bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Religion as Hallmark of Nationhood
Authors: Perica Vjekoslav
Published: October 2003

The first part of the chapter gives a brief account of the bloody fratricidal war fought in Croatia and Bosnia‐Herzegovina in 1991–5, which resulted from ethnic nationalistic revolutions aimed at destroying the multiethnic federation of Yugoslavia founded by the communists, and establishing independent homogeneous states. Further wars would continue in 1998 (between the Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo) and in 2001 (between Albanians and Macedonians in Macedonia). The main part of the chapter discusses religion and nationalism in these successor states – Islam and Muslim nationalism in Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Catholicism (the Madonna of Medjugorje) and Croatian nationalism in Bosnia‐Herzegovina and Croatia, and the Orthodox Church in Serbia (and Kosovo), Macedonia, and Montenegro. The remaining two sections of the chapter discuss saint making in Croatia in the late 1990s, and the role of religious organizations in the international peace process.
The Twilight of Balkan Idols
Authors: Perica Vjekoslav
Published: October 2003

The beginning of the chapter briefly discusses the degradation of the Balkan successor states to Yugoslavia, and the despise with which they were held by the West (except for Slovenia) – Serbia and Croatia came into conflict with the West, while Bosnia‐Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Macedonia became Western protectorates. The two main parts of the chapter discuss the role of the Catholic Church in the return of Croatia to the West, and the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in relation to the West and the failure of the Serbian revolution under Milošević. The last part of the chapter discusses the legacy of Yugoslavia, and current attitudes to Balkan nationalism, which has undergone heavy blows from demography (a diminishing population of children and young people) and migration to the West – which have replaced Marxism as the new key menace to the Churches.
Conclusions
Authors: Perica Vjekoslav
Published: October 2003

The conclusion from the case study of the making and unmaking of Yugoslav states presented in this book, both in general, and in its religious dimension in particular, offers scholars a kind of “laboratory” from which findings and deductions can be made. These are discussed under the following headings: multinational states and legitimacy by religion; the myth of the religious revival; religion and Yugoslav communism; and the continuing Balkan nightmare.
Beyond Auschwitz
Authors: Morgan Michael L.
Published: October 2003

Auschwitz is the center of the twentieth century, its dark core, yet, in the postwar years in America few intellectuals dared to come to grips with the horror and the suffering. Jewish theologians too were slow to respond until, in the turbulent years of the sixties and beyond, a small number of Jewish thinkers came to realize that the survival of Judaism and continued Jewish life require first and foremost confronting Auschwitz; looking into the abyss had become unavoidable. In this book, Michael Morgan tells the story of these theologians, and offers the first comprehensive overview of post‐Holocaust Jewish theology. He gives an account of the encounter with the death camps in the postwar writings of figures such as Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, and Primo Levi and describes the role of the Six Day War in 1967 on the development and reception of post‐Holocaust Jewish thought. In chapters on each of the central thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), he analyzes the way they have struggled with the dialectic of history and identity, and with the threat of radical rupture. Throughout the book, the intellectual developments are set in their historical context and there are chapters on the reception of post‐Holocaust Jewish thought and its legacy for today. This is a book of philosophical and theological analysis as well as a work of intellectual history and will interest a wide spectrum of readers.
Introduction
Authors: Morgan Michael L.
Published: October 2003

This brief introduction discusses the importance of understanding what the American Jewish response – and more importantly, the American Jewish theologians’ response – to the Holocaust has been, and what it has taught Jews about their approach to the past and the future. The author has approached this by an examination of the writings of five thinkers (Richard Rubinstein, Eliezer Berkovits, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, and Emil Fackenheim), each of whom in the 1960s and 1970s began to treat the Holocaust as a central and determining feature in his Jewish thinking. Each conceived of his theological task as understanding Judaism in terms of an act of coming to grips with Auschwitz, yet each has been influential in different ways, and for different constituencies. A brief summary is given of the writings of each of the five, and of some of the thoughts and conclusions raised. The introduction ends with an outline of the book.
The Holocaust and the Intellectuals of the Fifties and Sixties
Authors: Morgan Michael L.
Published: October 2003

From 1945 to 1965, the Holocaust and the Nazi destruction of European Jewry came to occupy the attention of a small number of intellectuals whose work would have a significant impact on post‐Holocaust Jewish thought. One of the most important, Raul Hilberg, was a political scientist by training, but his work was primarily historical; The Destruction of the European Jews, which appeared in 1961, meticulously examined the destruction process, but this massive and detailed work was rarely read. The most influential books were those of Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, and Primo Levi; these writers provided powerful, important views of the death camps and the Nazi horrors, and they also introduced modes of discourse for describing and discussing the crimes perpetrated, the criminals, and the victims. This chapter is primarily devoted to a study of Arendt's examination of Nazism and totalitarianism, published in articles in the 1940s, and culminating in her tremendously important hook, The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1951; discussion of various critiques of her work is also included. The writings of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi are discussed in the next chapter.
Jewish Theology in Postwar America
Authors: Morgan Michael L.
Published: October 2003

This chapter covers the writings and interchanges of various Jewish theologians who wrote in America in the late 1940s, the 1950s, and the 1960s, who included existentialists, and Reform Jewish theologians. These writers include Emil Fackenheim, Will Herberg, Martin Buber, Franz Rosenzweig, Eugene Borowitz, Bernhard Heller, Jakob Petuchowski, Arthur Cohen, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Joseph Soloveitchik, Lou Silberman, Bernard Martin, Eliezer Berkovits, Richard Rubinstein, and many others. The chapter also covers the debates in various journals as well as ideas put forward in more substantial publications (essays, books, etc.).
Postmodernism, Tradition, Memory: The Contemporary Legacy of Post‐Holocaust Jewish Thought
Authors: Morgan Michael L.
Published: October 2003

The contemporary legacy of the post‐Holocaust movement for modern Judaism and Jewish self‐understanding is considered in an examination of modernist and postmodernist thought. For various reasons, the primacy of the Holocaust has been seen by many as opposed to a number of recent developments in Jewish life, especially the return to texts, the renewal of ritual celebration, and the commitment to “liberal” values. The author encourages an appreciation of the realism and yet the idealism of the post‐Holocaust thinkers and points out that their goal, like that of every Jew, is to find a way to return to the past in order to live into the future with integrity and hope.
Regulatory Choke Holds on Economic Growth
Authors: Yago Glenn , Trimbath Susanne
Published: October 2003

The chapter starts by pointing out that a fundamental mismatch exists between the sources of job creation and capital formation in the USA, and that US financial history can be read as a long attempt to resolve this. Flow of funds data from the 1950s to the late 1990s reflect the relative contraction of financial institutional sources of capital and the expansion of capital markets. However, an analysis of this structural shift shows that small businesses have participated less than large ones (although they represent over 40% of total assets, debt, and net worth), and they remain disproportionately dependent on banks as their major source of capital. The effect of the recession of the early 1990s on such small firms is discussed in terms of the four sources of regulatory chokes (i.e. overregulation) that have hampered their economic growth: banking regulations, insurance regulations, thrift regulations, and merger regulations. The last part of the chapter discusses the reinvention of financial institutions and the restructuring of regulation, and financial technology transfer for small businesses – such as developing secondary markets for small‐firm equity and debt, and the creation of derivatives or issue of bonds or certificates by investment originators.
New High Yield Markets
Authors: Yago Glenn , Trimbath Susanne
Published: October 2003

Some of the developing (non‐US) high‐yield markets were briefly mentioned in the previous chapter, but before the development of the non‐US markets for high‐yield bonds is addressed in this chapter, the countries from which national and corporate borrowers were driven to the US markets for capital are reviewed. They represent the full spectrum of size, location, and creditworthiness, and include Argentina and Brazil (which accounted for nearly 90% of all high‐yield bonds issued in the USA by South American Corporations in the 1990s), Canada, Australia, and the UK. The next section of the chapter reviews the development of the European high‐yield market, the expansion of which peaked in 1998 but then paused (and showed a drop in returns) following the Russian crisis. Data are given contrasting the different European financial systems, and difficulties arising from the different European insolvency regimes and transnational bankruptcies are discussed. The last part of the chapter discusses the development of the Canadian high‐yield market, and the attempts made to break through into this market in Asia, which are limited by cultural taboos against bankruptcy (data are given on the different creditor rights in eight Asian countries and four South American countries).
Industrial Restructuring
Authors: Yago Glenn , Trimbath Susanne
Published: October 2003

This chapter investigates industrial restructuring in the slow‐growing food industry in the USA, asking why an industry with a growth factor of less than 1% flourishes in a world in which companies strive for growth rates of 10% or more. It first looks at the industrial composition (sectoral distribution) of the Fortune 500 [the largest 500 companies in the US as listed by Fortune Magazine, on the basis of publicly available data], and at the industrial restructuring that occurred in the 1980s in the US economy, showing a breakdown of consumer products into cyclical and noncyclical groups. The food industry is in the noncyclical group, which increased its share of revenues while decreasing its share of companies in the Fortune 500. Other sections of the chapter look at the following: consolidation through mergers and acquisitions; financial innovations – the ability to use public markets for leveraged financing and a possibly more heavy reliance (of noncyclical companies) on high‐yield bond financing (for which evidence is presented); the financing of biotechnology for food production and the associated structural change in production; the impact of the combination of high‐yield financing and high tech in the food industry; and foreign and international influences.
Why We Can't Understand Thought from the Outside
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: October 2003

In Nagel's view, any challenge to reason involves reason and implicitly authorizes the use of reason. Separating the idea of reason from the idea that its results must carry absolute certainty, Nagel stresses the importance of the aspiration of reason for universality. His defense of the authority of reason resembles Descartes’ cogito, which identifies the limits of self‐criticism from an external viewpoint. Rejecting Richard Rorty's pragmatism as inconsistent with the consensus upon which Rorty attempts to “ground” objectivity, Nagel states that epistemological skepticism is only possible with an implicit reliance on the capacity for rational thought.
Science
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: October 2003

To refute subjectivism about science, we must begin, Nagel says, with the idea that there is some way the world is and aim to show that even the subjectivist cannot rise above this idea. Nagel rejects Kant's claim that reason cannot tell us anything about how the world is in itself because any use of reason is limited by how the world seems to us. According to Nagel, there is something suspicious in the view that we have the bare idea of our placement in a mind‐independent world but not the logical possibility of anything more. Kantian transcendental idealism is just one hypothesis and must compete with the more mundane possibility that the world is more or less as it appears. Since science continues to offer good reasons to believe things, not just about the phenomenal world but also about the world as it is in itself, in an equal contest, the subjectivist loses.
Ethics
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: October 2003

Considers whether moral reasoning is fundamental and inescapable. Nagel argues that we cannot step outside the procedures of justification and criticism employed in moral and practical reason and regard them as mere expressions of contingent local or cultural, or, even more broadly, human practices. Nagel rejects Bernard Williams's claim that, unlike reflective theoretical reason, reflective practical reason, of which moral reason is an example, is always first‐personal. Targeting Hume's skepticism, Nagel argues that a gap exists between inclination and decision that requires one to employ reason to determine what oneself or any other person should do when confronted by a given set of circumstances.
Traditional Criteria of Tax Equity
Authors: Murphy Liam , Nagel Thomas
Published: October 2003

Traditional analyses of tax justice demand that the distribution of tax burdens satisfy criteria of vertical and horizontal equity–like cases should be treated alike and relevantly different cases should be treated differently. Various criteria for relevant differences have been proposed, drawing on ideas such as ability to pay and taxation in proportion to benefit. All these analyses suffer from the fundamental flaw of treating pretax income as a morally significant baseline. This mistake can partly be traced to a prevailing “everyday libertarianism” according to which our legal property rights simply protect what we are independently morally entitled to; this view is incoherent.
The Tax Base
Authors: Murphy Liam , Nagel Thomas
Published: October 2003

The choice of tax base–income, consumption, wealth–is an instrumental one: it depends upon the efficiency and justice of the outcomes different tax bases promote. Traditional fairness-based arguments for the consumption base–for example, that it is fairer to savers, or appropriately taxes according to what is taken out rather than put into the “common pool”–all suffer from the everyday libertarian mistake of treating the pretax distribution as morally significant. But there are important philosophical questions to be asked about the value of wealth and the legitimacy of taxing endowment (potential rather than actual income).
Autonomous Agents
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Explores the related topics of self‐control and personal autonomy. Self‐control is understood as the contrary of akrasia or weakness of will, and autonomy is placed in the family of metaphysical freedom concepts: most notably, free will, free choice, and free action. The book's first half develops an analysis of the nature of self‐control and explains the potential influence of self‐control on actions, beliefs, reasoning, emotions, and values. It also develops an account of an ideally self‐controlled person and argues that even such a person will fall short of autonomy. The second half of the book first asks what may be added to ideal self‐control to yield autonomy and then defends two distinctive answers, one for compatibilist believers in autonomy (believers in autonomy who see it as compatible with determinism) and another for libertarians (believers in autonomy who see it as incompatible with determinism). The compatibilist answer features an account of control and a sensitivity to agents’ histories, and the libertarian answer adds to this a kind of causal openness that does not require agent causation and that avoids the sort of luck that undermines autonomy and moral responsibility. It is argued that the disjunction of these two answers as applied to actual human beings is more credible than the thesis that there are no autonomous human beings. This is “agnostic autonomism”: the position is agnostic about whether the falsity of determinism is required for autonomy while asserting that it is more credible that there are autonomous human beings than there are not.
Introduction: Self‐Control and Personal Autonomy
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Introduces some of the book's key concepts, sketches the process leading to full‐blown deliberative action, and provides an overview of the first half of the book. Important concepts introduced are autonomy, self‐control, akrasia or weakness of will, control, and determinism. It is argued that full‐blown, deliberative, and intentional action involves some psychological basis for evaluative reasoning (for example, values, desires, and beliefs), an evaluative judgment that is made on the basis of such reasoning and recommends a particular course of action, an intention formed or acquired on the basis of that judgment, and an action that executes that intention. An agent who lacks control at any of these junctures does not act autonomously.
Better Judgment: Nature and Function
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Defends a position on the nature and function of agents’ judgments that it would be best to do something and on the connection between such judgments and intentions. Competing theories advanced by Aristotle, Donald Davidson, and R. M. Hare are criticized. One conclusion is that no nonartificial species of evaluative judgment renders agents immune to weakness of will. Agents’ judgments about what is best to do are not only subject to defeat by opposing motivation but are also supportable by exercises of self‐control. An account of practical reasoning or deliberation and of what motivates it is offered.
Exercising Self‐Control: A Motivational Problem
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Offers a resolution of a puzzle about the possibility of exercising self‐control in support of one's doing what one judges best when one's desire for that course of action is weaker than one's desire to pursue a tempting alternative. The resolution is based partly on observations about the sources of the motivational strengths of desires and about various ways in which desires compete with one another. Some relevant empirical work on delay of gratification is reviewed.
Self‐Control, Akrasia, and Emotion
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Defends and explains the possibility of emotional analogs of akratic and self‐controlled actions. It is explained how people can avoidably acquire and continue to have feelings or emotions that they judge it best not to have and how they can exercise self‐control to avoid this. Our emotions are often products of such things as desires, habits of interpretation, learned patterns of emotional response, other emotions, and our physiological condition. The possibility of akratic feelings rests on the possibility that the evaluations that ground some better judgments about particular feelings neither fully fix nor exactly gauge the causal power of what produces those feelings. When there is a mismatch between the determinants of our feelings and our better judgments and when what we are feeling is subject to our control, akratic feelings are possible.
Problems for Libertarians
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Identifies the main problems facing libertarians – incompatibilists who believe that there are free, autonomous, morally responsible agents. The main problems revolve around luck and control. Libertarians need to explain how the same actions can be both free and explicable and how indeterminism contributes to freedom, autonomy, and moral responsibility. It is shown that although the so‐called “Mind argument” is not a problem for libertarians, a variant of it is, and Robert Kane's libertarianism is criticized.
Incompatibilist Autonomy and Autonomous Action
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Develops a modest libertarian view that avoids traditional libertarians’ problems with luck and control. Ultimate and proximal control are distinguished; Galen Strawson's regress argument against libertarianism is criticized; a libertarian account of how we become free, autonomous agents is developed; and a set of sufficient conditions for libertarian autonomy is offered. Those conditions are the compatibilist conditions defended in Ch. 10 together with a new condition that introduces a specialized indeterminism into the deliberative process.
Assessing the Denial of Autonomy
Authors: Mele Alfred R.
Published: October 2003

Argues that it is more credible that there are autonomous human beings than that there are not. Agnostic autonomism is defended: the position affirms the existence of autonomous agents while being agnostic about whether the falsity of determinism is required for autonomy. The defense is based on an examination of the philosophical advantages and disadvantages of four positions: agnostic autonomism, compatibilist belief in autonomy, incompatibilist belief in autonomy (libertarianism), and the belief that there are no autonomous agents (nonautonomism). If compatibilism is true, there is a strong case – grounded partly in human experience – for the existence of autonomous human agents; even if compatibilism is false, the nonautonomist is no better off than the libertarian; and given the absence of a knockdown argument for incompatibilism, the agnostic autonomist has a significant edge over the nonautonomist.
Where Darwin Meets the Bible
Authors: Witham Larry A.
Published: October 2003

Offers a comprehensive and even‐handed summary of America's contemporary intellectual and social debate over evolutionism and creationism, with its roots in Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). The book relies on more than 100 interviews with contemporary players, includes profiles of many of them, and reports opinion surveys of scientists and theologians. Chapters cover the topic's impact on politics, public education, museums and churches, the news media, public debate, beliefs of scientists, and issues of human nature and morality. The book closes with events in 2000 and suggests that in future debate, science is challenged to separate philosophy from evolution, and religion to explain God's action in the world.
Looking for Boundaries
Authors: Witham Larry A.
Published: October 2003

The evolution–creation debate has produced various stances. This chapter uses “boundary theory” to survey them from strict evolutionism on one pole to literal Bible creationism on the other pole. Many shades of evolutionist and creationist solutions exist in between. The key stances are materialist evolution, theistic evolution, progressive creation, and young‐earth creation. The boundaries now include postmodern and New Age views of science.
What Natural Scientists Believe
Authors: Witham Larry A.
Published: October 2003

Hinges on survey findings (1990s) that 40% of U.S. scientists believe in a personal God and afterlife, while 93%of National Academy of Sciences members do not. Here is a look at the beliefs of Darwin and Einstein, how scientists deal with belief and atheism, and studies of scientists since psychologist James Leuba (1914) asked them about God. Biology and social science seem least open to belief.
Media‐Eye View
Authors: Witham Larry A.
Published: October 2003

The John Scopes “monkey trial” over evolution in 1925 set a pattern for news coverage of future disputes in courts, churches, school boards, and legislatures. This chapter samples media treatment of science–religion disputes – from Galileo to Arkansas and Kansas – and applies a news “framing” theory. It details court cases, political battles, news bias, and academic events on science–religion topics.
Parables for Our Time
Authors: Oldenhage Tania
Published: October 2003

Over the centuries, New Testament texts have often been read in ways that reflect and encourage anti‐Judaism. Since the Holocaust, Christian scholars have increasingly recognized this inheritance. New Testament scholars have not directly confronted the horror of Nazi crimes, Odlenhage argues, but their work has nonetheless been deeply affected by the events of the Holocaust. By placing twentieth‐century biblical scholarship within its specific historical and cultural contexts, she is able to trace the process by which the Holocaust gradually moved into the collective consciousness of New Testament scholars, both in Germany and in the U.S.. Her focus is on the interpretation of the parables of Jesus by scholars, including Joachim Jeremias, Wolfgang Harnisch, Paul Ricoeur and John Dominic Crossan. In conclusion, Oldenhage offers her own reading of the parable of the wicked husbandmen, demonstrating how the turn from historical criticism to literary theory opens up the text to interpretation in light of the Holocaust. Thereby, she seeks to fashion a biblical hermeneutics that consciously works with memories of the Holocaust. If the parables are to be meaningful in our time, Oldenhage contends, we must take account of the troubling resonance between these ancient Christian stories and the atrocities of Auschwitz.
Comedy, Play, and “The Horrors of This Century”
Authors: Oldenhage Tania
Published: October 2003

Develops a post‐Holocaust reading of John Dominic Crossan's book Raid on the Articule, published in 1976. Oldenhage attends to the ways in which allusive references to the Holocaust continue to appear in Crossan's discussion and offer an uncanny subtext to his comparison of the parables of Jesus and twentieth‐century literature. Oldenhage argues that Crossan's gestures to Holocaust atrocity together with his perpetuation of anti‐Judaism are typical of the vague nature of Holocaust memory in American culture in the mid‐1970s. The chapter draws from Peter Novick's and Jeffrey Shandler's works on American Holocaust memory.
Parables for Our Time?
Authors: Oldenhage Tania
Published: October 2003

Considers the motivations underlying the widespread efforts in biblical scholarship to find similarities between the parables of Jesus and twentieth‐century literature. Oldenhage's focus is on the frequent comparison between the stories of Jesus and the stories of Franz Kafka. She argues that such comparisons are not only driven by an interest in formal or generic similarities. She argues that scholarly projects that find parallels between Jesus and Kafka are also driven by the desire to have Jesus’ stories speak to twentieth‐century catastrophe and thus to make Christian Scripture relevant for our own time. While Oldenhage acknowledges the importance of such a hermeneutics of New Testament parables, she argues that it needs to be spelled out and explored more thoroughly.
Toward a Post‐Holocaust Biblical Hermeneutics
Authors: Oldenhage Tania
Published: October 2003

This chapter concludes by addressing the implications of this book for future work in New Testament scholarship. Oldenhage demonstrates what a post‐Holocaust reading of the parables of Jesus might look like. Focusing on the story of the Wicked Husbandmen, she seeks to develop an interpretation that critically makes use of literary criticism and that works explicitly with Holocaust memory. Oldenhage emphasizes the importance of situating parable interpretation as thoroughly as possible in specific cultural and rhetorical contexts. She also suggests possible ways for dealing with the parable's legacy of anti‐Judaism.
Secrets, Gossip, and Gods
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

This book is about secrecy in religion and the process by which traditionally secretive religions become public, taking as its case the Afro‐Brazilian religion of Candomblé. The book argues that Candomblé's entrance to the national public sphere of Brazil entails a two‐part process: (1) Practitioners become active participants in the dissemination of knowledge about the religion, including protected knowledge or secrets, and thus choose to enter the public sphere; and (2) the metropole turns toward indigenous religions like Candomblé as a source of exotic fascination and a set of religious practices from which outsiders may selectively appropriate. The result is religion innovation that nonetheless evokes strident discourses of traditional continuity – here in the form of claims to authenticity, depth, and secret knowledge.

The book explores secrecy as a form of social boundary making and the social processes through which such boundaries are both ritually and discursively forged. The book coins and explicates the neologism of secretism. If secrecy is the act of restricting information and the establishment of sanctions against the uncontrolled flow of information, secretism is, contrariwise, a dissemination or placing into circulation the reputation of secrets and claims of their possession and location. The contemporary meanings of secrecy and secretism become legible when read against the historical stages of Candomblé's relation to the nation of Brazil as a whole and the purposes secrecy served during successive historical stages: (1) the secrecy of African hermeneutics carried by slaves to the shores of Brazil; (2) the secrecy‐as‐resistance to the slave colony and kingdom of Brazil; (3) the secrecy of hidden affiliations with the newly formed Afro‐Brazilian religion under the First Republic; (4) the gradual replacement of secrets by secretism, the discourse of “depth” and “foundation” after Brazilian Candomblé became known and “national” under the Second Republic; and finally, (5) the layering of these uses of secrets and secretism to adjudicate religious meanings, orders, and privileges in contemporary practice.

The book argues that as Candomblé has become a national and public religion during the last decades through radically augmented forms of disclosure, freely circulated discourses of secret, African knowledge have begun to eclipse ritual practices and locales formerly regarded as traditional, generating new modes of religious affiliation.
Introduction
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

The introduction presents the concept of secretism and its relevance for the study of Brazilian Candomblé. Secretism is framed as a key issue brokering relations between indigenous religions and their host nation states. The overall strategy of the book is proffered, along with salient methodological notes and an introduction to the primary research sites.
What Is Candomblé?
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

Here, the religion of Candomblé is described. Candomblé is presented as a relatively stable system of meanings and practices. Johnson maps out the contour lines along which variations occur, the semiotic system linking historically disparate groups of practice. The key vectors of signification described include: (1) the orixás (orishas) and the digestive metaphor of exchange, (2) Africa, “Africa” and Afro‐Brazil, (3) gender and spirit possession, (4) axé and the terreiro, and (5) Candomblé in the context of a broader Brazilian religious field of spirit‐possession religions.
Slaves and Secrets
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

Presents conceptions of secrecy West Africans brought with them to Brazil: the interpretive separation of superficial appearance from “deep knowledge,” the face presented in public (ori ode) versus the inner head (ori inu), the layered nature of knowledge, which is ultimately bottomless, and the secret society of the Ogboni earth cult among the Yoruba. Additionally, the chapter recounts the nineteenth‐century context and motivations for a second historical layer of secrecy generated in response to repressive slave laws and policing, and the construal of Candomblé as illegal sorcery. Candomblé is interpreted as a secret society that was both built upon West African ideals of secrecy and constructed in Brazil as a religion that was seen, but not penetrated, and whose members concealed their affiliations with the orixás. Finally, in a third use of secrecy, the chapter demonstrates how masters with reason to fear it attributed extraordinary powers to exotic Candomblé.
From Tumor to Trophy
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

Describes the sociopolitical context of the new republican public order of Brazil between 1889 and 1930 that uncovered a third historical layer of the practice of secrecy, now as resistance to the republic.

The problem of the classification of Candomblé in the Brazilian public sphere began in 1888 with abolition. It is precisely at this juncture that the relation of Afro‐Brazilians and their religions to Brazilian national identity became a pressing concern. With the advent of abolition and the inchoateness of Afro‐Brazilians’ new social position, their provisional status as “Brazilians” shifted in the eyes of white élites back to that of “Africans” and therefore, foreigners – a dangerous and polluting presence. The liberty of freed slaves to perform religious ceremonies involving drumming, sacrifice, and possession dance was an obvious site of contestation since it was in such ritual performances that difference – the “non‐Brazilian” identity – was most radically marked.
Public Space to Secret Place
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

Shifts attention to the contemporary ritual practice of secrecy, focusing especially on initiation as a rite of passage. The chapter addresses (1) how secrecy is communicated and expressed spatially, (2) how that concept of a space of secrecy is transmitted from the group to arriving individuals and reproduced in the “closed bodies” of individuals sealed by initiation, and (3) how the reproduction of secrecy relies upon and incorporates coordinates of national legitimacy created between 1890 and 1940 to mark the spatial progression of the initiate. It is demonstrated that secrecy has less to do with the restriction of information than with bodily containment and the making of a “closed body” (corpo fechado).
Public Candomblé
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

Candomblé's expansion beyond ethnic markers and beyond the bounds of the traditional sites of ritual practice is described and analyzed under the rubric of public Candomblé. The chapter interprets the shift from the traditional form of secrecy, the initiation of contained bodies within the inner chamber, to secretism, the circulation of discourse on the street about secrets. Public Candomblé is under construction through bureaucratic institutionalizing efforts, published information about Candomblé, television broadcasts, film representations, and sites devoted to Candomblé on the Web.

The second half of the chapter assesses the feedback loop between public Candomblé and traditional practice within the terreiros, schematized as a “protestant” effect – the condensation of ritual practice and concomitant elaboration of discourse.
Conclusion
Authors: Johnson Paul Christopher
Published: October 2003

Explains the rise of secretism by summarizing three related arguments: First, Candomblé had no option to remain silent about the religion, only to either be represented or to take part in the control and production of those representations. Here, secretism follows the pattern of the incitement to discourse theorized by Foucault, as part and parcel of the creation and required administration of the public sphere. Second, claims to secrets are now circulated as a system of intrareligious prestige, a competition for limited rewards. In this competitive context, claims to deep secrets (secretism) are stimulated, compared to their former relative stability in traditional ritual practice. Third, secretism attempts to resecure the locative identity of Candomblé by discursively constructing boundaries for the experience of place, the ritual ideal of acquiring “foundation.” Secretism has therefore grown in direct proportion to Candomblé's publicization.
America's God
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

Examines the emergence – and then the broad effects – of a singularly American synthesis of convictions. That synthesis of evangelical Protestant religion, republican political ideology, and commonsense moral reasoning came into existence during the second half of the eighteenth century and then exerted a telling influence on American life through the time of the Civil War. Elsewhere in the North Atlantic world, the main Christian traditions opposed both “Real Whig” republicanism and the “commonsense” principles of the era's new moral philosophy. Not so in America. Through a series of contingent circumstances – revival in the 1740s, colonial warfare with France, the struggle for independence, a great surge of evangelical denominations in the new republic, and the leadership of Protestant thought and agencies in creating a national culture – distinctly American forms of Christian republicanism and theistic common sense became the common intellectual coinage of the new United States. In turn, these patterns of thought pushed theology, for both educated elites and sectarian populists, toward greater stress on the individual, on free will, and on personal appropriation of the Bible. The very centrality of commonsense Christian republicanism also, however, set the stage for the intellectual tragedy of the Civil War – when dedicated Christians, both North and South, were convinced that the Bible supported only their own side. The story is at once a great triumph of creative theological energy and a significant tragedy of theology captured by culture.
3 The Long Life and Final Collapse of the Puritan Canopy
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

By 1750, a transition was beginning to take place in American Christianity. Americans began to replace traditional theology with public intellectual ideologies like republicanism and commonsense moral reasoning – views that had traditionally been seen as heterodox. This occurred in large parts because the traditional Puritan framework cracked and fragmented during the heated events of the colonial Great Awakening.
8 Innovative (But not “American”) Theologies in the Era of the Revolution
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

The theological innovations that occurred prior to 1790 resulted largely from the importation of European progressive theology and from the extension of traditional pietistic impulses. Innovations arising from an absorption of American principles were uncommon. Those most willing to incorporate new elements with their theology were the liberals of New England, Baptists, African Americans, and radical dissenters.
10. . . and Constructing a New Nation
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

As evangelical Christianity grew rapidly after the 1790s, it made a great contribution to the creation of a national culture. Evangelicalism, as a flexible form of Christianity, thrived in a national environment that placed the concept of liberty at the fore. Evangelicals took to themselves the principles of the American Revolution and soon had made their type of religion critical for maintaining the virtue required by a republican government.
11 Ideological Permutations
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

The rise of a distinctly American theology came from Christian appropriation of a republican political vision, Christian confidence in commonsense moral reasoning, and Christian success at implementing evangelical religion in the culture of the new United States. But, as American political thought evolved from classical whig (and hierarchical) principles toward liberal (and populist) principles, so also did the American theology evolve in the direction of greater confidence in free will, personal initiative, and self‐guided interpretations of the Bible.
12 Assumptions and Assertions of American Theology
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

In the early nineteenth century, a great deal of diversity existed in American theology. Nevertheless, despite substantial differences, American religious thinkers during this period were dominated by Christians – mostly Protestants – and emphasized commonsense republican understandings of authority over against traditional standards. Even in disagreements, the commonsense republican approach to Christianity set the boundaries for dispute.
13 The Americanization of Calvinism
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

The historic Calvinist churches that still enjoyed significant leadership in American public life thoroughly incorporated common sense and republican emphases into their theology. In general, these theologians condemned the revolutions in France and were suspicious of the “infidel” Thomas Jefferson and his friend James Madison. American Calvinists were, however, not unified; their disputes grew from the different approaches they took to the problems of religious organization and national civilization posed by the new American nation.
15 The Americanization of Calvinism
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

The middle decades of the nineteenth century witnessed both the golden age of American Calvinism and its decline. Increasing fragmentation among Calvinistic voices as well as the rise of competition from non‐Calvinistic Protestants and Roman Catholics contributed to a vital but also chaotic theological period. A number of key Calvinist leaders published important works during this era, and public debates over theology were influenced by a number of decisive events not only within the denominations but also in public life. By the 1850s, leading voices like Horace Bushnell and Catherine Beecher were beginning to challenge the once settled principles of American Calvinist theology.
16 The Americanization of Methodism
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

Methodism became a great force in American life as a spiritual movement directed toward the salvation of souls. In its early American history, Methodism was mostly apolitical. Like their counterparts in Reformed circles, however, Methodists absorbed prevalent American principles of republicanism and commonsense moral reasoning. Unlike their Reformed counterparts, however, the Methodist absorption of these American ideologies occurred gradually and after they had spread widely in the country, rather than as part of the early Revolutionary struggle against Great Britain.
17 The Americanization of Methodism
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Methodists were the largest American denomination. But as they grew, so also did their theology Americanize. In the years following the death of Francis Asbury in 1815, Methodists grew closer to other denominations as they embraced American standards of commonsense moral philosophy and republican political thought. Still, it was not until the denomination divided over slavery in 1844 that the Methodists would come to look like most other American Protestant denominations in their embrace of commonsense and republican principles.
18 The “Bible Alone” and a Reformed, Literal Hermeneutic
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

By the 1830s and 1840s, challenges began to emerge to republican, commonsense understandings of the Christian faith. In the North, stronger individualistic interpretations emerged, whereas Southerners were returning to classic understandings of republicanism. In both the North and the South, however, the dominant pattern of biblical interpretation was shaped by the Reformed tradition, and it stressed a literal reading of the text. In the years leading up to the Civil War, differences over how to interpret Scripture, especially with regard to slavery, led to far‐reaching theological debates.
20 Failed Alternatives
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

Despite the prevalence of the Reformed, literal hermeneutic in the nineteenth century, a number of other interpretative strategies existed. These strategies were promoted by Roman Catholics, African Americans, church Protestants trying to maintain European traditions, and some conservative Presbyterian Calvinists. None of these groups succeeded in efforts to promote hermeneutical alternatives to the dominant Reformed, literal interpretation of the Bible. In addition, commonsense thinking about race exerted a largely unexamined, but very strong, influence on popular interpretations of the Scripture.
21 Climax and Exhaustion in the Civil War
Authors: Noll Mark A.
Published: October 2003

The Civil War was a decisive chapter in the history of American theology. While the leading theological commentators on the war continued to rely on the theological constructs that had been developed during the early years of the republic, more and more Americans found these constructs inadequate. One of the great ironies of the war era was that while theologians North and South found it very difficult to transcend the political–religious ideologies of their own regions, a few laypeople broke through to more profound theological insight. The most remarkable example was President Abraham Lincoln who, especially in his Second Inaugural Address, reached levels of theological profundity that none of the more thoroughly Americanized theologians reached.
Four Illusions
Authors: Candrakirti
Published: October 2003

Āryadeva's Four Hundred Stanzas (Catuḥśataka) is a Mahāyāna Buddhist text that describes the Bodhisattva's path toward enlightenment. In his commentary on this text, the Indian Buddhist philosopher Candrakiriti (c.550–650 c.e.) combines philosophical argument with the narration of popular stories to persuade beginners on the path of the value of the Buddha's teachings. In the first four chapters, Candrakiriti offers therapeutic advice to lay and monastic people on how to cope with death, suffering, lust, and egotism. Each chapter focuses on a different mistaken idea that must be abandoned by people who aspire to become Buddhas. Candrakiriti argues that people deceive themselves by believing in their immortality, in the pleasurable and pure nature of their bodies, and in the pride they take in themselves and their possessions. Part 1 of Four Illusions explores the broad range of his knowledge about Indian religious beliefs and practices, legal and political works, and the popular literature of his time, the Mahābharata and the Rāmāyaṇa. Part 2 provides the first translation into a Western language of the first four chapters of Candrakiriti commentary on Āryadeva's Four Hundred Stanzas.
Travelers on the Buddha's Path
Authors: Lang Karen C.
Published: October 2003

Candrakiriti was a Mahāyāna Buddhist whose numerous philosophical treatises on the Madhyamaka school were written between the mid‐sixth to the mid‐seventh centuries c.e. Traditional accounts of his life recount legendary stories about a charismatic figure who exemplified the Bodhisattva's practice of compassion and exhibited insight into the emptiness of inherent existence. Candrakiriti uses philosophical inference and argument, as well as the narration of short stories about ruthless kings, hapless fools, and promiscuous women, to demonstrate the superiority of Buddhist practices and beliefs. As an antidote to the four illusions that impede progress on the Buddha's path, he advocates the cultivation of mindfulness.