Duke Divinity School

HIV and AIDS is one of the widespread communicable diseases in the world today. Many non-government organizations including faith-based organizations are working to help address this growing problem. HIV and AIDS education on the youth especially on the religious sector here in the Philippines where discrimination and misinformation is one of the biggest concern. With the increasing trend of HIV cases, there is much more to be done to contribute in achieving MDG 6.  The National Prevention Plan is on the right direction but a focused program on HIV among the youth is needed.

The rising number of non-communicable disease (NCDs) is a global health challenge. According to WHO, non-communicable diseases account for 38 million of the 56 million deaths each year. That is more than half of the cause. This includes cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and chronic lung diseases. Health promotion can help address non-communicable disease like the control of hypertension. Health promotion contributes to controlling hypertension “through enabling people, to increase control over their health and its determinants, thereby promoting and sustaining good health. The health education of each clergy member of a particular region will be the health promotion activity effective for this NCD program. The purpose of the campaign is to persuade hypertensive church pastors to adopt a healthy lifestyle. This is best done by teaching individuals about hypertension and equip them with skills how to prevent it.

The Infant and Young Child Feeding is a program of the Department of Health focused on improving the nutrition of infants. This program addresses issues on equity and sustainable development by giving an opportunity for all newborn infants to grow up healthy. The goal of the IYCF program is to reduce infant and child mortality through optimal feeding of infants and young children. One very specific sub program to this is the Exclusive Breastfeeding for infants in the first six months.

The HIV Prevention Program of the Department of Health in the Philippines has the important factors to contribute in the sustainable development of the country. This program was created by Republic Act 8504 or the Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act of 1998 (SEPO, 2018). The Department of Health started the program in 1998 and was evaluated in 2011 by UNICEF focusing in the implementation process of the program. Process evaluation looks into the implementation of the program. It is a formative evaluation on the program designers, staff, internal and external entities checking into why the program is or is not working according to design (Management, 2012). I will argue that the HIV Prevention Program in the country was successful because it did not only focus on the individual behavioral change but intentionally addressed the social determinants of health affecting HIV transmission.

As a family physician, we are trained to practice a biopsychosocial-spiritual approach for a holistic patient care. But a doctor gains deeper appreciation for the importance of addressing a patient’s spirituality once he becomes a patient himself. My spirituality played a role in my recovery as a patient. This experience led me to appreciate the unique role a patient’s spirituality can play in one’s recovery. It has given me a different experience with God.

This article provides a brief overview of early Syriac sources useful for researchers in Byzantine history and late antiquity. As a guide for finding relevant material, it seeks to introduce the non-Syriacist to the contribution of Syriac literature in the transmission of Greek texts, preserved only in extant Syriac translations. It explains the characteristics of the Syriac language, including various alphabets and doctrinal terminologies, and offers an annotated bibliography of reference materials, along with a brief survey of Syriac literature up to the seventh century CE.

Medieval cultures in the East were generally more reticent than Western ones in describing warfare in bloody detail. As events that involved the death or mutilation of large numbers of people, battles are traumatic experiences that tend to inhibit creative literary description of them. The three cultures examined in this chapter approached the recording of war very differently. The Tang Chinese histories are formulaic, abstract to the point of statistics; they offer only names and casualty numbers. Byzantine writing about warfare is pragmatic, gives some operational details, and is concerned for the character of commanders, but avoids exalting them. Abbasid war poetry and chronicles glorify the moral superiority of Muslim commanders, especially in comparison to non-Muslim opponents, yet present the brute facts of battles in an epigrammatic way. All three cultures combined accounts of war with the exigencies of religion, which influenced their goals before battle and means of commemoration after battle. For the purposes of this chapter, ‘medieval’ will refer to the period between the seventh and thirteenth centuries. In taking an explicitly comparative approach, this investigation aims to illumine certain principles common to war-making in early medieval cultures, whilst also exposing religious biases that serve to differentiate opponents. Three cultures will be examined:
- the Tang dynasty in China (618–908),
- the Macedonian dynasty in Byzantium (867–1025)
- and the Abbasid caliphate in the Middle East (750–1258).

The Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886–912), was not a general or even a soldier, like his predecessors, but a scholar, and it was the religious education he gained under the tutelage of the patriarch Photios that was to distinguish him as an unusual ruler. This book analyses Leo's literary output, focusing on his deployment of ideological principles and religious obligations to distinguish the characteristics of the Christian oikoumene from the Islamic caliphate, primarily in his military manual known as the Taktika. It also examines in depth his 113 legislative Novels, with particular attention to their theological prolegomena, showing how the emperor's religious sensibilities find expression in his reshaping of the legal code to bring it into closer accord with Byzantine canon law. Meredith L. D. Riedel argues that the impact of his religious faith transformed Byzantine cultural identity and influenced his successors, establishing the Macedonian dynasty as a 'golden age' in Byzantium.

This essay proposes to present an analysis of how the emperor Leo VI (r. 886‒912) used scriptural language and biblical references to mold his vision of proper Christian political identity. He was not following cultural norms, but rather deliberately attempting to set them. As an elite, educated porphyrogennetos of the middle Byzantine era, Leo was comfortable using and referencing scriptural materials. Moreover, he was also unafraid to do that most un-byzantine of things: innovate. In particular, biblical references from one political document attributed to Leo VI – his military manual, the Taktika – reveal his particular approach to using the Bible.
Based on evidence from the Taktika, this essay will present a preliminary sketch of Leo’s exegetical method, and then consider how this contributes to his concept of ideal Byzantine Christianity. His use of scripture is interesting for its creativity, flexibility, and sometimes-overt cheekiness. It thus provides an initial direction for theorizing the use of religious language in Middle Byzantium.

The author examines the military manual of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise. It is a unique work of consolidation and innovation: while Leo's Tactics draws upon Earlier military texts, he also imbues it with Christian ideals - that is, he presents a Christianized general. This balance of imitation and innovation would appear to give a new lease of life to the military manual. These chapters appear to agree that one aspect of military thinking is the focus on how to conceptualize the enemy. Whereas the Greeks and romans considered themselves as superior fights to their foreign (barbarian) enemies, by the Byzantine period there appears to be a  recognition that this was no longer the case. In this sense, Maurice and Leo balance between following the generic traditions of the military manual and creating texts that are relevant to the shifting realities of warfare in that period.

The Amphilochia of Photios (d. ca.895) is a collection of letters that explain difficulties in the scriptures and related doctrines of the church. In Amphilochia 9, Photios applies himself to harmonizing what appears to be a conundrum in Orthodox theological anthropology:

How does one reconcile the saying of David ‘human life is like grass’ (Psalm 102.15) with the proverb of Solomon ‘man is great and precious’ (Prov 20.6)? [Πως του θεοπατορος Δαυιδ ειποντος ‘ανθροπος ωσει χορτος αι ημεραι αυτου’ και εξης, ο τουτου παις Σολομων αποφαινεται ‘μεγα ανθρωπος και τιμιον ανηρ’;]

This is more philosophical than exegetical, in terms of the content of these particular biblical sayings from the wisdom literature of the LXX. Photios approaches the problem with several concerns in mind. First, he must deal with the immediate question of the significance of humanity in the divine oikonomia. Second, the sayings of two of the Byzantines’ favourite biblical models of kingship, David and Solomon, must be reconciled or harmonised without impugning either David (a model claimed by Basil I) or Solomon (the model later applied to Basil’s son, Leo VI). As biblical prototypes, the wisdom of these two Israelite kings, particularly for Byzantine emperors, cannot be overstated. After the period of exile in which Photios wrote the first 75 treatises of the Amphilochia, he rather famously authored two mirrors-of-princes, directed to the newly-baptized Boris-Michael of Bulgaria and to his former pupil Leo VI, so his analysis of these conflicting sayings is also useful to understanding how he theorized kingship and authority.

This article provides a brief overview of early Syriac sources useful for researchers in Byzantine history and late antiquity. As a guide for finding relevant material, it seeks to introduce the non-Syriacist to the contribution of Syriac literature in the transmission of Greek texts, preserved only in extant Syriac translations. It explains the characteristics of the Syriac language, including various alphabets and doctrinal terminologies, and offers an annotated bibliography of reference materials, along with a brief survey of Syriac literature up to the seventh century CE.

This Essay was written in observance of the fiftieth anniversary of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s untimely April 1968 assignation. It highlights some of King’s most important work during the American Civil Rights Movement, in terms of its contemporary influence. As a focal thesis, this Essay respectfully argues that King’s famed Letter From Birmingham Jail, written during his April 1963 incarceration in Birmingham, Alabama, for deliberately refusing to follow what he morally deemed to be an “unjust law,” was predicated on the biblical foundation of civil disobedience exemplified in the famed story of Shadrack, Meshack, and Abednego, the three Hebrew boys who refused to obey King Nebuchadnezzar’s order to bow down to a deity made of gold. This Essay argues that the Hebrew boys’ theologically-based willingness to suffer the potentially fatal consequence for their civil disobedience, instead of complying with immoral governmental dictates, exemplifies the Judeo-Christian suffering servant theology that influenced King and permeated throughout the Civil Rights Movement.

In arguing the Hebrews’ civil disobedience set a foundation for King’s leadership in the Movement, fueled by a suffering servant theology that regards suffering as redemptive, provided it is for a moral cause, this Essay pays tribute to King’s legacy by also connecting his example of selfless sacrifice in the form of civil disobedience in Birmingham to recent contemporary social movements, like Black Lives Matter, a successor to the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, that also seeks egalitarianism and inclusion.

In 2011, usage of the term civil disobedience resurged in the American lexicon for at least two reasons: (1) there was wide-spread civil protest in Egypt; and (2) America observed the 50th anniversary of the now-celebrated Freedom Rides.

American media widely covered Egyptian citizens’ nonviolent acts of civil disobedience as Egyptians peacefully protested governmental corruption in demanding free and fair elections.  The Egyptian protests were presumably successful in that Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s now-former president, resigned from office.  Further, as 2011 marked the golden anniversary of the Freedom Rides in the United States, Americans were reminded of the nonviolent civil disobedience undertaken by an interdenominational movement of clergy and laity, undergirded by a Judeo-Christian suffering servant theology.  Dissident adherents literally sacrificed themselves for the democratic cause in which they believed.  Notwithstanding differences, the respective movements shared a common goal: indiscriminate citizen participation in voting.  Accordingly, civil disobedience led to both movements being successful.  In Egypt, the government announced unprecedented open elections.  In the United States, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (“VRA”).   

This interdisciplinary Article argues that a Judeo-Christian suffering servant theology undergirded the use of civil disobedience in the 20th century American Civil Rights Movement (“the Movement”) and caused the Movement to be successful because, among other things, the VRA was enacted.  The Movement’s success can be quantifiably measured through the VRA, as America became a more inclusive society.  Indeed, after the VRA’s passage, African Americans were elected to federal, state, and local offices as never before.

As a focal point, this Article details the theology of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the Movement’s key leaders.  This Article also details several key Supreme Court decisions that resulted from dissident acts of civil disobedience and shaped the First Amendment’s scope, while also paying tribute to the Freedom Riders, a group of young college and seminary students that literally risked their lives in a nonviolent fight for democracy.  Finally, this Article concludes by highlighting both empirical and anecdotal evidence that support the authors’ assertion that the Movement’s success can indeed be measured by the VRA’s passage.