bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cultural Heritage as Public Good
Authors: Serageldin Ismail
Published: October 2003

While global interest in health surveillance was relatively weak between the 1940s and the 1980s, today there is a renewed interest in international cooperation. There are many good reasons for this heightened interest, including new health risks and better communications. But it is also because in a world of increased mobility – of people and goods – health risks anywhere can pose a threat everywhere. Thus, the knowledge generated through international health surveillance has an important public goods dimension. Because information about existing risks is often of great interest and benefit to all countries, it is increasingly difficult to withhold this information given the strength of civil society and the media. Yet knowledge about disease outbreaks has a peculiar quality. Zacher points to two problems: the reluctance of governments to report disease outbreaks and the lack of capacity in many countries to adequately monitor public health and respond to outbreaks. Zacher suggests that increased involvement by nongovernmental organizations will help remedy at least part of the disclosure problem. “Bad” news travels faster today owing to the spread of the Internet and the growth of international networks of health professionals. Still, the expanded role of NGOs and individuals in disclosure does not take away from the need for an international organization, such as the World Health Organization (WHO) to verify and legitimate outbreak reports and to coordinate international responses to outbreaks. In addition, international development assistance has an important role to play in improving the weak links in global prevention and surveillance systems. National capacities to prevent, report, and control outbreaks can and should be improved in many developing countries in the interest of reducing the common global risk posed by infectious diseases.
Health as a Global Public Good
Authors: Chen Lincoln C. , Evans Tim G. , Cash Richard A.
Published: October 2003

Today we recognize that knowledge is not only a public good but also a global public good. We have also come to recognize that knowledge is central to successful development. The international community has a collective responsibility for the creation and dissemination of one global public good – knowledge for development. But how can we deal with the dilemma of reconciling the often contradictory incentives for the production and for the dissemination of knowledge? States must decide to what extent there should be public provision and to what extent private production should be encouraged through strengthened intellectual property rights. Designing the appropriate intellectual property rights regime entails balancing static and dynamic efficiency. Indeed, because research (knowledge) is one of the most important inputs into the production of further knowledge, raising the “price” of knowledge may actually reduce follow‐on research and slow the pace of innovation. Thus, it is essential to reward research and innovation by firms while ensuring widespread access to knowledge and protection against monopoly rents. Issues of equity and efficiency interplay here, as most innovations incorporate ideas that are part of the common pool of knowledge. Narrowing the knowledge gap between developing and developed countries requires the construction of strong domestic knowledge infrastructures, most notably in education. Because knowledge is a global public good, Stiglitz argues that successfully meeting the challenges posed by knowledge externalities depends critically on cooperative efforts at the international level.
Preventing Deadly Conflict
Authors: Hamburg David A. , Holl Jane E.
Published: October 2003

Through an interesting dynamic, there is at present an interesting intersection of two literatures – that on conventional foreign aid and that on global externalities and public goods. Some of the key questions that emerge from this are (1) Could international public goods and cross‐border spillovers provide a revived rationale for old‐fashioned transfers intended to spur development in poor countries? (2) When faced with the choice of making transfers or contributing to an international public good, what should a donor country do – even if its objectives are governed by self‐interest rather than solidarity? (3) What happens to the many issues (like conditionality and ownership) in old‐fashioned solidarity‐driven aid, so exhaustively and exhaustingly debated over the past 20 years or more, in this new world of international public goods?

The objective of this chapter is to begin the discussion of these questions, which seem to have been neglected in the rush to embrace international public goods as a new rationale for maintaining international development cooperation and even traditional aid flows. We set out a simple model of interaction between two countries that share a common public good and pose the problem of the richer “donor” country deciding between making a transfer or contributing to a public good, while being concerned only about the impact of outcomes on its own well‐being. We next analyze the problem with different specifications of the public good. We conclude by discussing the implications of this analysis and the areas for further research.
Peace as a Global Public Good
Authors: Mendez Ruben P.
Published: October 2003

During the 1980s and 90s, aid programs increasingly became a kind of surrogate national government, with outside agencies (usually led by the Bretton Woods institutions) attempting to foster the provision of public goods at the local and national levels. In this vision, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank would lead reform on behalf of the national polity because the government receiving the aid was too weak, too corrupt, too prone to backsliding, or too incompetent to mobilize the needed actions on its own. Thus, during the 1980s and especially in the first half of the 90s, aid was closely tied to policy conditions to ensure that the aid was linked to appropriate policies and the appropriate provision of public goods by the national government. In principle, if the aid were not used in the way agreed with the outside agencies, it would be cut off. We know from a large number of studies and frustrating case histories that this model is deeply flawed.

A new approach to aid is needed. In our view, donors should get back to basics to ensure that aid really delivers public goods that otherwise will not be provided either by markets or recipient governments in the absence of the aid. Without a doubt, there is one hugely neglected area of public goods: goods that can only be provided effectively at the level of the region (defined here to mean a grouping of neighboring governments) or on a global scale. The first category may be called “regional public goods” and the second category “international public goods.” This chapter focuses on regional public goods, partly because international public goods are covered in other chapters and partly because very little work has been undertaken on the actual and desirable levels of public goods provision at the regional level.
International Public Goods and the Case for Foreign Aid
Authors: Jayaraman Rajshri , Kanbur Ravi
Published: October 2003

During the 1980s and 90s, aid programs increasingly became a kind of surrogate national government, with outside agencies (usually led by the Bretton Woods institutions) attempting to foster the provision of public goods at the local and national levels. In this vision the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank would lead reform on behalf of the national polity because the government receiving the aid was too weak, too corrupt, too prone to backsliding or too incompetent to mobilize the needed actions on its own. Thus, during the 1980s and especially in the first half of the 1990s aid was closely tied to policy conditions to ensure that the aid was linked to appropriate policies and the appropriate provision of public goods by the national government. In principle, if the aid was not used in the way agreed with the outside agencies, it would be cut off. We know from a large number of studies and frustrating case histories that this model is deeply flawed.

A new approach to aid is needed. In our view donors should get back to basics, to ensure that aid really delivers public goods that otherwise will not be provided either by markets or recipient governments in the absence of the aid. Without a doubt, there is one hugely neglected area of public goods: goods that can only be provided effectively at the level of the region (defined here to mean a grouping of neighboring governments) or on a global scale. The first category may be called “regional public goods” and the second category “international public goods.” This chapter focuses on regional public goods, partly because international public goods are covered in other chapters and partly because very little work has been undertaken on the actual and desirable levels of public goods provision at the regional level.
Regional Public Goods in International Assistance
Authors: Cook Lisa D. , Sachs Jeffrey
Published: October 2003

The concept of global public goods can help us understand and respond to the new global policy challenges likely to face nations in the twenty‐first century. Tackling this growing agenda of common concerns will require fresh thinking, intense research efforts, new political instruments, and innovative policy responses. Up to now, global public goods consisted primarily of “traffic rules” between countries and such at‐the‐border issues as tariffs. But increasingly, the initiatives for international cooperation reach behind national borders. Global concerns are penetrating national agendas, and national concerns are becoming the subject of international debate and of policy coordination and harmonization. Today, concrete outcomes and targets – such as disease control, pollution reduction, crisis prevention, and harmonized norms and standards – matter. The reasons for these new exigencies: enhanced openness, growing systemic risks, and the policy demands of the growing number of transnational actors in both business and civil society. Nation states will witness continuing erosion of their capacities to implement national policy objectives unless they take further steps to cooperate in addressing international spillovers and systemic risks. But that cooperation must be of a new type. Not just cooperation that keeps global public bads at bay (until they reach crisis proportions) but cooperation that centers on creating global public goods and internalizing externalities. And not just cooperation that mistakenly assumes that the sphere of “public” ends at national borders, but cooperation that recognizes that an efficient system of global public policy is a necessary ingredient of an efficient global economy. To make cooperation work along these lines, its current structure must be reengineered to create: (1) clear jurisdictional loop, reaching from the national to the international (regional and global) level and back to the national; (2) participation loop, bringing into the process all actors – governments, civil society and business; all population groups, including all generations; and all groups of countries; (3) an incentive loop to ensure that cooperation yields fair and clear results for all.
The Money Trust (1890–1920)
Authors: Geisst Charles R.
Published: October 2003

The money trust and the development of the Federal Reserve. The central role of Wall Street power brokers in the country and the increasing sophistication of the exchanges. The Pecora hearings in Congress, revealing the inner workings of the money trust, the death of Pierpont Morgan, World War I financing, Liberty Bonds, and the role of bankers again as central figures in the power structure of the country.
The Booming Twenties (1920–29)
Authors: Geisst Charles R.
Published: October 2003

The boom and stock market crash of the 1920s. The public begins to invest in the stock market. Wall Street expands and banks begin selling securities. Wall Street bankers and brokers become celebrities. Federal Reserve is unable to slow down market bubble. The crash occurs and country quickly slides into depression. Market loss the largest in American history.
The Struggle Continues (1936–54)
Authors: Geisst Charles R.
Published: October 2003

The Depression and war years see little Wall Street activity. Congress creates NASD. The TNEC formed, investigates monopoly concentrations in industry, World War II brings changes on Wall Street. Bull market begins to develop in mid‐1950s. Small investors discover market in ’50s.
Bear Market (1970–81)
Authors: Geisst Charles R.
Published: October 2003

Stock market falls in 1970 after Wall Street crisis. War related inflation and high interest rates prevail. Paul Volcker assumes control at Fed. Historically high interest rates. High value of the dollar. Market retreats below 1,000 on DJIA. Record yields on Treasury bonds, economic stimulus package from Washington.
The Transformation of American Religion
Authors: Porterfield Amanda
Published: October 2003

Religious life in the U.S. underwent a profound change in the late twentieth century as divisions between different religious groups softened, exposure to various religions increased, and Americans experienced growing interest in personalized forms of religious experience. The surge of interest in personalized forms of spirituality coincided with the decline in the mainstream Protestant institutions that had once dominated American religion and shaped American culture. It also coincided with the criticism of American arrogance, the debacle in Vietnam, and the defeat of victory culture. Nevertheless, even as patriotic optimism and the authority of Protestant institutions declined, Protestant influence persisted in the celebration of individual religious experience, and in the tendency to place the authority of individual experience above that of established institutions and official hierarchies. Late twentieth‐century American spirituality reflected the Protestant tendency to individualism underlying American religious life, even as it also reflected the mainstreaming of Catholicism in American culture, and an unprecedented interest in, and freedom for, other religions. The book traces some of the antecedents of this recent awakening to the spirituality of American Transcendentalism in the nineteenth century and, before that, to New England Puritanism and its investment in the Holy Spirit's power in individual life. In its examination of these historical precedents, the book argues that the persistent tendency toward individualism in American religious life has often been affirmed and promoted as an effective source of benevolence, social responsibility, and reform.
The Liberation of Missionary Evangelicalism
Authors: Porterfield Amanda
Published: October 2003

American enthusiasm for individual religious experience has often resulted in missionary outreach and social reform. Focusing on the Reformed Protestant tradition that helped shape American culture, this chapter shows how American Protestants in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries came to see benevolence as the chief manifestation of Christian virtue. The chapter also describes the criticism of missionary arrogance that developed within missionary circles in the early twentieth century, and the emergence belief that while education, economic assistance, healthcare, and other forms of philanthropy were appropriate Christian endeavors, attempts to destroy other religions were not. The chapter points to this development in missionary thinking, and to social gospel tradition in liberal American Protestantism more generally, as a precursor of the liberation theology promoted by Catholic activists in the late twentieth century.
Buddhism and the Deconstruction of Selfhood
Authors: Porterfield Amanda
Published: October 2003

Buddhism emerged as an important component of American culture in the late twentieth century. New laws lifting restrictions on Asian immigrants contributed to this development, as did changes in American intellectual life that led more Americans than ever before to become predisposed toward Buddhist ideas about selfhood. Buddhist ideas had been present in America since the mid‐nineteenth century, but not until the writings of D.T. Suzuki and the Beat poets in the 1950s did these ideas catch hold as antidotes to the materialism and individualism of American culture. This chapter shows how Buddhist ideas of emptiness, nondualism, and no‐self contributed to the development of American psychology and popular culture, and also how American psychology and popular culture revised and redirected these Buddhist ideas.
Gender Consciousness, Body Awareness, and the Humanization of Religion
Authors: Porterfield Amanda
Published: October 2003

Awareness of gender roles, and gender role conditioning, became increasingly prevalent in late twentieth‐century America. As an outgrowth of the civil rights movement and experiments in consciousness raising, the women's movement promoted gender consciousness as an essential part of women's liberation. The close connection between gender and religion became increasingly apparent, especially as academic courses in women's studies explored these connections. Focusing on the writings of Mary Daly and other pioneers in feminist theology, this chapter shows how gender awareness became an important element in twentieth‐century American spirituality.
The Pragmatic Role of Religious Studies
Authors: Porterfield Amanda
Published: October 2003

The academic study of religion in colleges and universities played an indirect but important role in the development of spirituality. Courses in religious studies proliferated in the context of the Vietnam War, criticism of American Protestant culture, and the search for alternative forms of religious meaning. This chapter identifies the historical roots of religious studies in Protestant thought and describes the development of the field, paying particular attention to the influences of Paul Tillich and Mircea Eliade.
Conclusion
Authors: Porterfield Amanda
Published: October 2003

The changes that took place in American religious life during the late twentieth century were, in some important respects, unprecedented. As the U.S. became hospitable to virtually all the religions of the world, more religious switching and experimenting occurred than ever before. In other respects, the enthusiasm for spirituality in this period was similar to previous Great Awakenings that have marked American religious history in the past. This concluding chapter compares the transformation of American religion in the late twentieth century to previous awakenings, suggesting that the impetus to spiritual expansion can be traced back through the American Transcendentalists to the New England Puritans and their influential role in shaping American culture.
“And the Shout of a King Is Amongst Us”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

Gathering as a sect in England in the 1650s, Quakers believed that each person had a “light within,” illuminating not only his own evil but also available as an inner Christ to lead him to God's will. Obedience to God's principles ensured access to continuing revelation and to the possibility of approaching perfection and dwelling in the Kingdom of God on earth. Quakers emphasized some of God's principles and termed them “testimonies.” Although Quakers believed that God instituted worldly government in order to be a “terror to evil‐doers” and a “praise to them that do well,” non‐Quakers mistrusted them and subjected them to strenuous persecution and suffering.
“A Killinge Instrument We May Neither Forme, Nor Beare”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

Quakers renounced war, killing, and the use of weapons – a set of principles of nonviolence that they termed the peace testimony. Upon the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the English Quaker leadership enunciated the peace testimony on behalf of the collective body of Quakers in two documents: the “Declaration and Information” and the “Declaration of 1660.” Early English Quakers grounded their peace principles in biblical texts, especially the admonition to love one's enemies. They relied upon this spirit of the gospel wherein the purity of one's motives was as essential as one's behavior. The early peace testimony rested on the foundation of maintaining the purity of one's soul in order to remain in the Kingdom of God; later, the emphasis would shift to a concern for the victims of violence and to an interest in worldly justice.
“Fire at the Mast”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

From the beginning, early English Quakers were working out how to put principles into practice, and their observances were diverse. Some participated in military activities wholeheartedly; others such as Thomas Lurting and Edward Coxere found it necessary to declare that they would no longer bear arms; still others, like Henry Pitman, responded to violence and persecution in complicated ways. The dominant histories of the peace testimony tend to simplify this diversity among early Quakers, and adopt one of two competing interpretations. The more traditional interpretation is that the peace testimony was inherent in Quaker spirituality and was observed before 1660, from the earliest times; in reconciling this pietistic theory with conflicting evidence, proponents minimize or “define out” those Quakers who bore arms or were violent. The second interpretation is that the peace testimony arose in the Declarations of 1660 as a strategic reaction to the violent uprising of other sects; proponents of this pragmatic theory see the testimony as politically self‐protective and downplay both the prior practice of peace principles and the spirituality of the testimony.
“Bold Boyes and Blasphemers”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

Social and geographical context influenced the developing peace testimony. In England, early Quakers were outside the established order; in contrast, when they made their way into the wilds of Carolina, they represented societal order itself and Pennsylvania Quakers were dominant and confident. When Quakers arrived in New England in 1656, they represented a threat to the Puritan order; persecution and military service obligations challenged the peace testimony. Everywhere Quakers made use of their sufferings, both spiritually and as a practical tactic, keeping careful records of them. In a time when “carnal weapons” could be both actual and metaphorical, principles of peace could be at once complex, confused, and conscientious.
“The Habitation of the Hunted‐Christ”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

Rhode Island was a sanctuary for Quakers and others because of its freedom from civil enforcement of religion and its tradition of religious liberty. In 1672, a group of English Quakers including one of the founders of Quakerism, George Fox, visited Rhode Island. Fox preached and organized vigorously, strengthening the structure of Quaker meetings, taming the extreme individualism of Quaker belief, and establishing a system of internal discipline to temper individual revelation. In 1672 also, Quakers came to dominate the Rhode Island government, to Fox's delight. The duties of Quaker governors created new tensions with the requirements of the peace testimony.
“Times of Motion and Danger”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

Indian unrest and French and Dutch invasion scares threatened New England in 1667, 1671, and 1673. As colonies reacted to these dangers, there were no differences attributable to pacifism between non‐Quaker governments in Rhode Island, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay and Quaker government in Rhode Island; all governments made haphazard, tentative, localized, and inadequate provisions for defense. None called upon the king for aid; all called councils of war, mounted an occasional great gun, set watches, negotiated with the Indians. An occasional individual Quaker demonstrated scruples against one measure or another. One major exception to the absence of pacifist evidence was the legislation passed by the Rhode Island Quaker government, the Exemption of 1673, the first formal legislative provision for conscientious exemption.
“Fighting Against the Minde of God”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

In an emergency session responding to the Dutch recapture of New York, the Rhode Island General Assembly enacted the 1673 Exemption, exempting any self‐identified pacifist from military service on the basis of conscience. It provided, too, for alternative service, but it also excused those for whom even alternative service would violate their consciences. The legislature, expressing local conditions, traditions, and needs, gave several arguments to support its excusing those unable to fight or train for reasons of conscience. The justifications pointed to Rhode Island's own liberty of conscience; then pointed to the Hebrew scripture, wherein God excused certain classes of people from fighting in his wars. The legislature cited the example of the king, who also did not require all to fight, and referred to other “implied” arguments.
“Sin and Flesh”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

In 1675, King Philip's War – a war redolent of sin and flesh – broke out in New England between English settlers and Indians. All of the antagonists in this war saw each other as sinners: the Puritans blamed Quakers for drawing the wrath of God upon them in the form of angry Indians; the Quakers blamed Puritans for persecuting fellow Christians; the Indians felt the English had abused them in multiple ways; the English saw the Indians as Godless, and so as sinners as well. As for flesh, the physical costs of war were devastating: the Indians suffered massive losses of population, and 12 English towns were utterly destroyed. The major leaders when war erupted were King Philip of the Wampanoags, Canonchet of the Narragansetts, the Quaker Governor William Coddington of Rhode Island, Governors John Leverett of Massachusetts Bay, Josiah Winslow of Plymouth, and John Winthrop Jr. of Connecticut. Quakers dominated the Rhode Island government and sent Quaker John Easton to negotiate with Philip in a failed effort to forestall hostilities.
“Midnight Shrieks and Soul‐Amazing Moanes”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

When open hostilities began near Plymouth and the Plymouth governor requested help from Rhode Island, the Quaker government agreed to blockade a peninsula and trap Philip's troops. This openly partisan military action was only the first of many ways in which Rhode Island participated in the war notwithstanding the sizable Quaker presence in the government. Rhode Island housed and provisioned Massachusetts and Plymouth troops; their troops fought at Nipsachuck; they bought arms from Boston and stored ammunition for Plymouth; and the government transported Massachusetts and Plymouth troops to the largest battle of the war, the Great Swamp Fight, and sheltered English casualties. But participation remained local: no colony‐wide commander was appointed, no colony‐wide army formed.
“A Bulit out of Everi Bush”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

The local towns of Warwick and Providence showed resentment toward the Rhode Island central government for its failure to adequately protect them. Both towns were destroyed in the spring of 1676; the Quaker colony government then reconsidered and appointed a captain for the colony as a whole, and set up a garrison in Providence. The Quaker governor signed the commission for Captain Cranston, and for the captain of the garrison. In June 1676, the legislature modified the 1673 Exemption: conscientious objectors would now have to pay fines in lieu of military service; the Exemption was fully restored in October. In August 1676, just after the death of King Philip, the Rhode Island government court‐ martialed four Indians and sentenced them to execution.
“The Rectification of the Heart”
Authors: Weddle Meredith Baldwin
Published: October 2003

Beyond soldiering, individual Quakers faced other issues relevant to the peace testimony, such as self‐defense and offering sanctuary to others. To seek protection in a garrison house, for example, raised several questions: might it betray a lack of faith in God's protection; should one go in armed, or unarmed; as a site of potential violence, should one avoid it altogether? The records show a range of behavior, from Nathaniel Sylvester's scrupulous avoidance of garrison houses to William Coddington's contorted legalism. Would offering sanctuary to wounded English soldiers be a loving act, or would it be an unconscionable support of military activity? The peace testimony, with the exception of the Rhode Island Testimony, did not appear in disciplinary admonitions until the 1690s among New England Quakers, suggesting that its parameters were too unsettled, its complexities too great.
Religious Criticism
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

Lays out a theoretical orientation that allows Friesen to compare the evidence for the imperial cult institutions of mainstream society with a visionary religious text like Revelation, which was produced by a marginal group in society. The chapter begins with a review of critiques of modernity found in the work of three scholars of religion – Mircea Eliade, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and Charles Long. The chapter then draws on the comparative model of Lawrence E. Sullivan, which describes cosmogony, cosmology, human maturation, and eschatology as the four cornerstones of religious systems. This phenomenological method is amended by the incorporation of Edward Said's concept of contrapuntal interpretation of history and society.
Provincial Imperial Cults of Asia Under Augustus and Tiberius
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

Examines three imperial cult institutions sponsored by the Roman province of Asia during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. These provincial imperial cult institutions are the temple of Rome and Augustus built at Pergamon (c.27 b.c.e.); the new provincial calendar proposed by the Roman proconsul Paullus Fabius Maximus around 9 b.c.e.; and the temple of Tiberius, Livia, and the Roman Senate at Smyrna (26 c.e.).
Provincial Cults from Gaius to Domitian
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

Completes the survey begun in the previous chapter by discussing the abortive attempt to establish a provincial imperial cult for Gaius (Caligula) at Miletus around 40 c.e.; changes in the organization of high priests and high priestesses of Asia; and the temple of the Sebasteion at Ephesus under Domitian (89–90 c.e.). The survey demonstrates that provincial imperial cult institutions enforced new spatial and temporal perspectives that were focused on Rome and the Roman emperors. These provincial cults also helped establish a new imperial discourse within the province of Asia. They were crucial cosmological symbols that supported Roman imperialism and defined an evolving provincial identity.
Municipal Imperial Cults
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

Synthesizes the existing evidence for municipal imperial cults in the cities of Asia (Ephesos, Priene, Miletos, Sardis, Pergamon). An examination of imperial cults in temple settings and those without temples shows that municipal imperial cults permeated city life and were more attuned to local piety. In comparison with provincial imperial cults, the municipal institutions were more variegated in their formats and in the objects of worship. There was more incorporation of imperial figures into the cults of other deities, more assimilation of imperial figures to specific deities, and a different standard for the language of divinization.
Municipal Imperial Cults
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

Closer scrutiny of two well‐documented temples adds nuance to the survey in the preceding chapter. The Sebasteion at Aphrodisias and the Augusteion at Ephesos show the diversity that is included in the concept “municipal imperial cults.” These cults were part of a new discursive practice in Asia that allowed novel and creative representations of civic identities within the Roman imperial system. They presented the imperial cosmology in a vernacular mode.
Groups and Individuals
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

Few studies deal with the role of imperial cults in human maturation. Evidence for imperial hymnodes from Pergamon and elsewhere, for imperial mysteries, and for individual votive offerings shows that imperial cults often played a part in rituals for mourning, socialization, agricultural cycles, family, gender, and other issues in the cultivation of personhood.
Imperial Cults as Religion
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

The four components of Lawrence E. Sullivan's comparative model allow us to summarize the role that imperial cults played in the polytheistic religious systems of Asia. Imperial cults had some influence on cosmogony and human maturation. Their major contribution, however, was to cosmology. These cults articulated an imperialist elaboration of Greco‐Roman religious life that made Roman rule seem normal, or at least inevitable. This strong commitment to the longevity of Roman imperialism resulted in an absurd eschatology, which could not represent an end to Roman rule. This fundamental flaw in the religion of imperial cults created the matrix within which Revelation's critique of Roman rule could take root.
Revelation in Space and Time
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

Discusses the date and time when Revelation was written, and then considers the role of imperial cults in the generation of the text. The main argument concludes that Revelation was not written against alleged imperial cult excesses under Nero or Domitian; the evidence for imperial cults from Asia shows that these were not aberrant periods. Rather, Revelation should be interpreted as a critique of the dominant imperial discourse for which mainstream imperial cults were a crucial manifestation.
Centering Reality
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

The Revelation of John contains an overwhelming eschatology that produced an inherently unstable cosmology. According to John, space and time were not centered around Rome and the emperors. Rather, space was centered around the heavenly throne and time around worship. Worship directed people toward the absent throne as they awaited a new heaven and a new earth, when God would abandon heaven and dwell among humans. In contrast to the work of Leonard L. Thompson, Friesen concludes that Revelation spoke about the Roman world, but Revelation's weak cosmology could not speak on behalf of the Roman world.
Communities Worshipping Humans
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

The author of Revelation promoted a particular view of church life. John described the churches as a divine kingdom chosen from the peoples of the earth. The most important leaders were, according to John, the 12 apostles of bygone days and the past and present prophets. In these communities, human maturation involved gender relations that were less discriminatory than those evinced by many other early Christian texts. Apocalyptic personhood also included a renunciation of violence. Outsiders lived in a society characterized by profound deception and dramatic inequality in the distribution of wealth.
Worship and Authority
Authors: Friesen Steven J.
Published: October 2003

The cosmogony of Revelation manifests two strategies similar to those employed in imperial cults for the emperor. In both cases, the human is connected to a high God(s) of the tradition and the human is portrayed as the founder of a new reality. Revelation claimed legitimacy, however, by describing imperial authority as a deceptive, demonic imitation. The imperial cosmology is castigated as an exploitative economy in which the wealthy and powerful live a life of arrogance and affluence that is based on violence. The kingdom of God and his Christ, on the other hand, was a community of suffering and endurance that would be vindicated in the end if they remained faithful.
A Controversial Spirit
Authors: Mulder Philip N.
Published: October 2003

Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists in the American South competed divisively with each other during the First and Second Great Awakenings, establishing a spirited evangelical presence in the region, but left wanting a common religious influence that would fulfill ecumenical ideals. Presbyterians and Baptists set the tone by subordinating New Light techniques to their denominational traditions, the Presbyterians countering the novelties of the revivals with their long‐standing emphasis on education and decorum, and the Baptists demanding that converts be judged by their knowledge of core doctrines. The two Calvinist denominations successfully limited the innovative Methodists, who had hoped to transcend the others’ sectarian spirit with piety and ecumenism – the very definition of the New Light. Methodists were absorbed into the arguments over denominational differences, and all the groups turned their aggressiveness toward each other as the Anglican Church, formerly their target of mutual dissent, disintegrated during the American Revolution. Left to encounter each other during outdoor preaching, camp meetings, and neighborhood discussions, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists became obsessed with their own debates over proper religion and the acceptable measure of New Light piety. In their polities, beliefs, rituals, and conversions, these churches, led by the Baptists, defined evangelicalism as a controversial spirit, with the New Light ideal of the Methodists falling into the rivalry of denominationalism.
Good Reasons to Believe
Authors: Mulder Philip N.
Published: October 2003

Although the Great Awakening temporarily split Presbyterians into Old Side and New Side, moderation prevailed as Presbyterians tamed the New Light with their traditional emphases on clerical training, education, and theological and ecclesiastical balance. Ministers like Samuel Davies exemplified temperateness as they worked to promote religious warmth – not heat – in conversion, at the same time wresting toleration from the Anglican Church. Presbyterians concentrated their efforts within their own ethnic communities in the Shenandoah Valley and southern Piedmont, expecting potential converts to be attracted to their system and communion seasons.
Experimental Religion
Authors: Mulder Philip N.
Published: October 2003

Francis Asbury imposed a rigorous discipline and strict episcopacy on early American Methodists, and he envisioned a universal faith that would overwhelm the sectarian spirit that he saw prevalent in Baptist and Presbyterian churches. Following the precedents of Methodist founder John Wesley, Asbury promoted an experiential religion and holiness, accepting individual expressiveness in conversion, but demanding complete commitment from participants who were expected to pursue an ideal of perfection. They received support in class and society meetings where they could share concerns, shortcomings, and successes, and they could find models of their ideals in the selfless work of circuit riders whose example of openness and effort would trump particularity and smug complacency, Methodists hoped.
Sowing and Reaping
Authors: Mulder Philip N.
Published: October 2003

With the Revolutionary trauma and Anglican Church swept away, Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists could turn their full attention to each other as they competed for converts and ascendancy in the religiously free nation. The insular Presbyterians and Baptists struggled to keep pace with the Methodists by experimenting with some of their tactics, including warm, extemporaneous preaching, lively music, and itinerancy, yet ultimately they relied on their traditional distinctions in appeals for converts. Methodists forged ahead with their universal designs and waves of quarterly and annual meetings that fostered outdoor preaching events and camp meetings, but as they encountered their competitors, they had to define their distinctive message, and, doing so, they addressed their Calvinist rivals on the enemies’ terms: the controversial spirit that the Methodists had hoped to convert.
Choosing God's People
Authors: Mulder Philip N.
Published: October 2003

Laity in the audiences and congregations embraced the message of the preachers all too well during the Great Awakenings. Accounts show that men, women, Anglo‐, and African‐Americans accepted not only the general need for salvation, but also the denominations’ prescriptions for conversion. True conversion required selecting the particular beliefs of one denomination and specifically rejecting those of the others. The reborn had to turn away from false churches and teachings just as they cast aside their sinfulness. Choice, the celebrated feature of evangelical religion, emboldened laity and helped the democratization of American Christianity, but it also assured that a spirit of distinction would hover over the quarreling faithful of the South. Baptists’ oppositional religion steadily displaced Methodists’ universal faith.
Kaufman and Hick
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

Many contemporary theologians hold that there are profound problems in the very idea that we can refer to and think about a being characterized in the way Christians characterize God; in this chapter, I consider the claims of two such thinkers, Gordon Kaufman and John Hick. Roughly, Kaufman's position (in his early work) appears to be the following: the term “God” may or may not have a real referent, but if so this real referent transcends our experience and hence is something to which our concepts don’t apply; the term “God” does, however, have an available referent, which is a human construction. I examine and reject this view, as well as some of Kaufman's claims about the function and utility of religious language. I then examine and attempt to clarify John Hick's position that there is an unlimited and transcendent being, the Real, which is “the noumenal ground of the encountered gods and experienced absolutes witnessed to by the religious traditions,” and which is such that only our formal concepts and our negative concepts apply to it. I argue that although this position (or one close to it) may manage to avoid incoherence, Hick gives us no good reason to think that we cannot predicate of God such positive, nonformal properties as wisdom, knowledge, love, and the rest.
Warranted Belief in God
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

In the last chapter, I pointed out that the objections against religious belief made by Freud and Marx amount to the de jure objection that religious belief lacks warrant. By way of response, I offer in this chapter a model (the Aquinas/Calvin model), which illustrates a way in which theistic belief could have warrant. On the Aquinas/Calvin (or A/C) model, we (human beings) have a faculty or cognitive mechanism (the sensus divinitatis or sense of divinity), which, in a wide variety of circumstances, produces in us beliefs about God; the theistic beliefs thus produced, furthermore, are properly basic with respect to warrant. After presenting the A/C model, I argue that if theism is true, then it is likely that belief in God has warrant and is properly basic with respect to warrant; this implies that a successful atheological objection will have to be to the truth of theism, not to its warrant, rationality, justification or intellectual respectability. I then turn to the objections of Freud and Marx (considered in the previous chapter) and argue that these objections fail as de jure objections to theistic belief; what I call the Freud‐and‐Marx complaint is a good objection only on the assumption that theism is false.
Sin and Its Cognitive Consequences
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

In Ch. 6, I presented a model (the Aquinas/Calvin model, or A/C model), which illustrates how belief in God could have warrant; my aim in the next four chapters (7–10) is to extend the model of Ch. 6 to specifically include Christian belief, and to show how it can be that Christians can be justified, rational, and warranted in holding full‐blooded Christian belief. Now, one important difference between bare theism and Christianity has to do with sin and the divine remedy proposed for it; in the present chapter, therefore, I explore the nature of sin and its noetic effects. After providing an initial statement of the extended A/C model, I turn to an examination of the nature of sin, focusing especially on original sin, a condition affecting both will and intellect. According to the extended A/C model, the noetic effects of sin are concentrated with respect to our knowledge of others, ourselves, and God; most importantly, the sensus divinitatis has been damaged by sin. After exploring this basic noetic consequence of sin, I return to an issue from Ch. 12 of Warrant and Proper Function, and take the opportunity to make some corrections, simplifications, and additions to the arguments I offered there (especially to the argument I offered for the conclusion that an ordinary naturalist has a defeater for any belief she holds, including ordinary naturalism itself).
The Testimonial Model: Sealed Upon Our Hearts
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

According to the model I proposed in Ch. 8, Christian belief is produced in the believer by the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit; the result of this work of the Holy Spirit is faith. In Ch. 8, I explored the cognitive aspects of faith, but faith is more than just belief; in producing faith, the Holy Spirit does more than produce knowledge in the believer – the Holy Spirit also seals this knowledge to our hearts, which is to say that the Holy Spirit begins to cure our misdirected wills, producing in us the right sorts of affections. In this chapter, I explore the affective side of faith, turning first to the work of Jonathan Edwards in order to examine the nature of religious affections. In doing so, I address the issue of the relationship between intellect and will (and belief and affection) in the process of acquiring faith. I then turn to that most important of religious affections, the love of God, exploring the nature of this love and arguing that it is, in part, an erotic love, figured or imaged in the phenomenon of human erotic love.
Objections
Authors: Plantinga Alvin
Published: October 2003

The extended Aquinas/Calvin (A/C) model of the last three chapters is intended to show how specifically Christian belief can have justification, internal and external rationality, and warrant. In this chapter, I do two things; first, I consider some of the arguments for the conclusions that theistic and/or Christian belief lacks warrant, and, second, I consider objections to my arguments and claims about the way in which Christian belief can have warrant. I first consider the objection that religious belief can derive warrant from religious experience only if there is a good (noncircular) argument from premises reporting the occurrence of such experience to the existence of God; I rebut this objection by pointing out that it is surely possible for religious belief to derive warrant from religious experience directly, in a basic way, just as perceptual and memory beliefs derive warrant from perceptual and memorial experience in a basic way and not by virtue of inference or argument. After considering a second objection, concerning the alleged incapacity of experience to account for the specificity of religious belief, I reply to an objection due to Richard Gale, according to which it is impossible to have a veridical perceptual experience of God. I then examine and reply to (1) a number of objections to my claim that theistic and Christian belief can receive warrant in the basic way, including the so‐called Great Pumpkin objection and descendants of it, and (2) the objection that there is something circular in my account.