requires no particular bodily
attitude or sacred environment: "Divine
source of love and truth, be my guide through darkness and confusion."
This prayer should be repeated as many times during the day as opportunities for
rash and unloving actions arise. The thought alone might stop the lying
word, the destructive act, the vengeful plot…
Peace, Ingrid …
Posted
31 December 1998
Last
revised 17 September, 2000
[emphasis
added]
Transformation of the Church
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