bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
5 TITHONUS AND THE PERFORMANCE OF MASCULINE BEAUTY
Authors: Pearsall Cornelia
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines “Tithonus” in the context of Tennyson’s “Oenone,” and of his early poems representing Tithonus’s son, Memnon. In studying the phenomenon of masculine beauty in a cluster of related poems of Tennyson’s, Chapter Five also explores the problem of beauty in Tennyson’s poetics. Section one, “Trojan Aesthetics,” examines some of Tithonus’s familial, social, and literary contexts and their implications for Tennyson’s own poetic practice. Drawing on Arthur Henry Hallam’s conception of “sympathy,” as well as a range of Victorian aesthetic, poetic, and psycho-sexual theories (including Havelock Ellis’s theory of “eonism”), this chapter’s second section, “The Rapture of Tiresias,” explores the nature of identification and similitude in Tennyson’s dramatic monologue. Pearsall responds to the critical tradition of dismissing Tennyson’s poetry as “effeminate” and “ornamental,” suggesting that, through Tithonus’s efficacious speech, Tennyson demonstrates the utility of beauty.
Introduction
Authors: Ramble Charles
Published: January 2008

The original aim of the research that led to this book was to explore the confrontation between Buddhism and Himalayan “pagan” religion, based on the sacrificial cult of territorial gods. It was hypothesised that such a study might shed light on the interaction between Buddhism and indigenous religion in early Tibet. When this hypothesis was found to be misleadingly simple, the inquiry shifted to the way in which both Buddhism and pagan religion were just two components of a complex “civil religion,” revealed by the history of the community, its social institutions, and the dialectical relationship between the individual and the collective. The theoretical position adopted here is essentially a Durkheimian perspective as modified by authors such as Berger and Luckmann. A discussion of the concept of civil religion and the main literature on the subject is followed by an outline of the book's chapters.
The People of Mustang and Their History
Authors: Ramble Charles
Published: January 2008

The community of Te, the focus of this book, is located within the modern‐day Nepalese district of Mustang. The aim of this chapter is to situate Mustang within the historical and political context of Nepal. The fortunes of Mustang are traced from the creation of the kingdom of Lo (to which it corresponds in geographical extent) in the 15th century. Lo later became a vassal of the kingdom of Jumla, to the west, and its territory disintegrated into several autonomous enclaves. The rise of the Gorkhas in the 18th century resulted in the absorption of Lo/Mustang into the nascent state of Nepal. Under Nepal's Rana regime (1846–1951), Mustang was dominated by the Thakalis, whose monopoly of the salt trade brought them political and judicial privileges. Particular attention is given to the ethnically Tibetan enclave of Baragaon, and to the cluster of five villages called the Shöyul, where Te is located.
The Encounter with Buddhism
Authors: Ramble Charles
Published: January 2008

The encounter between Himalayan communities and Buddhism is sometimes oversimplified both in ethnographic studies and in the autobiographical accounts of missionary lamas. Buddhism has come to Te not as a set of abstract moral and dogmatic precepts but through different clerical institutions. The religious needs of the community have long been served by Nyingmapa tantric priests from an adjacent settlement. The archives of two such families reveal the insecurities of certain prominent figures in their competition for patronage. The apprenticeship and the civic duties of these priests is examined. The Sakyapa school of Buddhism, the dominant monastic tradition in Mustang, was once influential in Te. However, the community of monks eventually lost its religious character and evolved into a class of traders.
Buddhists or Pagans?
Authors: Ramble Charles
Published: January 2008

This chapter further challenges the reduction of religion in culturally Tibetan villages to a confrontation between opposed ideologies: Buddhism on the one hand and the cult of autochthonous gods on the other. The fallacy of this simple dialectic is illustrated by an examination of a number of local documents and anecdotes. Whereas the most obvious interpretation of these reinforces the idea of an ideological clash between Buddhist tenets and “pagan” practice, closer analysis demonstrates that this attractive scenario is an irrelevance. Apparent inconsistencies in the examples are reconciled when they are examined not in terms of the conventional understanding of religion but rather from the point of view of the community. It is suggested that certain narratives that are ostensibly concerned with Buddhism are in fact celebrations of the morality of collectivity as opposed to the divisive (albeit lucrative) ethos of individualism.
Conclusion
Authors: Ramble Charles
Published: January 2008

Te may be culturally conservative, but it is by no means impervious to change. While the mechanisms for dealing with limited change have been discussed in previous chapters, the Conclusion examines the more substantial developments that are likely to come about as a consequence of “radical transcendence.” The resulting disenchantment—to use Weber's term—entails the irrevocable retreat of “sublime values” from a rational and secularised world. Evidence for this process in Te is found by re‐examining its laws and identifying the disappearance of some of the most complex institutions that were seen to be central to its civil religion. However, using analogies from Indo‐European linguistics and the status of transcendence in European religion, it is suggested that the conspicuous phenomenon of disenchantment is constantly balanced by a less visible process of re‐enchantment, and evidence for the latter can be found in the case of Te.
The Making of the African American Holiness Movement
Authors: Giggie John M.
Published: January 2008

This chapter investigates how growing numbers of Delta blacks rejected a number of the new dimensions to black religion, including the role of fraternal orders, the sight of ministers hawking market wares in person and in print, the popular stress on worldly goods as a sign of spiritual worth and success, and the marginalization of women from traditional roles of authority. It demonstrates how the disenchanted turned to a new breed of religious leader, men such as William Christian, Charles H. Mason, and Charles P. Jones, one-time Baptist ministers who urged blacks to recapture the spirit of primitive Christianity. Each was a founding father of the African American Holiness‐Pentecostal movement and criticized black denominational churches as too materialistic, rational, and hostile to ecstatic dimensions of worship. Yet within twenty years of its founding, the Holiness leaders, ironically, embraced some of the very denominational practices they had previously castigated, revealing not only the limits to their calls for reform but also some of the modern characteristics of Delta black religion as a whole.
Is Dōgen's Eiheiji Temple “Mt. T'ien‐t'ung East”?: Geo‐Ritual Perspectives on the Transition from Chinese Ch'an to Japanese Zen
Authors: Heine Steven
Published: January 2008

Chapter 4 approaches the formative period of the establishment of Zen ritual in Japan based on sources from China by way of the sacred space within which it is conducted. Although it has long been thought that Dōgen sought to design his new Eiheiji temple after the Sung dynasty Chinese model of Mt. T'ien‐t'ung, a study of the ritual layout of both plans reveals more differences than similarities. The “geo‐ritual” perspective taken in this study compares how the geographical settings and social environments of the two temple sites affect the way in which they implement Zen ritual. The author's conclusion is that Dōgen did not attempt to duplicate the Chinese model in rural Japan, but instead “adjusted it to the Japanese context” by taking local social, political, and economic conditions into account. These differences in the structural layout of the monasteries underscore the conclusion drawn elsewhere that Japanese Zen ritual diverged in a variety of significant ways from the models available in medieval China, even though Zen leaders in Japan typically proclaimed otherwise for the purpose of legitimation.
Introduction
Authors: Guzman Andrew T
Published: January 2008

This introduction motivates the central question of how international is able to influence state behavior despite the absence of a coercive enforcement mechanism. It also lays out some methodological issues relating to the book and explains the relationship between the institutionalist approach used in the book and alternative approaches.
International Agreements
Authors: Guzman Andrew T
Published: January 2008

This chapter analyzes the most important source of international law – the international agreement. It first explains why it is appropriate to think of states as being risk neutral rather than risk averse in the context of international law. It then explores the choice states make between various design features in their international agreements, including the choice between hard and soft law, the presence or absence of dispute resolution, the use of reservations, escape clauses, and exit clauses. The trade‐off between form and substance in agreements is also explained, as is the manner in which membership rules are developed.
Customary International Law
Authors: Guzman Andrew T
Published: January 2008

This chapter applies the theory of international law (developed earlier in the book) to customary international law. The way in which reputation, retaliation, and reciprocity support a body of less formalized legal rules, that operate more forcefully than mere norms, is explained. The chapter reconsiders traditional views of custom and in particular the requirements of opinio juris and general practice, explaining why a better definition of custom would demand on the former.
Understanding International Law
Authors: Guzman Andrew T
Published: January 2008

This concluding chapter ties together the prior analysis of international law and emphasizes that sense in which various forms of international obligation represent alternative choices along a spectrum of commitment. States choose where on that spectrum they wish to locate their obligations. The chapter also points out that the book's approach subject matter can be applied to all forms of international law and any substantive issue area. By bringing the entire field within a single theoretical approach the book offers a complete and satisfying account of international law.
Celibacy in the Early Christian Church
Authors: Holland Glenn
Published: January 2008

The emphasis on the virgin birth of Jesus, the apparent celibacy of Jesus due in part to his itinerant lifestyle, and the apparent sexual abstinence of many of his disciples served as models for Christian practice at a later period. The early Christian motivation for celibacy was connected to the eschatological expectations of the early community, and later celibacy became associated with a veneration of the ascetic lifestyle.
“Let Anyone Accept This Who Can”
Authors: Cheatham Karen
Published: January 2008

A distinction is made between virginity, which was mostly associated with women, and chastity, which represented a choice of lifestyle after sexual activity. These kinds of choices were associated with sexual purity, preparation for an intimate relationship with God, imitation of angels, and connection to superior moral and spiritual conditions. Resistance to church authority was evident by chaste marriages for devoted couples and lay sanctity movements, such as the Beguines.
Celibacy and the Protestant Traditions
Authors: Bryant M. Darrol
Published: January 2008

The Protestant reformer Martin Luther denounced priestly celibacy as a universal policy, argued that it kept clergy and laypeople apart, and was opposed to the Word of God and against Christ because such vows violated the freedom of the gospel and made religion a matter of rules, status, orders, and divisions rather than a spontaneous relation to God through Christ. It was also ridiculous to assume that virginity was superior to marriage, and there was a danger that the vow of celibacy could become a substitute for faith itself. Other reformers such as John Calvin, John Wesley, and Karl Barth focused on other problems associated with celibacy.
Islamic Tradition and Celibacy
Authors: Bashir Shahzad
Published: January 2008

The prophet Muhammad served as a model for those entering into marriage and celibacy is rejected as a human invention, although the Islamic tradition embodies exceptions with Sufism and its more negative attitudes toward the human body. Sufi groups used celibacy as a form of social protest. There is also a relation between forced celibacy and political power during the medieval period. In addition to certain Sufi groups, eunuchs represented another exception to the general negative Islamic attitude toward celibacy.
Celibacy in Classical Hinduism
Authors: Olivelle Patrick
Published: January 2008

The system of the stages of life for a Hindu played a crucial role in the development of celibacy in Indian culture, although there was a tension between the values of domestic life and ascetic values. The classical Hindu attitude toward celibacy affirmed that celibates attain immortality and acquire superhuman powers on earth.
Celibacy in East Asian Buddhism
Authors: Kieschnick John
Published: January 2008

Chinese and Japanese Buddhism manifested a wide diversity of practice within a cultural context in which there were many obstacles to celibacy. The cultural image of Buddhism was harmed in China by the misconduct of monks, critical literary figures, and the fabrication of stories about wayward monks for political reasons. With the advent of Japanese devotional movements, many Buddhists rejected celibacy in favor of marriage.
Sexual Control and Daoist Cultivation
Authors: Kohn Livia
Published: January 2008

Celibacy was not central to Daoism ethos and the basic Confucian conviction that the family represented the basis of Chinese society, although harnessing and refining sexual energy, a basic power of life, was essential to Daoism. Inner alchemy schools stressed female superiority in order to harness the primal sexual energy with the intention of transforming it into a spiritual force that created an immortal embryo within one's body. Sexual techniques did not completely eliminate celibacy because it was used as a prelude to enhancing concentration and meditation practices.
Shinto and Celibacy
Authors: Littleton C. Scott
Published: January 2008

Shinto, an indigenous religion of Japan, is opposed to celibacy because the religion represents a celebration of life and procreation. An exception is found with virgins (miko), who assist priests.
“The Pain Has No Right to Exist”
Authors: Peters Shawn Francis
Published: January 2008

The sociolegal issues raised by more contemporary prosecutions of Christian Scientists for neglect and manslaughter compose the bulk of this chapter. These cases pitted grieving parents who sincerely believed in the efficacy of spiritual healing against equally genuine prosecutors who insisted that those parents’ neglect had resulted in the senseless deaths of children. The litigation resulting from the death of Ian Lundman in 1989 provides a particularly revealing jumping-off point because it gave rise to two separate legal actions: a criminal prosecution of his mother (in whose care he died), and an unprecedented wrongful death civil action filed by his father against his mother and the “mother church” of Christian Science in Boston. This chapter uses these cases to underscore the difficulties posed to prosecutions by state laws that often were interpreted as providing exemptions to manslaughter and child neglect laws to parents who practice spiritual healing.
“This Ain't Religion”
Authors: Peters Shawn Francis
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses how issues of reproductive rights have been implicated in cases of religion-based medical neglect. Its primary focus is on legal cases involving members of a New England sect known as The Body, among them a woman named Rebecca Corneau. Massachusetts authorities obtained a court order mandating state-supervised confinement for Corneau so that she would give birth under a physician's supervision. The chapter also explores other cases raising analogous legal issues, including several cases involving pregnant Jehovah's Witnesses (who have long refused, on religious grounds, to accept blood transfusions). A discussion of Witness transfusion cases involving both children and fetuses highlights the web of bioethical issues confronting physicians and hospital administrators in cases of religion-based medical neglect.
“God Can't Cure Everyone”
Authors: Peters Shawn Francis
Published: January 2008

This chapter recounts the religion-based medical neglect-related deaths of several children in Oregon, including seven-year-old Tony Hays, who died in 1995 after his parents, members of a Fundamentalist sect known as the Church of the First Born, elected to treat his leukemia solely with prayer. A close study of events in Oregon – and of the religious beliefs of those involved – is especially fruitful because the state is home to one of the largest concentrations of faith-based neglect deaths in the country. Central to this section is a discussion of how prosecutors, judges, and lawmakers in Oregon struggled to balance statutory protections for the religious liberty of faith-healing parents against the state's obligation to safeguard the rights and welfare of children.
Karl Rahner's Theological Anthropology
Authors: Beste Jennifer Erin
Published: January 2008

This chapter draws on Rahner's best known writings in Theological Investigations and Foundations of Christian Faith to elucidate his account of the relation between the self, human freedom, and God's grace. Rahner believes that God creates humans as beings who essentially become themselves by responding in freedom to God's self‐communication. While Rahner acknowledges that persons are determined to a significant extent by cultural and biological factors (including interpersonal harm), he nevertheless argues that persons who possess reason ultimately have the transcendental and categorical freedom to realize who they will become before God. Rahner conceptualizes such freedom as the ability to effect a fundamental option to accept or reject God's self‐communication. Persons actualize this transcendental freedom through concrete acts of loving God and neighbor.
Ethical Directions
Authors: Beste Jennifer Erin
Published: January 2008

This chapter explores the ethical implications resulting from this revised understanding of the self, freedom, and God's grace—implications that are relevant to trauma survivors and to Christian communities as a whole. This chapter argues that this revised theology of freedom and grace intensifies our sense of collective responsibility for enabling one another's freedom before God. The chapter proceeds to examine how Christian communities can practically reach out to trauma survivors to facilitate healing and recovery from traumatic violence. There is hope that creative acts of neighbor‐love can mediate divine grace, fostering incest survivors' freedom to relate lovingly to God and neighbor.
Millennial Dreams and Apocalyptic Nightmares
Authors: Lahr Angela M.
Published: January 2008

Conservative evangelicals in the early Cold War were the forbearers of the New Christian Right of the 1980s. In the postwar United States, the evangelical subculture, which had become marginalized after the turn of the 20th century, mixed its own eschatology with the apocalyptic context of the beginning of the Cold War and the nuclear age. The atomic bomb, the new Israeli state, and the Cuban Missile Crisis all confirmed for evangelicals their belief that biblical prophecy about the end‐times was being fulfilled. Evangelicals who utilized religious practices like prayer and missions work in light of these events simultaneously responded politically within a Cold War context. Furthermore, Cold War secular apocalypticism helped to justify evangelical prophecy. These developments, alongside conservative evangelicalism's embrace of anticommunism, created a less‐marginalized subculture that fit comfortably into a dominant American political culture defined in dichotomous Cold War terms. Ironically, it was this earlier integration into the mainstream that paved the way for the rise of the religious right in the last decade of the Cold War. While the New Christian Right stormed onto the political scene, they did so by separating themselves from secular America. At the same time, a burgeoning evangelical left was advocating a different prophetic message—a call for social justice.
Putting the Trumpet to Their Lips
Authors: Lahr Angela M.
Published: January 2008

Evangelical Cold War missionaries spread a premillennial and “American” gospel in the Cold War. A “culture of urgency” drove both evangelical missionaries and U.S. political leaders, who spread their own Cold War message abroad. The American government sometimes used missionaries in its interactions with other nations, while foreign missionaries closely intertwined anticommunist and evangelical messages.
Introduction
Authors: Maria Vogt Katja
Published: January 2008

In addition to outlining the overall argument—that early Stoic political philosophy is deeply tied to the Stoic conceptions of reason, nature, and wisdom—the introduction explains two methodological assumptions. First, what we consider a contribution to ancient political philosophy need not be limited to questions about justice, institutions, and constitutions. Thus the Stoics' discussion of the law, and of the ways in which we should consider the concerns of all human beings as relevant to us, are well described as contributions to political thought. Second, after a brief historical sketch of early Stoicism, it is argued that the notion of ‘early Stoic philosophy’ is a worthwhile construct for the purposes of reconstructing the political thought of the early Stoics (most importantly, Zeno and Chrysippus).
2 The Community of All Human Beings
Authors: Maria Vogt Katja
Published: January 2008

The Stoics propose a cosmopolitan theory, but not in a modern sense of the term: their cosmic city is the cosmos. The Stoic theory is also not well described as impartialist or universalist; it calls for a certain kind of affiliation with all human beings. It is argued that the evidence does not speak in favor of seeing a marked development within early Stoicism: it does not seem that, while Zeno conceives of a city of sages, Chrysippus comes to compare the cosmos with a city, thus creating the notion of a cosmic city. Rather, it seems that early Stoic political philosophy is, throughout, concerned with a complex mix of two ideas—that the cosmos is the common home of all human beings, and thus like a city, and that, in order to truly live by the law of this cosmic city and thus be its citizen, one must be wise. These ideas are deeply connected with Stoic thought about affiliation (oikeiôsis): we should view everyone as belonging to us, thus understanding something which is the case (all human beings do belong to us as fellow‐inhabitants of the world); but only through gaining a full understanding of what this means (i.e., by becoming wise) can we achieve a full integration into the cosmos.
4 Law and Reason
Authors: Maria Vogt Katja
Published: January 2008

It is argued that the two dominant ways of reconstructing the Stoic conception of law—as a set of rules (rules‐interpretation) or as identified with the perfect decision‐making of the sage (prescriptive reason—interpretation)—miss important aspects of the theory. There is not enough textual evidence to show that the Stoics conceived of universal or general rules; even those texts which, by apparently mentioning exceptions, seem to imply the existence of rules are more plausibly interpreted without this assumption. The prescriptive reason—interpretation correctly captures key ideas of the Stoics' theory, but misses the substantive side of their conception of the law. A third interpretation is proposed that draws in crucial ways on the Stoics' substantive conception of reason. What the law commands is a life based on an understanding of what is valuable for human beings; the law thus is substantive without breaking down into rules—it is substantive in the same way in which perfect reason, which knows everything that is relevant to wisdom, is substantive.
Private Science, Public Injury
Authors: Shrader‐Frechette Kristin
Published: January 2008

This chapter begins by explaining why the complexity of health-related science often makes it susceptible to manipulation. It then shows what some special interests do when they literally “buy” private-interest science through front groups, think tanks, and “hire education” (“hire education” refers to industry funding of academic research that serves its corporate goals). The chapter surveys how private-interest science is done — with incomplete data, contraindicated models, inadequately sensitive tests of pollution damage, and so on. Finally, the chapter shows how and why private-interest science often leads to death, injury, and flawed ethics.
Human Rights and Duties Not to Harm
Authors: Shrader‐Frechette Kristin
Published: January 2008

Building on the severity and inequity of public-health risks and the way polluters sometimes undercut rights to know and consent to these risks, by manipulating media or science, this chapter sketches an ethical response — the responsibility argument. It shows that because most citizens receive undeserved financial or medical benefits when minorities and poor people bear higher levels of pollution, citizens have prima facie ethical duties to help stop these harmful inequities.
Where We Go from Here
Authors: Shrader‐Frechette Kristin
Published: January 2008

This chapter presents a brief, four-step strategy for practicing duties to help stop harm to life and to human rights. These four steps are: getting information about public-health threats, cooperating with others, evaluating health threats and alternative solutions to them, and engaging in organized action. It is argued that these four steps are best accomplished through piecemeal reform rather than revolution. A number of specific reforms are suggested for which citizens might work to reduce harms to life and to rights to know and to consent.
New Members and a New Founder
Authors: Hatcher Brian A.
Published: January 2008

This chapter describes the types of individuals who joined the Sabhā and why. It highlights the surprisingly diverse social and intellectual background of the Sabhā's bhadralok members. The chapter also briefly sketches developments after the publication of Sabhyadiger vaktṛtā.
Missionaries and Modern Vedantists
Authors: Hatcher Brian A.
Published: January 2008

This chapter considers in broad terms Christian suspicion of these so-called modern Vedantists. This is the context out of which the rubric of neo-Vedānta first emerged. Consideration of Christian attitudes toward the Sabhā highlights a central theme, not only in the further development of Tattvabodhinī thought but also in the subsequent emergence of modern Hinduism.
Who Wrote These Discourses?
Authors: Hatcher Brian A.
Published: January 2008

This chapter attempts to identify the authors of the various discourses in Sabhyadiger vaktṛtā. It highlights initials for which attribution is definitive, relatively certain, or uncertain. It then discusses the significance of authorship.
Introduction: An Ornament for Jewels
Authors: Hopkins Steven P.
Published: January 2008

A thematic introduction to the life and work of Venkatesha (Vedantadesika), with a focus on Venkatesha's sacred biographies and poetry in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Maharashtri Prakrit connected to the Devanayaka Swami temple in Tiruvahindrapuram, Tamil Nadu. Includes a detailed historical introduction to South Indian bhakti literatures that shape Venkatesha's devotional poetics and Srivaisnava sectarian identity in the “age of the Acaryas” after the twelfth century C.E. Introduction also includes a discussion of the sources of Venkatesha's texts, his rootedness ion the cosmopolitan city of Kanchipuram, the thematic structure of the book and the importance of liturgical worship (darsana and puja), the themes of asymmetry and intimacy, and the “telescoping” form of the poems, to Venkatesha's bhakti poetics. Introduction concludes with a detailed section on translation, in theory and practice, pertinent to the author's goal of translating these medieval South Indian poems into contemporary American English verse.
A Garland of Nine Jewels: The Navamaṅimālai
Authors: Hopkins Steven P.
Published: January 2008

A full translation of Venkatesha's Tamil prabandham, the Navamanimalai, with detailed thematic afterword and notes. Devotional themes include the poem's roots in classical Cankam Tamil poetics of akam and puram, the Tamil of the Alvars, particularly allusions to the poems of the female Alvar Antal, as well as poem's sequential description of various forms of the god Vishnu, in telescoping fashion, from the cosmic and most transcendent to the earthly and most accessible, including the ten avataras or “incarnations” of Vishnu through sacred “history.” Afterword also treats of the important themes of the “big in the little,” the image of the cowherd child‐god Krishna, the beauty (alaku) of the god's impassible body “that saves,” ritual surrender (adaikkalam), helplessness, and the passionate appeal to Vishu's “grace, mercy, power‐potenital of presence (arul).”
One Hundred Verses for the Invincible Lord of Medicine Hill: The Acyutaśatakam
Authors: Hopkins Steven P.
Published: January 2008

A full translation of Venkatesha's Maharashtri Prakrit poem Acyutashatakam, with deialed thematic afterword and notes. The Chapter situates Venkatesha's poem in the history of Maharashtri Prakrit, literary Prakrit “par excellence,” a distinctive literary language in pre‐modern South India that enjoyed a status often equal to that of Sanskrit or Tamil. Literary analysis includes themes of simplicity of expression, lack of extensive ornamentation, and the “structural brevity” of the arya meter, characteristics of both Prakrit poetry in general and of Venkatesha's poem. Themes of the afterword include a most important theme, developed throughout the book, of “asymmetry and intimacy,” Venkatesha's “dialectic of love, along with the role of the anubhava, divine mercy and human helplessness, and reflections on the role of translation.
One Nation under God, Divisible
Authors: Domke David , Coe Kevin
Published: January 2008

This chapter tracks the rise of religious politics in modern America, from the Scopes trial to the Cold War to the civil rights movement, and ultimately to the mobilization of religious conservatives in the 1970s and 1980s behind leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. It then describes four religious signals that politicians since 1980 have used to appeal to these newly mobilized religious conservatives and to political moderates who nonetheless want politicians to be people of faith. These signals — speaking the language of the faithful; fusing God and country; embracing religious symbols, practices, and rituals; and emphasizing bellwether moral issues — are perfectly suited for the modern media environment in which citizens must look for simple ways to navigate endless amounts of information. The chapter concludes by tracking trends in citizens' political identification, showing that Republicans have gained significant ground over that past several decades, and that evangelical protestants and Catholics have become crucial coalitions within the party.
God and Country
Authors: Domke David , Coe Kevin
Published: January 2008

This chapter focuses on the second religious signal: fusing God and country. It examines four ways that presidents have fused God and country in their addresses: invoking the nation; setting the nation apart by declaring it to be special or distinct; calling for national renewal and rebirth; and sanctifying the nation by asking for God's blessing upon it, in phrases such as “God Bless America.” All of these approaches signal an appreciation of religious conservatives' world view, and evidence shows that the past four presidents have far exceeded their modern predecessors in the use of each. Further analysis shows that the past four presidents have also differed from previous presidents in the way they talk about the key American values of freedom and liberty. In particular, recent presidents have adopted a “prophetic” posture that suggests a certainty about God's wishes or desires. This stands in stark contrast to the more humble “petitioner” posture that characterized presidential rhetoric prior to 1981.
Religious Politics and Democratic Vitality
Authors: Domke David , Coe Kevin
Published: January 2008

This chapter reflects on the workings of the God strategy, and on what its omnipresence means for American democracy. The God strategy's “golden rule” — exhibit faith, but don't be too strident or nakedly partisan in doing so — is discussed in relation to the 1992 presidential election and the 2006 midterm elections. In both cases, Republicans pushed too hard with the God strategy while Democrats responded with a religious politics of their own. And in both cases, the result was Democratic electoral gains. The chapter then discusses how America's current brand of religious politics puts at risk the Founding Fathers' vision for a democracy that would protect the church from the state and the state from the church. The chapter concludes by considering the role that mass media, the public education system, and religious institutions can play in preserving Constitutional protections.
Act II
Authors: Domke David , Coe Kevin
Published: January 2008

This chapter describes a key moment that signaled a shift in America's new religious politics: a 2006 event at the famous pastor Rick Warren's church that featured Republican Senator Sam Brownback and Democratic Senator Barack Obama. The chapter then briefly identifies a series of changes that may come as the God strategy develops in the years ahead, including a broader range of issues being emphasized by religious conservatives; conflicts between the familiar leaders of the religious conservative movement and the movement's emerging leaders; and the role that generational change will play as a younger, more religiously and politically moderate public begins to engage in the political world.
Christian Naturalism
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

William Bentley's Arminianism was hardly unique to him, but he also addressed other, more deep‐seated problems surrounding claims about God's attributes and God's power. These were problems that forced Christianity to confront reason in its formal sense, to answer the demands of ontology and epistemology, in short to account for both the Trinity that seemed contrary to the imperatives of rationalism and the providentialism that seemed contrary to the lessons of empiricism. Bentley's solution to the rational problem of the Trinity was to deny outright any divinity of Jesus (and of the Holy Spirit), a solution called Socinianism; his solution to the empirical problem of miracles and special providence was to argue that while God did indeed intervene in nature during the biblical era, in the post‐biblical ongoing present, He no longer does. God no longer needs to, since sending (the human) Jesus was the ultimate and thus last expression of God's will for humanity. And if Bentley's Arminianism was not uniquely his, these solutions—what one may call Christian naturalism—were. His Socinianism was a more stringent modification of the Trinity than was that of the “Unitarianism” of later New England (really Arianism), and no other cleric in Bentley's era came close to barring God from intervening in the natural realm.
Republicanism Emergent
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

If the factionalization of the 1780s allowed the coexistence in Bentley of both liberalism and libertarianism, the partisanship of the 1790s would force him into the political camp of one or the other. Unlike his liberal peers, Bentley would become a Democratic Republican, or, more loosely, a Jeffersonian. This shift began in 1785 with the arrival of William Hazlitt, an English Unitarian and member of the circle of English Rational Dissenters that moved around Joseph Priestley. Hazlitt convinced both Bentley and James Freeman, rector of Boston's King's Chapel, of Unitarianism (this was in fact the beginning of Bentley's Socinianism, a term used synonymously), and Bentley and Freeman began participating in a transatlantic network of disseminating Unitarian pamphlets into the public sphere. They met only casual resistance for the first few years, but then more rigorous resistance after the beginning of the French Revolution. After 1789, that is, Jacobinism and Unitarianism merged in the public mind, and supporters of one were linked with supporters of the other. In 1791 when a Church and King mob in Birmingham, England, destroyed Priestley's property, Bentley in Salem came to believe that the path to rational liberation was being blocked not so much by the ignorant masses themselves as by the liberal elites who were encouraging those masses.
The Liberal Symbiosis
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

By the middle of the 1790s Bentley was arrayed against classical liberalism in both its Christian and its economic forms. Those forms had in fact come together in a newly powerful symbiosis, both in the tangible sense of the Federalist Party and in the ideological sense of encouraging a mutually beneficial confluence of self‐defined morality, wealth, and divine pleasure. If Birmingham in 1791 and then the embargo in 1794 had begun the schism between Bentley and his liberal peers, Thomas Paine's Age of Reason finalized it. Bentley was not a deist, but Christian naturalism was ontologically no different than deism. So he was lumped in with Paine as a threat to Christianity by supernaturalists who themselves had decided to put aside their soteriological differences and unite against the philosophical threat. The second half of the decade brought more radicalism yet, most notably the writings of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, just when Federalist fears and their resultant sedition laws aimed more suspicion yet at men like William Bentley. By 1800, a defensive Bentley's transformation from classical liberal to republican was complete.
Republicanism Victorious
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

Until 1800, Salem was for all intents a one‐party town, the Federalists enjoying almost complete hegemony over local politics. But in 1800, the Democratic‐Republicans entered the fray with new life, and there was William Bentley squarely in the thick of things, helping edit the party newspaper, continuing his pleading from the pulpit, and helping his most prominent congregant, Jacob Crowninshield, run for office. The First Party System was, finally, fully formed in Salem. Crowninshield ran for office several time before finally winning the 1802 Congressional race against none other than Timothy Pickering, Salem's highest‐ranking and most ideologically extreme Federalist. Salem Republicans—the party of the rising middle class anxious to break the grip of elite power while keeping a newly sympathetic eye towards the lower sort—had accomplished a most unlikely coup. Other towns in Massachusetts were moving toward Republicanism too, but not for the reasons that Salem was. In Salem, Bentley was the deciding factor.
Vox Populi, Vox Dei
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

Bentley had led the Democratic‐Republican Party to victory, but not all of Salem's Republicans followed along for the reasons he offered. Many, perhaps most, of Salem's Republicans were evangelicals, not rationalists. They supported the party not because of its advocacy of disestablishment—at least that was not an important part of the public rhetoric—but rather because they too were economic republicans, even if of a different sort than Bentley. They brought to the party a social ideology derived from Jonathan Edwards rather than from Rousseau. Even so, both Bentley and the evangelicals—Baptists and Methodists and New Light Congregationalists—stood on the essential common ground of Christian republicanism, and if it was an awkward fit for both factions, such was the nature of oppositionalism in New England's First Party System.
Epilogue
Authors: Ruffin J. Rixey
Published: January 2008

Bentley's importance peaked in 1805. Never again would he assume such a public or intellectually significant role as he did between 1783 and 1805. Nor would he bridge the chasms separating him from his liberal peers and from his evangelical contemporaries. Although he remained the pastor of the East Church until his death in 1819, in every real sense of the word he died alone.
1 A Scientific Perspective on Labeling Genetically Modified Food
Authors: Pariza Michael W.
Published: January 2008

This chapter begins by considering how lawyers, chemists and biologists might define “food,” and how each perspective relates to the development of a rational food regulation program. The adjectives “novel,” “biotechnology‐derived” and “genetically‐modified,” are discussed in light of a food biotechnology continuum that began when humans first farmed crops and domesticated animals. The scientific basis for evaluating the safety of GM foods is discussed, and ecological considerations are addressed. The experience regarding the introduction of a GM tomato product in the United Kingdom by J. Sainsbury and Safeway stores is recounted. It is evident that science can help sort out the environmental and human health safety issues, but cannot settle philosophical and legal disputes that deal with matters beyond those that can be tested using the scientific method.
2 Genetically Modified Organisms for Agricultural Food Production
Authors: Roberts R. Michael
Published: January 2008

Genetically modified (GM) crops are now part of mainstream agriculture, and the trend towards increased use of GM organisms in plant and animal agriculture will undoubtedly continue. This chapter provides a brief outline of the technologies used to produce GM crop plants and livestock, the means whereby GM products can be detected as minor contaminants in food, and some of the difficulties and paradoxes that must be faced in attempts to label products derived from GM organisms.
5 Genetically Engineered Animals and the Ethics of Food Labeling
Authors: Streiffer Robert , Rubel Alan
Published: January 2008

The current debate about labeling genetically engineered (GE) food focuses on food derived from GE crops, neglecting food derived from GE animals. This is not surprising: GE animal products have not reached the market and participants in the debate may be assuming that conclusions about GE crops automatically extend to GE animals. But two GE animals‐the Enviropig and the AquAdvantage Bred salmon‐are approaching the market, animals raise more ethical issues than plants, and U.S. regulations treat animal products differently from crops. This chapter therefore addresses the question of whether there should be mandatory labeling on food products derived from GE animals, examining the likely regulatory pathways, salient differences between GE animals and GE crops, and relevant social science research on consumers' attitudes. It concludes in favor of mandatory labeling.
7 Consumer Response to Mandated Labeling of Genetically Modified Foods
Authors: Kalaitzandonakes Nicholas , Marks Leonie A. , Vickner Steven S.
Published: January 2008

This chapter presents market data showing that consumers are not willing to pay a premium for non-GM food when given a choice between GM and non-GM food. Its data come from the Netherlands and China, where GM and non-GM foods are labeled. In the Netherlands, consumers do not respond to labels on processed food with information about GM ingredients. In China, consumers do not respond to labels on soy oil that say it comes from GM soybeans. The authors believe that preferences consumers reveal in the marketplace are more significant than preferences consumers state in opinion surveys. They conclude that mandatory labeling does not bring benefits that justify its cost. Voluntary labeling can accommodate the minority who care about the difference between GM and non-GM foods.
8 Frankenfood Free
Authors: McGarity Thomas O.
Published: January 2008

This chapter explores the legal issues raised by the ongoing debates over whether foods containing genetically modified materials should, or even may, contain labels informing consumers of that fact. Two broad legal issues predominate: (1) whether the law should require companies marketing foods to provide information concerning the presence of GM materials in those foods on the labels; and (2) whether the information that companies voluntarily include on food labels concerning the presence or absence of GM materials is misleading. An overarching legal issue is the constitutionality of any legal requirements imposed by Congress, a state legislature or a regulatory agency.

While governmental authorities in Europe have required labeling, the Congress and the Food and Drug Administration in the United States have so far declined to do so. Furthermore, the FDA has suggested that it would be unlawful for manufacturers to label foods not containing genetically modified materials “GMO free,” because that would misleadingly suggest that they are somehow safer or more desirable. One court has even overturned a state requirement that milk containing a particular genetically modified hormone be so labeled as an unconstitutional violation of the free speech rights of manufacturers.

This chapter explores the policy and legal issues arising from labeling foods containing genetically modified organisms and critiques the current U.S. approach. It then briefly explores four models for a labeling regime that could be enacted if Congress elects to do so in the future.
9 Regulatory Barriers to Consumer Information about Genetically Modified Foods
Authors: Peters Philip G. , Lambert Thomas A.
Published: January 2008

Participants in the debate over the labeling of genetically modified foods have generally advocated either a liberal American approach, under which positive labeling is not required and negative labeling is regulated, or the more protective European approach, under which positive labeling is mandated. We argue that the optimal approach may occupy a middle ground under which positive labeling is not required (as it is under the European model) but negative voluntary labeling is not discouraged (as it is under the American model). Removing the barriers to consumer information that inhere in the American approach would permit markets to accommodate heterogeneous consumer preferences regarding genetic modification.
10 Labeling Genetically Engineered Foods
Authors: Wolf Clark
Published: January 2008

This chapter considers several different proposals for the regulation of genetically modified foods. It urges that the arguments for mandatory labeling are weak, but that there are good reasons to adopt a voluntary labeling system that permits producers to advertise their products as free from genetically modified ingredients.