Browse

This book places the rise of the United States' political conservatism in the context of ferment within the Roman Catholic Church. How did Roman Catholics shift from being perceived as un-American to emerging as the most vocal defenders of the United States as the standard bearer in world history for political liberty and economic prosperity? This book charts the development of the complex relationship between Roman Catholicism and American conservatism, and it shows how these two seemingly antagonistic ideological groups became intertwined in advancing a certain brand of domestic and international politics. Contrary to the standard narrative, Roman Catholics were some of the most assertive political conservatives directly after World War II, and their brand of politics became one of the most influential means by which Roman Catholicism came to terms with American secular society. It did so precisely as bishops determined the church needed to update its teaching about its place in the modern world. Catholics grappled with political conservatism long before the supposed rightward turn at the time of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. The book follows the course of political conservatism from John F. Kennedy, the first and only Roman Catholic president of the United States, to George W. Bush, and describes the evolution of the church and its influence on American politics. By tracing the roots of Roman Catholic politicism in American culture, the book argues that Roman Catholicism's adaptation to the modern world, whether in the United States or worldwide, was as remarkable as its achievement remains uncertain.

As the sacred text of a modern religious movement of global reach, The Book of Mormon has undeniable historical significance. That significance, this volume shows, is inextricable from the intricacy of its literary form and the audacity of its historical vision. This landmark collection brings together a diverse range of scholars in American literary studies and related fields to definitively establish The Book of Mormon as an indispensable object of Americanist inquiry not least because it is, among other things, a form of Americanist inquiry in its own right—a creative, critical reading of “America.” Drawing on formalist criticism, literary and cultural theory, book history, religious studies, and even anthropological field work, Americanist Approaches to The Book of Mormon captures as never before the full dimensions and resonances of this “American Bible.”

This study examines, within a chronological framework, the major themes and personalities that influenced the outbreak of a number of Evangelical clerical and lay secessions from the Church of England and Ireland during the first half of the nineteenth century. Though the number of secessions was relatively small, between a hundred and two hundred of the ‘Gospel clergy’ abandoned the Church during this period, their influence was considerable, especially in highlighting in embarrassing fashion the tensions between the evangelical conversionist imperative and the principles of a national religious establishment. Moreover, through much of this period there remained, just beneath the surface, the potential threat of a large Evangelical disruption similar to that which occurred in Scotland in 1843. Consequently, these secessions provoked great consternation within the Church and within Evangelicalism itself, contributed to the outbreak of millennial speculation following the ‘constitutional revolution’ of 1828–32, led to the formation of several new denominations, and sparked off a major Church–State crisis over the legal right of a clergyman to secede and begin a new ministry within Protestant Dissent.

This book demonstrates that British imperialism was integrally connected to British religion. Using published sources, the book identifies the construction, development, and ingredients of a public Anglican discourse of the British Empire between 1700 and c.1850. It argues that the Church of England exhibited an official and conscious Anglican concern for empire and for missions by the Church of England, from the foundation of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in 1701. Much of that earlier 18th century understanding went on to shape later Anglican Evangelical imperial attitudes in the Church Missionary Society founded in 1799. In this Anglican engagement with the British Empire, a public theological discourse of empire was formed and promulgated. This religious public discourse of empire was developed in an imperial partnership with the state. It was formulated in the Anglican engagement with the North American colonies in the 18th century; it underwent a revival of the church-state partnership in the period between 1790 and 1830, as witnessed in Bengal; and it was fundamentally transformed in a new paradigm of imperial engagement in the 1840s, which was implemented in the colonies of Australia and New Zealand. Both the old and the new imperial Anglican paradigms developed a religious and theological imperial discourse that constructed the identities for various colonized peoples and British colonists, as well as contributing to English-British identity between 1700 and 1850. It was a Christian lens that proved remarkably consistent and enduring for both the old and the new British Empires.

This book is a study of the Anglican Reformed tradition (often inaccurately described as Calvinist) after the Restoration and it sets out to revise our picture of the theological world of the later Stuart period. Arguing that the importance of the Reformed theological tradition has frequently been underestimated, the study points to a network of conforming Reformed theologians which included many of the most prominent churchmen of the age. Focussing particularly on what these churchmen contributed in three hotly disputed areas of doctrine (justification, the Trinity and the divine attributes), the study argues that the most significant debates in speculative theology which erupted within the English Church after 1662 were the result of Anglican Reformed resistance to the growing influence of continental Arminianism. It demonstrates the strength and flexibility of the Reformed response to the developing Arminian school, and shows that the Reformed tradition remained a viable theological option for Anglicans well into the eighteenth century. The study therefore provides a significant bridge linking the Reformed writers of the Elizabethan and early Stuart period to the Reformed Evangelicals of the 18th Century. It also shows that, throughout its formative period, Anglicanism was not a monolithic tradition, but rather a contested ground between the competing claims of those adhering to the Church of England's Reformed doctrinal heritage and the insights of those who, to varying degrees, were prepared to explore new theological avenues.

This book examines the use of the image of the Jewish temple in the writings of Anglo-Saxon monk Bede (d. 735). The various Jewish holy sites described in the Bible possessed multiple different meanings in Bede’s exegesis and therefore this imagery provides an excellent window into his thought. Proceeding thematically, the book studies what Bede’s use of the temple reveals about his ideas of history, the universe, Christ, the Church, and the individual Christian. Across his wide body of writings Bede presented an image of unity, whether that be the unity of Jew and gentile in the universal Church or the unity of human and divine in the incarnate Christ, and the temple image provided a means of understanding and celebrating that unity. This book argues that this theology and the related exegesis of the temple were part of the shared spirituality and communal discourse of Bede’s monastery at Wearmouth-Jarrow, in particular as revealed in the Codex Amiatinus, an illuminated Bible made there. Studying the temple in Bede’s works reveals not just an individual genius, but a monastic community engaged actively in scriptural interpretation and religious reflection.

Mexico is famous for its notoriously graphic and bloody crucifixes depicting the broken and tortured body of Jesus on the cross. Images of Christ’s suffering frequently outnumber images of the Virgin Mary in local and household devotions throughout Latin America. How do we explain the enduring significance of these images for the popular Roman Catholic faith of poor and ordinary Mexicans? Based on original archival and ethnographic research, this book uncovers the diverse and sometimes contradictory meanings that the symbol of the crucifix has held for indigenous and mestizo Mexicans over many centuries. By recounting the epic story of the Christianization of Mexico from the perspective of a specific, sculpted crucifix of colonial origin, this book offers a profoundly sympathetic portrait of indigenous Christian belief and practice and a lively defense of the diverse and “heterodox” local expressions of Christianity alive in the world today.

Clemens August Graf von Galen, Bishop of Münster from 1933 until his death in 1946, is renowned for his opposition to Nazism, most notably for his public preaching in 1941 against Hitler's euthanasia project to rid the country of sick, elderly, mentally retarded, and disabled Germans. This biographical study of von Galen views him from a different perspective: as a complex figure who moved between dissent and complicity during the Nazi regime, opposing certain elements of National Socialism while choosing to remain silent on issues concerning discrimination, deportation, and the murder of Jews. The book places von Galen in the context of his times, describing how the Catholic Church reacted to various Nazi policies, how the anti-Catholic legislation of the Kulturkampf shaped the repertoire of resistance tactics of northwestern German Catholics, and how theological interpretations were used to justify resistance and/or collaboration. It discloses the reasons for von Galen's public denunciation of the euthanasia project and the ramifications of his openly defiant stance. The book reveals how the bishop portrayed Jews and what that depiction meant for Jews living in Nazi Germany. Finally, it investigates the creation of the image of von Galen as “Grand Churchman-Resister” and discusses the implications of this for the myth of Catholic conservative “resistance” constructed in post-1945 Germany.

This book argues that the central concept of Bonhoeffer’s early theology, ‘person’, positions his thought in relationship to his own Lutheran tradition as well as the two most important post‐First World War theologies, Karl Barth’s dialectical theology and Karl Holl’s Luther interpretation. Barth convinces Bonhoeffer that theology must understand revelation as originating outside the human self in God’s freedom. But whereas Barth understands revelation as the act of an eternal divine subject, Bonhoeffer treats revelation as the act and being of the historical person of Jesus Christ. On the basis of this person‐concept of revelation, Bonhoeffer rejects Barth’s dialectical thought, designed to respect the distinction between God and world, for a hermeneutic way of thinking that begins with the reconciliation of God and world in the person of Christ. Here Bonhoeffer mines a Lutheran understanding of the incarnation as God’s unreserved entry into history, and the person of Christ as the resulting historical reconciliation of opposites. This also distinguishes Bonhoeffer’s Lutheranism from that of Karl Holl, one of Bonhoeffer’s teachers in Berlin, whose location of justification in the conscience renders the presence of Christ superfluous. Against this, Bonhoeffer emphasizes the present person of Christ as the precondition of justification. Through these critical conversations, Bonhoeffer develops the features of his person‐theology—a person‐concept of revelation and a hermeneutical way of thinking—which remain constant despite the sometimes radical changes in his thought.

This is the first major study for over forty years of the liturgical arrangement of Anglican churches in the period between the Reformation and the Oxford Movement. The book is based both on surviving buildings and on a wide range of archival sources, such as seating plans, which are used to document internal changes and to suggest reasons behind them. This book challenges many widely held assumptions about the liturgical outlook of the Pre-Tractarian period, and about the impact of ecclesiology on the Church of England. In particular, it emphasises the existence, hitherto disregarded, of a Church of England movement for liturgical renewal between 1780 and 1840, which to a degree anticipated some of the ideas previously attributed solely to the ecclesiologists. The discussion is firmly set within the context of European Protestantism, and comparisons are drawn with the liturgical practices both of Calvinists and Lutherans.

For much of his career as a Reformer, John Calvin was involved in trinitarian controversy. Not only did these controversies span his career, but his opponents ranged across the spectrum of theological approaches — from staunch traditionalists to radical antitrinitarians. Remarkably, the heart of Calvin's argument, and the heart of others' criticism, remained the same throughout: Calvin claimed that the only-begotten Son of the Father is also, as the one true God, ‘of himself’. This book investigates the various Reformation and post-Reformation responses to Calvin's affirmation of the Son's aseity (or essential self-existence), a significant episode in the history of theology that is often ignored or misunderstood. Calvin neither rejected eternal generation, nor merely toed the line of classical exposition. As such, these debates turned on the crucial pivot between simple unity and ordered plurality — the relationship between the processions and consubstantiality — at the heart of the doctrine of the Trinity. This book's aim is to explain the historical significance and explore the theological implications of Calvin's complex solidarity with the classical tradition in his approach to thinking and speaking of the Triune God. It contends that Calvin's approach, rather than an alternative to classical trinitarianism, is actually more consistent with this tradition's fundamental commitments regarding the ineffable generation of God from God than its own received exposition.

Calvin, the Bible, and History investigates John Calvin’s distinctive historicizing approach to scripture. The book explores how historical consciousness manifests itself in Calvin’s engagement with the Bible, sometimes leading him to unusual, unprecedented, and occasionally deeply controversial exegetical conclusions. It reshapes the image of Calvin as a biblical interpreter by situating his approach within the context of premodern Christian biblical interpretation, recent Protestant hermeneutical trends, and early modern views of history. In an introductory overview of Calvin’s method and seven chapters focusing on his interpretation of different biblical books or authors, Barbara Pitkin analyzes his engagement with scripture from the Pentateuch to his reception of the apostle Paul. Each chapter examines intellectual or cultural contexts, situating Calvin’s readings within traditional and contemporary exegesis, broader cultural trends, or historical developments, and explores the theme of historical consciousness from a different angle, focusing, for example, on Calvin’s historicizing treatment of Old Testament prophecy, or his reflection of contemporary historiographical trends, or his efforts to relate the biblical past to present historical conditions. An epilogue explores the significance of these findings for understanding Calvin’s concept of history. Collectively these linked case studies illustrate the multifaceted character and expansive impact of his sense of history on his reading of the Bible. They demonstrate that Calvin’s biblical exegesis must be seen in the context of the rising enthusiasm for defining adequate and more formalized approaches to the past that is evident in the writings of Renaissance humanists, early modern historical theorists, and religious reformers across the confessional spectrum.

This work is the first modern full-scale examination of the theology and life of the distinguished English Calvinist clergyman Daniel Featley (1582–1645). It explores Featley’s career and thought through a comprehensive treatment of his two dozen published works and manuscripts and situates these works within their original historical context. A fascinating figure, Featley was the youngest translator of the Authorized Version, a protégé of John Rainolds, a domestic chaplain for Archbishop George Abbot, and a minister of two churches. As a result of his sympathies with royalism and episcopacy, he endured two different attacks on his life. Despite these two attacks, Featley was the only royalist episcopalian figure who accepted his invitation to the Westminster Assembly. Nevertheless, three months into the assembly, Featley was charged with being a royalist spy, imprisoned by Parliament, and died shortly thereafter. While Featley is a central focus of the work, this work is more than a biography. It uses Featley’s career to trace the fortunes of Calvinist conformists—those English Calvinists who were committed to the established church and represented the church’s majority position between 1560 and the mid-1620s, before being marginalized by Laudians in the 1630s and puritans in the 1640s. It demonstrates how Featley’s convictions were representative of the ideals and career of conformist Calvinism, explores the broader priorities and political manoeuvres of English Calvinist conformists, and offers a more nuanced perspective of the priorities and political manoeuvres of these figures and the politics of religion in post-Reformation England.

This book recovers the liturgical and pastoral ministries performed by Benedictine nuns in England from 900 to 1225. Three ministries are examined in detail—liturgically reading the gospel, hearing confessions, and offering intercessory prayers for others—but they are prefaced by profiles of the monastic officers most often charged with their performances—cantors, sacristans, prioresses, and abbesses. This book challenges past scholarly accounts of these ministries that either locate them exclusively in the so-called Golden Age of double monasteries headed by abbesses in the seventh and eighth centuries, or read the monastic and ecclesiastical reforms of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries as effectively relegating nuns to complete dependency on priests’ sacramental care. This book shows instead that, throughout the central Middle Ages, many nuns in England continued to exercise primary control over the cura animarum of their consorors and others who sought their aid. Most innovative and essential to this study are the close paleographical, codicological, and textual analyses of the surviving liturgical books from women’s communities. When identified and then excavated to unearth the liturgical scripts and scribal productions they preserve, these books hold a treasure trove of unexamined evidence for understanding the lives of nuns in England during the central Middle Ages. These books serve as the foundational documents of practice for this study because they offer witnesses not only to the liturgical and pastoral ministries that nuns performed, but also to the productions of female scribes as copyists, correctors, and even creators of liturgical texts.

Relying on empirical evidence from a national study of senior administrators at Catholic colleges and universities across the United States, this book defines the critical religious identity and mission issues facing Catholic colleges and universities as they look to the future. It analyzes and addresses these issues using the rich construct of culture, particularly organizational culture. Adopting cultural concepts of “distinguishability” and “inheritability”, the book provides four different models of how Catholic colleges and universities can operate and successfully compete as religiously distinctive institutions in the higher education market. After specifying the content of the Catholic tradition — intellectual, moral, and social — the book critiques the present performance among institutions in all four models, provides specific policy proposals for attending to religious cultural weakness, and offers principles for effectively leading and managing cultural change. For much of the history of Catholic colleges and universities, nuns, priests, and brothers provided successful Catholic cultural leadership. This book takes a critical look at the way congregations prepared members for knowledgeable, committed, and effective religious cultural leadership, and explains how insights from that model might prove particularly usefully today. The book also explores the cultural collapse of the once highly dynamic Roman Catholic sisterhoods as a cautionary tale about the perils of a cultural change process ineffectively managed.

The book adopts as its theme Pascal's assertion that “Christianity is strange” (“le christianisme est étrange”), taken from the Pensées, and explores various possible understandings of the statement in terms of Catholic particularity, as it was expressed in the writing of the French seventeenth century. This was a period of quite exceptional fertility in a range of genres: apologetics, sermons, devotional manuals, catechisms, martyr tragedies, lyric poetry, polemic, and spiritual autobiography. The chapters consider a broad cross‐section of this corpus with reference to the topics of apologetics, physicality, language, discernment, polemics, and salvation; and evidence is drawn both from canonical figures (Pascal, Bossuet, Fénelon, St François de Sales, Madame Guyon) and from less easily available texts. The writer's aim is to explore all those features that the heritage of the Catholic Reformation brought to the surface in France, and to do so in support of the numerous ways in which Christian doctrine could be understood as being strange: it is by turns contrary to expectations, paradoxical, divisive, carnal, and inexpressible. These features are exploited imaginatively in the more conventional literary forms, didactically in pulpit oratory, and empirically in the accounts of personal spiritual experience. In addition they are manifested polemically in debates surrounding penance, authority, inspiration, and eschatology, and often push orthodoxy to its limits and beyond in the course of their articulation. The work aims thereby to afford an unsettling account of a belief system to which early‐modern France often unquestioningly subscribed, and to show how the element of cultural assimilation of Catholic Christianity into much of Western Europe only tenuously contains a subversive and counter-intuitive creed. The degree to which that remains the case will be for the reader to decide.

After two chapters on the rise and history of Catholic Christianity, the book explains systematically how the beliefs and practices of Catholicism came to be what they are. A chapter on revelation, tradition, and scripture introduces six chapters, which set out Catholic doctrines in the order in which they developed: the Trinity and the Incarnation; sin, the life of grace, and the promise of glory; the seven sacraments; the nature of the Church and its mission; and Catholic moral life and teaching. The book ends by drawing together major characteristics of Catholic Christianity and setting out some central challenges that the Catholic Church now faces. The central aim of the book is to present, with ecumenical sensitivity, the world’s oldest and largest institution, the Roman Catholic Church.