In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 59-69 [Access article in PDF] Buddhist Views on Ritual Pactice Protestant Character of Modern Buddhist Movements Yukio MatsudoUniversity of HeidelbergWhat is the relationship between ritual and ethical activities in Nichiren Buddhism, as practiced in the Soka Gakkai (SG)? SG is a lay Buddhist organization which is, as such, involved extensively in secular affairs, specifically in the field of educational, cultural, social, and peace-promoting programs. (...) The question is, therefore, not at all whether there is a connection of religious practice and ethical activities. Rather it begs an explanation regarding its ideological background. In this respect a further reflection on a metareflection level would be useful to clarify the "modern" character of SG, which may be discussed in relation to Christian Protestantism since it has been regarded as a spiritual background for the formation of modern ethos such as individualism, egalitarianism, and social engagement. Thus, I will depict the fundamental feature of Nichiren Buddhism as "reformative Buddhism," which makes the practice of Buddhism congruent with "modern" understanding of religious roles in daily life as well as social engagement. On the other hand, I will also discuss some problems being inherent to the Western acculturation of the reformed and "engaged Buddhism." 1 The Ethical Activities of the SG in the World Ethical and Social Aspects of the Movement It is generally well known that the lay Buddhist organization, SG, as a whole has initiated wide and multifaceted activities even in an international level in order to transform its religious ideals into social reality, specifically in the field of educational, cultural, social, and peace-promoting programs. For this purpose it established educational institutes ranging from kindergartens to universities as well as research [End Page 59] institutes such as the Institute of Oriental Philosophy (founded 1961), the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century (founded 1993), the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research (founded 1996), and other centers for ecological researches. For promoting mutual respect and understanding through cultural expressions and exchanges several institutes have been established, like the Min-On Concert Association (founded 1963), the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum (founded 1991), and La Maison Littéraire de Victor Hugo in Bièvre, France (founded 1992). On a global level, its political involvement is, for a large part, situated as a NGO in the frame of the UNO and the UNESCO. With the help of the UNO, SG has organized all over the world expositions translating its concerns for peace, e.g., "Nuclear War: Threat to our World" and "War and Peace." With the Simon Wiesenthal Center it organized an exhibition "The Courage to Remember: Anne Frank and the Holocaust Exhibition." The issue of human rights is another of its major concerns. Commemorating the forty-fifth anniversary of the United Nations' adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, SG held an exhibition entitled "Toward the Century of Humanity: An Overview of Human Rights in Today's World" at the UN office in Geneva. Also, money received from fund-raising activities has been donated to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and related agencies to provide medical supplies and food, and to support educational programs in the areas concerned. To expose the horrors of war, SG has also published life histories written by members about their sufferings in war: "Women against War," "Cries for Peace," and "Peace is our Duty." Segmental Differentiation of Organizational Structure To meet the requirements of functional differentiation of today's modern societal life SG is organized in a segmental and hierarchical structure. The basic structure is the regional units, organized in a hierarchical model, and all members are integrated "in each group" in their residence area. At the same time each member belongs to a specific "division" which is organized according to gender, age, and occupation. There are the four divisions of men, women, young men, and young women. Additionally there are divisions for school boys and girls, university students, as well as divisions according to occupation such as artists, lawyers, medical doctors, academics, and so on. These divisional differentiations reflect the need... (shrink)

O.Bornovolokov. Constituent Assembly of the Churches of the Christians of the Evangelical Faith in 1929: Historical and Religious Analysis. Many different protestant movements are present in the modern Ukraine of the beginning of the XXI century. Pentecostal churches make up a large part of those movements. Pentecostal movement is the second largest one in protestant world. This article reviews historical issues of the development of the Pentecostal churches of the Christian of Evangelical Faith. Inaugural Congress of Christians (...) of Evangelical Faith’ Churches of Ukraine which took place in 1929 is reconstructed on the basis of archive materials, monographs and memoirs. The first part of the article introduces the subject, revealing its general historical aspects. The By-Laws and main beliefs of the Union of Christian of Evangelical Faith of Ukraine as of 1929 are analyzed; the article is making a summary of their most important component parts. (shrink)

Religion is intrinsically social, and hence irretrievably organizational, although organization is often seen as the darker side of the religious experience--power, routinization, and bureaucracy. Religion and secular organizations have long received separate scholarly scrutiny, but until now their confluence has been little considered. This interdisciplinary collection of mostly unpublished papers is the first volume to remedy the deficit. The project grew out of a three-year inquiry into religious institutions undertaken by Yale University's Program on Non-Profit Organizations and sponsored (...) by the Lilly Endowment. The scholars who took part in this effort weree challenged to apply new perspectives to the study of religious organizations, especially that strand of contemporary secular organizational theory known as "New Institutionalism." The result was this groundbreaking volume, which includes papers on various aspects of such topics as the historical sources and patterns of U.S. religious organizations, contemporary patterns of denominational authority, the congregation as an organization, and the interface between religious and secular institutions and movements. The contributors include an interdisciplinary mix of scholars from economics, history, law, social administration, and sociology. (shrink)

Religious traditions in the United States have been characterized by an ongoing tension between assimilation to the broader culture, typically reflected by mainline Protestant churches, and defiant rejection of cultural incursions, as witnessed by more sectarian movements such as Mormonism and Hassidism. But legal theorist and theologian Cathleen Kaveny contends that religious traditions do not need to swim in either the Current of Openness or the Current of Identity. There is a third possibility, which she calls the (...) Current of Engagement, which accommodates and respects tradition but which recognizes the need to interact with culture to remain relevant and to offer a prophetic critique of social and political and legal and economic practice. In fifty-six brief articles Kaveny illustrates the implications of the Current of Engagement in American public life. The articles are organized into five chapters or sections: Law as Teacher; Religious Liberty and its Limits; Conversations about Culture; Conversations about Belief; and Cases and Controversies. Kaveny provides astonishing insights into a range of hot-button issues: abortion, assisted suicide, government-sponsored torture, contraception, the Ashley Treatment, capital punishment, and the role of religious faith in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

The study deals with a religious conversion of members of the Catholic Charismatic movement. This movement is characterised by the integration of those aspects of spirituality, which draw on traditional religious life as well as on the spirituality of new religious movements. The consensual qualitative research was used for analyses of thirty stories of personal conversions from the members of this movement. The stories were described in a public bulletin, published by the movement. They were analysed (...) in regard to the precedents of conversion, course of conversion and the consequences of conversion in personal life. The results of analysis showed that the typical process of religious conversion in this movement is preceded by some contact with religious issues in childhood and experiencing some problem in the period before conversion. The conversion is stimulated by meeting a religious person and attendance at prayer meetings, which lead to the experience of God's presence, and a cognitive insight into religious matters. Consequences of conversion include radical changes in spiritual life, increasing subjective well-being, improving social life and solving the antecedent problem. The results are discussed with regard to the previous theories and research on religious conversion as well as their limitations originating from the nature of the data. (shrink)

An examination of the studies of the French historian of religion Jean Delumeau on the subject of ‘angst’ and awareness of guilt as a collective mode of being, characteristic of Europeans from the 13th to the 18th century, will not only provide the reader with a nuanced picture of the influence of the so-called Renaissance and Reform Movement on the liberation of the human person, but he or she will also find it difficult to resist the temptation to draw parallels (...) with current explanations for the present day increase in feelings of insecurity and ‘angst’.Both then and now the collective ‘angst’ resulting from epidemic, war, famine and natural disaster vented themselves against ‘outsiders’, those who were different; foreigners witches, gypsies, heretics, vagabonds, the insane and the crippled all became targets. Just as people today try to discern devilish plans afoot in a world stricken by AIDS, environmental and health dangers, by growing unemployment, fundamentalism and migration, and by plans intent on undermining Western civilisation as we know it, so also then people found it easy to identify demons in the ‘other’, disguised Antichrists and Satans whose sole purpose was to undermine Christian culture. In those days people tried to avert the danger by attempting to force Muslims by government decree and Cathars by the Inquisition to embrace the true faith of Christians. Today we try to do the same by submitting foreigners to an ever narrowing concept of integration.In pre-modern culture, just as today, subjective feelings of insecurity were disproportional to objective insecurity, and although the chances of falling victim to epidemic, war or criminal acts were much greater among the lower social classes, protests of insecurity from among the better situated classes, tended to set the tone, as they continue to do today.Two aspects of Delumeau’s evocation of the culture of ‘angst’ are particularly striking. Firstly, one becomes aware of the quasi evident moralising with which people tackled the most diverse social phenomena. Signs of God’s wrath were to be found everywhere as moral warnings. Difference and alterity was immediately understood in terms of godlessness, decline, guilt, sin, unworthiness, vice, wickedness or cunning. The Christian culture was in its very core a culture of meaning in which everything, as a matter of course, acquired a moral significance. In this regard, the advent of Protestantism did not essentially change matters: morality shifted towards individual responsibility, but its worldview did not become less moralising as a result. Actually, it became even more moralising. Secondly, one becomes aware of the sustained efforts of the Church to spread and intensify the culture of ‘angst’ and to view everything from the perspective of the contemptus mundi, vitae et homini. Every form of human joy, delight or pleasure was condemned as a manifestation of insufficiency in one’s fear of God. Although the world was never to become the ‘vale of tears’ of which the clerical authorities dreamed, ‘angst’ and fear were nevertheless an essential feature of the condition humaine of the time and the dominant religious cultural expressions of the day were solely directed towards the maintenance of such a culture of ‘angst’. (shrink)

In this challenging and provocative book, Steve Fuller contends that our continuing faith in science in the face of its actual history is best understood as the secular residue of a religiously inspired belief in divine providence. Our faith in science is the promise of a life as it shall be, as science will make it one day. Just as men once put their faith in God's activity in the world, so we now travel to a land promised by science. (...) In "Science", Fuller suggests that the two destinations might be the same one. Fuller sympathetically explores what it might mean to live scientifically. Can science give a sense of completeness to one's life? Can it account for the entirety of what it is to be human? And what does our continuing belief in scientific progress say about us as a species? In answering these questions, Fuller ranges widely over the history of science and religion - from Aristotle and the atomists to Dawkins and the neo-Darwinists - and takes a close look at what science is, how its purpose has changed over the years, and what role religion and in more recent years atheism have played in its progression. Science, argues Fuller, is now undergoing its own version of secularization. We are ceasing to trust science in its institutional forms, formulated by an anointed class of science priests, and instead we are witnessing the emergence of what Fuller calls Protscience' - all sorts of people, from the New Age movement to anti-evolutionists, claiming scientific authority as their own. Fuller shows that these groups are no more anti-scientific than Protestant sects were atheistic. Fearless and thought-provoking, Science questions some of our most fundamental beliefs about the nature and role of science, and is a distinct and important contribution to debates about evolution, intelligent design, atheism, humanism, the notion of scientific progress, and the public understanding of science. (shrink)

This paper discusses some aspects of foreign language learning within the divided school system of Northern Ireland. It is argued that an improvement of foreign language learning must be seen in a socio‐cultural context whereby a change in attitudes to languages in general, including Irish, may lead not only to a balanced interest among girls and boys in the language classroom, but also to a more tolerant approach to the cultural differences among the Catholic and Protestant communities.

The Sai Baba movement, one of the most widespread and popular modern South Asian religious movements, owes its origin to a saint, Sai Baba of Shirdi (d.1918), who was probably born around 1838. Through his successor, Sathya Sai Baba (b. 1926), the movement has become a transnational phenomenon in the late twentieth century and has also expanded the main centers of its charisma, including today Shirdi town in the Indian state of Maharashtra and Puttaparthi town in the neighboring (...) state of Andhra Pradesh. While most of the available literature is hagiographical in nature, some aspects of the movement have been studied - the figures of Shirdi Sai Baba and Sathya Sai Baba, the middle-class constituency of the Sathya Sai Baba movement, role of miracles, and the pedagogical role of movement, for instance. These studies are part of a growing interest in new religious and reformist movements in South Asia in the past century, their impacts on civil society and its institutions, and their relationships to the nation-state. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Weber’s Lacuna: Medieval Religion and the Roots of RationalizationLutz KaelberFew works in twentieth-century social thought have received as much attention as Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which appeared in its original form in 1904–5. 1 Weberian scholars and critics have focused on the links between religion and the modern economy, but have overlooked an important component of Weber’s study—medieval religion. Analyzing the cultural significance (...) of modern ascetic rationalism, Weber initially wanted to extend the PE stepping back in time and study the historical development of methodical rational ways of life preceding the Reformation. Between publication of the PE essays and his death in 1920, Weber then specified his research agenda and elaborated on his earlier views. First these specifications and elaborations were made as a response to a series of writings by Ernst Troeltsch, particularly The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Groups, 2 and later while preparing a study on The Christianity of the Occident as part of his Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion. The purpose of this essay is to provide an analysis of Weber’s views on medieval religion as they evolved between 1904–5 and 1920, and to [End Page 465] show how Weber linked his explorations of medieval religion to his larger intellectual agenda, appropriating and transcending ideas current in contemporary historical and religious scholarship.Furthermore, I hope to demonstrate that the conclusions of the few existing studies of Weber’s views on this topic have to be revised. His remarks on medieval religion were not confined to the conceptualization of structural transformations in the Middle Ages; 3 nor did they contain the notion of medieval Christianity as a step backward in the course of Western rationalization. 4 On the contrary, Weber was interested in religious contributions and impediments to a rationalization of conduct in different groups in the Middle Ages, and while he saw largely impediments in orthodox lay religion, he presumed the existence of precursors to Calvinist ascetic rationalism in fringe and heterodox religious movements.In the development of his thought Weber’s interest in this topic runs through three phases: first, the years 1904–5, when the PE was published, containing the cornerstones of a sociological treatment of medieval religion; second, the years between 1906 and 1910, in which Ernst Troeltsch supplemented Weber’s treatment and elicited his response; and third, the years between 1910 and 1920, when Weber began to put medieval Christianity in the context of a comparative typology and historical analysis of religious rationalizations in the major world religions.The Protestant Ethic of 1904–5 5In the PE Weber set himself the task of analyzing the contribution of religious factors in the early-modern period to the emergence of one constitutive component of modern culture, that is, methodical behavior based on the idea of a calling. Yet Weber’s intellectual interests went beyond this topic and era. The overarching issue was the cultural significance of Protestantism’s “ascetic rationalism,” which was to be studied for both later and earlier periods. In delineating the meaning of this concept, Weber was careful to point out that ascetic rationalism of a religious providence was just one among many empirical forms the generic concept of rationalism could designate: [End Page 466] “One can very well ‘rationalize’ life according to very different ultimate points of view and in different directions; ‘rationalism’ is a historical concept that encompasses a world of differences.” 6 It was therefore necessary to provide a specification of the term, for which Weber took a cue from the economist Werner Sombart.In his Modern Capitalism (1902) Sombart had characterized the distinguishing feature of the modern capitalist economy as thorough “calculability” (Rechenhaftigkeit). Calculability denotes the precise, encompassing structuring of means for the achievement of capitalist profit. Weber found Sombart’s characterization highly accurate, 7 but also differed from him in two important aspects. First, he viewed calculability as a manifestation of a larger underlying process—ascetic rationalism. For Weber ascetic rationalism manifested itself in the thorough calculability of all social spheres, and it was not merely an institutional characteristic, as Sombart had defined it. Ascetic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction VIOLENCE AND INSTITUTION IN CHRISTIANITY Robert J. Daly, SJ. Boston College We need both to define our terms and to indicate whether we are using them in a normative or descriptive sense. Thus the question: "Is Christianity"—or, if you will—"Are the institutions of Christianity violent or nonviolent?" can be answered with either a Yes, or a No, or with anything in between, depending on the meaning we attach (...) to theterms "violence," "institution," and "Christianity" (Daly 1997, 321-43). When we speak normatively, or take Christianity and its institutions accordingto its best ideals, Christianity isessentially nonviolent. But when we speak descriptively, i.e., take Christianity according to what the institutions ofChristianity have actually done, and according to how those who call themselves Christian have actually acted, we can make the argument that Christianity is violent, ffanalogous distinctions can be made from within the other four traditions, this might offer a good starting point for discussion. Adapting to my purpose standard dictionary definitions, I understand violence to include in a broad way the justified or unjustified human exertion of internal or external power or force in order to achieve an injurious or abusive end, i.e., an end that is against the will, the good, or the interests of those who suffer it. (This includes all war and avoids, at least at the outset, arguments about whether a war is or can be a "just war.") I understand institution in its ordinary meaning of: any significant or established practice, relationship, structure, system, or organization in a society or culture. I understand Christianity also in its ordinary sense: the Roberti. Daly, SJ.5 religion which, derived from Jesus Christ, and based on the Bible, is professed by Eastern, Roman Catholic, and Protestant bodies. Now, to help set the background for our discussion, I will try to list and briefly describe, relative to this theme, some of the major aspects or "moments" of Christianity (or Christian History), and do this in an approximately diachronic or chronological order. Much of this will be descriptive, but I will not go out of my way to dissociate the descriptions from the effects of all normative claims. I.Violence and Institution in the History of Christianity [1] The biblical foundation of Christianity in the Hebrew Scriptures. [2]The pervasiveness of violence in the Bible. [3]The Christian Scriptures present themselves as a gospel of peace. [4]Jesus and nonviolence. [5]Early Christians and nonviolence. [6]The early Christians and the military. [7]The "Constantinian turn." [8]Caesaro-papism. [9]The relegation ofChristian pacifism to religious and monastic life. [10]The just war theory. [11]The medieval Christian taken-for-grantedness of violence. [12]The Crusades. [13]Medieval Christian peace movements [14]Christians and heretics. The Inquisition. See [11] above. [1 5]Christianity and the witches. See [U] above. [16]The Reformation. [17]The Radical Reformation and the Peace Churches. [18]St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (August 1572). [19]The religious wars. [20]Absolutism. [21]Modernity. [22]The Quakers—Religious Society of Friends. [23]The Enlightenment and Modernity. [24]Christianity and world mission; Christianity and colonialism. [25]Slavery. [26]Christianity and the "war" against native cultures. [27]Christianity and the First World War. [28]The Second World War. [29]The Holocaust. 6 Violence and Institution in Christianity [30]Christianity and the modern peace movement. [31]Christians and the "seamless ethic of life." [32]Christianity and International Communism. [33]Liberation theology. [34]The liberation of women. [35]Christianity and the resurgence of tribal and nationalist violence. [36]Christianity and human rights. [1] The biblical foundation of Christianity in the Hebrew Scriptures. Christians and Jews have the same family origins. Since believing Christians no less than believing Jews accept and revere the Hebrew Scriptures as the inspired word of God, Christians and Jews are indeed, to paraphrase Pope John XXIII, siblings. There is, beyond this, fromJudaism to Christianity, a significant parent-child relationship. In recent years (but not early enough to have prevented the Holocaust), the main line churches ofChristianity have rejected the supersessionism (the doctrine that the Old Testament has been abrogated by the New Testament) that used to characterize Christian attitudes towards the Jews and that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 133 The Foundations of Mysticism. Vol. I of The Pl'.esence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. By BERNARD McGINN. New York: Crossroad, 1991. Pp. xxii and 49. Index and bibliography. $39.00 (cloth). With this work Bernard McGinn delivers the first of a projected four volume History of Western Christian Mysticism. The Foundations in· cludes, as one might expect, the Scriptural tradition, Neoplatonic phi· losophy, early (...) Greek Fathers who influenced the Latins, as well as the early "Founders" Ambrose and Augustine. Judged by the quality of its start, this work promises to become a standard history for years to come. The author displays a stunning acquaintance with the sources of a subject that extends over full twenty centuries. Though " spe-·cialized " in the spirituality of the high and late Middle Ages (he has written substantial studies on Joachim de Fiore and Eckhart), the Chi· cago professor has admirably succeeded in mastering the mass of per· tinent literature of this early period, as the 150 pages of notes and bibliography testify. His ideas are clearly presented, his evaluations of others critical yet generous, his overall judgment impressively balanced. Moreover, he ventures well beyond the usual territory. His work in- -eludes subjects rarely discussed hut often alluded to in the history of.early Christian spirituality: e.g. Gnosticism, which appears here not as a " heresy ", but as a spiritual movement in its own right. The thorough discussion of Philo together with the introductory chapter on 4 ' The Jewish Matrix" (somewhat improperly entitled since it deals only with the Hebrew Bible) display an unusual appreciation of the underestimated influence of Jewish mysticism. One would have been happy to read more about Marius Victorinus, hut is grateful to find him present at all. A historical survey of this scope may easily degenerate into an enumeration of titles and trends, whereby ideas are treated as facts. Professor McGinn has judiciously avoided that. Entire sections of his history are rich monographs about spiritual systems treated for their intrinsic interest rather than as transitory moments of an indifferent history. The sections dealing with Origen, Evagrius, and Ambrose in particular deserve to be read as independent treatises. The long concluding chapter on Augustine also presents a marvelous synthesis, though one primarily written from the point of view of its later impact. In a study of this nature the definition of its formal object presents.a unique problem. Before the late Middle Ages the concept of a purely private spiritual experience remained largely unknown in Christian 134 BOOK REVIEWS spirituality and until the seventeenth century even the substantive " my,;· ticism ", referring to a separate activity, did not exist. H what we now take to be characteristic were to serve as normative concept, almost all spiritual writers of the :first Christian millennium and a good many after that would he excluded. Moreover, the subjective mystical ex· perience remains inaccessible to the historian. McGinn has wisely confined his subject to the spiritual text in its social and ecclesiastical context. But this choice leads to a further, equally difficult question: What constitutes a mystical text? Obviously not all religious or theo· logical writings are mystical. Protestant theologians of the nineteenth century tended to consider a genuine Christian faith incompatible with mysticism, while prominent students of mysticism in this century (such as Underhill, Butler) :remained highly suspicious of speculative theology, including the so-called "mystical" one, But friend and foe of mysticism agree that the mystical, however conceived, cannot simply he identified with the religious. Some scholars, such as von Hiigel, distinguish the mystical from other aspects of religion, but leave its positive content vague and controvertible. Avoiding a precision which the nature of the subject precludes, McGinn nevertheless goes to the heart of the matter in :referring to the mystical as to the dynamic power that drives the religious mind toward the experienced presence of God, without necessarily bringing it to the state of full union. The author's position appears in the felicitous choice of the general title: The Presence God. All religious life aims at entering into the presence of God. But " mystical " religious texts speak of a particular mode of divine presence, not ordinarily... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel by Thomas A. LewisVincent LloydReligion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel THOMAS A. LEWIS Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 277 pp. $135Religion, Modernity, and Politics in Hegel explicates Hegel’s account of religion and contends that Hegel offers important insights for contemporary conversations in religious studies. Specifically, Thomas Lewis argues in this book that Hegel’s thought enriches discussions regarding the relationship between philosophy (...) and religion, religious pluralism, the meaning of tradition, and the concept of religion itself.Lewis is careful and reasonable in his explication of Hegelian texts, cognizant of recent scholarship on Hegel in both English and German, but also attentive [End Page 226] to Hegel’s location in German political history and the history of ideas. The young Hegel, we learn, was primarily a social theorist and not a philosopher. Concerned with social fragmentation in the context of the late Holy Roman Empire, Hegel saw religion as a means to unify. He understood civil religion (not just philosophy or natural religion) as capable of engaging the imagination in a way that motivates people to act in line with reason and so to act morally. In Hegel’s mature thought, religion is integrated into his broader philosophical system; it is an entry point into the dialectical movement beyond immediacy. Yet Hegel continues to think that religion inculcates crucial intuitions about what matters most to us as we live together. While some philosophers have recently emphasized Hegel’s deep debt to Kant, others hold that Hegel’s account of religion demonstrates his distance from Kant. For Lewis, Hegel’s account of religion, as the entwined beliefs and practices representing a community’s sensibilities, demonstrates his close relation to Kant and his continuing struggle to bring together sensibility and understanding, worldly objects, and human thoughts.Lewis occasionally ventures beyond the explication of Hegel, although these forays sometimes feel brief and thin. Like Alasdair MacIntyre, Stanley Hauerwas, and Jeffrey Stout, Lewis presents Hegel’s view of religion as essentially mixing—or synthesizing—history, narrative, community, and identity. Lewis understands Stout to be in agreement with Hegel, extending Hegel’s account of religious tradition to include the broader array of traditions that we encounter in the contemporary world. He suggests that Hauerwas could learn to better appreciate religion’s conceptual aspect from Hegel. Hegel and MacIntyre share what might seem to be a Christian triumphalism, but Lewis reads this more sympathetically as a self-awareness that rejects relativism. They both argue that (certain versions of) Christianity can account for the insights of other worldviews and can address contradictions in those other worldviews. But MacIntyre requires that such judgments be based on deep knowledge of two traditions in a comparison; Hegel paints non-Protestant traditions with very broad strokes. Indeed, this is the point where Lewis himself is the most critical of Hegel. He charges that Hegel’s attempt to survey all major world religions (in his account of “determinate religion”) is overly ambitious, and he argues that Hegel would be more successful had he detached this survey from his argument for Christianity’s status as the “consummate religion.” Hegel’s conception of consummate religion should be understood more broadly, Lewis argues, to include nonreligious beliefs and practices, such as civic education, that reflect the spirit of a community.Lewis claims that Hegel complicates the supposed Protestant bias of religious studies scholarship with its focus on belief at the expense of practice. Although unequivocally Protestant, Hegel’s approach to religion emphasizes the inextricability of practice and belief. But what was Hegel’s approach? Was it an [End Page 227] alternative Protestant tradition? Was it a theological movement or simply a philosophical one? Further, it is unclear whether Lewis’s Hegel would find any use for religious ethics other than as an idiom for ethical reflection suited to those who are not capable of advancing to philosophical heights.Vincent LloydSyracuse UniversityCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, initially preached in Methodist Churches, later left this position and formed a social and religious formation called the "Christian Mission". This movement was named "Salvation Army" in 1878. The Salvation Army, organized in many countries, has established nursing homes for elderly, women and children and continues to attract attention and increase its reputation both locally and internationally with aid organizations, rehabilitation of prisoners, natural disasters, fight against human trafficking and aid to (...) refugees. In every region where The Salvation Army is located, there is an administrative centre known as the regional headquarters. Headquarters are headed by the district commander at the international headquarters in London. Smaller districts are run by colonels, larger districts by commissars. Resembling the Catholic Church due to its episcopal structure, the Salvation Army accepts the same beliefs as this church at the point of belief. Although the movement has also the appearance of a Protestant and evangelical church, it approaches the sacraments from a different aspect. In this research, the history, organizational structure, activities, belief principles and practices of the Salvation Army have been tried to be revealed. Descriptive, comparative and chronological methods have been used while conveying the aforementioned issues in order of importance. In addition, the literature was scanned and various sources belonging to the emergence period of the Salvation Army and especially those belonging to them were examined. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS lier Christian dualism into a balanced, theological whole. As a protreptic device, Jackson's book may be, in a certain way, part of a collective movement that may form a prolegomenon for a new synthesis-informed by the patristic authors but written as a vademecum for contemporary inquiry. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. ROBIN DARLING YOUNG Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church, Its History and (...) Theology. By KENAN B. OSBORNE, 0.F.M. (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). Pp. 722. $29.95 (paper). In his Lay Ministry, Fr. Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., sustains his effort to introduce a program of reform in ecclesial self-understanding inaugurated in his earlier Priestlwod: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The project undertaken in this second installment aims primarily to undermine those traditional patterns of distinguishing klerikos/laikos and ordained/non-ordained that locate "lay ministry" at a lower latitude on the ontological map, and in this way to clear a path for a more adequate understanding of the place of the laity in the ministry of the Church. Of the 609 pages of text, 548 are dedicated to genealogical analysis of the transmission of Christian understanding of ministry. The author's narrative might be condensed as follows. The first millennium was a period marred by theological definitions of ministry and order derived from the terms of debate that emerged in the conflict between temporal and spiritual rulers. Necessary for successful participation in this cultural debate was the embrace of a hierarchical view of reality, a view destined to obscure the truth about the distinctively egalitarian Christian form of life in common (48-332). The second millennium is interpreted as a period of the gradual reemergence of a vision and practice of evangelical life that had been surrendered to alien philosophical and religious doctrines. The primary historical moments in this recovery, treated in three successive chapters, include the late medieval vita evangelica movements (333-90), the Protestant Reformation (391-463), and the French and American Revolutions (464-517). The Second Vatican Council, where it treats of lay ministry, consolidated these post-medieval insights gained into the Christian religion and the nature of man (518-95) and advanced the conclusion : Equality of discipleship is primary in the Christian religion and differences in ministerial function serve only to promote this fundamental good. Osborne is aware that this basic line of thought was that taken by the Reformers and found inadequate by the Council of Trent. But Osborne does BOOK REVIEWS 333 not present his position as an instance of theological dissent. Rather, he argues that the magisterium acting in the Second Vatican Council teaches that there exists no meaningful sense in which "lay ministry" can be understood as subordinate (ontologically) to "ordained ministry" in the sacramental life of the Church. This review will focus on this latter aspect of Osborne's argument which, while limited in scope, appears to be the more original and important element of the book. Osborne himself provides a further narrowing of scope with his selection of two key sources upon which he relies: Lumen Gentium and the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In his interpretation of Lumen Gentium, Osborne argues that the rejection of the preparatory documents signaled the majority bishops' desire to distance themselves from a "hierarchical approach" and move toward "a new form of ecclesiology" (516). This new form is rooted in the primacy of Jesus, and it is He (and not the Church) who is the sole lumen gentium, from which it follows immediately that there can be only one form of "gospel discipleship " (530). "All Church ministry, whether ordained or non-ordained, is relativized by the identical christological base" (528), Jesus, who transcends the distinction between clerical and lay (558). Osborne argues further that Lumen Gentium supports this position in its identification of the Church as "the people of God," "christifidelis," and "priesthood of all believers" (530-40). On the basis of this recovery of the "foundational and most sacred level of discipleship " (541), at which level the distinction between ordained and nonordained "makes no difference" (39), Osborne maintains... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dharma Bums: The Beat Generation and the Making of Countercultural PilgrimageP. J. JohnstonI believe in the sweetness of Jesus And Buddha— I believe, In St. Francis, Avaloki Tesvara, the Saints Of First Century India A D And Scholars Santidevan And Otherwise Santayanan Everywhere.(Kerouac 1959: 15)Preliminary Polemics“PILGRIM, n. A traveler that is taken seriously.”—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary 2007: 133As Beat commentator Stephen Prothero describes in his article “On the (...) Holy Road: The Beat Movement as Spiritual Protest” (1991), the Beats and their pilgrimages have most emphatically not been taken seriously. Both critics and scholars have been unkind to members of the Beat generation, and this unkindness has manifested itself in relative neglect of the Beats in all possible aspects of scholarly investigation. But nowhere does this appear more pronounced than in the area of Beat religion. Though some recent scholarship has been picking up from this earlier neglect and it is now [End Page 165] possible to find serious biographies of most of the major Beat writers and some belated attention to the movement as a literary phenomenon, the only book-length treatment of Beat Buddhism I was able to locate (Tonkinson 1995) hardly qualifies as a scholarly work and was published not by an academic press but as a special feature of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. Prothero hypothesizes that this is because of the movement’s reputation as rebellious and antinomian—in its heyday the movement was characterized in identical unsavory terms by publications representing interests as diverse as Life and Playboy, with the latter describing the Beats as “nihilists” and the former claiming that the Beats were at war with “Mom, Dad, Politics, Marriage, the Savings Bank, Organized Religion, Literary Elegance, Law, the Ivy League Suit and Higher Education, to say nothing of the Automatic Dishwasher, the Cellophane-wrapped Soda Cracker, the Split-Level House and the clean, or peace-provoking H-bomb” (Prothero 1991: 206). Norman Podhoretz of Partisan Review went further still, claiming that the Beats were “hostile to civilization” and that the movement as a whole amounted to “a revolt of the spiritually underprivileged and crippled of soul” and “an affirmation of death” (ibid., 206). One couldn’t ask for a more passionate disavowal of the Beats or a more thorough polemic that the movement was profoundly antireligious.This could not contrast more with the Beats’ representation of their movement and its aims, with Jack Kerouac going so far as to reinterpret the crucial term “Beat” (a term for someone down and out originally borrowed from criminal street jive) as a noun derived from the adjective “beatific,” a specifically religious term familiar from such phrases as “the beatific vision” (ibid., 206–207). Several of the representative Beat writers were practicing Buddhists, influencing the entire movement to such an extent that Buddhist ideas and imagery suffused Beat literature as a whole. Ginsberg and Kerouac especially emphasized the positive and constructive elements of their spiritual vision, arguing that literature such as On the Road and Howl should be understood as religious affirmations of what is good and holy rather than as purely critical undertakings: “For the crucifix I speak out, for the Star of Israel I speak out, for the divinest man who ever lived who was German (Bach) I speak out, for sweet Mohammed I speak out, for Buddha I speak out, for Lao-tse and Chuang-tse I speak out” (ibid., 206–207). Or, as Allen Ginsberg put it less lyrically (and rather more bluntly): “Howl is an ‘Affirmation’ by individual experience of God, sex, drugs, and absurdity... the poems are religious and I meant them to be” (ibid., 207).But for the most part, Beat asseverations in no way diminished scholarly wariness about the Beat movement and its spirituality—as Prothero concludes, “the tendency among literary scholars is to see these [religious] concerns as tangential rather than constitutive” while “historians of American religion who have explored beat spirituality have tended to focus almost exclusively on the beats’ engagement with Zen and then to dismiss that engagement as haphazard” (ibid., 207).It is my contention that the mainstream scholarly neglect of Beat spirituality is in some part... (shrink)

The trend to centralization of the Mizrahi narrative has become an integral part of the nationalistic, ethnic, religious, and ideological-political dimensions of the emerging, complex Israeli identity. This trend includes several forms of opposition: strong opposition to "melting pot" policies and their ideological leaders; opposition to the view that ethnicity is a dimension of the tension and schisms that threaten Israeli society; and, direct repulsion of attempts to silence and to dismiss Mizrahim and so marginalize them hegemonically. The Mizrahi (...) Democratic Rainbow [The Keshet], the most prominent proponent and representative of this trend, was established in the 1990s with the intention of being a leading civic and political body in Israeli society. While it was the Mizrahi worldview that led to selection of the organization's name and aims, their vision was to be involved in social struggle on behalf of other groups in Israeli society. Since it was established, The Keshet has aimed to function as an assertive, long-term alternative coalition exerting influence, power, and pressure on the Israeli narrative network. And, indeed, the organization has succeeded in disrupting Israeli discourse, principally, by challenging the ideological foundations of the Zionist meta-narrative. Nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century and nearly a decade since it was established, The Keshet not only represents the most current wave of Mizrahi discourse, it has changed it to such a great degree that it is impossible to ignore its influence. Further, this alternative narrative may have significant potential to advance the internal Jewish discourse so fundamental at this time given the changing Israeli situation and regional conditions. And, while it is possible to view The Keshet and this new narrative as a continuation of the Mizrahi struggle, as a narrative The Keshet's agenda represents a post-colonial perspective and multi-cultural alternative to Zionism as a social vehicle. Amidst all of this, The Keshet continues to offer concrete proposals to change the Jewish character of the state as well as its internal and external relations. One of the primary goals of this study was to examine the rise of the Mizrahi narrative over the last two decades and the new Mizrahi discourse in Israeli society. More specifically, the study sought to attain an in-depth understanding of the central narrative created and represented by The Keshet. An additional goal was to investigate the influence of The Keshet's activity and the narrative it constructed in regard to other narratives. In particular, the study focused on The Keshet's opposition to the central Zionist narrative that infuses civic, political, and academic frameworks in Israel. Accordingly, the primary research questions investigated in the study sought to determine: What has been the influence of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow on the Mizrahi narrative in Israel? And, what are implications of such influence for the central Zionist narrative? Methodologically, the study was based on narrative and comparative analyses of texts from different periods of the older and newer Mizrahi narratives. The corpus included two types of texts: First, academic texts and opinion pieces, both philosophical and programmatic in nature, published in magazines, journals, books, as well as position papers; second, all of the texts published by prominent and influential figures who charted the path of The Keshet or led it organizationally and/or intellectually over the last twenty years (e. g., Yehudah Shenhav, Yossi Yona, Moshe Krief among others). All texts were examined by means of philosophical, historical and critical hermeneutic tools. This analysis revealed different levels of Mizrahi and civic discourse in Israel as well as among The Keshet's founders and leading ideologues. The study was based on a three stage process model, developed for purposes of this study, for investigation and analysis of the new Mizrahi narrative as well as other oppositional narratives, in particular opposition to the hegemonic meta-narrative. The stages are: issuing the challenge, dissolution and, liberation; that is, liberation is the measure of the ultimate success of the struggle for narrative change. Such change is not based on success in the field, but rather on a radical, fundamental reversal of thought, discourse patterns, stylistic structures, as well as forms of questioning - in this case of taken-for-granted racist mechanisms. However, the principal change is in achieving a deep, inner de-legitimization of the signifiers, categories, and reproductions of all manner of mockery that are based on immoral colonialist processes that are reinforced by regimes of fear and intimidation whose self-destruction began upon their very creation. This three stage model charts the course of the oppositional Mizrahi narrative from: accounting for the past (passing judgment on the so-called historic colonialist Zionism) to writing a new (pure Mizrahi) history and creation of a Mizrahi-Arab identity separate from the Ashkenazic, identified as Zionist. Contemporary post-colonialist discourse is integral in these stages. Such a perspective has been transformed by transitions from - binarism to hybridity, Orientalism to Occidentalism, the politics of "liberation" to "constructive" politics, from the history of consciousness to the history of change, as well as from nationalist to post-nationalist questions. Fundamentally, according to this approach, political and other struggles for the emerging narrative of Mizrahi (or Arab) history seek to centralize it in society and weave it amidst the models of multiculturalism. Undertaken in parallel, the central characteristics of all these stages are borrowed from countries in which the need for national reconciliation led to renunciation of apartheid and racist policies and historical judgment of the hegemony supported by racist leaders. In addition, these three moves were undertaken in Keshet and its ideologues by means of substantive symbolic violence directed at the hegemonic Ashkenazic discourse, which included creation of hatred of it, use of stereotypes the opposite of oppressive discourse, and adoption of an arrogant point of view toward it. This stands in stark contrast to the claims of the self-proclaimed new Mizrahi stance of a discourse established on purely ethical grounds that sought to cleanse itself of these very same oppressive elements. The model developed for and demonstrated in this study allows for analysis of oppositional narratives in which the libratory stage evolves into a form of entrapment, as appears to be occurring to the new Mizrahi discourse. This conclusion is based on the observations shared by many Keshet proponents including leading intellectuals who worked on the manifestos that were the subject of criticism from the Zionist camp. The study identified and defined the following six interwoven strata, which for purposes of explication are each discussed in a separate chapter: The first chapter presents a general theoretical discussion of the issue of the narrative and the inter-narrative struggle that has become central and applicable in various ways in the latest generation (e. g., anthropologically, hermeneutically, and philosophically). The analysis surveys different discussions in the inter-narrative struggle and locates them in the contexts, relations, and meanings derived from, representing, and indeed reproducing the narrative of national identity. The second chapter includes a historical survey of the older Mizrahi struggle that existed prior to the ascendance of the new Mizrahi narrative. Initially, Mizrahi discourse focused on expressing the ethnic protest that grew in years to follow. These feelings of discrimination and social distancing of the immigrants from Islamic countries gave birth to expressions of protest, the most prominent of which were Wadi Salib and the Black Panther Movement's various activities. The research literature contains many explanations for the exacerbation of the ethnic problem and creation of a situation that could not be ignored. The consensus academic view reached at the end of the 1970s identified a number of primary factors for this situation: the existence and extensive numbers of different ethnic groups; the relative or absolute segregation of frameworks within which members of these ethnic groups lived and acted; and the significant overlap between socio-economic status and feelings of discrimination retained by members of the Mizrahi group due years of neglect by the Ashkenazic establishment, the strengthening of Mizrahi social, cultural, and political power, as well as the emergence of a Mizrahi elite that identified with Mizrahi problems. The severe consequences of feelings of discrimination were expressed in a long series of events, such as: rioting by residents of the Rehovot Sharayim neighborhood in 1956; events of Wadi Salib in Haifa in 1959; and a chain of activities involving the Black Panthers in the 1970s. Protest was also an aspect of the "tent movement" in the 1970s and 1980s. Political activities were advanced by the Tami Movement that competed in the election for the 10th Knesset in 1981 and the Shas Movement that has continued to garner political power since being found in 1984. The 1980s and 1990s were characterized as the era of radical consciousness of Mizrahi discourse as well as by the rise to power, in consecutive order, of the political parties – Tami, Shas, and the Mizrahim HaHadashim [the New Mizrahi]. The latter party laid the foundations of the new radical Mizrahi discourse from which emerged such cultural activities as: Iton Aher [A Different Newspaper]; Bimat Kivon Aher [Another Direction Forum]; Efir'yon journal; the Halah Organization for Education in Neighborhoods, Development Towns, and Villages; Kedma; the newspaper – Patish [Hammer]; and, eventually the establishment of Keshet. The third chapter presents an examination of the materialization of the inter-narrative struggle in the case of Israel, with a specific focus on The Keshet and the new Mizrahi narrative advanced by it and intellectuals. The Keshet ideology is examined in the context of its grounding in post-colonial thought, especially that of Edward Said; the directions proposed by Ella Shohat and her followers; the central thinkers of the narrative in Israel in the last decade; and the harsh critique leveled at the Ashkenazic-Zionist narrative. The practical steps proposed for implementation within the multicultural model are also examined. Here the effort to reduce the centrality of Zionism while revealing its oppressive mechanisms was undertaken in parallel with use of these mechanisms in order to create a Mizrahi space with broad margins inclusive of alternative forms of Israeli identity in the Middle East and in conjunction with Arabs within and beyond Israel. Mizrahi traditionalism is examined in the fourth chapter in two particular respects. First, the criticism of the new Mizrahi narrative leveled by the renewed view and, second, the implications of the alternative in terms of creating a Mizrahi space that does not oppose Zionism. Rather, in opposing the post-colonialist perspective, this renewed traditionalist perspective criticizes as well as values Zionism. This space seeks to be both Jewish and Mizrahi. It does not detach itself from nationalist Zionism but rather views itself as a continuation of this tradition and, accordingly, is an effort to develop a next stage in its development. For example, an essential dimension of the traditionalist perspective, "commitment," is considered in this stage to be a fertile basis for dialogue with the past and as an anchor for contemporary interpretation of Mizrahi and other Jews' identities in Israel. The fifth and sixth chapters deal with all of the vectors of criticism directed at the new Mizrahi narrative, including its ideological foundations, philosophical stance, as well as intellectual and practical basis in the Israeli sphere in the face of Palestinian nationalism. These vectors of criticism from within and beyond The Keshet deal with issues, such as, the meaning of the movement's activities and the narrative that it offers regarding questions of Israeli identity, Israeli collective memory, and Mizrahi self-perception. At the same time, it must confront the capitalist neo-liberal narrative in a global world and thrive in a context in which it must make itself manifest amidst oppositional narratives. The final chapter presents a comprehensive, critical analysis of the new Mizrahi narrative. It does so by means of a theoretical model that examines it as an oppositional narrative – one that seeks to challenge the hegemonic meta-narrative, to dissolve the boundaries of the narrative discourse, and to propose liberation and redemption that may led to entrapment amidst a changing, a-dichotomous realities (e. g., global economic development in the face of Zionist nationalisms that display ideological strength as well as development of the sense of being an Israeli that maintains its vitality and continuity while being constituted by sectors that challenge being a Mizrahi, such as co-ethnic subjects. The Keshet's influence is dramatic and extends in a number of central directions. Its political activity and non-entry into the domains of the Israeli parliament granted the movement significant power in civic discourse and contributed to changing the persona of the Mizrahi discourse; for example, from political-party struggles over budgets and obtaining shares of the regime to changing the face of Israeli society and the centrality of the Mizrahi narrative. This change included deconstructing the Ashkenazic narrative and constructing comprehensive Ashkenazic-Zionist guilt, as evident in the Ehud Barak's request for collective forgiveness. This was accomplished through the participation of leading members of Keshet who appeared in prominent intellectual forums and engaged in lively discourse - principally in academic, social, and media domains. Such participation gave new meaning to various aspects of Israeli society while establishing different models of multiculturalism. The rise of the new Mizrahi narrative is a significant marker in the inter-narrative struggle as it represents a desire for separate or hybrid identities. And, the deep probing of the narrative constructed by leaders of The Keshet and those who identify with the movement produced a number of clear ways to distinguish it from the old Mizrahi struggle, whose history was portrayed through social protests, in a manner similar to linear vectors marked with wars and elections. The old Mizrahi struggle selected the traditional tactical struggle identified usually with social and political movements that seek to change political, social, and economic reality - from the bottom up. Their primary demand was to change decisions as well as the division of social goods and resources. Hence, this older period of struggle was not aimed at opposing the ideological foundations of the hegemonic narrative nor did it seek to undermine in a radical manner the unique nature of the state of Israel as a revolutionary solution for the problems of the Jews according to the Zionist approach, as a national home for the Jewish people, and recognition of the right to an preferred and meta-definition of Jewish nationalism. In contrast, the top down struggle advanced by the new narrative is part of an ideological movement led by the educated that is assertive and ground in post-colonialist theory. Accordingly, it was critical of the techniques and mechanisms of oppression as well as sought to attack the Zionist ideological foundations and to reveal its racist operations and the regimes that have preserved it so efficiently for many years. The uniqueness of this narrative is the intellectual offensive that continues to be advanced and, in parallel, development of the discourse struggle in Israel concerning the justification for Zionism and the concrete political proposal that Jews reject the taken-for-granted status of it as an ideology. This new narrative recognizes the historic difficulties of subversion as an emancipatory and, principally, moral effort. In addition, the new Mizrahi narrative shares the foundations and narrative of Palestinian victimization. In its radical version, the new Mizrahi narrative seeks to connect to the Palestinian narrative in order to create a new space here. According to this version, this action will take place gradually. The first stage will be characterized by opposition to Western European, Ashkenazic Zionism. The Eurocentric Zionism will surrender in the second stage, to be followed in the last stage by creation of a coalition of Jews and Arabs that will be establish through concrete actualization of the refugee status and victimization that is shared by both Palestinians and Mizrahim (whether as Mizrahim or Jewish-Arab). Not a speculative academic exercise, the goal sought by this narrative is delineate and to achieve a multicultural model in which equality, liberty, and social justice will overcome the nationalism and colonialism of either side; that is it will be neither Zionist nor Jewish. Thus, this approach stresses what is shared (e.g., acceptance of the Arab space and not a rejection of it; the legitimacy of the Arab language and culture). This is part of detachment from and historic judgment of the colonialist Zionist enterprise. This possibility includes moral elements that remove the evil and harm caused by Zionism for many years as well as inner cleansing – primarily among Ashkenazim – of attitudes towards Jews and non-Jews. Though, in this regard, it should be noted that, to date, the new narrative has not made similar claims that Palestinians undergo a similar process. The assumption seems to be that this should be tested, that the coalition proposed is a possibility that will be recognized by the Palestinians, and that they are prepared to undergo a similar, shared moral process that involves negating the state of Israel as a Jewish, Western state, a state of the Jewish people, and not only for those who live within it. These Mizrahi thinkers conducted a significant move through deconstruction and substitution of the Eurocentric narrative with a multi-cultural proposal that is optimistic and even attractively naïve. Today, they acknowledge that they did not take into account Palestinian nationalist violence directed to citizens, the traditionalist alternative, and widespread opposition within the Mizrahi community toward what is perceived to be Mizrahi seclusion. They also did not take into account the harsh criticism rendered by young and educated Mizrahim who claim that they were born into a complex, multi-dimensional, multi-layered identity that includes internalization of the language of the West and rules of the game of this complex identity. And, though they are critical of some of its values, this makes it difficult to mount internal emotional opposition to the West and to the globalization contained within this world. Hence, this more familiar world is preferred over the values of the Mizrahi-Arab alternative, particularly in regard to problems in the domains of democratic citizenship, stance taken toward women, and freedom of speech. Further, educated Mizrachim reject the post-colonialist perspective and are stridently critical of its dichotomization. They claim that such a division is irrelevant in a world in which older ideologies have collapsed and new spheres – such as cyberspace and others – are open to them in which they can present themselves with an Israeli identity that is not categorized as necessarily Mizrahi. (shrink)

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book focuses on how 'cult rhetoric' affects our perceptions of new religious movements (NRMs). 'Cult' Rhetoric in the 21st Century explores contemporary understandings of the term 'cult' by bringing together a range of scholars from multiple disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, psychology, and religious studies. The book provides a renewed discussion of 'new religious movements', whilst also considering recent approaches toward a nuanced study of contemporary religion. Topics explored include online religions, political 'cults', 'apostate' testimony (...) and the current 'othered' position of the study of minority religions. (shrink)

The ArgumentIn most historical accounts, eugenic doctrines and Christian beliefs are assumed to be adversaries. Such a perspective is too narrow, however, for while many prominent eugenicists were indeed religious skeptics, others sought to reconcile eugenics with Christianity. Various American Protestant social reformers tried to synthesize new biological theories with older biblical ideas about the meaning of a good inheritance. Such syntheses played an important role in disseminating eugenic doctrines into America's deeply Protestant heartland.

Historically confined to the disadvantaged ranks of the stratification system, evangelical Christians have increasingly joined the corporate elite, eliciting concern from some and sanguinity from others. Quantitative studies of the effects of religion on executive behavior have thus far shown mixed and inconclusive effects, and those few qualitative analyses that have focused on evangelical business leaders have generally emphasized conflict between religion and business but failed adequately to explore areas of consonance. While evangelical executives do, in fact, experience conflict associated (...) with their professional contexts, this tension arises not because business and religion are inherently opposed, as some have argued, but because evangelical business leaders are made to feel like second-class citizens by members of their own faith communities. Indeed, in cases of apparent conflict between faith and business, evangelical executives insist that it is faith, not business, that must be reconceived. Equipped with an array of strategies for demonstrating that business is a sacred institution and a worthy occupation, evangelical business leaders hope to restore faith in business as they apply their faith in business. In these evangelical executives and their accounts, the "spirit of capitalism," defined by Max Weber as a positive attitude toward both work and wealth, finds ongoing embrace and new expression, with implications for understanding the so-called faith at work movement, evangelicalism, and the role of religion among elites. (shrink)

In the context of changing paradigms of human thinking, secularization of social consciousness, scientific and technological and information revolution, social and environmental cataclysms, Christian preaching seeks to answer the "challenge of time", seeking and offering man such spiritual foundations of life that will help him to "find himself" in the changing in the modern world.

The purpose of this article is to explore the religious responses within the Orange Free State republic to the environmental crises in the period c. 1896 to c. 1898. During this time the state was subjected to severe drought, flooding, and the outbreak of various diseases. The article examines the way in which these afflictions where interpreted by the Christian and wider community in terms of God’s wrath for unrepented sins. The persistence of synchronistic elements of folk religion was (...) seen to have brought plagues like those found in Exodus which were visited upon the Pharaoh and his kingdom. This interruptive frame work led to calls for national repentance, but also a resistance to scientific and medical resolutions to the crises. It also reinforced racial divisions. Black Africans were perceived as the carriers of the disease so their movement was prohibited. The article goes on to show how the effect of this biblical frame of reference protected the concept of God as the ever-present active God in every aspect of life against the scientific rationalism of the age, while at the same time ironically hindering the work of mission and the life of the church. (shrink)

Historical analysis confirms the home-grown character of Nigeria’s conflicts and the complexity of their peaceful resolution. Religious leaders have traditionally contested political space with other actors and continue to do so. But the religiosity of popular culture is such that Nigerian religious leaders can make a substantive contribution to peace building and countering religious extremism if given the time, space and tools to do so. Elections have been critical moments in the evolution of religious tensions and (...) conflicts owing to the country’s geographical demographic and history, and the popular hope of correcting injustice that they evoke. There is a need to distinguish between genuine religious conflicts and conflicts that are essentially socio-economic or about competition for political power which become “religionised.” The evolution of the terrorist organisation, Boko Haram, can be traced back to intra-Muslim conflicts and anti-Sufi movements. But it reflects no less the underdevelopment and poverty of the Northeast and the impact of corruption on the perception of state and national government. The crude and violent narrative of Abubakar Shekau, its leader, shows a deterioration beyond that of its founder Malam Yusuf, who was able to offer financial and economic inducements over and above a rejection of most aspects of modernity and Western education. Increasingly, efforts are being made by religious leaders at both national, and local levels through formal, and grassroots networks to build better understanding and awareness between faiths to change and challenge narratives. With the appropriate support, these networks have great potential for improving communal relations and overcoming Boko Haram’s narratives of hate. (shrink)

Crowdfunded microfinance provides financial resources to impoverished entrepreneurs across the globe based on online appeals describing the entrepreneur’s values and venture potential and is considered a key player in the ethical finance movement. Despite knowledge that the content of the appeals impacts funding success, little is known regarding the role of religious expression, which is common and consequential in socially-oriented contexts. We leverage role congruity theory to address a theoretical tension concerning the effects of religious expression on crowdfunded (...) microfinance funding outcomes. Religious expression is associated with perceptions of trustworthiness, rule-following, and ethicality—qualities that would suggest an entrepreneur would likely avoid opportunist behavior and repay the loan. However, appeals to a higher power may be incongruent with the role of an entrepreneur to the extent that such expression communicates a lack of proactiveness and self-reliance. We use a two-study design to help resolve this tension. Our field study incorporating 253,130 loans from Kiva reveals that religious expression negatively influences funding, particularly for women. Our experiment using 1,795 individual loan assessments shows that the negative influence of religious expression is attenuated when individual lenders exhibit higher levels of religiosity. Post hoc analysis suggests campaigns can mitigate the negative impact of religious expression by being careful to also include aspects highlighting an entrepreneurial orientation. Overall, our work extends prior research suggesting that language tied to ethical or virtuous behaviors is generally not rewarded by lenders as using such language may make the applicant appear inconsistent with role of a stereotypical entrepreneur. (shrink)

We see religion in the things people treat as crucial to what they are and to what they aspire to become, things that make the biggest difference in how people feel about themselves. They may be social aspects or personal (behavioral or characterological) aspects of the self. The things people are militant about, the practices in regard to which they are most scrupulous, and the things about themselves that distress them are indicators of where their religious concerns lie, whatever (...) the subject matter. People work to maintain themselves as they want to see themselves and as they want others to see them; they seek ways to repair damage to their selves. They seek also to transform themselves so as to escape present unhappy definitions of self and to achieve ideal states of being. What needs to be changed may be perceived as aspects of personal self, as attitudes other people have toward otherwise unchangeable aspects of self, or as the entire socio‐political system in which people feel trapped. The process by which people manage successfully to transform themselves includes social cooperation, including the formation of groups to provide mutual reinforcement. (shrink)

Purpose Late in 2019, massive protest demonstrations rocked both Chile and Colombia. They were an expression of discontent with the economic model and social policies implemented in both countries in recent decades. The purpose of this study is to investigate how Chilean and Colombian news websites framed these social protests and what aspects of the social movements promoted these media to public opinion. Design/methodology/approach The methodology of this research is empirical; the authors use quantitative and discourse analysis techniques (...) to study the news published by the top three most visited main news websites in each country and deduce the main frameworks emerging from them. After analyzing the framing of reality by media in 4,252 news items, the authors suggest that the main news portals in these Latin American countries not only portrayed the collective actions but also promoted interpretations that did not necessarily reflect the demands of the demonstrations. Findings The findings were that in the 2019 protests in Chile and Colombia, the media approach to collective action was not necessarily positive for the activists. This was mainly because framing in the Chilean and Colombian websites had to do with negative aspects of the movements, such as violence or economic costs. Originality/value The originality and value of this research is that despite the fact that there are abundant case studies on the relationship between social movements and media framing in the literature, this study adds to the current knowledge because it compares two Latin American countries and focuses on Web news portals. (shrink)

The book offers a new insight into the political, social, and religious conduct of religious-Zionism, whose consequences are evident in Israeli society today. Before the Six-Day War, religious-Zionism had limited its concern to the protection of specific religious interests, with its representatives having little share in the determination of Israel's national agenda. Fifty years after it, religious-Zionism has turned into one of Israeli society's dominant elements. The presence of this group in all aspects of Israel's (...) life and its members' determination to set Israel's social, cultural, and international agenda is indisputable. Delving into this dramatic transformation, the book depicts the Six-Day War as a constitutive event that indelibly changed the political and religious consciousness of religious-Zionists. The perception of real history that had guided this movement from its dawn was replaced by a "sacred history" approach that became an actual program of political activity. As part of a process that has unfolded over the last thirty years, the body and sexuality have also become a central concern in the movement's practice, reflection, and discourse. The how and why of this shift in religious-Zionism--from passivity and a consciousness of marginality to the front lines of public life--is this book's central concern. The book will be of interest to readers and scholars concerned with changing dynamic societies and with the study of religion and particularly with the relationship between religion and politics. (shrink)

This book is discussing patterns of radical religious thought in popular forms of Black music. The consistent influence of the Five Percent Nation on Rap music as one of the most esoteric groups among the manifold Black Muslim movements has already gained scholarly attention. However, it shares more than a strong pattern of reversed racism with the Bobo Shanti Order, the most rigid branch of the Rastafarian faith, globally popularized by Dancehall-Reggae artists like Sizzla or Capleton. Authentic devotion (...) or calculated marketing?Apart from providing a possible answer to this question, the historical shift of Bobo adherents from shunned extremists to firmly anchored personifications of authenticity in mainstream Rastafarian culture is being emphasized. A multi-layered comparative case study attempts to shed light on the re-contextualization of language as well as expressed dogmatic perceptions and symbolism, attitude towards other religious groups and aspects of ethnic discrimination. Further analysis includes the visibility of artists and their references to practical and moral issues directly derived from two obscure ideologies that managed to conquer airwaves and concert halls. (shrink)

This article examines the formative influence of the organizational field of religion on emerging modern forms of popular political mobilization in Britain and the United States in the early nineteenth century when a transition towards enduring campaigns of extended geographical scale occurred. The temporal ordering of mobilization activities reveals the strong presence of religious constituencies and religious organizational models in the mobilizatory sequences that first instituted a mass-produced popular politics. Two related yet analytically distinct generative effects of the (...) religious field can be discerned. First, in both cases the transition toward modern forms of popular mobilization was driven by the religious institutionalization of organizational forms of centralized voluntarism that facilitated extensive collective action. Second, the adoption of different varieties of the same organizational forms led to important divergences. The spread in the United States of societies for moral reformation—in contrast to their non-survival in Britain—steered popular politics there towards a more moralistic framing of public issues. These findings indicate the importance of the organizational field of religion for the configuration of modern forms of popular collective action and confirm the analytical importance of religion’s organizational aspects for the study of collective action. (shrink)

I want to argue…that to read Rossetti’s religious poetry with understanding requires a more or less conscious investment in the peculiarities of its Christian orientation, in the social and historical particulars which feed and shape the distinctive features of her work. Because John O. Waller’s relatively recent essay on Rossetti, “Christ’s Second Coming: Christina Rossetti and the Premillenarianist William Dodsworth,” focuses on some of the most important of these particulars, it seems to me one of the most useful pieces (...) of scholarship ever written on the poet. The essay locates the special ground of Rossetti’s religious poetry in that peculiar Adventist and premillenarian context which flourished for about fifty years in mid nineteenth-century culture. In point of historical fact—and it is a historical fact which has enormous significance for the aesthetic character of Rossetti’s poetry—her religious verse is intimately meshed with a number of particular, even peculiar, religious ideas.18 From the vantage of her strongest poetry, the most important of these ideas were allied to a once powerful religious movement which later—toward the end of the century—slipped to a marginal position in English culture.The whole question [of premillenarianism] was overshadowed first and last by the Tractarian Movement, Anglo-Catholicism, and the resulting Protestant reaction. And we can see in retrospect that all through the years [1820-1875] the theological future actually belonged to liberal, or Broad Church, principles. By the middle 1870s, apparently [the issues raised through the premillenarian movement] were no longer very alive.19­­In this context we may begin to understand the decline of Rossetti’s reputation after the late nineteenth century, when she was still regarded as one of the most powerful and important contemporary English poets. Her reputation was established in the 1860s and 1870s, when Adventism reached the apogee of its brief but influential career. Thereafter, the availability of religious poetry was mediated either through the Broad Church line or through the High Church and Anglo-Catholic line . The premillenarian and evangelist enthusiasm which supported Rossetti’s religious poetry had been moved to the periphery of English culture when the canon of such verse began to take shape in the modern period.To read Rossetti’s poetry, then, we have to willingly suspend not only our disbelief in her convictions and ideas but also our belief in those expectations and presuppositions about religious poetry which we have inherited from those two dominant ideological lines—Broad Church and High Church and Anglo-Catholic. Waller has drawn our attention to the general premillenarian content of her work, and I should like to follow his lead by emphasizing another crucial and even more particular doctrinal feature of her poetry. 19. Waller, “Christ’s Second Coming,” p. 477. For a general discussion of millenarianism in the early nineteenth century, see J. E. Harrison, The Second Coming, Popular Millenarianism, 1780-1850 . Jerome J. McGann is the Doris and Henry Dreyfuss Professor of Humanities at the California Institute of Technology. His two most recent books are The Romantic Ideology. A Critical Investigation and A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism . His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “Formalism, Savagery, and Care; or, The Function of Criticism Once Again” and “The Meaning of the Ancient Mariner”. (shrink)

This book provides philosophical grounds for an emerging area of scholarship: the study of religion and dance. In the first part, LaMothe investigates why scholars in religious studies have tended to overlook dance, or rhythmic bodily movement, in favor of textual expressions of religious life. In close readings of Descartes, Kant, Schleiermacher, Hegel, and Kierkegaard, LaMothe traces this attitude to formative moments of the field in which philosophers relied upon the practice of writing to mediate between the study (...) of “religion,” on the one hand, and “theology,” on the other.In the second part, LaMothe revives the work of theologian, phenomenologist, and historian of religion Gerardus van der Leeuw for help in interpreting how dancing can serve as a medium of religious experience and expression. In so doing, LaMothe opens new perspectives on the role of bodily being in religious life, and on the place of theology in the study of religion. (shrink)

From the seventeenth century onwards, English Reformed ministers engaged in lively correspondence and publishing exchanges with men from different countries and Protestant traditions. In the eighteenth century, appreciation of their shared intellectual and cultural heritage and a desire to sustain the patterns for religious living it encouraged inflected the content and style of textual interactions among Halle Pietists, English dissenters and New England Congregationalists. Interest in the present state of religious life was also important, and therefore news about (...) awakenings and materials for pastoral care circulated around Europe and North America through existing channels and by new means. Their encounters and the texts that they produced were mutually generative, and the language and manner of the participants' personal interactions were important features of published works. These personal associations, publishing activities and discursive styles can be understood as aspects of the literary sociology of a religious culture that valued intellectual and emotional engagements and sought to inculcate religion through education and friendship. (shrink)

Ethical mysticism, by S. Coit.--The ethical import of history, by D. S. Muzzey.--The tragic and heroic in life, by W. M. Salter.--Distinctive features of the ethical movement, by A. W. Martin.--Ethical experience as the basis of religious education, by H. Neumann.--"All men are created equal," by G. E. O'Dell.--How far is art an aid to religion? by P. Chubb.--Evolution and the uniqueness of man, by H. J. Bridges.--The spiritual outlook on life, by H. J. Golding.--The ethics of Abu'l Ala (...) al Ma'arri, by N. Schmidt.--Life's unused moral force, by H. Snell.--Is the ideal real? by G. A. Smith.--Some ethical tendencies in the professions, by R. D. Kohn.--On the art of living, by W. Boerner.--The relation of the ethical ideal to social reform, by J. L. Elliott.--Concerning tolerance, by R. F. Dewey.--Ethical culture in Germany after the war, by R. Penzig.--A confession of faith, by S. B. Weston.--"Hearing the witnesses," by J. Gutmann. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to identify, analyze and summarize the main theological and sociological approaches to the study of the latest trends of the Western Protestant theological inquiry that takes into account the condition of postmodernity, based on the study of the researches of the Emerging church. As a methodological foundation of the research it is employed the interdisciplinary approach, as well as the comparative method, which gives the researcher the opportunity to fully consider the theological and socio-cultural (...) features of Emerging Church. Scientific novelty. As follows from the analysis, there are various theological and sociological interpretations of the church. In particular, the phenomenon of post-modern religiosity is interpreted as a form of protest against the traditional evangelical Protestantism, as the movement of cultural and religious criticism, whose identity is formed by the deconstruction of narratives and discourses of traditional evangelical Christianity, as the autonomous Protestant tradition that applies postmodern forms of knowledge for rethinking of the Christian faith. Conclusions. A new phenomenon of Western Christianity has caused intense debate in the scientific and especially theological environment. Despite the availability of a wide range of interpretations of the new movement, the researchers acknowledge its religious innovative meaning, recognizing the potential of the Emerging Church to actualize the process of transformation of traditional institutions and practices of Protestantism so that it again would be able to enter into dialogue with society in a new socio-cultural situation. (shrink)

The strengthening of intolerance and religious movements of various mass organisations after the 1998 reform in Indonesia caused social friction. The Ministry of Religious offers religious moderation as an essential aspect of the plurality of spiritual life. What is the concept and practice of religious moderation for each mass organisation? This research is qualitatively descriptive, with a sociological approach to religion. The concept of religious moderation of mass organisastions is different; they claim to understand (...) the principle of wasathiyyah so that it becomes a view of life that accepts religious differences outside themselves. Religious moderation is in the form of religious views, attitudes, and behaviours that balance the interests of life, the world and the hereafter, personal with the public, and others. There are four indicators of religious moderation: nationalism, tolerance, non-violence, and local cultural accommodation. MTA understands religious moderation based on two principles: not being self-righteous, and do not blame other groups; FPI departs from its vision, religious moderation over the spirit of ‘amar ma’ruf nahi munkar; LUIS sees religious moderation based on the principles of Islam as a religion of rahmatan lil’alamin, the implications for the balance of the relationship between habl min Allah; habl min an-nass and habl min al-’alam; and MMI understands religious moderation based on three aspects: Islam is a religion that is syumul and rahmatan li’alamin; religious moderation related to sharia enforcement; and religious moderation means that fulfillment of maqashid asy-syariah includes ushul al-khamsah: hifdz al-din, hifdz an-nafs, hifdz al-mal, hifdz al-’aql, and hifdz an-nasb. (shrink)

This article explores certain aspects related to the environmental ethical message in the Encyclical Letter Laudato si, written in 2015 by Pope Francis, leader of the Catholic Church, and compares them to recent Green party political movements in Italy. Italy offers a unique case study in that the religious background of the country acts as an independent variable with respect to the social acceptance of current environmental issues. The ethical message in Laudato sì is compared to recent debates (...) on the moral responsibility of the individual and/or institution towards environmental problems; a range of responsibilities assumed by institutions versus individuals with regards to environmental problems are analyzed. In conclusion, parallels are made between the abovementioned ethical debate and the ethical contents of the Encyclical Letter. (shrink)

The article contains a comparative analysis of philosophical and religious views of the Indian thinker and public figure Swami Vivekananda and the philosophers of the American transcendentalism movement. The author focuses on understanding by the intellectuals of various aspects of the Divine. As representatives of American transcendentalism, the most prominent figures of this movement are considered, in whose works the main transcendentalism ideas are expressed – philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and William Ellery Channing. Hermeneutical and historical-philosophical (...) methods are used in the study. As a result, the obvious similarity of many positions in the teachings of thinkers is recognized, caused by common sources of their views. At the same time, significant differences in the views of Western philosophers and Indian thinker are revealed. They are represented in the ideas about the divinity of man, about nature as a metaphysical force, as well as in the question of the search for and knowledge of God. The conclusion about Vivekananda’s adequate comprehension of the works of American transcendentalists and his using of transcendentalism ideas for forming a masterful interpretation of the foundations of Indian culture for Western society is done. (shrink)

In “Diversifying Effective Altruism’s Longshots in Animal Advocacy”, Matthew C. Halteman acknowledges the value of aspects of the EA method but considers two potential critical concerns. First, it isn’t always clear that effective altruism succeeds in doing the most good, especially where long-shots like foiling misaligned AI or producing meat without animals are concerned. Second, one might worry that investing large sums of money in long-shots like these, even if they do succeed, has the opportunity cost of failing adequately to (...) combat systemic injustice in the shorter term. This chapter explains each of these reservations and goes on to suggest some exciting new initiatives—institution-building in Black veganism, higher education, and religious communities—that could mitigate these reservations, energize and diversify the movement, and remain true to the EA method of supporting underexploited but potentially high-impact causes that produce non-fungible goods otherwise unlikely to be funded. (shrink)

“A LAYMAN’S INTODUCTION TO RELIGIOUS EXISTENTIALISM presents the philosophy of one of the most influential movements of thought in the twentieth century. In language that is exceptional for its clarity, it explains and assesses the important Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant contributors to modern theology: Soren Kierkegaard, Karl Barth, Franz Rosenzweig, Jacques Maritain, Nicholas Berdyaev, Gabriel Marcel, Reinhold Niebuhr, Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Buber, and Paul Tillich”- Publisher.

This paper examines gender aspects of tactics of the alter-globalization movement. Focusing mainly on two transnational collective actions in Prague in 2000 and in Genoa in 2001, the research draws on participant observation, interviews with activists and analysis of the movement's alternative media. The feminist activism within the movement, the gendered tactics and their representation in the alternative media are analysed using the concept of diffusion. Although feminists are involved in the protests, and local Czech feminist activism was incited by (...) the international mobilizations in Prague in 2000, they are often marginalized because of the emphasis on masculine confrontational and violent tactics used in demonstrations. The movement's alternative media further reproduce gender stereotypes. The visual representations of the tactics are traditionally gendered – women are depicted as fairies, men as fighters; this is because the movement does not want to appear weak and feminine, and seeks to be effective. (shrink)

Four previously unpublished chapters by Jacob Viner. The first two deal with the economic doctrines of the Christian Fathers and the Scholastics; the last two are each concerned with a particular aspect of the relationship between religious thought, economic ethics, and society. Initially conceived as part of a larger study on "Religion and Society," this volume holds some interest for the philosopher of religion because it examines the treatment by Christian theologians, both Protestant and Catholic, of topics such as (...) private property, riches and poverty, commerce, just price and economic motivation. Viner explores the roles of early Protestant theology in the rise of capitalism, with special reference to the Weber-Tawney thesis which attributes significant responsibility to Calvinist doctrine for the growth and the character of modern capitalism. The chapters on Patristic and Scholastic economic thought are particularly strong. There is a detailed examination of the economic views of Thomas Aquinas, though the author is aware that Aquinas’s influence was not a dominant one before the sixteenth century. In the final chapter Viner amasses considerable historical evidence to construct a case against Weber and his followers. In the first three chapters, Viner appears to have been partly inspired by a desire to correct the false impressions of some earlier and less friendly commentators on Catholic economic thought. Throughout, documentation is extensive. There is a rich bibliography.—J.P.D. (shrink)

The central theme in the discussion of how education about religion can, and should, be developed in pluralistic societies concerns challenges and opportunities involving intercultural religious education (RE). One example is Robert Jackson’s report Signposts, commissioned by the Council of Europe, in which various aspects of intercultural competence are captured and made visible regarding a religious didactic context. Here, different dimensions of what can be described as ‘ethical competence’ appear to be central. In this article, the interpretive approach, (...) strongly connected with Jackson, is considered to be in need of a development of a theoretical framing of forceful strategies for handling ethical challenges taking place in multicultural, multireligious and multi-confessional classrooms. It is argued that such strategies will depend on a careful analysis of the concept of ethical competence. A theoretical platform for the argument is presented with reference to James Rest’s analysis of ethical competence, which is shown to be relevant to an examination of how the concept of ethical competence can contribute to the development of strategies for teaching intercultural RE. As a basis for this examination, the Danish, Finnish and Norwegian syllabuses for compulsory school RE are analysed regarding how they express conceptions of ethical competence. This selection shaped the curricular arena of the investigation as being non-confessional, whilst simultaneously, more or less explicitly, resting on a shared historical Protestant anchorage. This twofold interpretation is shown to allow for an analysis of ethical competence, in relation to which an identification of certain prerequisites for developing strategies for teaching intercultural RE is possible. (shrink)

A highly readable account of the development and present teachings of spiritualism, theosophy, New Thought, Divine Science, Church of Religious Science, Unity, and Christian Science. Professor Judah has personally participated in a number of the movements and hence his approach is reasonably sympathetic, although his general attitude is that of a liberal Protestant. He successfully demonstrates not only the tremendous variety of doctrines and personalities active in the above groups, but also indicates the substantial agreement in major areas. (...) The book is a reasonably objective, fascinating introduction to the "Age of Aquarius," which will, according to its heralds, replace a dying Christianity of the old Piscean dispensation. The book is well indexed.--S. A. S. (shrink)

_Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of this seminal book, this new edition includes an illuminating foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittges_ The seeds of the swift and sweeping religious movement that reshaped European thought in the 1500s were sown in the late Middle Ages. In this book, Steven Ozment traces the growth and dissemination of dissenting intellectual trends through three centuries to their explosive burgeoning in the Reformations—both Protestant and Catholic—of the sixteenth century. He elucidates with great clarity (...) the complex philosophical and theological issues that inspired antagonistic schools, traditions, and movements from Aquinas to Calvin. This masterly synthesis of the intellectual and religious history of the period illuminates the impact of late medieval ideas on early modern society. With a new foreword by Carlos Eire and Ronald K. Rittgers, this modern classic is ripe for rediscovery by a new generation of students and scholars. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Protestant Responses to Darwinism in Denmark, 1859–1914Hans Henrik HjermitslevFrom the 1870s onwards, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, published in On the Origin of Species (1859) and Descent of Man (1871), was an important topic among the followers of the influential Danish theologian N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783–1872). The Grundtvigians constituted a major faction within the Danish Evangelical-Lutheran Established Church, which included more than ninety percent of the population in the period (...) 1859–1914.This article demonstrates the influence of local contexts on the reception of scientific ideas by analyzing how specific aspects of Danish intellectual culture made the Grundtvigian reactions to Darwin’s theory different from Protestant denominations in America and Britain. Firstly, Grundtvig’s critique of Lutheran scriptural theology and his preference for the living word to the letters of the Bible legitimized liberal interpretations of Scripture. Secondly the philosophy of the Søren Kierkegaard protagonist, Rasmus Nielsen, made it possible for Grundtvigians to draw radical distinctions between science and faith. This specific “Danish Protestantism,” as the clergyman Frederik Jungersen phrased it in 1873, led the way for liberal Grundtvigians in coming to terms with Darwinism in the first decades of the twentieth century.1 [End Page 279]Protestant Responses to EvolutionIn recent decades historians have paid considerable attention to religious responses to Darwinism. Studies have revealed a variety of reactions to evolution depending on local contingencies, which has made it impossible to uphold any grand narrative of the dissemination of Darwinism.2 In his study of Calvinist attitudes toward Darwinism in Princeton, Belfast, and Edinburgh, David N. Livingstone thus emphasizes the importance of place in the reception of evolution.3 The historical complexities shaped by local contexts have been further demonstrated by scholars, who have explored the responses to Darwinism in a wide range of Protestant denominations in Britain and America.4 From the 1870s, when evolution was generally accepted among British and American scientists, liberal and even some orthodox theologians advocated various kinds of theistic evolutionism. It was not until the 1920s that creationists, who rejected evolution in general and human evolution in particular, took center stage in American Protestant answers to the Darwinian challenge. While many Protestant theologians in the decades around 1900 accepted that God had created the living world, including man, through evolution, very few embraced the specific Darwinian mechanism of natural selection that was often said to have atheistic implications. Instead liberal theologians, in line with many naturalists, often applied Lamarckian concepts of use-inheritance and teleological [End Page 280] development and prevalent ideas of progress that were seen as consistent with viewing evolution as a meaningful process and the unfolding of the Creator’s plan. According to James R. Moore, Peter J. Bowler, and Frederick Gregory this was the common way for liberal Christians to respond to organic evolution at least in the English-speaking world. It offered an acceptable compromise between science and faith. However, this article demonstrates that this strategy did not dominate in Denmark, where a separation model of science and faith was a more widespread approach when embracing the theory of evolution.5While studies by Jon H. Roberts and Ronald L. Numbers reveal considerable differences within the leading Protestant denominations such as Calvinists, Baptists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, and Methodists in their attitudes toward evolution, they detect no significant differences among the groups. Numbers notes however that “distinctive theological convictions sometimes influenced how people viewed Darwin’s theory.”6 This was especially the case when we move from the Protestant mainstream into distinctive groups such as the Seventh-day Adventists and the Pentecostals. In the case of the Adventists, their hyper-literalism and strong support for young-earth creationism owed much to the inspired writings of their founding prophetess Ellen G. White, while the relative indifference to evolution among Pentecostals can be explained by their Wesleyan-Methodist focus on religious experience over the study of Scripture.7 Likewise, in a study of attitudes toward evolution within the British Quaker community, Geoffrey Cantor has shown how discussions of Darwinism between evangelicals and moderates centred on the relative importance that should be paid to the Bible versus the doctrine of the Inner Light. Emphasizing... (shrink)

After Copernicus (1473–1543) and the ongoing development of contemporary cosmization, a new epistemological paradigm of post-religious humility is replacing religious versions. In the 100th year of Kuhn/Lakatos, this article explores the differences between religious and post-religious paradigms of humility as a formative aspect of human knowing. Although post-religious humility does not necessarily strive to criticize earlier paradigms of humility, an implicit critique is often present. In accordance with Kuhnian/Lakatosian theory, this article is not about psychological (...) traits or personality characteristics; rather, both types of humility as epistemological paradigms exist at the nascent stage of knowledge development. In retrospect, various thinkers throughout the Renaissance and Enlightenment demonstrate flux and conflict between the two paradigmatic humilities, and various theorists also struggle to articulate the emerging paradigm. The overall trajectory radicalizes the abandonment of anthropomorphism and positivistic assumptions about certainty. Historically, post-religious humility also intersected with society’s perception of science’s “progress” and a deeper embrace of finitude and mortality than was possible earlier. Movements like transhumanism, as well as phenomena of technological prowess and remarkable achievements in modern scientific research, do not contradict the new humility’s role. Whether religious or post-religious, postpositivistic civilization increasingly experiences that the new paradigm repositions the sociological and cognitive place where humility can now comfortably reside. (shrink)

L’article reconsidère le mouvement des femmes en Albanie dans l’entre-deux-guerres en partant de ses racines ottomanes et en l’examinant à travers la presse féministe de l’époque. En prenant en compte l’ensemble des activités des militantes protestantes formées par les Américains, les bureaucrates post-ottomans et les féministes de la région, j’interprète le mouvement des femmes comme un aspect de la modernité ottomane tardive et comme une initiative marquée par des circulations globales qui ont eu un impact dans la construction de la (...) nation dans l’entre-deux-guerres. En commençant par une synthèse des activités des protestants dans la période tardive ottomane, l’article interroge ensuite la relation entre la bureaucratie post-ottomane et le mouvement des femmes de l’entre-deux-guerres. Enfin, il se termine par l’étude du magazine familial Shqiptarja (La femme albanaise). Soutenu par l’État, le magazine montre l’émergence d’un féminisme local conscient des enjeux globaux. Le féminisme en Albanie dans ces années se révèle ainsi bien plus riche et complexe que dans les travaux nationalistes existant. L’Albanie apparaît comme un espace post-ottoman qui se modernise selon ses propres enjeux avec des féministes capables de s’approprier de manière sélective les messages venant de l’extérieur. (shrink)