Böcker av Gerald Grudzen

Burying the Sword: Counteracting Jihadism with Interfaith EducationThis book analyzes the historical and political context in which various forms of violent extremism (jihadism) have emerged in the Middle East, Europe, and in Africa since 9/11/2001. The growth of the jihadism can be attributed in part to the oppressive regimes of the Middle East which have curtailed the democratic impulses of their youth. Alternative youth movements such as we saw in the Arab Spring can serve as a source of inspiration and model for renewal of these regions. The book also analyzes the role that technology can play in organizing future youth movements and serve as part of an interfaith educational program that has already been initiated in Kenya. New models of interfaith education in public and private schools throughout Africa are needed to counteract the growth of extremist ideologies among the youth of this region.

Spirituality and Science: Greek, Judaeo-Christian and Islamic Perspectives shows that the historical origins of Western science lie in the medieval synthesis of Greek science and philosophy with the faith traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This synthesis is most evident in medieval medicine where the synergies of Greek philosophy and Greek science are most evident. The first such Western synthesis of medieval medicine took place in the eleventh cenury at the monastery of Monte Cassino when Constantine the African translated, for the first time, Arabic medical manuscripts into Latin. These manuscripts became the core of the first medical curriculum in the West called the Articella and formed the foundation for the first Western medical curriculum in Salerno. Other translations of Arabic science continued over the next century forming the basis for the medieval scientific curriculum in Astronomy, Chemistry, Surgery and Pharmacology. In the Golden Age of Islamic culture found in the Eastern and Western Caliphates centered in Baghdad and Cordoba during the ninth and tenth centuries, we find a great flowering of scientic studies. A synthesis occurred of Greek, Syriac and Arabic scientific insights and methods. These scientists and philosophers elaborated the rational implications of both faith and science. This harmony of the three pillars of medieval society, faith, philosophy and science, continued well into the medieval era in both the Islamic and Christian worlds and continued to be the case well into the Renaissance era in Western Europe. This book was written jointly by Christian and Islamic philosophers; it shows that Christianity and Islam played a key role in bridging the world of Greek philosophy and science with the Arabic and European intellectual traditions. This collaboration proved vital to the development of sicence in the medieval universities and the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth and seventeetnth

The Catholic Church has a tradition of bridge-building, one founded on Christ and that began with the Apostle St. John and the convert St. Paul. It helped bridge the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman worlds. Later, it helped civilize the tribes that overran Europe. Limits appeared in the Church's bridge-building ability when Europe was confronted with Islam, and later with the secular mentality that arose in Western Europe, as well as in its encounters with China, India, and Africa.Steps Toward Vatican III examines the present dilemmas facing the Church and humanity in an age of globalization that daily brings people of various backgrounds into close proximity. It offers a "middle-way" to face such issues. It develops a global ethics and a global spirituality that can be incarnated within alert, loving, small Christian communities, as well as in the larger Church structures directed from the Vatican. It builds on Vatican II to find paths that may help bring peace and understanding in the world by a sympathetic evaluation of different world traditions. Such sympathy must be informed by the conversions that Jesus and the Church have demanded of their followers.