bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Fitzgerald Timothy
Published: January 2008

This wide‐ranging chapter introduces key aspects of the argument to be discussed in greater detail in subsequent chapters. The chapter sets out the proposition that the formation of a category “religion” which appears as a distinct and autonomous reality of human experience and practice is a myth serviced by the corresponding formation of special departments for the study of religion. But this process is mirrored in the formation of “nonreligious” categories such as “politics” and “the secular state” which in turn appear as distinct and autonomous domains served by special departments of political science. These rhetorical constructions appear as though they are natural aspects of the world, and their ideological function in the mystification of capitalism and consumerism is disguised by the academic pretensions of secular objectivity. The chapter also makes a distinction between critical thinking that challenges these rhetorical constructions and “critical” thinking that merely recycles them as an undeniable part of the order of things.
English Historical Documents, 1485–1558
Authors: Fitzgerald Timothy
Published: January 2008

This chapter continues the close analysis of discourses on “religion” and related categories such as “politic order” and the “commonweal” and shows how in significant texts of the period there was nothing like a modern concept of the nonreligious secular, or some conceptual or social space from which an attitude of neutrality could be taken toward some putatively separate domain called “religion.” The commonweal or politic body, based on a holistic analogy with the well‐functioning human body, is embedded in a God‐given hierarchical cosmos that legitimated rank and degree long after the Reformation. The editor of these texts, C. H. Williams, is aware of the problem of using modern concepts such as “class” to represent the realities of the early modern period. Yet editorial needs of the twentieth century in effect compel him to classify these texts according to modern categories, thus creating a contradiction between what the texts imply and what we need them to mean.
English Historical Documents, 1660–1832
Authors: Fitzgerald Timothy
Published: January 2008

The changes in typical usage of the various key categories discussed in previous chapters become more pronounced in certain contexts after the late seventeenth century, and the connection with colonies, plantations, and the increasing need for new forms of classification tends to relativize Religion as Christian Truth. This should not be exaggerated. In England the dominance of the church state continues, and the social order is still characterized more in terms of a hierarchy of rank and degree than in terms of Dissenting Individuals motivated by the need for justification and economic salvation. Even Locke's contemporary John Bunyan, whose pilgrimage is an interior moral one, and whose use of the term religious does not refer at all to monastic orders but to a special kind of inner life, still has no concept of a world which is neutral to religion. However, by the early nineteenth century in England there is a clearly gathering momentum to the discourse on “politics” as essentially separate from “religion,” even though the boundaries are hotly disputed and thus by no means yet inscribed into the order of things.
Introduction
Authors: Giggie John M.
Published: January 2008

The introduction argues that a study of black religion in the Delta in the post‐Reconstruction era promises to introduce new theoretical perspectives to three overlapping academic disciplines: American religious history, African American history, and southern history. It offers a working definition of American religion that integrates popular, church, and racial history; a sense of black history in which the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries represent a time of profound cultural experimentation that belie its label as the nadir of African American cultural accomplishment; and a view of southern history in which the religion of rural poorer blacks emerges as a rich and varied source of protest to segregation.
The Intersecting Rhythms of Spiritual and Commercial Life
Authors: Giggie John M.
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines the intersection between consumer capitalism and black religion in the Delta. After Reconstruction, African Americans increasingly turned to the market to raise money for their churches, schools, and newspapers and to expand their access to manufactured goods. Preachers began to serve as peddlers to their congregations, advertising and selling domestic consumer goods produced by northern white manufacturers and netting a small commission every time they sold a bolt of cloth, a pair of shoes, a stove, or an organ. Religious newspapers counseled readers on what to buy and where to buy it. The effect was to change the character of relationship between the consumer market and black religion in the South: consumer capitalism spread to blacks partly through their own networks of religious leaders and institutions and, in turn, black Baptists and Methodists integrated the language and practices of the market more directly into their spiritual lives.
The Material Culture of Religion
Authors: Giggie John M.
Published: January 2008

This chapter probes how Delta blacks developed a new material culture of religious experience. It illuminates how the purchase and display of certain types of consumer goods became crucial elements of new ideas about respectability, domesticity, and the ‘black Christian home.’ Congregants purchased staid clothes, lithographs of church leaders, and religious wall‐hangings to model self‐restraint and racial pride; preachers symbolized progress by purchasing drapes, pipe organs, and electric chandeliers for their churches. Central to these new consumer and spiritual practices was the shifting association between politics, black women, and religion. As disfranchisement expelled all blacks from the politics, denominational churches increasingly excluded women from traditional leadership posts, and fraternal orders evolved as new centers of community affairs run only by men, women, in an attempt to capture a new measure of social authority, defined themselves as the curators of home and church decoration. With the support of male clerics, they openly championed themselves as the market's arbiters of public taste and domestic consumption.
Epilogue
Authors: Giggie John M.
Published: January 2008

The conclusion explores the legacies of religious change among Delta blacks, including those who left for Chicago as part of the Great Migration of African American southerners northward beginning in the mid-1910s. It tracks the explosive career of Rosetta Tharpe, a Gospel and blues singer from the Arkansas Delta who embodied the new intersection between the sacred and commercial world. It also reveals how key features of modern black sacred life in Chicago actually took root during in the rural South the post-Reconstruction era, especially black nationalism and Garveyism, the linking of spiritual identity and consumption, and civil rights protests that focused on boycotting racist stores.
Introduction: Rethinking Ritual Practice in Zen Buddhism
Authors: Wright Dale S.
Published: January 2008

The ritual dimension of the Zen tradition in East Asia took the particular shape that it did primarily by means of thorough absorption of two different cultural legacies in China, one—the Confucian —indigenous to China and one entering East Asia from India and Central Asia in the form of the Buddhist tradition, and influence Zen even today. The introduction places the Zen ritual tradition in relation to the growing interdisciplinary field of critical ritual studies. Relevant contemporary ritual theories include those that focus on the non‐intellectual dimensions of life, where the emotive and bodily dimension of learning and culture are given greater appreciation, and theories of ritual change that attempt to see how rituals tend to evolve over time without practitioners necessarily being aware of that transformation.
Chan Rituals of the Abbots' Ascending the Dharma Hall to Preach
Authors: Poceski Mario
Published: January 2008

Chapter 2 describes a ritual tradition that clearly goes back to the beginnings of Zen. These ritual occasions, sometimes daily and at other times less frequent, brought the entire assembly of monks together in a formal ceremony in which the abbot of the monastery would present a sermon on Zen doctrine or practice. Although these were the occasions most often valorized as expressions of the Zen master's spontaneity, in fact these sermons follow highly stylized and scripted patterns of Zen thought. Only certain doctrines and formats of delivery were appropriate for these sermons, and even the greatest of the early Zen masters rarely diverged from the “pre‐existing templates” that were bequeathed to them by their predecessors. Although the talks would sometimes involve transgressions or critiques of the ritual order, in fact they validated and maintained that order by carefully setting their remarks within the all‐encompassing sphere of Zen ritual.
Zazen as an Enactment Ritual
Authors: Leighton Taigen Dan
Published: January 2008

Chapter 5 addresses what many today would consider the central ritual of Zen—zazen—or seated meditation. Although zazen is commonly understood by way of instrumental logic as a means or method for attaining enlightenment, from the Sōtō Zen perspective initiated by Dōgen and featured in this essay, the order of cause and effect is reversed—zazen is “the practice‐realization of totally culminated awakening.” In developing this approach to meditation, Leighton traces its roots to Vajrayana teachings that were influential not simply in Japanese Shingon, but also in Nichiren, Tendai, Jōdo, and Zen. Upon that Buddhist foundation, the essay develops the “unity of practice and realization” by showing how this theme appears in Dōgen's instructions for meditation ritual (Eihei shingi), in his extended essays (Shōbōgenzō), and in direct teachings to his monks (Eihei kōroku). The essay claims that when meditation is taken as “the expression or function of buddhas,” rather than as a technique of spiritual acquisition, an emphasis on meditative awareness in everyday life is made possible.
Meditation in Motion: Textual Exegesis in the Creation of Ritual
Authors: Riggs David E.
Published: January 2008

Chapter 8 seeks to uncover the historical origins of kinhin, the ritual of walking meditation as it has been practiced in the Sōtō school of Japanese Zen. Practiced today between periods of zazen, the Sōtō style of kinhin entails an exceptionally slow pace of walking in order to coordinate each step with a full cycle of respiration. Although Sōtō monks typically attribute this practice to the founding figure, Dōgen and his teacher in China, Riggs finds the origins of the practice considerably later than this in the eighteenth century Sōtō leader Menzan Zuihō's writings, the Kinhinki, a brief text describing the practice of kinhin, and the Kinhinkimonge, a commentary connecting this practice to traditional Buddhist texts.
Reputation
Authors: Guzman Andrew T
Published: January 2008

This chapter presents a theory of reputation to complement that discussion in Chapter 2. Here, the way in which reputation is acquired and lost is presented. It is explained that the reputational impact of state actions depends critically on the expectations of other states as well as the non‐reputational payoffs faced by the acting state. In order to understand the role of reputation, then, one must consider both reputational and non‐reputational payoffs. The extent to which reputations are compartmentalized (by issue area, by governing regime, by dyad) also impacts the force of reputational concerns, and the chapter clarifies how alternative categories of reputation can affect outcomes.
INTRODUCTION
Authors: Maher Neil M.
Published: January 2008

This introduction asks two questions that are central to this book. First, how did Progressive Era conservation become post–World War II environmentalism? And second, how did Franklin Roosevelt forge and maintain his liberal New Deal coalition? One answer to both questions, the introduction argues, is the New Deal's unique brand of conservation. The introduction then describes the differences between conservation and environmentalism, explaining that while progressive conservation involved elites interested in the efficient use of natural resources, postwar environmentalism represented a more grassroots phenomenon concerned with more human-centered and non-utilitarian issues including wilderness preservation, ecological balance, and health through outdoor recreation. This introduction also explains the peculiar politics of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal coalition, which brought together an unlikely alliance of eastern intellectuals and western farmers, urban immigrants and rural native-born Americans, the American working class and a particular type of industrial capitalist. The introduction concludes by suggesting that New Deal conservation in general, and the CCC in particular, helped transform progressive conservation into postwar environmentalism while simultaneously aiding Franklin Roosevelt in overcoming various divisions within this New Deal coalition.
Sthūlabhadra's Lodgings
Authors: Dundas Paul
Published: January 2008

Celibacy was integral to the Jain ascetic because it protected the soul from the harm associated with passion connected to sexual activity, and it was directly connected to the practice of nonviolence. Women as sources of temptation and the connection between food and erotic desire are also considered as threats to the soul.
“Defended by Lord Jehovah”
Authors: Peters Shawn Francis
Published: January 2008

This chapter analyzes a series of influential (but heretofore largely unexamined) manslaughter and neglect cases involving a British spiritual healing sect known as the Peculiar People, whose adherents rejected conventional medicine and treated their children solely with prayer. As recounted here, throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, prosecutors responded to deaths of children in the sect by charging Peculiar People with manslaughter and neglect. Over time, the British courts developed a relatively consistent approach to these cases, generally rejecting claims that the religious liberty of parents would be violated if they were prosecuted for faith-based medical neglect. In addition to tracing the evolution of the British approach to such cases and its profound effect on the American courts in the early 20th century, this chapter details both the sincerity and the intransigence of spiritual healers.
“We Need to Change the Statute”
Authors: Peters Shawn Francis
Published: January 2008

This chapter entails a discussion of how lawmakers in several states – including Colorado, Massachusetts, and Oregon – have reacted to prominent cases of religion-based medical neglect by attempting to clarify and strengthen state manslaughter and child neglect laws. The stories of these reform efforts demonstrate how the issue of faith-based medical neglect has generated spirited public policy debates over the parameters of the state's power to regulate religious practice and its obligation to safeguard the rights of children. The chapter also tackles questions that haunt even the staunchest advocates for reform: will bolstering temporal laws really alter the behavior of deeply religious parents who trust in the efficacy of spiritual healing? Or, given the intensity of spiritual healers’ beliefs, will the welfare of their children remain in jeopardy whenever a serious illness strikes? Also included is a detailed examination of the prosecution of Ray Hemphill, a Wisconsin minister who faced criminal charges after he led an exorcism ceremony in which a toddler died.
Models of Christian‐Muslim Dialogue in America
Authors: Smith Jane Idleman
Published: January 2008

A one-shot meeting for the purpose of getting to know each other is often the only way Christians and Muslims engage with each other. For groups who want to continue, however, it is important to determine what kind of dialogue participants are interested in. Groups often peter out simply for lack of direction and guidance. Here a number of different kinds of dialogue are discussed, from debate and confrontation to classroom discussions, theological engagement, attempts to worship together, and movements to form interfaith teams to work for some aspect of social action. Some groups simply want to learn how to live together as neighbors, to practice what is called the dialogue of life.
The Manly Voice of Orthodoxy
Authors: Najar Monica
Published: January 2008

This chapter maps the religious landscape of the late colonial Upper South, examining the patterns of religious practice of the state-established Church of England, which opened the door for competition from the small dissenting sect of the Baptists. While Baptist churches grew exponentially, the Church of England labored to gain the lay adherence necessary even to support existing churches, let alone create new ones. The Anglican Church's difficulty in keeping pace with the population of the Upper South opened the door for competing sects to recruit unchurched populations. This contest between established and dissenting churches introduced a new and compelling definition of “church” and religiosity that would ultimately reshape the religious landscape in the region and alter the concept of the state's place in the religious realm.
We, the Male and Female
Authors: Najar Monica
Published: January 2008

This chapter argues that during the 1760s and 1770s, distinctly evangelical visions of manhood and womanhood emerged which became structured into early church membership. In the late colonial era, Baptist ministers and converts to the faith found the South a hostile and often dangerous place. Colonial authorities attacked and imprisoned preachers; Anglican ministers denounced Baptists from their pulpits; mobs disrupted Baptist services and dragged ministers from their congregations. This era of conflict acted as a defining moment for the Baptists and helped them to construct an identity for themselves as a heroic and martyred people. Baptist ministers began to write and collect firsthand accounts of persecution and new conversions in the 1770s. The stories that Baptists told about the disputes centered on gender, and gender became an integral part of the conflicts between dissenting sects and the established church. In particular, embracing new gender norms became a chief strategy for countering opposition and spreading the faith. Women and men were constantly praised for discarding conventional gender roles and assuming new behaviors to serve the evangelical cause. Not only did the Baptists explore distinctly evangelical visions of manhood and womanhood, but they structured them into church membership.
Our Domestic Peace
Authors: Najar Monica
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses how churches consistently involved themselves in the intimate matters of their members' lives and claimed an expansive influence over their members' familial relations. In claiming authority over marriage and family relations, churches intruded on matters that were being increasingly defined as under the sole purview of the white, male householder, and proved a countervailing influence against the trend toward household privacy and autonomy then under way in the late 18th- and early 19th-century South. This broad trend encompassed a series of architectural, legal, and cultural changes that worked to transform the physical space of the household and the social understandings of the household unit.
Unusual Strugglings of Mind
Authors: Najar Monica
Published: January 2008

This chapter explores the vital paradoxes in Baptists' understanding of the relationship between religious and political authority. It begins by examining the debates over church and state in Virginia. In North Carolina, disestablishment occurred relatively quickly and with much less public debate. In Virginia, however, the process of disestablishment involved a complicated negotiation among different civil and sectarian factions that carried on for years and ultimately resulted in a far-reaching statement for religious liberty. The chapter then turns to Baptists' involvement in political debates and political culture in the early republic.
God and the Victim
Authors: Beste Jennifer Erin
Published: January 2008

How does severe interpersonal harm affect our freedom and the ways in which we relate to ourselves, others, and God? God and the Victim addresses the challenges that trauma and feminist theory pose to cherished theological convictions about human freedom and divine grace. Overall, the Christian tradition has held that a person's response to God's grace is not entirely vulnerable to earthly contingencies: interpersonal harm, however severe, cannot separate one from the grace of God and from the power to love others. Does this longstanding belief remain credible, however, in light of social scientific research on the insidious effects of interpersonal violence? Should we not consider more carefully the possibility that individuals can harm one another to such an extent that the other's capacity to respond to God's grace is severely diminished, if not altogether destroyed?

Drawing on insights present in feminist and trauma theory, this book articulates a revised Rahnerian theology of freedom and grace responsive to trauma survivors in need of healing. Such a revised theology of freedom and grace is marked most distinctively by two claims: (1) human freedom to respond to God's grace can possibly be destroyed by severe interpersonal harm, and (2) divine grace is mediated at least in part through loving interpersonal relations. This book argues that survivors' experiences of both interpersonal harm and support offer crucial insights that shed light on God's grace and human freedom. Ultimately, such insights promise profound ethical implications, altering our perceptions of the obligations we have toward one another.
Challenges of Interpersonal Harm for a Theology of Freedom and Grace
Authors: Beste Jennifer Erin
Published: January 2008

This chapter introduces theological questions about the extent to which interpersonal harm can damage an individual's freedom to respond to God's grace and relate with love to oneself, others, and God. It provides an overview of the field of trauma studies, an explanation of posttraumatic stress disorder, and a rationale for focusing on child sexual abuse in the book. Next, this chapter examines historical and contemporary theological perspectives about the impact of interpersonal harm on a person's selfhood, freedom, relationality, and ability to receive and respond to God's grace. The chapter argues that trauma theory challenges cherished Christian beliefs regarding the human self, freedom, and God's grace, and this in turn suggests the need for a revised theology of God's grace and human freedom that resonates with trauma survivors’ experiences and facilitates healing. The purpose of the book is to offer such a theology and explore its resulting ethical implications.
The Vulnerable Self and Loss of Agency
Authors: Beste Jennifer Erin
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines the impact of severe trauma on persons' selfhood, capacity for relationality, and freedom for self‐determination. To address the complex effects of trauma on the sense of self and capacity for freedom, this book focuses on women survivors who experienced severe incestuous trauma as young girls. It examines incest survivors’ posttraumatic stress systems, focusing in particular on how their behavior attempts to reenact the trauma severely compromises their sense of self and their agency. Incestuous abuse also damages survivors' ability to develop trusting, intimate relationships with others and God. Many incest victims frequently report, in comparison to nonabused women, experiencing more anger, shame, and feelings of distance toward God. While more research is needed, it is reasonable to take seriously the possibility that severe trauma such as incestuous abuse can negatively impede and perhaps destroy a person's ability to relate to God and neighbor with faith, trust, and love.
Sticks and Stones
Authors: Neu Jerome
Published: January 2008

The schoolyard wisdom about “sticks and stones” does not take one very far: insults do not take the form only of words, in truth even words have effects, and in the end the popular as well as the standard legal distinctions between speech and conduct are at least as problematic as they are helpful. To think clearly about how much we should put up with those who would put us down, it is necessary to explore the nature and place of insult in our lives. What kind of injury is an insult? Is its infliction determined by the insulter or the insulted? What does it reveal of the character of each and of the character of society and its conventions? What is its role in social and legal life (from play to jokes to ritual to war and from blasphemy to defamation to hate speech)? Philosophical, anthropological, psychoanalytic, and legal approaches to the questions are emphasized. Whether intentional or unintentional, the assertions and assumptions of dominance in insults make them a serious and essential form of power play. Is to understand all to forgive all?
TWO HONOR SLAPS AND SWORDS
Authors: Neu Jerome
Published: January 2008

Insult may essentially involve a kind of shock, a disruption of expectations, a slap in the face. In honor one seeks to save face and social status may be preserved by social rules and rituals, such as dueling, which may in turn raise problems of their own. Notions of competitive honor are entangled with images of masculinity.
EIGHT INSULT IN THE LAW
Authors: Neu Jerome
Published: January 2008

The Danish Muhammad cartoons enflamed much of the Muslim world. What does respect for another religion require? Must non‐believers follow all of its dictates? Which? Why? Heresy by fellow believers depends on the content of the beliefs. Is it the manner or matter of disagreement and/or disregard that makes for the disrespect in blasphemy? Some of the history of blasphemy law in England and the United States is considered.
“Bomb”arding Evangelicals
Authors: Lahr Angela M.
Published: January 2008

The dawning of the nuclear age brought premillennial speculation about the imminent end of the world that altered the evangelical assessment of the relationship between religion and science. Eschatological beliefs about the potential impact of nuclear weapons blended with secular apocalypticism that even influenced American Cold War foreign policy. Simultaneously, evangelicalism's embrace of anticommunism in the early Cold War helped lead to the subculture's integration into the mainstream culture.
Praying in the End
Authors: Lahr Angela M.
Published: January 2008

Premillennialism aided evangelicals in interpreting the significance of the Cold War era, but prayer served as a means of action. This chapter argues that heightened nuclear age tension made prayer, as an important component of civil religion, an effective tool for evangelicals in the dialogue over the relationship between church and state. Still, key court cases in the 1960s magnified the controversial aspects of prayer that would create conflict between evangelicals and other Americans.
Next Year in Jerusalem?
Authors: Lahr Angela M.
Published: January 2008

The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 increased dispensational speculation about the end of the world more than any other prophetic sign. Within a larger Cold War context, biblical prophecy that revolved around Israel influenced how evangelicals perceived time, space, and politics. It also affected the relationships among evangelicalism, Judaism, and Islam.
A Different Kind of Prophet
Authors: Lahr Angela M.
Published: January 2008

Whereas evangelicals in the early Cold War were able to better integrate into the dominant culture, the United States became more and more divided in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Evangelical conservatives increasingly embraced “morality politics” as part of the New Christian Right. At the same time, an emerging evangelical left adopted a different kind of prophecy that called on Christians to push for social justice.
1 The Disturbing Theses
Authors: Maria Vogt Katja
Published: January 2008

Early Stoic political philosophy is misrepresented in the sources—as recommending such practices as anthropophagy and incest—mostly because of the large role that the Sceptics had in transmitting the theory (the Sceptics' role in this was first shown to be important by Schofield, 1991). Sextus Empiricus cites the scandalous Stoic views when discussing the question whether there is an art of life. He contrasts them with ‘normal life’, and through the opposition between theory and appearances calls into question whether there is an art of life, an issue which is of central importance to the Sceptical project and is discussed repeatedly. The Stoic theses thus gain a disproportionate eminence within the overall sparse evidence on early Stoic philosophy. The chapter closes with a discussion of the ‘disturbing theses’ (the infamous ideas ascribed to the Stoics) which tries to assess them as what they most likely are: examples that the Stoics put forward when explaining the revisionary implications of their theory of value and appropriate action, rather than general recommendations, rules, or an account of life in a city of sages.
Lives at Risk
Authors: Shrader‐Frechette Kristin
Published: January 2008

This chapter begins with a discussion of the three important ethical points about science, whistleblowing, and democracy, following the tragic deaths of several children in northern Indiana from rare types of cancer due to alleged exposure to ethylene dichloride released by a nearby chemical plant. It then discusses the themes and limits of the book, threats posed by pollution, and public health in developed and developing nations. An overview of the chapters included in this book is also presented.
Orchestrating Ignorance, Ignoring Consent
Authors: Shrader‐Frechette Kristin
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses some of the unethical strategies polluters use to mislead citizens about pollution risks. It identifies at least ten special-interest or government behaviors — from advertising and lobbying to white-collar crime and information-suppression — that enable private-interest polluters to subvert the public interest. These strategies allow polluters to “corner the market” in public-health information, fail to disclose risks to citizens, and threaten their health. When relevant risks are not disclosed, citizens are unable to fulfill their rights to know, to give or withhold consent to the risks, and to receive equal protection. To protect their rights, citizens are urged to use the tools of deliberative democracy to educate themselves and others, to help prevent conflicts of interest, and to ensure that government regulators and oversight agencies behave as they should.
Obstacles to Responsibility
Authors: Shrader‐Frechette Kristin
Published: January 2008

This chapter surveys some of the main objections that might be brought against the responsibility argument. Chapters 1, 3, and 4 considered eight of these objections. This chapter evaluates eight additional concerns: unfairness objection, the burden objection, the neutrality objection, the uncertainty objection, the conflicting-duties objection, the economics objection, the collective-responsibility objection, and the failure objection. The chapter argues that many objections to the responsibility argument can be answered. If citizens use the small-wins strategy, work through NGOs, and carefully evaluate their own abilities and opportunities, they can help accomplish both political change and personal transformation.
The Sum of All Heresies
Authors: Quinn Frederick
Published: January 2008

Current global tensions and the spread of terrorism have resurrected a largely negative perception of Islamic society in the West, an ill will fueled by centuries of conflict and prejudice. Shedding light on the history behind these hostile feelings, this book traces the Western image of Islam from its earliest days to recent times. The book establishes four basic themes around which the image of Islam gravitates throughout history: the Prophet as Antichrist, heretic, and Satan; the Prophet as Fallen Christian, corrupted monk, or Arab Lucifer; the prophet as sexual deviant, polygamist, and charlatan; and the Prophet as Wise Easterner, Holy Person, and dispenser of wisdom. A feature of the book is a strong portrayal of Islam in literature, art, music, and popular culture, drawing on such sources as Cervantes's Don Quixote; the Orientalism of numerous visual artists; the classical music of Monteverdi and Mozart; and more recent cultural manifestations, such as music hall artists like Peter Dawson, Charles Trenet, and Edith Piaf; and stage or silver screen representations like The Garden of Allah, The Sheik, Aladdin, and The Battle of Algiers. The book argues that an outpouring of positive information on basically every aspect of Islamic life has yet to vanquish the hostile and malformed ideas from the past. Conflict, mistrust, and misunderstanding characterize the Muslim-Christian encounter, and growing examples of cooperation are often overshadowed by anger and suspicion.
The Prophet as Hero and Wise Easterner (1800–1900)
Authors: Quinn Frederick
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses dramatic changes the image of Islam underwent in the West during the 19th century. Topics covered include Napoleon Bonaparte's forays into Islamic religion, Orientalism in British arts and letters, and America as the Holy Land without Arabs.
“Nous Revenons, Saladin!” (We Return, Saladin!) (1900–2000)
Authors: Quinn Frederick
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses the more subtle, expansive, and complex image of Islam in the West during the 20th century, characterized by the twin elements of attraction and repulsion. Topics covered include the Middle East after World War I, new policies towards the Middle East, emergence of a new understanding of Islam, Islamic themes on stage and in films, and American Orientalism.
Vedānta According to Rammohan Roy
Authors: Hatcher Brian A.
Published: January 2008

This chapter presents a brief overview of salient themes from Rammohan Roy's work. By highlighting these themes, readers of the translated discourses in Chapter 8 not only will be able to appreciate the general Brāhmo “feel” of Sabhyadiger vaktṛtā but also will be able to recognize just what the Tattvabodhinī Sabhā contributed to the emerging discourse of Vedīnta in early colonial Bengal.
The Complete English Translation of Sabhyadiger vaktṛtā
Authors: Hatcher Brian A.
Published: January 2008

This chapter presents the complete English translation of the twenty-one discourses in Sabhyadiger vaktṛtā.
At Play with Krishna in the Tamil Land: The Gopaālaviṃśati
Authors: Hopkins Steven P.
Published: January 2008

A full translation of Venkatesha's Sanskrit stotra in praise of Vishnu Devanayaka as Krishna, the Gopalavimshati, with detailed thematic afterword and notes. The afterword situates Venkatesha's Sanskrit praise‐poem to Krishna in the broader history of Vishnu/Krishna devotion in Tamil South India, where Krishna as such rarely stands alone as an object of praise. In the poetry of the Alvars and Acaryas, particularly in the poems of Antal, there are several sometimes quite vivid references to Krishna, as god‐child and as god‐lover, but always within the larger context of Vishnu and his ten incarnations (avataras). Venkatesha, however, in the Gopalavimshati and in his mahakavyam, the Yadhavabhyudayam, has written quite concretely about Krishna, as Gopala, the Cowherder god loved by the gopis, the cowherd girls; as the prankster child‐god, the Butter‐Thief; as divine Lover, the god of love and the god in love (kami); and also, as the inconceivable godhead, Brahman itself, the ground of being, formless and in essence unknowable, that takes the form of a playful, vulnerable human being. This chapter revisits themes of ecstatic beholding of the body of god, the devotional relish of the big in the little, and passionate religious love (bhakti and kama).
Praises of Devanāyaka by Tirumaṅkaiyāḻvār: From the Periyatirumoḻi
Authors: Hopkins Steven P.
Published: January 2008

A full translation, with thematic foreword and detailed notes, of a decade of verses on Devanayaka by the great Alvar saint‐poet, Tirumankaiyalvar, or Parakala. These verses are included in this volume of Venkatesha's poems for comparative reasons, being the only praises of Devanayaka Swami at Tiruvahindrapuram composed by an Alvar. The forword compares and contrasts the terse strophic songs (tirumolis) of Parkala with the later, more elaborate, metrically diverse Tamil prabandhams and Sanskrit stotras of Venkatesha. Parakala's tirumolis are more conventional and repetitive, less theologically driven and less emotionally dramatic in content than Venkatesha's verses, though they are more vividly in touch with specific flora and fauna of the idealized landscapes of the temple shrine, which are linked by the bhakti poet to the ancient Tamil landscapes of the Cankam poetry. Both poets follow similar patterns of “telescopic” description, beginning with the Vishnu of myth, the awesome and heroic forms of the god, and ending with the temple icon (arcavatara) and an evocation of a particular place (divyadesha).
Introduction
Authors: Domke David , Coe Kevin
Published: January 2008

This chapter describes two key moments that signaled the rise of a new religious politics in America: the presidential nomination acceptance addresses of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and Bill Clinton in 1992. It then briefly identifies a series of changes that have taken place over the past several decades, all of which point to an increasingly close relationship between religion and politics. Political leaders have taken advantage of and contributed to these changes by employing the God strategy, in which they carefully craft their public communications to appeal to people of faith.
Acts of Communion
Authors: Domke David , Coe Kevin
Published: January 2008

This chapter focuses on the third religious signal: embracing religious symbols, practices, and rituals by engaging in acts of communion with the faithful. Three presidential acts of communion are examined: political pilgrimages, in which presidents give speeches at religious locations or to religious audiences; presidential proclamations, in which presidents formally signal their support for prayer or other religious symbols and activities; and presidential celebrations of Christmas, in which presidents recognize an important holy day for Christians. These acts of communion are “narrowcasts” — targeted communications that typically are noticed only by a chosen few. In this sense, they differ from the “broadcast” communications discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. As in those chapters, however, this signal increased dramatically in 1981. Since that time, presidents have made far more political pilgrimages, issued far more proclamations of a religious nature, and been far more likely to reference Christ in their Christmas communications — all to the delight of religious conservatives.
A Paradise of Reason
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

William Bentley was a Congregationalist pastor in Salem, Massachusetts, during the first few decades of independence. He was also a figure quite unlike anyone else in all of America. In talent, vision, and most importantly ideas, he was a unique and heretofore underappreciated member of the founding generation. To study his life is to study the intellectual world in which he moved and through which he cut a unique and illustrative path. In theological terms, he was both an Arminian and what this book calls a “Christian naturalist,” a combination that was both unique and volatile. For if his belief in the Arminian view of salvation put him at odds with his Calvinist contemporaries (including his senior colleague at the East Church), his unique denial of post‐biblical supernaturalism and his unique embrace of Socinianism (a denial of the divinity of Jesus more radical than what others would call “Unitarianism”) put him also at odds with other Arminians. But it was the only way that Bentley could keep both what he thought essential to Christianity and what he thought true about the natural world. In the realm of social ideology, he was both a classical liberal and a republican at the same time, but if he was able in the 1780s to be both, the 1790s would pull apart these dualities and see him move along the path to Jeffersonian Republicanism. But even here he was, among the New England clergy, alone, drawn to the party not by its support for disestablishment so much as by his unique approbation of Rousseau's state of nature theorizing. William Bentley's life, ministry, and thought allow a singular exploration of theology and philosophy as well as of ideology: of the social politics of race and class and gender, the ecclesiastical politics of establishment and dissent, and between minister and laity, the ideological politics of republicanism and classical liberalism, and the party politics of Federalism and Democratic‐Republicanism.
Introduction
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

These opening pages introduce the reader to the figure of William Bentley, to the physical and ecclesiastical structure of Salem, and to the central place of religiosity within the bustling economic life of the town. They also gesture at the importance of Bentley—and thus this book—in understanding the social implications of the American Revolution, the ideological consequences not only of liberal Christianity but also of its other versions, the complicated interactions between religion and politics in late 18th‐century New England, and most importantly the means by which men and women tried to reconcile their faith to the new imperatives of the Enlightenment.
Classical Liberalism
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

The theological claims called Arminianism were, in 18th‐century New England at least, attached to a set of economic, social, and political ideas as well. In questions of wealth and class, race, and gender, Arminians, including William Bentley, were also subscribers to the ideology of classical liberalism. This chapter examines that connection and its widely felt implications for the lives of his congregants and townspeople. The new minister's views on poverty and the proper kinds of Christian charity, women and their place in public life, and the slave trade were all of great interest. What they all found was that while classical liberalism's desire to elevate law and reason over arbitrariness and whim did remove the fear of a tyrannical deity, it also removed the hopes of effecting social change through protest and passion.
Spiritual Libertarianism
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

If Arminianism shaped his social ideology, Christian naturalism shaped his spiritual one. The removal of God from interfering in the natural realm allowed Bentley a new type and degree of religious toleration. He supported the freedom of religion both within and without Congregationalism, in fact dissolving the legal obligations of his own parish (the first Congregationalist to do so) and then publicly defending the rights of such dissenting views as the Gloucester Universalism. And he would open up the sacraments—Communion and, more importantly, baptism—beyond the range even of the most liberal of his peers. In short, he developed a unique theological libertarianism, sharing parts of the liberal, evangelical, and deist traditions but belonging to none of them.
William Bentley and the Limits of Revolutionary Ideology
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

Ultimately, in politics as well as in religion, Bentley's projects came to little. For while he had led the Republicans to success, that very success then led them to abandon him. The party would grow ever larger and more influential, but the tenor of the party changed too, away from the rationalist, libertarian egalitarianism that Bentley wanted it to have. Meanwhile, his efforts to convert Americans to Unitarian Christian naturalism came to even less. His church actually shrank and was the only congregation in Salem to do so, for it was the age of the Second Great Awakening, and Bentley could only stand by and watch as many more Americans moved toward an evangelical, experientialist version of Christianity rather toward his side. This chapter offers some explanations for these failures, in the limited appeal of his desires for a free America, compared to those of most Americans, and the failure of his Christian naturalism to meet the spiritual, communal, and emotional needs of those who looked to their Christianity to provide more than just a rationally consistent explanation of the world.
Introduction
Authors: Sorensen Roy
Published: January 2008

The causal theory of perception says we see things in virtue of the experiences they cause. This theory comports well with common sense and science. However, the theory has trouble explaining how we see black objects, shadows, and holes. They are not seen by virtue of the light they reflect into our eyes. This book is aimed at resolving the anomalies posed by dark things.
3 The Disappearing Act
Authors: Sorensen Roy
Published: January 2008

A conceptual artist suspends a solid cone beneath a lamp to cast a shadow. The shadow has the shape of a truncated cone. (The cone looks like the triangle in the letter A. The shadow looks like the area below the triangle.) The artist next slides a dark brick of the same shape and color as the shadow into the exact spot occupied by the shadow. This intrusion leaves no room for the shadow, so it is destroyed. This snug fit also makes the brick invisible because the brick is no longer absorbing light. So what is the observer seeing?
5 Berkeley's Shadow
Authors: Sorensen Roy
Published: January 2008

In his New Theory of Vision, George Berkeley argued that touch is the basis for the spatial sensitivity of the remaining senses. There appear to be counterexamples, that is, intangibles that are spatial: rainbows, the sky, microscopic entities, and holes. A flexible Berkeleian can argue with surprising plausibility that these are actually tangible. However, Berkeley (and his two centuries of followers and adversaries) overlooked how shadows are genuine counterexamples. Echoes of Berkeley's theory of vision can still be heard in contemporary vision research. These echoes are also affected by the fact that shadows are entirely visual.
6 Para-reflections
Authors: Sorensen Roy
Published: January 2008

A para-reflection is a privational phenomenon that is often mistaken as a reflection. You have seen them as the “reflection” of your pupil in the mirror. Your iris reflects light in the standard way but your pupil absorbs all but a negligible amount of light (as do other dark things such as coal and black velvet). Para-reflections work by contrast. Since they are parasitic on their host reflections, para-reflections are relational and dependent in a way that reflections are not. Nevertheless, para-reflections obey nearly all the laws of reflection with exquisite fidelity. Physicists and psychologists who study optics have neglected these everyday phenomena. Happily, physicists have been attentive and insightful about other privational phenomena such as vacuums and cold spots. This kind of subtle treatment of negative things needs to be extended to optics.
7 Para-reflections
Authors: Sorensen Roy
Published: January 2008

Can a flame cast a shadow? The blocker theory of shadows answers no because flames emit light. However, a candle on a white surface does appear to cast a flame. Denying that the dark patch created by the flame is a shadow saves the blocker theory of shadows. It is instead a shadowgram – a kind of para-refraction much like the para-reflections of the preceding chapters.