bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Greek Orthodox Position on the Confession of Cyril Lucaris
Authors: Michaelides George P.
Published: April 2006

A small book appeared in Geneva in 1629 under the title, Confessio Fidei Reverendissimi Domini Cyrilli, Patriarchae Constantinopolitani. French, English, and German translations circulated during the same year. Two years later a Greek edition of the same book turned up in Constantinople under a more elaborate title,—“Eastern Confession of the Christian Faith. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. For the benefit of those asking and inquiring about the faith and the religion of the Greeks, i. e. of the Eastern Church, as to how they think of their Orthodox faith, Cyril, Patriarch of Constantinople, publishes in the name of all the Christians this brief Confession as a testimony to God and to men, in a clear conscience and without any reservations.” Below this were the words, “I, Cyril, Patriarch of Constantinople, wrote it in my own hand. Given in Constantinople, in the month of January, 1631.”
John Hales and the Puritans During the Marian Exile
Authors: Peck George T.
Published: April 2006

John Hales's life during the Marian Exile throws much light on the development of that Puritan group which came back to England in 1558 and helped to found the Elizabethan church in the chaos left from the Roman Catholic reaction of Queen Mary. While Bishop Ponet and John Knox were formulating the political credo of the later Puritan party, Hales was working out his “congregational experiment” in the field of practical politics at Frankfort.
The Development of the Canon Law Since 1500 A. D.
Authors: Peterson Vivan A.
Published: April 2006

The body of law dealing with discipline, polity, and sacramental administration which has grown up in the history of the church is ordinarily styled Canon Law (jus canonicum), because it is a collection of canons. Canon (derived from the Greek kanon) means a rule, in a material and moral sense. Its original meaning was a straight rod. In apostolic times it signified the truth of Christianity as an authoritative standard of life and a statement of doctrine in general. It is, therefore, easy to understand how the word kanon later came to mean the ecclesiastical legislation which governed the conduct of the faithful. The excellent definition given by Archbishop Cicognani. states that “The Canon Law may be denned as ‘the body of laws made by the lawful ecclesiastical authority for the government of the Church’.”
John Cotton and Roger Williams: Their Controversy Concerning Religious Liberty
Authors: Hirsch Elisabeth Feist
Published: April 2006

Many people in the United States today feel that England is fighting a battle that is also their own. The English people, on the other hand, note with great satisfaction and gratitude the sympathy that the United States displays for their life and death struggle. A similar mutual interest existed between the American colonies of the seventeenth century and the England of the age of the Revolution. We have only to look at the many impassioned controversies on both sides of the Atlantic. They tell us a lively story of the exchange of ideas between Old and New England. Robert Baillie, Samuel Rutherford, William Twiss, three outstanding members of the Westminster Assembly, engaged in long arguments with John Cotton on various problems of doctrine and church government. John Cotton and other New England ministers in long pamphlets answered any reproaches of heresy made by the English or Scotch Presbyterians. It is safe to say, furthermore, that the controversy between John Cotton and Roger Williams, with which we are here concerned, would never have been started without Williams's participation in the debates of the Long Parliament in 1643/44.
The Perfectionism of the Early Unit as Fratrum
Authors: Fousek Marianka S.
Published: April 2006

The writings of the Bohemian Brethren dating from the sixteenth century and the end of the fifteenth accuse the founding generation of their Unitas of a spirit-breaking perfectionism and an unwarranted idealism (“high thinking”) about the moral achievements, or inner “corrrection” (opraveni) available to those born anew in Christ. According to the later documents, the expectations which were placed upon the early Brethren by their spiritual leaders were “above measure and sobriety,” made them live in constant fear and anxiety, and took away from them the hope of salvation. The revolution which took place within the Unitas toward the end of the fifteenth century liberated the Brethren from the demand to carry out to the letter the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount as spelled out in Matthew 5: 21–48, permitting them to have an active part in the political and social order of the day. It also released them from the apparently unbearable pressure to show their new birth by lives free from sin. The revolutionary official Agreement of 1495 setting aside the authority of the Brethren's older writings refers to the abiding frailty of even the greatest saints and states that the hope of salvation cannot be based on the achievement of perfection by the Christian.
Doctrine and Fellowship: William Channing Gannett and the Unitarian Creedal Issue
Authors: Pease William H.
Published: April 2006

In the thirty years following the American Civil War, American society witnessed marked changes. Among the many stimuli to these changes, Darwinian evolution and the literary and intellectual Renaissance of the Middle Period were perhaps predominant. And of all the changes wrought in this thirty years of many changes, those in American religious thought may be counted among the most significant.
The Problem of Papal Primacy at the Council of Florence
Authors: Schmidt Martin Anton
Published: April 2006

At Ferrara and Florence the healing of the old schism between the Eastern and Western Chruches proved to be more than a hope, and in corresponding measure the breach between the Pope and the Council of Basel became less than a real new Occidental Schism. The Florence-Ferrara conception of Christian unity has led to the doctrine of the Vatical Council and will be of great importance at the council which has been announced by the present Pope. Together with our Roman Catholic brethren we are convinced that a clear understanding of the character of Christian unity must exist prior to all attempts at union or reunion of churches, prior as a condition and as an incentive those efforts.
Slavery and Christianity in the British West Indies
Authors: Smith Robert Worthington
Published: April 2006

Slavery in the British Empire was always centered in the British West Indies. To a greater degree than in the Southern Thirteen Colonies, economic life in the West Indies depended upon Negro slavery, and the population of the islands soon became predominantly Negro. With the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after 1775, slavery within the British Empire became almost entirely confined to the Caribbean colonies. Until the emancipation of the slaves in 1833, British eyes were focused upon the West Indies whenever slavery was mentioned.
The Spanish Heretic: Cipriano De Valera
Authors: Hutton Lewis J.
Published: April 2006

The approaching four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the 1559 edition of John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion has aroused in Spanish-speaking circles a desire to make more generally available the translation made by Cipriano de Valera in 1597. This labor of love has been undertaken by Professor B. Foster Stockwell in Buenos Aires and his facsimile reproduction of the Spanish translation of the Institutes is being published by La Aurora press.
Church and State in The Maryland Ordinance Of 1639
Authors: Hanley Thomas O'Brien
Published: April 2006

With justification American historians emphasize the rise of democratic government during the Colonial Period. The will of the colonists to determine their own affairs grew with greater force after their departure from the mother country. Within the colonies themselves they successfully demanded greater liberty in their political institutions.1 Free representation was strengthened by the plea for free conscience in a common effort to transform the outward political forms which they had left behind in seventeenth century England. In this process new understanding of the State was developing.
The Task of the American Church Historian
Authors: Trinterud L. J.
Published: April 2006

It is part of our American folk-lore that sooner or later a criminal will return to the scene of his crime. And perhaps it is a bad conscience which brings me to this topic. Nonetheless, if indeed this paper be an exercise in the amendment of life, I take comfort in the fact that a confession of sin is hardly a profession of achievement. Consequently, if at the close of this paper I leave this topic no better than I found it, the effort will yet have been a phase in my amendment of life. I do not think that any of us will come easily or quickly to an adequate understanding of how greatly we all must change our ways. Nor will the change itself be accomplished by mere good intentions.
Origen's Interpretation of Judas Iscariot
Authors: Laeuchli Samuel
Published: April 2006

The post-apostolic generation was not interested in the person who, according to all four gospels, betrayed Jesus the day before his death. This whole episode remained a rather dark spot for the young church, which was in constant self-defence against the manifold powers of the pagan world. It is not astonishing, therefore, that the apologetic literature of the second century carefully avoided this subject. The Judas legend, developing more and more the evil character and the horrible end of the betrayer, does not even appear in the second century writings of Justin, Hermas, and Clement, and we would not know anything about it if Irenaeus and the Catenas of the church had not preserved the Papias fragments for us. The apologetic literature had no use for it.
The Literary Campaign for Toleration of the Huguenots
Authors: McCloy Shelby T.
Published: April 2006

After the Calas Case of 1762–64 the more severe of the anti-Protestant laws fell into disuse. Raids on the open-air religious meetings ceased; few if any clergy were executed; no laity were sent to the galleys; and no property apparently was seized. The Protestant pastors became bolder and, in the 1780's, Paul Rabaut and his son Rabaut Saint-Etienne, the two foremost of them all, lived without disguise and without molestation as they served their flock in the city of Nîmes. The pastor Frossard, whose name has passed down to us as the author of an able antislavery pamphlet, worked without harm in Lyons, where he was visited by Brissot in 1782. Court de Gebelin, son of the daring pastor Antoine Court and himself a pastor, lived openly in Paris from 1763 to 1784 without annoyance, became secretary of the celebrated Freemason's Lodge of the Nine Muses frequented by Voltaire and Franklin, and acquired some reputation as a writer and scholar. And when at length he died (in 1784) his funeral was unmolested, and Quesnay de SaintGermain, a councillor at the Parlement of Paris, and the pastor Rabaut Saint-Etienne addressed the assemblage. Even earlier, in 1748, Simon Louis de Ry, son of a Protestant refugee at Cassel, came to Paris and studied architecture. Either the government did not know or care who he was. Likewise his sister, married to a French Protestant refugee named Le Clerc, returned to Paris for a period of three months in 1773 without molestation. The Protestant physician Paul Bosc went to Paris in the 1750's and not only lived untroubled but even became a court physician, a member of the Academy of Sciences, and was sent on a government mission to England. He died a noted scientist in 1784. As a youth he had even been a Protestant pastor. What did that matter? Paris did not care. Paris throughout the eighteenth century was perhaps the safest place for a Protestant in France.
Christianity and Socialism in America, 1900–1920
Authors: Handy Robert T.
Published: April 2006

American Christian churches in the first three quarters of the nineteenth century were in general strongly conservative in social and economic outlook, and solidly supported the individualism of the time. But after the Civil War the swiftly and often painfully changing social scene stimulated widespread interest in economic and social matters and contributed to extensive rethinking of traditional views on the part of many Christians. Important reformist, progressive, and radical Christian social movements rose and agitated the churches. Hence, when socialism grew with startling rapidity in the first decade and a half of the twentieth century, the attention of Christians was powerfully drawn to the new development. In that period when awareness of the social problem throbbed in the atmosphere of the time, that period of muckraking and trustbusting, progressivism and the sociological novel, the Socialist Party found rich soil in which to grow. The socialist vote grew from slightly over 400,000 in 1904 to some 900,000 in 1912, while party membership increased from 25,000 to 120,000 in the same period. By the latter date there were over one thousand socialists in elective positions across the land, most of them in minor posts, but with fifty mayors and twenty legislators included in the total. This rapid growth raised in a new and urgent way the problem of the relationship that should exist between Christianity and socialism.
John Rokycana—Church Reformer between Hus and Luther
Authors: Heymann Frederick G.
Published: April 2006

There are four men whom popular tradition, and the builders of Luther's monument in Worms, have grouped around the figure of the Wittenberg reformer as his greatest forerunners: Peter Waldo, Savonarola, Wyclyf and Hus. Luther himself considered only the last named as a man to whom he was indebted, and with whose teachings he could increasingly identify himself, at least after he wrote that famous letter to Spalatin in February 1520 in which he claimed, half-correctly, that he had always held the whole doctrine of Hus without having even been aware of it. But what, in the consciousness of present historiography, is the relation between the heritage of Hus, the whole vast movement called Hussitism, and the Lutheran reformation?
The Roman Catholic Church, the State and Al Smith
Authors: Smylie James H.
Published: April 2006

Historians have shown a reluctance to discuss a basic issue of the Al Smith campaign of 1928: the relationship between the Church and the State.
The Democratic Element in Calvin's Thought
Authors: McNeill John T.
Published: April 2006

Calvin's political interests had a beginning in his humanistic studies, before his conversion, or commitment to Protestantism.His Commentary on Seneca's De Clementiaappeared April 4, 1532. The date of his conversion is much disputed, but there is fairly good evidence for placing it almost exactly two years later, about the time of his visit to Lefèvre in April, 1534. His own statements here must be given more weight than those made by Beza after Calvin's death. If, as is probable, he was inwardly half convinced of the Protestant position in 1532, he was, nonetheless, still clinging tenaciously—in his own words “obstinately devoted (adonné)”—to the papacy and had apparently not definitely discarded any of his traditional assumptions with respect to religion.
The Non-Existent Controversy: Puritan and Anglican Attitudes on Work and Wealth, 1600-1640
Authors: Breen Timothy Hall
Published: April 2006

George Herbert was a devotional poet in the early part of the seventeenth century; he was also an Anglican minister. Like his friends, John Donne and Lancelot Andrewes, he loved the Church of England, and his faith was a source of creativity. In the later part of his life Herbert had a hobby; he liked to collect simple proverbs. Herbert's sayings, which he published as Outlandish Proverbs, had little to do with religion. Compared with the themes of his poetry, in fact, they were surprisingly secular.
The Cult of the Royal Martyr
Authors: Stewart Byron S.
Published: April 2006

In 1660 not only did the institution of monarchy return to England but also the “Image of the King” was restored. The monarchy had to be defined again, but the image persisted and entered the mythology of English history. By decapitating Charles I, Parliament and the army created a myth which covered all the flaws in the king and revealed only the virtuous martyr. The Cult of the Royal Martyr was formed around this myth of the sanctified personality of Charles. Charles the Good was martyred to the factious spirit of the Puritans. He was a martyr for the church; and as such, instead of being a dead king, he became a living defender of the church and the monarchy. He was the patron saint of all who wished to criticize puritanism or to support the monarchy.
Three Medieval Chroniclers: Monastic Historiography and Biblical Eschatology in Hugh of St. Victor, Otto of Freising, and Ordericus Vitalis
Authors: Petry Ray C.
Published: April 2006

The middle of the twelfth century marked an upsurge in historical awareness and a revitalization of the practice of historiography.1 Exemplifying this trend were three men who flourished and died within twenty years of each other. Hugh of St. Victor projected a manysided view of history. Otto of Freising and Ordericus Vitalis were universalizing historians.2 None was an academic professional after the fashion of our modern guild. Each followed a monastic vocation. All protested any evisceration of time and history, every attempt to evacuate humanity therefrom. They extended the Augustinian emphasis on the key role of the Divine in the Hebrew-Christian tradition.
The Episcopal Election of 1430 in Trier and Nicholas of Cusa
Authors: Watanabe Morimichi
Published: April 2006

Gregor Heimburg, the bitter critic of the papacy and of Nicholas of Cusa, is said to have taunted Cusanus, saying that because Cusanus was defeated in a lawsuit in Mainz, he turned from the practice of law to theology.1 Heimburg, a utriusque iuris doctor who rendered his legal services to both secular and ecclesiastical princes, was certainly versed in the legal literature of his time. But, as we shall see below, history does not seem to bear out his insinuation that disappointment and failure in the field of law led Cusanus to take up theology as his career. It is probably of little importance to ask whether Cusanus would have continued to work as a lawyer had he won the case in Mainz. We must note, however, that Cusanus is so well known as a theologian, cardinal, philosopher, and even as a scientist that we are apt to forget his early career as a canon lawyer in the service of the archdiocese of Trier. It is only recently that due attention began to be paid to the legal activities of Cusanus.2 The purpose of this paper is to throw light not only on his education and activities as a canon lawyer, but also on the role which he played in the disputed episcopal election of 1430 in the archdiocese of Trier.
The Second Great Awakening and the New England Social Order
Authors: Birdsall Richard D.
Published: April 2006

“Only the shell of orthodoxy was left.” Such was the considered judgment of Henry Adams on the condition of the inherited socioreligious order of New England by the year 1800.1 The image of the shell of a gourd with loose seeds rattling within is a good one to convey the dissociation between the purposes of the society and the real beliefs of individuals that had come to pass by the end of the eighteenth century. And it presents a notable contrast to the close congruence of individual belief and the social aims of the first generation of New England Puritans.
Religion and the Development of Canadian Society: An Historiographical Analysis
Authors: Clifford N. K.
Published: April 2006

During the past forty years Canadian historians have viewed the relationship between religion and the development of Canadian society from three perspectives. None of these perspectives have risen out of the Canadian context; they have been imported and adapted with various degrees of success to the Canadian scene. The assistance they have given Canadian historians in perceiving and highlighting various aspects of the role of religion in their national life has been valuable. Like all perspectives, however, they have often concealed as much as they have revealed. Canadian church historians, of course, have been aware of the limitations which these perspectives have placed upon the story of the religious development of Canadian society. Their comments and criticisms, however, have never been systematically studied nor viewed in the wider context of the development of these perspectives elsewhere. This neglect needs to be remedied for such a study throws light not only on an aspect of the intellectual history of Canada but also on a number of points of emphasis in the use of these perspectives which appear to be distinctively Canadian. In what follows, therefore, an attempt has been made first of all to trace the development and continuing influence of these perspectives on the interpretation of religion in Canadian society; secondly, to assess the adequacy and limitations of these perspectives as interpretive frameworks in the Canadian context; and finally, to point out some of the factors in the present situation which need to be taken into consideration in the development of a new perspective.
Marsilius of Padua and the Henrician Reformation
Authors: Stout Harry S.
Published: April 2006

Judged by any standard, Marsilius (Marsiglio, 1270–1343) of Padua represented one of the most strikingly innovative thinkers in the history of Christian thought. Because he was one of the pioneers in the struggle for an uncontested erastianism and because of his forthright condemnation of the papacy, it was inevitable that his epitaph would be shrouded in controversy. A movement that clearly evidenced a positive dependence on Marsilius' thought was the Henrician Reformation. Although many students of the Henrician Reformation (notably A.G. Dickens) have recognized the figure of Marsilius looming in the background, none have delineated the precise relationship of his thought to the English Reformation. Contrary to prevailing assumptions, Marsilius, not Machiavelli, Wycliff, Erasmus or Tyndale furnished the prevailing ideological framework within which the Henrician Reformation was justified.
Foreign Episcopal Appointments during the Reign of Francis I
Authors: Edelstein Marilyn Manera
Published: April 2006

Although historians have been aware that foreigners were appointed to the French episcopacy, there are no studies of the evolution of this practice as a longterm trend. Indeed, there are no studies for any particular reign. The only information on this subject is provided indirectly by articles on Italians in France. One such study asserts that the appointment of foreigners to the French episcopacy began in the thirteenth century and ended in the sixteenth century, but this is erroneous since this author has discovered that foreign appointments continued until the last quarter of the seventeenth century. This study focuses in depth on the reign of Francis I because it was during this period that the appointment of foreigners to the French episcopacy reached its apogee. We will investigate the reasons for this and will show that Francis I used ecclesiastical patronage to further the goals of an ambitious foreign policy. The characteristics of his foreign episcopal appointments will be examined along with their effects on the French church. An attempt also will be made to place this reign within the larger context of the evolution of this practice from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries.
Athanasios of Constantinople: A Study of Byzantine Reactions to Latin Religious Infiltration
Authors: Boojamra John L.
Published: April 2006

When the twenty–two year old Andronicos II (1282–1328) acceded to the throne of Byzantium, the empire was in a state of political, social, and ecclesiastical decline. This paper will consider the attempts of Patriarch Athanasios I to reverse this process of decay and to eliminate foreign religious elements from the capital of the Orthodox Byzantine empire. In 1261, the Byzantine empire had been restored to its capital, Constantinople, after fifty-seven years of Latin occupation. The city, however, had declined sadly from its former glory. The area of its effective hegemony was reduced to sections of western Anatolia and Greece, some islands in the Aegean, and Byzantine Thrace. Even this pitiful remnant was subject to the continuing assaults of the Turks, the pillaging of Catalan mercenaries turned hostile, the exploitation of Latin merchants, and threats of a Western military adventure to restore a Latin kingdom and Church of Constantinople.
Christians and the Roman Army A.D. 173–337
Authors: Helgeland John
Published: April 2006

The question of the church's stand during the first three and a half centuries on Christians enlisting in the Roman army has received much attention since 1900. With slight overlapping, modern historians of the encounter of Christians with the Roman military fall into three basic groups: Roman Catholic, Protestant pacifist and “establishment” Protestant, primarily Lutheran.
The Place of Tradition in Dutch Anabaptism
Authors: Dyck Cornelius J.
Published: April 2006

There is little doubt that biblical literalism was a characteristic of the main stream of sixteenth-century Anabaptism. Bybiblical literalismis not meant a wooden, proof-texting, legalistic understanding of every word of the Bible, but a conviction that the plain meaning of scripture could be understood by any sincere Christian, and ought to be obeyed. The Protestant reformers Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Bucer also made the Bible central to their reforming efforts. In a sense this might even be said about the intentions of the Council of Trent. Yet differing hermeneutics and socio-political presuppositions led to vastly different ecclesiastical results. Recent Reformation historiography, particularly in eastern Europe, rightly reminds us of the importance of the social and economic factors involved, but hermeneutics remains a vital part of the dynamic of that period, as of all church history, and must be central to contemporary efforts to overcome the legacy of ecclesiastical fragmentation which that area left us.
Episcopal Unrest: Gallicanism in the 1625 Assembly of the Clergy
Authors: Becker Michael K.
Published: April 2006

A major problem in assessing the ecclesiastical policies of the government of Louis XIII is the equivocal reputation of its chief ministers as a churchman. Cardinal Richelieu enjoys an uncertain reputation as churchman in large measure because of the inherent ambiguities of his position as both prince of the church and chief minister of the king of France. Further compounding this ambiguous position was Gallicanism, the peculiar stance of the French church on matters of church-state and Franco-papal relations. A classic example of how Gallicanism could introduce complex and independently derived factors into Richelieu's policies was the decennial meeting of the Assembly of the Clergy of 1625. At that meeting, early in Richelieu's tenure as chief minister, the French clergy demonstrated with great vigor that Gallicanism was not a doctrine of the past and that it had wellsprings quite independent of the crown and Richelieu. Even in 1625 most people, including the papal curia, found it difficult to believe that the behavior of the Assembly of the Clergy was not dictated by Richelieu. We shall see, however, that the Assembly adopted measures well calculated to irritate the Holy See at a time when Cardinal Richelieu had every desire to placate Urban VIII. In 1625 Richelieu was negotiating feverishly to extricate Louis XIII from war in the Valtellina without losing the fruits of his aggressive action there. Richelieu's plan called for a papal garrison to be placed in the valley to keep it neutral and closed to Spain. Necessarily, the pope's cooperation was vital, which meant that it was not the moment to offend Urban VIII by attacking papal authority at home.
Immigrants in the City: New York's Irish and German Catholics
Authors: Dolan Jay P.
Published: April 2006

In the 1860s Walt Whitman described New York as a “city of spires and masts” with “the flags of all nations … duly lowered at sunset.” To this celebrator or urban life New York was a “city of the world! For all races are here; all the lands of the earth make contributions here.” The cosmopolitan character of New York was especially reflected in the city's Roman Catholic community. In the words of John Hughes, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York at mid-century, his “people were composed of representatives from almost all nations.” There were Italian and French Catholics, German and Irish Catholics as well as white and black American-born Catholics. And if one looked long enough, he would come across Catholic merchants from Spain and Catholic chefs from Switzerland. But within this polyglot community the two most significant ethnic groups in ante-bellum New York were the Irish and German immigrants.
Ethnicity: The Skeleton of Religion in America'
Authors: Marty Martin E.
Published: April 2006

“The story of the peopling of America has not yet been written. We do not understand ourselves,” complained Frederick Jackson Turner in 1891. Subsequent immigration history contributed to national self-understanding. Eighty years later historians have turned their attention to a second chapter in the halftold tale of the peopling of America. They have begun to concentrate on the story of the regrouping of citizens along racial, ethnic and religious lines, and of their relations to each other in movements of what have come to be called “peoplehood.”
Immediate Reactions to Darwin: The English Catholic Press' First Reviews of the ‘Origin of the Species’
Authors: Lyon John
Published: April 2006

English Roman Catholic reactions to the issues presented by Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) were as varied as the elements which made up the English Catholic community itself. Any reading of the Catholic periodical press in England during the years immediately after Darwin's epochal publication will bear this out. These reactions ranged from a simple reaffirmation of childhood formulations of the account of creation in “Genesis,” to rather disingenuous allegorical reinterpretations of the meaning of what “Moses”—and Darwin—had said.
Robert Wodrow and The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland
Authors: Starkey A. M.
Published: April 2006

A dark picture of tyranny and prelatical persecution endured by Scottish Presbyterians under Charles II and James II was created by Robert Wodrow in his History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland published in 1721. This image became deeply embedded in the national consciousness much to the despair of apologists of rovalist and episcopalian causes. “That which we have from Wodrow”, Mark Napier complained bitterly, “is a caluminous tissue of monstrous fables. It has poisoned the History of Scotland to an extent that is now, perhaps, irremediable.” But those who wish to revise Wodrow's interpretation of the period cannot do so simply by dismissing his work as fabulous.
Anglican Against Puritan: Ideological Origins during the Marian Exile
Authors: Molen Ronald J. Vander
Published: April 2006

Traditionally, divisions among Protestant groups during the English Reformation have been examined as deep theological crises, simply written off as manifestations of economic or political struggles, or, more recently, treated as having roots in basic ideological commitments. One of the most important Protestant divisions, that between Anglicans and Puritans, has undoubtedly had a great impact on western history; however, it lacks full treatment from the point of view of its intellectual and social bases. One's attention is easily drawn to the Anglican-Puritan conflict of Queen Elizabeth's rule or to the seventeenth-century revolution in England; but earlier origins often receive only cursory treatment. Actually, the ideas, party divisions and social characteristics of the Anglican-Puritan division in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras have their roots and first appearance during the flight of Protestants from England after the reign of King Edward VI. It is to the ideological and social factors which appeared in the congregation of English exiles at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1554–55 that I should like to draw attention, for it was in the “Troubles at Frankfurt” that the historical pattern of the Anglican-Puritan division assumed a form which was to have such a great impact on western society.
Nature, Grace and John Cotton: The Theological Dimension in the New England Antinomian Controversy
Authors: Stoever William K. B.
Published: April 2006

In 1636 the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay was confronted with a sectarian outburst which rent the religious and civil peace of Boston and temporarily threatened that of the whole colony. Certain of the Boston congregation, led by Anne Hutchinson and abetted by John Cotton, the teacher of the church, charged that the clergy of the Bay, almost entirely, were not true ministers of the gospel but in fact a company of unregenerate “legalists”, preaching a “covenant of works” instead of a “covenant of grace”, and there by hindering the work of redemption. For nearly two years the “Antinomian Controversy” darkened the radiance of the City on the Hill, and echoes of the affair returned in the next decade to plague apologists for the New England Way. Part of the apologists' difficulty was the fact that their star, the illustrious Cotton, had been on the wrong side.
French Catholic Demonologists and Their Enemies in the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
Authors: Pearl Jonathan L.
Published: April 2006

Since the eighteenth century, critics and historians have looked with embarrassment and horror at the belief in and persecution of witches in France, as well as in the rest of Europe, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The witchcraft crisis has seemed to be either an example of the evils of traditional religious bigotry or an odd aberration in the march of progress following the Renaissance. Those who defined and propagated the learned theories of witchcraft—its reality and dangers and the need for severe persecution of witches—have been depicted almost universally as oppressive, bigoted extremists. In recent years historians have dealt with witchcraft from new points of view and have provided valuable new information and interpretations, but they still have tended to confirm the traditional images of the writers of demonological tracts. They are horrified and repulsed by the demonologists, whom they see as spokesmen for a unified oppressive upper class.
Metropolitan Gavriil (Banulesko-Bodoni) and Greek-Russian Conflict over Dedicated Monastic Estates, 1787–1812
Authors: Batalden Stephen K.
Published: April 2006

One of the more frequently cited but less well understood issues involving Eastern Orthodox interests and modern nationalism in the Balkans has been that of the so-called dedicated monasteries. Dedicated monasteries (prek Ionennye or, in Moldavian, inchinat monasteries) were those landed estates, mainly in the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which were entrusted to the administration of one or another of the Greek patriarchates, holy places, or monasteries of the Near East so that the profits from the land might be used to sustain Greek Orthodox institutions under Ottoman, Islamic rule. These estates, dating to the first such bequests by Danubian boyars in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, became the loci for monastic institutions which yielded a constant source of revenue to their Orthodox trustees in the Near East up to the middle of the nineteenth century.
On Reforming the Reformed: A Study of the Religious Changes and the
Premonstratensians in Saxony
Authors: Froese Walter
Published: April 2006

The phenomenon of reform has appeared in many diverse modes throughout
the history of the Christian church. At different times Christians have
attempted to improve conditions which were perceived to reveal unwelcome
deviations from some ideal models. During the late fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries, the call for reform of the church in western Europe was
especially loud, and many ameliorating changes did happen at that time. The
forces at work strengthened a variety of trends which were as dissimilar as
the growing respect for new theological insights, the increasing power of
local leaders, and the expanding importance of the common people. Not only
did church prelates guide parishioners into reforms; lay folk also
influenced their religious superiors into ameliorations. The reforms in the
Christian church of western Europe from about 1450 to 1525 were complex
upheavals in which Christians attempted to solve the religious problems of
that time.
John Ireland's Americanism After 1899: The Argument from History
Authors: Stroch Neil T.
Published: April 2006

Historians of American Catholicism long have recognized that John Ireland, the aggressive archbishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota, was a leading exponent of the Americanist movement. At the turn of the twentieth century Ireland advocated a number of important ideas—religious liberty, separation of church and state, interfaith cooperation, and greater lay initiative—gleaned from the American experience. Reflecting his democratic convictions, Ireland declared, “Let there be individual action. Layman need not wait for priest, nor priest for bishop, nor bishop for pope.” Although there were differences on specific issues, Americanists in general took an optimistic view of American life and culture. In fact, they were eager to move their church into a more positive relationship with the political, cultural, and social climate of America.
Calvin and Abraham: The Interpretation of Romans 4 in the Sixteenth Century
Authors: Steinmetz David C.
Published: April 2006

It is possible to be so familiar with a subject that one no longer sees its peculiar features. Roger Fry, the English art critic, spoke of a specialization of vision that prevents us from observing familiar objects around us until artists awaken us to the distinctive reality of what we have overlooked by lending us their eyes. Historical discoveries are often very much like an aesthetic awakening. Only a relatively small percentage are prompted by the discovery of wholly new and previously unknown evidence. The great majority are stimulated by fresh insight into evidence so familiar that its significance has been underestimated or disregarded.
The Hungarian Government, the American Magyar Churches, and Immigrant Ties to the Homeland, 1903–1917
Authors: Benkart Paula K.
Published: April 2006

Before the political and scholarly rediscovery of ethnicity during the past decade, American observers tended to overlook the lingering homeland influences in the lives of this country's immigrant ethnic groups. Scholars here were the world's experts on the consequences which follow international migration: alienation, acculturation, and assimilation. But like their dean, Oscar Handlin, they stressed not the “roots” but the uprootedness of their subjects. According to this tradition, the migrants, torn suddenly from Old World surroundings, had been able to bring with them only a few flimsy pieces of “cultural baggage,” the equivalent of the fragile-looking wicker hampers and precariously bulging cloth bundles with which the newcomers were photographed at Ellis Island but with which they rarely were seen again.
The Nigerian Military and the Issue of State Control of Mission Schools
Authors: Ahanotu Austin
Published: April 2006

Education is fundamental to any society. In its broadest sense it includes not merely curriculum and educational theory but all of the pressures that help to shape peoples' minds. Education, both formal and informal, is the vehicle through which society transmits its values, its “dreams”, and its worldview to its youth. Precolonial southern Nigerian societies had created educational systems that promoted their own values and moral standards as the guiding principles for their children. The function of such education, in addition to occupational preparation in agriculture, crafts, and religion, was the inculcation of a sense of communal responsibility. Christian missionaries who came in the nineteenth century brought with them European culture and traditions. These traditions were propagated and concretized in the mission schools which were tolerated by the British colonial government. But the colonial government frequently reexamined its views concerning the objectives of the mission schools. During the nationalist period (1945–1960) the nature of politics, particularly in southeastern Nigeria, led to further reevaluation of the basic role of missions in secular education. Then the military officers came to power in 1966. They shared the perspective that the idea of the elimination of mission schools within the Nigerian educational system again should be given serious consideration.
Hildegard of Bingen: Visions and Validation
Authors: Newman Barbara
Published: April 2006

Some years ago, wrote the Flemish monk Guibert to his friend Radulfus, strange and incredible rumors reached his ears at the Benedictine monastery of Gembloux. They concerned an old woman, abbess of the Benedictine foundation at Bingen-am-Rhein, who had gained such fame that multitudes flocked to her convent, from curiosity or devotion, to seek her prophecies and prayers. All who returned thence astonished their hearers, but none could give a plausible account of the woman, save only that her soul was “said to be illumined by an invisible splendor known to her alone.” Finally he, Guibert, impatient with rumor and zealous for the truth, resolved to find out for himself. In the year 1175 he wrote to this famed seer, Hildegard, with mingled curiosity and awe. Surely she had received “rare gifts, till now practically unheard of throughout all ages”; in prophecy she excelled Miriam, Deborah, and Judith; but let her recall that great trees are uprooted sooner than reeds, and let her keep herself humble.
Self-Deception as a Theological Problem in Jonathan Edwards's “Treatise Concerning Religious Affections”
Authors: Chamberlain Ava
Published: April 2006

Like many great theologians, Jonathan Edwards was a polemicist. Although he kept extensive personal notebooks in which he developed his views concerning scripture interpretation and doctrinal theology, in most instances he did not publish these views without the catalyst afforded by theological controversy. Throughout the course of Edwards's ministry Arminianism was his constant foe. In the 1730s he published a number of anti-Arminian sermons and actively opposed the ordination of Robert Breck, an Arminian sympathizer. He also viewed the revivals as falling within the scope of this anti-Arminian polemic. InFaithful Narrative(1737) he expressed concern over the spread of Arminianism in the Connecticut Valley and portrayed the revival as working directly against this tendency. Likewise inSome Thoughts(1743) he predicted that the activity of the Holy Spirit in the revivals would “entirely overthrow their scheme of religion” and suggested, “Now is a good time for Arminians to change their principles.” In the late 1740s on several occasions he recorded his intention to write “something particularly and largely on the Arminian controversy, in distinct discourses on the various points in dispute.” Although he was temporarily distracted from this proposed project by the communion controversy in Northampton, he began to carry it out soon after the move to Stockbridge, publishingFreedom of the Willin 1754.
“A Church-going People are a Dress-loving People”: Clothes, Communication, and Religious Culture in Early America
Authors: Schmidt Leigh Eric
Published: April 2006

When the early nineteenth-century pastor William Henry Foote reflected upon the eighteenth-century Christians who were his forebears in North Carolina and Virginia, he paused at one point to make an observation about the clothes they wore. “A church-going people are a dress-loving people”, he said; “The sanctity and decorum of the house of God are inseparably associated with a decent exterior; and the spiritual, heavenly exercises of the inner man are incompatible with a defiled and tattered, or slovenly mein. All regular Christian assemblies cultivate a taste for dress, and none more so than the hardy pioneer settlers of Upper Carolina, and the valley and mountains of Virginia” As they readied themselves for worship, Foote elaborated, the faithful “put on their best and carefully preserved dress” in preparation for “their approach to the King of Kings”.
The Sabbath on the Overland Trail to California
Authors: Solberg Winton U.
Published: April 2006

The westward movement carried Americans to the banks of the Mississippi River by 1840, and in the following decade hardy pioneers began crossing the plains and mountains to settle on the Pacific coast. Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill near present-day Sacramento on 24 January 1848, and the ensuing gold rush created a spectacle such as the world had never seen before.
“Living in a Land of Prophets”: James T. Barclay and an Early Disciples of Christ Mission to Jews in the Holy Land
Authors: Blowers Paul M.
Published: April 2006

In the nineteenth century the West truly rediscovered Palestine. A land many western observers had long considered fallen from its former glory was roused amid its Ottoman occupation to abide the hopes, dreams, and designs not only of aspiring Jewish nationalists but of British and American diplomats, explorers, archaeologists, adventurers, Christian pilgrims, missionaries, and others in that great entourage which Naomi Shepherd has dubbed the “zealous intruders.” Protestant missionaries in the Levant, to the extent that they established an early and enduring physical presence in the Holy Land and a living link with evangelical churches in Europe, Britain, and America, played a memorable, if limited, role in this modern reopening of Palestine to the West.
Fundamentalism and Femininity: Points of Encounter Between Religious Conservatives and Women, 1919–1935
Authors: Bendroth Margaret Lamberts
Published: April 2006

“Women go to church for the same reason that farmers and convicts go to church,” H.L. Mencken once observed—strictly for the company. His book “in defense of women,” written at the close of World War I, systematically deflated the Victorian era's sentimental notions about the “fairer sex.” “They are growing less and less religious as year chases year,” he noted cheerfully. “The evangelical Protestant denominations will have a hard time holding them.” Others shared Mencken's conclusion, though less joyfully. “Women no longer accept Christianity as a matter of course because they happen to be women,” the Christian Century lamented in 1924. “They pause and question here as in all things else.”
The Drive Toward Protestant Union in Early Eighteenth-Century Geneva: Jean-Alphonse Turrettini on the “Fundamental Articles” of the Faith
Authors: Klauber Martin I.
Published: April 2006

Jean-Alphonse Turrettini (1671–1737) was the last of the line of theology professors from his family at the Academy of Geneva, following his grandfather Benedict (1588–1631) and his father François (1623–1687), the famed Reformed scholastic theologian. Jean-Alphonse started his theological career as the pastor of the Italian congregation in Geneva in 1693; he was then named professor of church history at the Academy in 1697 and then rector in 1701 and finally professor of theology in 1705. Although his father was one of the principal architects of the Helvetic Formula Consensus (1675), Jean-Alphonse led the movement toward eliminating such credal religion through the abrogation of the Formula in 1706.