bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Thomas Sutton: Tudor-Stuart Moneylender
Authors: Shipley Neal R.
Published: April 2006

Medieval strictures against usury were a long time dying, and the dynamic society of the English Renaissance could not afford to wait. Inflation, the growth of commerce, and the increasing splendor of the royal court created a strong demand for cash, especially among the landed gentry. Professor Shipley describes how one of the greatest of the moneylenders legalized the interest rates he charged, secured his loans against default, and (with limited success) maintained his reputation for respectability while engaged in a dubious occupation. Thomas Sutton and his like filled the gap that old church doctrine made in the social fabric of sixteenth-century England and smoothed the way for their successors who, after the ethical revolution of the seventeenth century, would he legitimized as private bankers.
Business History in Germany: A Survey of Recent Developments
Authors: Jaeger Hans
Published: April 2006

Focusing on developments of the last twenty years, the author analyzes the achievements and the shortcomings of business history in Germany and offers some suggestions for its future.
Monopoly in Barbed Wire: The Formation of The American Steel And Wire Company
Authors: McFadden Joseph M.
Published: April 2006

Of the myriad end products of the steel industry, none played a more strategic role in the evolution of the modern, vertically integrated enterprise than barbed wire. A unique solution to America's unique agricultural problem, the product attracted numerous manufacturers in the 1870s and 1880s. Profit margins, despite efforts to limit production and fix prices by means of pools, declined steadily, and firms that were not integrated backward into the production of rods (from which wire is drawn) had difficulty competing. Excess capacity and depressed prices convinced industry leaders like John W. Gates, Isaac L. Ellwood, and Charles F. Washburn that what was needed was a modern, fully integrated corporate holding company embracing every barbed wire manufacturer of consequence. The result was the formation of American Steel & Wire Co. in 1899 which, two years later, became an important component of the U.S. Steel Corporation.
Herbert Hoover, the Wage-earner, and the “New Economic System,” 1919–1929
Authors: Zieger Robert H.
Published: April 2006

Herbert Hoover's seven years as Secretary of Commerce raised that department to a level of prestige and influence it has not known since. In the prosperity of the 1920s, real wages rose rapidly, the wage-earners' standard of living began to resemble that of white-collar groups, and all that remained, it seemed, was to replace the traditional antagonism between employer and worker with a system that would give the latter a voice in plant decisions. In this climate, “welfare capitalism” and company unions, encouraged by Hoover's department, flourished for a time. Professor Zieger shows that Hoover never realized that the wage-earner could have no effective representation through company-sponsored schemes. By the late 1920s, some academic experts posited the virtual demise of the labor movement unless it found a means of transcending the limitations that the circumstances of the New Era and its own weaknesses imposed.
Origins of Federal Oil Regulation in the 1920's
Authors: Nordhauser Norman
Published: April 2006

The 1920's and early 1930's witnessed the beginnings of federal oil regulation in the United States. Professor Nordhauser argues that oil executives rather than government officials led the way in the movement for regulation and that their dominant goals were the stabilization of prices and profits.
The Discovery and Study of a “Corporate Liberalism”
Authors: Hawley Ellis W.
Published: April 2006

Once the story of modern America seemed relatively simple. On one side stood a business elite defending a market system to which it owed its power and position. On the other stood the “common man,” economically weak but politically capable of forging tools that could alter the workings of market discipline. And between them, waxing and waning in response to “reform” and “counter-reform,” stood the aggregation of political tools that the “common man” had been able to forge. Such was the story told in “liberal” history; and with reversed heroes and villains, the same story was told in “conservative” history. Both assumed a business-government dichotomy, and both ignored or slighted those aspects of modern America that could not be fitted into it.
The Strategic Use of Public Policy: Business Support for the 1906 Food and Drug Act
Authors: Wood Donna J.
Published: April 2006

The 1906 Food and Drug Act is widely believed to be an early example of federal legislation designed entirely to protect consumers. Professor Wood shows that in fact many Progressive Era food and drug manufacturers had substantial interests in achieving passage of such a law and that they worked actively toward this end. In particular, the desire of businesspeople to secure advantage over domestic competitors and to expand markets to interstate and foreign commerce played a significant role in businesses' support for federal food and drug regulations. The article shows that the strategic use of public policy by business—a relatively recent development in theories of business-government relations—is by no means a new development in practice.
The Origins of an Expanded Federal Court Jurisdiction: Railroad Development and the Ascendancy of the Federal Judiciary
Authors: Merkel Philip L.
Published: April 2006

The years following the Civil War witnessed a rapid expansion in the power of the federal judiciary. In this article, Professor Merkel reveals that the construction of the transcontinental railroad played an important role in this development. Beginning in 1868, the management of the federally chartered Union Pacific Railroad sought legislation that would authorize the company to remove lawsuits from hostile state courts to more sympathetic federal forums. Congress was accommodating, passing laws that expanded the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts. Consequently, these courts resolved many questions of transportation law, often in ways that benefitted the railroads.
Annuities in Late Medieval Hanse Towns
Authors: Baum Hans-Peter
Published: April 2006

In this article. Professor Baum reports on recent research into the annuity markets of late medieval German Hanse towns. While historians traditionally have considered annuities an essentially noncommercial form of credit, Baum takes a different approach. Considering the annuity market as an economic institution, he describes its function as an instrument of credit and offers some speculations about how his conclusions modify our traditional view of the late medieval economy.
The Transformation of Cotton Marketing in the Late Nineteenth Century: Alexander Sprunt and Son of Wilmington, N. C., 1884–1956
Authors: Killick J. R.
Published: April 2006

Historians of the New South will find in Professor Killick's essay, based on the business archives of an important fin-de-siécle and early-twentieth-century cotton marketing enterprise, further powerful proof that the real story can only come from informed, sympathetic studies of what private men of affairs were accomplishing behind the dust storm of political demagogy that marked most public utterances, North and South, on southern problems in this era. Real entrepreneurship sprang up to give the marketing of the cotton crop a directness and an efficiency that ineffectual antebellum southern leaders had only dreamed of. This torch of enterprise was successfully passed, moreover, from a dying family firm to a more modern corporate organization, headed by even more skilled marketers who had learned well the lessons of their predecessors and were well prepared to flourish in the vastly changed post-1929 world. The stereotype of the prolonged backwardness of the South after 1877 is further discredited in this essay, which, significantly, is written from the far side of the Atlantic, where marketing of the cotton crop was always the most important aspect of its history.
Innovations in Textile Bleaching in Britain in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Gittins L.
Published: April 2006

Prompted by a 1974 article by Professor Klaus H. Wolff in the Business History Review, Dr. Gittins considers the economic factors that influenced the introduction of technical changes in textile bleaching.
Not Politicians but Sound Businessmen: Norton Company and the Third Reich
Authors: Cheape Charles
Published: April 2006

The lengthy dispute about the role of big business in Hitler's Third Reich has generally portrayed business leaders either as instigators or as victims. The experience of Norton Company, an American multinational in Germany between 1933 and 1945, fits neither role. In this article, Professor Cheape demonstrates that Norton's German and American managers acted as outsiders compelled to play a part for their firm's long–run self–interest. As a result, Norton executives variously cooperated with, ignored, or violated Nazi policies, presenting a richer and more complex pattern of behavior than is usually pictured.
Business, Democracy, and Progressive Reform in the Redevelopment of Baltimore after the Great Fire of 1904
Authors: Rosen Christine Meisner
Published: April 2006

The following article reexamines the role of business leaders in the structural reform of American city government during the Progressive Era. In presenting a careful analysis of the fate of redevelopment plans after Baltimore's great 1904 fire, this case study argues against an unsophisticated good guy/bad guy approach to urban and business history. Historians are urged, however, not to abandon attempts to make reasoned moral judgments concerning the consequences of structural reform, but rather to base those efforts on a recognition of the deepening complexity of twentieth-century urban society.
Associationalism, Statism, and Professional Regulation: Public Accountants and the Reform of the Financial Markets, 1896-1940
Authors: Miranti Paul J.
Published: April 2006

In this article Projessor Miranti contrasts the differing reactions of leaders in the public accounting profession to the structure of national economic regulation that emerged in America during the first decades of the twentieth century. Specifically, he focuses on the actions taken by two national professional organizations, the American Association of Public Accountants and its successor, the American Institute of Accountants, at two important junctures in the history of financial reform: the establishment of the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission and the organization of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In assessing these experiences, his article concentrates on identifying the changing circumstances and political contexts that gave rise first to an associationalist response and then to a statist response to the problem of ordering the nation's financial markets.
The Development of Corporate Financial Markets in Britain and the United States, 1600–1914: Overcoming Asymmetric Information
Authors: Baskin Jonathan Barron
Published: April 2006

In the following article, Professor Baskin traces the evolution of corporate finance from its beginnings among the British trading companies to its modern transformation in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. He argues that deductive theoretical analyses based on perfect capital markets cannot always explain actual historical developments, and that financial history generally has not received sufficient attention from either economic theorists or historians. Professor Baskin suggests that financial markets developed as they did largely as a result of efforts to minimize the problems created by the asymmetry of information between company insiders and potential investors.
Patents Legislation and German FDI in the British Chemical Industry before 1914
Authors: Hagen Antje
Published: April 2006

This article analyzes the investments in both manufacturing units and sales subsidiaries by German chemical companies in the United Kingdom prior to 1914. It extends the findings in the existing literature on the subject, as sales subsidiaries have not so far been investigated. In particular, the article focuses on the motives underlying these investments. By building sales subsidiaries, German companies hoped to improve their control over foreign distribution activities and to promote their own brand names. As for the creation of manufacturing outlets, the motives of the companies differed before and after the reform of the British patent law in 1907. Prior to patent law reform, branch plants were set up due to transport cost considerations, resource orientation, or the pursuit of monopoly. Further reasons included restrictions on the use of proprietary technology in the home country and capacity constraints in the home factory. It was only after 1907 that manufacturing units were established to safeguard the companies' British patents. Consequently, the traditionally held notion that it was solely the patent law of 1907 which sparked off German FDI in the British chemical industry needs to be modified.
Bank Ownership and Lending Patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831
Authors: Wright Robert E.
Published: April 2006

Unlike most contemporary New England banks, early commercial banks of the Middle Atlantic region were widely owned and frequently traded corporations. They lent to a broad segment of the business community, including artisans, farmers, and women. Banks lent widely, first, because their large capitalization made it difficult for a few privileged insiders to control a substantial percentage of loanable funds and, second, because banks were able to acquire reliable credit information on a variety of customers in an efficient manner. As a result, small enterprises had access to bank credit.
Environmental Activism, Locomotive Smoke, and the Corporate Response: The Case of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Chicago Smoke Control
Authors: Stradling David , Tarr Joel A.
Published: April 2006

In the early 1900s, a powerful antismoke movement in Chicago forced the Pennsylvania Railroad to develop strategies for reducing public protest against the company, limiting fines, and blocking legislation forcing railroads to electrify. The company pursued a policy of least steps, by retrofitting locomotives with ameliorative technology, through fuel substitutions, and by training firemen and engineers in efficient combustion methods. By 1909, however, pressure for electrification in Chicago intensified, and Pennsylvania managers worked to retain control over the pace of technological change. In coordination with other railroads, management attempted to obey smoke ordinances without interfering with railroad operations and profitability. Company archives reveal an earnest learning process and differences among railroad managers regarding appropriate responses to antismoke regulations.
The British Engineering Press during the Second Industrial Revolution: Responses to Corporate Capitalism
Authors: Botticelli Peter
Published: April 2006

This work presents a controlled sampling of texts which might, through further research, provide the basis for a broad theoretical investigation of the cultural response of British managers, engineers and entrepreneurs to the so-called second industrial revolution in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Also, the texts are organized by theme, as a preliminary effort to establish an empirical critique of prevailing historiographical interpretations of the content and influence of Britain's business culture with respect to competitive pressures from abroad.
Comment: Conceptualizing Gender in American Business History
Authors: Scott Joan W.
Published: April 2006

Business history is not a field whose problematic I know, although these papers and one I read by Angel Kwolek-Folland, which was given here last spring, provide a helpful introduction. Instead, I come from exactly those fields, as the papers point out, that have been the traditional ones for thinking about women and gender: women's history and labor history. The challenge is to extend insights from those fields to business history.
Private Banking in Antebellum Virginia: Thomas Branch & Sons of Petersburg
Authors: Bodenhorn Howard
Published: April 2006

This article investigates the role of the private banking house of Thomas Branch & Sons of Petersburg, Virginia, in promoting entrepreneurship and economic development in the early United States. It argues that while Branch adopted many of the methods and practices of antebellum commercial banks in that he accepted and created deposits and followed a real-bills philosophy in his lending, he also differed from them by extending his services to a particular market niche. Many of his borrowers were young entrepreneurs who were just embarking upon their own commercial ventures. In addition, many of his customers had accumulated only limited wealth. If Branch's actions, then, can be considered indicative of those of private bankers more generally, this article reveals the importance of small town private bankers in supplying monetary and intermediary services to local communities, and moreover, helps clarify their place in the history of antebellum banking.
T. C. Power & Bro.: The Rise of a Small Western Department Store, 1870–1902
Authors: Klassen Henry C.
Published: April 2006

When studying retailing and its role in developing the American mass market, historians traditionally have focused their attention on large department stores. An analysis of the influence of small department stores in the growth of underdeveloped sections of the American West provides a different emphasis. The following article traces the history of T. C. Power & Bro.—a small, family-run department store in Montana—before the early 1900s. The article demonstrates that the firm's service was tailored to the economic and social needs of urban and rural settlers on the western frontier, helping to create a consumer society in the West.
Strategic Maneuvering and Mass-Market Dynamics: The Triumph of VHS over Beta
Authors: Cusumano Michael A. , Mylonadis Yiorgos , Rosenbloom Richard S.
Published: April 2006

This article deals with the diffusion and standardization rivalry between two similar but incompatible formats for home videocassette recorders (VCRs): the Betamax, introduced in 1975 by the Sony Corporation, and the VHS (Video Home System), introduced in 1976 by the Victor Company of Japan (Japan Victor or JVC). Despite being first to the home market, the Beta format fell behind the VHS in market share during 1978 and declined thereafter. By the end of the 1980s, Sony and its partners had ceased producing Beta models. This study analyzes the history of this rivalry and examines its context—a mass consumer market with a dynamic standardization process subject to “bandwagon” effects that took years to unfold and that were largely shaped by the strategic maneuvering of the VHS producers.
Crossed Wires and Missing Connections: Valdemar Poulsen, The American Telegraphone Company, and the Failure to Commercialize Magnetic Recording
Authors: Clark Mark , Nielsen Henry
Published: April 2006

The first magnetic recorder, the telegraphone, was invented in 1898 in Denmark. Despite favorable publicity and considerable investment, the telegraphone was a commercial failure. This article uses the theoretical concept of “frames of meaning” to explain that failure, focusing on three factors in particular: Denmark's status as a technologically peripheral country, the telephone orientation of the telegraphone's inventors, and management failures by the firm set up to manufacture the machine.
Making Cars and Making Money in the Interwar Automobile Industry: Economies of Scale and Scope and the Manufacturing behind the Marketing
Authors: Raff Daniel M. G.
Published: April 2006

Many observers of the American automobile industry have focused on Ford's development of mass production shortly before the First World War; they have then moved to General Motors's success in the 1920s, usually attributing it to a marketing innovation, the introduction of the annual model change. This article argues that the emphasis on GM's marketing strategy is misplaced and that profound changes in the organization of production, exploiting the economies of common parts, were far more fundamental. Rough calculations of the cost structure involved in the rise of the Chevrolet to mass market domination are presented to support this interpretation.
Religious Ideas and Attitudes in the Early Frontier
Authors: Gaddis Merrill E.
Published: April 2006

The early American frontier imported all of its basic religious ideas, yet was not slow in taking very significant liberties with them. The carriers of these various concepts represented a number of rather distinct cultural groups with antecedents reaching back to the British Isles and to the continent of Europe. A common background of Christian tradition existed, most of it Protestant; and English was the prevailing tongue. As in the case of every great movement of population, there came about of necessity a continuous exposure to new environmental influences which, in turn, placed their mark upon the attitudes, ideas and institutions making up the religious and general cultural life of the migrating people. It is natural, therefore, that our interest should be attracted not only to such ideas and attitudes as may appear to have been more or less indigenous to the very soil of the frontier, but more perhaps to such traditional religious concepts as may have assumed new forms or taken on new emphasis in the process of becoming acceptable to the frontiersman who again and again found himself confronted by entirely unlooked-for problems.
The Development of Democracy in the English Reformation
Authors: Harkness R. E. E.
Published: April 2006

The English Reformation appeals to an American student of Christian history largely, perhaps, because of his cultural heritage of language and customs, political philosophy and organizations, and religious views and institutions. There is in the study something of the pleasure of looking up one's family tree; the pride of discovering some noble ancestor, who worthily served his day, firmly established in its branches and the equally joyous, though perhaps guilty, thrill upon finding some other ancestor, not quite so worthy, hanging from one of the strong oak limbs of the ancient tree.
Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion
Authors: Pauck Wilhelm
Published: April 2006

On account of its influence upon many generations of Protestants, Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion may be regarded as the classical statement of the Protestant Christian faith. It reflects more clearly than any other book produced by the Reformation the thought which inaugurated the whole Protestant movement.
The Legal Aspects of the Andover Creed
Authors: Pierce Richard D.
Published: April 2006

On April 10, 1931, the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, acting under the doctrine of cypres, decreed that henceforth Andover Theological Seminary should forever be relieved of subscription to1 its creed and that “hereafter no professor should ever be called into question because of inconsistency with the creedal requirements of its Constitution and Statutes.”
The Christian Faith and Religious Tolerance
Authors: Pauck Wilhelm
Published: April 2006

One of the greatest achievements of the democratic state is the establishment of religious tolerance or the freedom of religion. This fact confronts the church with an opportunity that it has not yet fully realized. It still has to perform important tasks in connection with religious liberty. This is due mainly to the fact that it was by political and not by ecclesiastical action that the practice of tolerance was secured. To be sure, the fathers of American democracy were influenced by Christian ideas and movements when they provided for the freedom of religion, but these represented radical minorities within Christendom and not the larger churches. Indeed, the major impetus toward tolerance came as a reaction against the practice of persecution of religious minorities by majorities and it was inspired by a view of religion that was critical of the traditional religious and social reasons for intolerance.
English Attitudes Toward the Relationship Between the Renaissance and the Reformation
Authors: Weisinger Herbert
Published: April 2006

The terms “Reformation” and “Renaissance” have acquired such currency that they have come to be accepted as denoting what really and truly happened, and in fact, the words themselves are regarded as the guarantee of the actuality of the phenomena they merely have been coined to describe. The matter of defining accurately and precisely the meaning of both the Reformation and the Renaissance has occasioned so large and disputatious a body of scholarship that it is with some trepidation that I add another, question to an already sufficiently vexing problem. For not only must the meaning of the Reformation and the Renaissance be defined in themselves but the relationship between them must be clearly stated as well. The fact of the matter is that the relationship between the two has an existence and nature as real and as significant as they have in themselves, for since the one without the other is impossible of full definition, what then is the exact relationship between them? What are the origins of this relationship and how did it develop and come to be regarded? I have tried to answer these questions in this paper; to simplify the story somewhat I have confined the study to English materials.
Charles Simeon: Anglican Evangelical
Authors: Zabriskie Alexander C.
Published: April 2006

The leaders of the Evangelical Movement in the Church of England till the end of the nineteenth century can, for convenience sake, be divided into three groups: the Awakeners, the Pastors and Organizers, and the Ecclesiastical Controversialists. The main concern of the first was to awaken the inert and indifferent population by preaching of sin and judgment, of forgiveness and eternal life; that of the Pastors and Organizers was to guide awakened and conscience-stricken people in the paths of righteousness, and to organize their resources for more efficient service to God and man; that of the Ecclesiastical Controversialists was to stem the rising tide of Tractarianism and Biblical criticism which seemed to them to be endangering the purity of the Gospel and to be leading the Church into false paths. It was under the leadership of this last group that the Evangelical Movement became definitely “Low Church” (at first, in distinction from the Latitudinarians, it had been relatively “High Church”) and what today would be called “fundamentalist.” If it be remembered that these groups were not hard and fast, that the Awakeners were pastors and that the Organizers were awakeners, and that the Ecclesiastical Controversialists were trying to be both, they will serve to indicate the general phases of the movement.
William Tindale—First English Puritan
Authors: Knappen M. M.
Published: April 2006

Four hundred years ago this autumn William Tindale was executed at Vilvorde, a few miles south of Antwerp. So ended an adventurous career which began some forty years earlier in the soft western vales of Gloucestershire. The family acres, while not too broad, made possible a university education, which resulted in the youth becoming an Oxford M. A. in 1515. More important, it brought him in contact with the works of Erasmus, whose ardent disciple he became. Settling in his native region as chaplain and tutor to one of the important county families, he soon distinguished himself as a champion of the new learning. In this work he found himself handicapped by lack of suitable English books. He therefore translated his Dutch master's Enchiridion, and resolved to answer the great humanist's call for vernacular scriptures available to the masses. But the church authorities of his diocese were hostile, and, in any case, for such work he needed greater facilities than those of a country parish.
Problems of the Norwegian Church in the Eleventh Century
Authors: Larson Laurence M.
Published: April 2006

In Viking times the Northmen recognized several important sea routes, one of which, “the North Way,” was of such significance that it gave its name to a kingdom. The ships that sailed this route followed the west coast of the great Scandinavian peninsula northward and northeastward for a distance of one thousand miles to the land's end in the Arctic. Out toward the sea the fairway is flanked by an almost continuous series of islands, large and small, numbering perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand. Many of these are inhabited. On the other side rises the Norwegian plateau, a massive wall of ancient rock, which in many places descends abruptly to the water's edge. The wall is not continuous, for all along the coast the sea, thrusting forth its mighty arms, has carved out a maze of deep inlets, some of which run far into the land. The longest of these, the Sogn Fjord, has a length of nearly one hundred and forty miles.
Emphasis on the Gospel and Christian Reform in Late Medieval Preaching
Authors: Petry Ray C.
Published: April 2006

Christian history demonstrates repeatedly that the church at its best has been a self-criticizing institution. Furthermore, the call to both corporate and individual reformation has never ceased to be regarded as the special obligation of Christian, preachers. Their hearers through the centuries have often been, highly sensitive, as individuals and groups, to castigation of any kind emanating from whatever quarter. In every era, however, there have been some prophetic spokesmen who have continued to take seriously the censures of the church's enemies and to call for self-examination, repentance, and rededication—both personal and social—on the part of its true friends.
Count Zinzendorf and the Pennsylvania Congregation of God in the Spirit: The First American Oecumenical Movement
Authors: Stoudt John Joseph
Published: April 2006

William Penn and Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf were both stubborn idealists. Penn, believing that the seal of divinity had been stamped upon him, planned his refuge for the persecuted across the sea. Zinzendorf, fretting at the sterility of the churches and secretly admiring the vitality of the sects, felt called to create a church in Pennsylvania in which the Redeemer's presence would be so perceptively felt as ultimately to halt all words, prayer, and singing. Both dreams were failures— but significant failures: Penn's vision was an important factor in fashioning the American political pattern, while Zinzendorf's ideal is the working principle of modern church co-operation.
Quakerism and the end of the Interregnum: a Chapter in the Domestication of Radical Puritanism
Authors: Maclear James F.
Published: April 2006

In that fantastic decade from 1650 to 1660, English saints of every persuasion strove frantically to make the rule of the Lord on earth a political reality. Imbued with a lively apocalyptic hope and enjoying the driving enthusiasm of nascent religions, the left-wing Puritan sects sought to build in England a holy commonwealth that would prepare the way for the coming of the Lord. With the failure of the Barebone Parliament, their most promising opportunity passed by unrealized, but throughout the remainder of the Interregnum, Independents, Baptists, Fifth-Monarchy Men, and various mystical sects continued without abatement their endeavors to transform England into Zion.
Theophan Prokopovich and the Ecclesiastical Ordinance
Authors: Graham Hugh F.
Published: April 2006

The period of the reforms in the reign of Peter the Great shook Russia to her very foundations, drastically altering her historical course. It is noteworthy in many respects, particularly in the sudden appearance of many men in various walks of life capable of envisaging and of carrying out these novel measures. In the Orthodox Church, which was as profoundly affected as any other Russian institution, this phenomenon is admirably illustrated in the career of Theophan Prokopovich, the Ukrainian ecclesiastic. The range and power of his intellect were enormous; a theologian, scholar, teacher, poet, dramatist, and man of affairs, he merits respectful treatment both from students of theology and literature as well as politics. He was the Tsar's intimate associate, well-known to Catholic and Protestant theologians abroad, friend of the poet Kantemir and the historian Tatischev, and a man who could influence the imperial succession itself.
The Institution of the Benai Qeiama and Benat Qeiama in the Ancient Syrian Church
Authors: Vööbus Arthur
Published: April 2006

The Syriac term qeiama, “covenant,”1 with its derivations benai qeiama, “the sons of the covenant,” and benat qeiama, “the daughters of the covenant,”2 not only marks the idiosyncracy of primitive Syrian Christianity but it also mirrors a development which parallels the whole process of transformation in ancient Syrian Christianity. Originally the term qeiama designated the whole church comprised of ascetically oriented Christians.3.Standing face to face with this singular concept of church and the peculiar profile of primitive Syrian Christianity, we must be reminded that the first Christian impulses in the lands of the Euphrates and Tigris did not come from Hellenistic Christianity via Antioch but from Palestinian Jewish Christianity.4 Therefore the earliest traditions implanted here reveal the Palestinian Aramaean influence not only in the contacts which these Christian Jews had with the Palestinian Jewish Christians5 but also in the use of the ancient Palestinian Targum as the first biblical texts translated into Syriac6 and in the fundamentally ascetic orientation of the Christian Kerygma7 which echoes the Palestinian ascetic trends.8 These archaic conditions, which understood the qeiama as the whole
Churches in the Alabama Black Belt 1875–1917
Authors: Sisk Glenn N.
Published: April 2006

This is a segment of local church history in the South in the transition period from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the modern period of World War I. The cross section described here was no doubt typical of most of the deep Southern region with the exception of such areas as the Catholic district of Louisiana. The manner in which the Baptists and Methodists had catered to pioneer needs in furnishing a highly emotional religion without the requirement of an educated clergy certainly contributed to their large memberships in the period covered here.
The Pacifism of the Sixteenth Century Anabaptists
Authors: Bender Harold S.
Published: April 2006

A preliminary word should be said about the propriety of the use of the late, twentieth-century term “pacifism” to apply to the peace doctrines of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists. As it has been used since World War I pacifism designates broadly an idealistic anti-militarist position whose goal is the elimination of war in history.
American Missionaries in Greece: 1820–1869
Authors: Saloutos Theodore
Published: April 2006

A lesser known but perhaps significant phase of American religious reformism manifested itself beginning with the eighteen twenties when missionaries attempted to graft Protestantism on Greek soil. These spiritual reformers prepared to plant their faith in Greece while Samuel Gridley Howe, Jonathan P. Miller, and George Jarvis sought to help the Greeks win their independence from the Turks. This phase of missionary activity represented something extraordinary, because the Americans were attempting to impose their kind of Christianity on a people who had been Christians centuries before America was discovered.
Jonathan Edwards: A New Departure in Eschatology
Authors: Goen C. C.
Published: April 2006

The current revival of interest in both Jonathan Edwards and eschatology points up the fact that there has been no deliberate effort to bring these two subjects together. The only previous attempt to treat Edwards' doctrine of the last things is that by Frank Hugh Foster, in a series of articles on “The Eschatology of the New England Divines.”1 Unfortunately, the title promises more than the discussions afford; because Foster's interest is confined almost entirely to the problem of Universalism, his section on Edwards treats only of the doctrine of eternal punishment and serves to perpetuate the common notion that the great Puritan was little more than a preacher of damnation.
“The True American Union” of Church and State: The Reconstruction of the Theocratic Tradition
Authors: Maclear James Fulton
Published: April 2006

Modern studies of church and state in America have begun to modify some older conclusions. Much attention has been given to the Constitutional “solution” of separation and its contradictions and problems in practice. Similarly, church historians, qualifying an older assumption that conservative churches ultimately shed the forms of “classic Protestantism” and permitted American religion to be shaped by the sectarian heritage of the radical Reformation, have begun to re-examine the background of ideas. This re-examination is urgently needed in treating America's last disestablishment contest, the struggle over the state churches in New England which raged until the 1820's. For this struggle had unusual significance.
The Condemnation of theSillon: An Episode in the History of Christian-Democracy in France
Authors: Breunig Charles
Published: April 2006

Any study of France's political history since the Liberation must inevitably attempt to explain the sudden emergence in 1944 of that somewhat unconventional and ambiguous political grouping known as theMouvement Républicain Populaire. Almost overnight the new party, despite its obscure origins and unfamiliar program, succeeded in winning the largest bloc of seats in the National Assembly and in the years since the war has provided France with some of her most prominent leaders. Although the M. R. P. has declined in parliamentary strength in recent years, it seems probable that the party of Robert Schuman and Georges Bidault will continue to play an important role in French politics.
John Calvin and the Rhetorical Tradition
Authors: Breen Quirinus
Published: April 2006

The purpose of this essay is to bring another candle to an understanding of John Calvin as a theologian, by way of a look at some rhetorical traits in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. That Calvin was an eminent theologian or that the Institutes is a classic of theological literature is not examined, for neither is generally disputed. Our specific concern is with the question of what happens to theological subject matter when it is put in rhetorical form. Accordingly, this essay is divided into three parts: I—The proper marks of a style suitable to theology, and how the humanists, including Calvin, felt about this; II—A look at some rhetorical traits in the Institutes; and III—Some conclusions.
Nationalism and Missions
Authors: Beaver R. Pierce
Published: April 2006

Nationalism in the Orient came into being as a reaction to Western and Japanese political, military, economic, and cultural imperialism. It still has this character in countries remaining under colonial rule. This nationalism is a phenomenon of the twentieth century, although arising somewhat earlier in certain countries. Anti-western movements before this time were manifestations of cultural resistance to European penetration rather than truly nationalistic expressions. The Boxer Uprising of 1900 in China is the last major example of such a cultural reaction. Thereafter love and pride of ancient culture became increasingly only one ingredient in patriotic loyalty and devotion. Intensified during World War I, this earlier type of nationalism reached its climax in Asia in the period of World War II, and came to fruition in the independence of eight nations in East and Southern Asia. Since then this earlier type of nationalism has been replaced by a religious statism, to which many Western nations had already succumbed and which had led Japan to disaster. The entire Orient is far too vast an area for treatment in a brief paper, and this survey is limited to a mere outline of the relation of nationalism to the Christian mission as illustrated by events in some countries of East Asia, where along with India the issues were most sharply raised.
Arminius and the Reformation
Authors: Bangs Carl
Published: April 2006

James Arminius (1560-1609) is not nearly as well-known as the various movements which bear his name. “Arminianism” is a familiar word in Protestant history and theology and a pervasive movement particularly in English-speaking Protestantism. The Arminian movements, however, because of their diversity do not point clearly to Arminius himself. The label of Arminianism has been applied to and often accepted by such diverse entities as the politics of William Laud, seventeenth century Anglican theology from high churchmanship to moderate Puritanism, the communal experiment at Little Gidding, the empiricism of John Locke, Latitudinarianism, the rational supernaturalism of Hugo Grotius and the early Remonstrants, early Unitarianism in England, Wales, and New England, the evangelicalism of the Wesleys, and the revivalism of the American frontier. In our time the term means for some the crowning of Reformation theology; for others it points merely to an anachronistic sub-species of fundamentalism; and for still others it means an easy-going American culture-Protestantism.
Intellectual Repercussions of the Council of Florence
Authors: Ševčenko Ihor
Published: April 2006

At Ferrara and Florence, Western intellectuals met with the greatest Greek scholarly and theological delegation that ever came to Latin soil. The Greeks did not come empty-handed. They brought with themde luxeeditions of Greek sacred and, above all, secular authors—coveted treasures for Renaissance Italians. To judge by the letters in which Ambrogio Traversari announced the arrival of the Greeks, Christian Humanists were as much interested in the codices of Plato, Plutarch, Euclid and Ptolemy, brought by the Emperor and Bessarion, as in the cause which brought the Greeks to Italy.
Methodist Historical Studies 1930–1959
Authors: Norwood Frederick A.
Published: April 2006

Following a period of neglect Methodist historiography in the three decades since 1930 has taken a new start. The keynote of this revived interest is not antiquarian but existential, and manifests a concern for the recovery of the Methodist heritage as roots for the faith of the present. Curiously, this interest in the denominational background arises in part from increasing participation in the Ecumenical Movement. Methodists have felt that they had something of their own to offer, but were not quite sure what it was.
The Polarity of the Gospels in the Exegesis of Origen
Authors: Laeuchli Samuel
Published: April 2006

In spite of all the hermeneutic research, the allegorizing of the Alexandrians, and above all the exegetical work of Origen, remains a strange phenomenon of the early church. Historians have often smiled indulgently, if they have not scoffed, at those childhood steps of biblical interpretation within ancient Christian theology, from Thomasius more than a century ago up to our present. The possibility of a complete understanding is hindered by the lack of many of Origen's texts in the original language. Many of his commentaries are lost. And yet there are certain indications from which we can learn that Origen did have his sound reasons for his exegetical undertaking. For this, one has to examine the tenth chapter of his Commentary on John.
Municipal Patronage and the Crisis of the Arts in Reformation Nuernberg
Authors: Christensen Carl C.
Published: April 2006

Historians of art and of German culture alike traditionally have interpreted the Reformation period as one of crisis and ultimate decline in the area of the visual arts. This view, while perhaps correct in broad outline, should be accepted only with certain qualifications. The German Reformers, and Luther in particular, were not as hostile to aesthetic expression as has sometimes been alleged. In Lutheran Nuernberg there occurred very little iconoclasm; in fact, Medieval and Renaissance art works were more fully preserved there than in many Catholic areas where they were later replaced by Baroque creations. It is true that, following the Reformation, few new commissions were given for works of ecclesiastical art. It is also no doubt true that the economic position of the artist was thereby gravely endangered, as examples cited later in this study will indicate. The evidence suggests, however, that the picture was not uniformly bleak.
The Expansion of the Visible Church in New England: 1629–1650
Authors: Kobrin David
Published: April 2006

Recent Puritan historiography has stressed the characteristics peculiar to the New England churches during the 1630's and 1640's. Historians have noted that while the Puritan church was the central religious institution in a religiously oriented society, it did not have the same importance for its members that the Roman Catholic church, for example, has for its communicants. Since the Puritans believed that God had irrevocably predetermined who would be saved and who damned, they did not need their churches to insure salvation. On the contrary, rather than being a means of gaining salvation, Puritan theory clearly defined the church as a fellowship of those already saved under covenant with God. By excluding all others the New England Puritans attempted to narrow the apparently inevitable gap between the visible and the invisible. In a world where salvation belonged to a minority and where man could do nothing to change his spiritual state, the Puritan church, these historians continue, was not an institution which included all those living within a certain geographical area, such as a parish, or even all the obviously pious within such an area.
Matthew Simpson and the Mission of America
Authors: Kirby James E.
Published: April 2006

In the American self-consciousness from its beginning to the present there has existed a firm conviction that this nation is destined, either by divine decree or circumstances, for a unique place among the peoples of the earth. One form of this is the assumption that the United States will provide the great example which others will want to follow. The classic expression of this was given by John Winthrop aboard the Arbella, but equally valid ones can be found in the words of modern Americans. Winthrop said:

We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when he shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations ‘The Lord make it like that of New England.’ For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us.
England, the Pope, and the Council of Basel, 1435–1449
Authors: Schofield A. N. E. D.
Published: April 2006

Although England's official participation in the Council of Basel came to an end with the departure of the second English delegation from Basel in the summer of 1435, the history of England and the Council does not end with this event.1 There was no lack of English concern over the developments that followed: the Council's final break with Eugenius IV in 1436–37, its suspension and deposition of him, and election, in 1439, of the anti-pope, Felix V. Henry VI was anxious to intervene to restore peace and unity in the Church, while the fathers of Basel made unsuccessful bids for renewed English support. This article is devoted chiefly to an examination of English relations with the Council from 1435 until its dissolution in 1449; but the subject is also closely linked with the history of Anglo- papal relations during these years, for England remained staunchly loyal to Eugenius. Although no English delegation went to the general council which the pope summoned in 1437 to Ferrara, this council's fruitful work towards union with the Greek Church and other Christians was followed with approval in England.