bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Walter White (July 1, 1893-March 21, 1955)
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

1893 Born to George and Madeline Harrison White on July l in Atlanta, Georgia. 1905 Witnesses the Atlanta race riot at the age of twelve. Helping to defend his home and family against a mob of bloodthirsty whites, he realizes his identity as an African American. 1912 Enters Atlanta University’s freshman class. 1916 Graduates from Atlanta University and works as an insurance agent for Standard Insurance Company in Atlanta. Helps to form the Atlanta branch of the NAACP and spearheads the campaign against the mounting racial discrimination as practiced by the Atlanta Board of Education. 1917 Meets James Weldon Johnson in Atlanta. Johnson persuades him to join the staff of the national office of the NAACP. 1918 Joins the staff of the NAACP in New York City on January 31. His major areas of responsibility include helping to coordinate the legal program. 1919 Volunteers to undertake the dangerous task of investigating some of the most sinister crimes of lynching in the south. Because of his blue eyes, blond hair, and overall Caucasian appearance, is able to “pass.” The NAACP uses his findings as data for their publication Thirty Years of Lynching. This work, the first statistical analysis of lynching, is published by the Association.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of February 1932
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

On March 25, 1931, nine African-American boys, aged 14 to 20, were charged with raping two white girls. The incident allegedly occurred while the boys were traveling on a freight train at Pain Rock, Alabama. Subsequently, eight of the youths were convicted and sentenced to death. The 14-year-old received life imprisonment. The defendants were initially represented by the NAACP’s legal team. The Communist Party intervened through the International Labor Defense (ILD). The NAACP wanted no association with the Communist Party; therefore, the NAACP withdrew from the case.] In accordance with the resolution passed at the January meeting of the Board, that resolution by which the N.A.A.C.P. withdrew from the Scottsboro Cases was sent to the parents and guardians of the defendants and to the press of the coun try. Since the passage of the resolution, letters have been received from two of the defendants asking that the Association remain in the cases, or at least take their individual cases; and on January 13 the following telegram was received from the Chattanooga Ministers Alliance: The Interdenominational Ministers Alliance understand by press report that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has withdrawn from the Scottsboro Case their legal aid in the defense of nine Negro boys. In view of the fact that the I.L.D. Legal force has all but gone to pieces because of questionable tactics and other developments and that the boys might be brought into court without legal aid, we beg you to prevail with your Board that the N.A.A.C.P. re-enter the case.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of January 1934
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Overview Today we inaugurate a new and, we hope, a more satisfactory method of reporting to the Annual Meeting on the past year’s activities. Instead of a long and detailed account of the wide variety of cases, issues, procedures, and the like, the Secretary gives only a terse statement of the highlights of the year’s work. Most of you who attend these annual meetings have closely followed the work during the year and are already familiar with most of the cases reported. We attempt, therefore, to spare you the necessity of listening to an over-long account. A committee numbering among its members some of the most distinguished medical authorities of America has at the invitation of the Association made a detailed study of the difficulties in Harlem Hospital, the only tax-supported institution in the country which has to so large an extent a mixed staff. The inquiry was broadened to include the whole field of medical opportunity for Negro doctors and nurses. The committee’s report of more than 80,000 words establishes a new yardstick in the matter of opportunity for service in tax-supported hospitals and in medical schools which, because of the distinction of the committee making the report, is of nation-wide significance. Two of the recommendations which will have most effect are for the ending of discrimination against Negroes in medical schools and of denial of opportunity to serve on the staffs of tax-supported hospitals through out the country.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of February 1936
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Following a number of conferences in Washington with Senator Costigan, Senator Frederick F. Van Nuys, and others, a new strategy with regard to getting a federal anti-lynching law passed by the present session of Congress has been decided upon: On January 6 Senator Van Nuys, who was chairman of the subcommittee which conducted the hearings on the Costigan-Wagner Bill last spring and who meeting will be the school conditions in Harlem. The Special Counsel will talk on the Association’s legal work. Publicity During January the Association received a great deal of publicity on (1) the winning of the University of Maryland cases; (2) the questioning and picketing of Senator William E. Borah on his stand on the anti-lynching bill.
Report of the Secretary for the Board Meeting of August 1940
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

The Association’s Thirty-first Annual Conference was held at Philadelphia, Penn sylvania, June 18-23. There were in attendance four hundred delegates from thirty-three states and the District of Columbia, representing the Association’s Senior Branches. Also, Youth Councils and College Chapters were well represented. Delegates showed a keen interest in the various topics discussed at the business sessions, as many as time allowed taking part in the discussions. The keynote speech of the Conference was delivered by the Association’s Pres ident, Mr. Arthur B. Spingarn, at the opening session on Tuesday evening, June 18. Mr. Spingarn followed Mr. John L. Lewis, Chairman of the Congress of Indus trial Organizations. Other speakers at the evening sessions were: Mr. Earl B. Dickerson, Chicago, Illinois; Dr. Russell L. Cecil, New York City, who made the presentation of the Spingarn Medal; Mr. Herbert E. Millen, Philadelphia; Dean William H. Hastie, chairman of the Association’s National Legal Committee; Mr. Aubrey Williams, Administrator of the National Youth Administration; and the Assistant Secretary. On Sunday afternoon the speakers were Hon. Fiorello H. La Guardia, Mayor of the City of New York; and the Association’s Secretary.
I Investigate Lynchings
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

When Walter White joined the staff of the NAACP he became a zealous crusader against lynching. His novel Fire in the Flint, published in 1925, is one of the most compelling on the subject. His nonfiction Rope and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch, published in 1927 and written on a Guggenheim fellowship, became the first significant work on the phenomenon of lynching. The following essay is an account of White’s personal investigations of lynching. This article was written in 1929. Nothing contributes so much to the continued life of an investigator of lynchings and his tranquil possession of all his limbs as the obtuseness of the lynchers themselves. Like most boastful people who practice direct action when it involves no personal risk, they just can’t help but talk about their deeds to any person who manifests even the slightest interest in them. Most lynchings take place in a small towns and rural regions where the natives know practically nothing of what is going on outside their immediate neighborhoods. Newspapers, books, magazines, theaters, visitors, and other vehicles for the transmission of information and ideas are usually as strange among them as dry point etchings. But those who live in so sterile an atmosphere usually esteem their own perspicacity in about the same degree as they are isolated from the world of ideas. They gabble on ad infinitum, apparently unable to keep from talking.
On Racist Textbooks
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

The NAACP became concerned about a New York City Board of Education textbook which was called to the attention of the Association. The book, How the United States Became a World Power, about black life during the Reconstruction era, is filled with inaccuracies and stereotypes. In the following essay, Walter White recommends to the NAACP Board of Directors that a representative from the Association evaluate the New York City Board of Education’s textbooks, especially on history and civics. This essay was written in 1932. Effort was made some months ago to get the New York Women’s Auxiliary to appoint a committee to go over all the text books, especially history and civic text books, to compile material such as the above and to prepare therefrom an au thoritative document as the basis for a protest to the Board of Education and to the Mayor. No city in the country offers a more likely chance of successful elimination of such paragraphs than New York, and especially in view of the coming elections. The example set by New York would undoubtedly be followed by branches in other cities.
A Sign of Political Change in the South
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In the following article Walter White praises Governor W. Kerr Scott of North Carolina for appointing Dr. Frank P. Graham as the new U.S. senator. White writes here that Graham’s appointment adds to the growing number of southern congressmen who are able to think beyond selfish geographical lines. The most dramatic, because of its unexpectedness, and the most heartening evidence of the political metamorphosis in the South is the appointment by Governor W. Kerr Scott of North Carolina of Dr. Frank P. Graham as the new United States Senator in North Carolina last week. I found the politicians stunned and the people jubilant. More than fifty persons had been urged upon Governor Scott for the appointment by various political factions. It would appear that none except Governor Scott and Senator Graham knew that North Carolina’s most distinguished citizen was being considered for the post.
Speeches, Essays, and Articles, 1955-1976
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Roy Wilkins received the following letter from a person who had followed his writings in the many publications he wrote for during his long career. Mrs. Roy Wilkins thought that this letter captured the substance of her husband as a hu man being and as a leader of civil rights for all Americans. In fact she used the letter as a preface to a collection of her husband’s speeches, essays, and articles that she herself published. I feel, that as one of your reader audience, you should know how much you inspire me. You maintain a universal tone in the human dilemma of wanting to love and to be loved, to feel worthwhile, to believe that others feel that we are worthwhile. The Negroes’ dilemma is a silhouette of every man’s fear of neglect, deprivation, and isolation. In view of the uprising in some of the big cities, it is more important that we keep our cool and plough ahead with our aspirations for mankind.
Freedom, Franchise, and Segregation
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

The NAACP and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City have a very special relationship that extends to the founding of the Association in 1909. The founders often met at Cooper Union to bring forth plans for the development of the NAACP. In the cen tennial year of Cooper Union, Roy Wilkins underscores the unswerving and unyielding forward push of the Association and its accomplishments since its founding. In his optimistic fashion he expresses his belief that success is inevitable. This address, given in 1959, was broadcast on Station WNYC in New York City. It is a privilege to have a small part in the celebration of the centennial year of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and to speak here in this famous Forum where so many issues of importance to our nation and to the world have had an airing. In many a year since the founding of our country it must have seemed to anxious students that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly were about to be curtailed, if not abolished. The tensions that develop with wars, the fervors distilled in political and economic conflict, and the emotions stirred by debate over human rights, here and abroad, have threatened these and other precious free dons from time to time. The Bill of Rights has escaped, often by the skin of its teeth. The courts which dared to interpret it and other clauses in our Constitution have had to meet and defeat challenges of greater or lesser intensity.
Medgar W. Evers: In Memoriam
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

The following are remarks by Roy Wilkins at the funeral of Medgar W. Evers on June 15, 1963, in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers, NAACP field secretary for Mississippi, died after being shot down from ambush in front of his home in Jackson on June 12. There have been martyrs throughout history, in every land and people, in many high causes. We are here today in tribute to a martyr in the crusade for human liberty, a man struck down in mean and cowardly fashion by a bullet in the back. The N.A.A.C.P. has had its share of sufferers: John R. Shillady, one of the earliest N.A.A.C.P. executive secretaries who was badly beaten by a mob in Austin, Tex., in 1919; Elbert Williams, secretary of the Brownsville, Tenn., N.A.A.C.P. who was lynched in 1940; Rev. George W. Lee. officer of the Belzoni, Miss., N.A.A.C.P., who registered to vote and was assassinated in 1955; Harry T. Moore, N.A.A.C.P state secretary for Florida and his wife. both murdered in their beds in Mims, Fla..
We Want Freedom Now!
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In this keynote address to the Fifty-fourth NAACP Convention, Roy Wilkins told the audience, “There will be a march on Washington as a living petition for the redress of old grievances, a march of decency and dignity.” Secretary Wilkins’s declaration was ratified by the convention, and a resolution was passed committing the NAACP to “cooperate, support, and participate in a March on Washington or other mass demonstrations which may be jointly sponsored, planned, and executed by those organizations and individuals similarly commited to enactment.” The following is Wilkins’s speech at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
At American Association of Advertising Agencies
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

This speech was made in the aftermath of the March on Washington, the Kennedy and Evers assassinations, and the bombing of four little children in Birmingham, Alabama. Job opportunities were opening, but, these avail able jobs were in automation. Job that had been long held by the unskilled poor were being eliminated with no hope or plans for replacement. In this speech Roy Wilkins explains the need for black people to put into action the concept, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work.” This speech was given on November 18, 1963.
At White House Conference “To Fulfill These Rights”
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

When Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded John F. Kennedy as president in 1963, Roy Wilkins found Johnson much more aggressive on civil rights than Kennedy had been. Yet even after Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill into law, Wilkins knew there was still much to be done. At the time of this White House conference, the Brown decision was twelve years old. On administration of justice three categories were set forth embracing protection of Negroes and civil rights workers in connection with the exercise of their rights: equal justice in the operation of the machinery of the law-juries, courts, court officials and law enforcement agents and police minority group community relations. The material in the Council report, including the recommendations for action, has received critical scrutiny and has benefited from broadening and strengthening corrections and amendments including home rule for D.C. by the conferees in the twelve committees. Each of these urgent suggestions, born of intimate experience on local and state levels, has become a part of the record and will be submitted as a part of the report to the President, as will the specific resolutions adopted in the committees this afternoon.
Ego and Race
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Roy Wilkins noted that some black parents were against integration because they believed it meant “begging” to be with whites. He further contended that many of these parents believed that race pride could be taught only in segregated educational settings. He explains in the following article, written in June 1971, why the slow pace of integration is better than seeking quality education in a separate system. In the whole black-and-white field, a more emotional topic than that of racial integration in the public schools will be hard to find unless it is racial integration in housing. The idea of Negro and white children going to school together somehow seems to rouse both black and white parents to peaks of feeling. Whites, of course, want a good and exclusively white thing to continue.
A. Philip Randolph
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was born in Crescent City, Florida. In 1925 Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), and ten years later he negotiated a collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Palace Car Company. As an official of the AFL-CIO, Randolph joined other prominent civil rights leaders in organizing the 1963 march on Washington. In the following article Roy Wilkins pays tribute to Randolph for conceiving the idea of the march on Washington. This article was writ ten in August 1972. The ninth anniversary of the famous March on Washington by the civil rights organizations and their followers is August 28. It seems only yesterday that 220,000 white and black people-an estimated 40,000 white-presented their petition and their personal presence to their government, at its seat, in behalf of civil rights for all Americans.
Black Power or Black Pride
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Roy Wilkins was unyielding in his belief that the move toward full integration was the only way to a united America. He frequently challenged the so-called separatists and militants about their beliefs that a system that was centuries old could be eradicated overnight. In the following article, written in March 1974, he offers a definition of black power. There is considerable indication, cropping up here and there, that some aspects of the black power hysteria that spread into all race relations when it was first voiced in 1966 are on the way out. In fact, among more advanced thinkers these aspects are dead. Negro political leaders in New York City, fresh from their soul-searching in the hectic and discouraging experience of the nomination and appointment of a black deputy mayor, were among those who redefined “black power.” Its real meaning is far from the sloganeering of marches, demonstrations, and confrontations. It is fully as far from the chip-on-the-shoulder bragging of some of its less thoughtful early proponents.
Black Mayors
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In 1976 when Roy Wilkins wrote this article, Maynard Jackson was mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, and Richard Hatcher was mayor of Gary, Indiana. At the time, both mayors were accused of allowing race to divide their respective cities. In the following article, Wilkins discusses what he believes to be some of the reasons behind the racial dissension in cities headed by black mayors. More wisdom in dealing with all segments of the population is indicated in each city. For decades blacks cried this to whites. Now the roles are reversed. They should get together, for the time grows shorter for the cities.
Intelligence Tests
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

In the following article, written in May 1975, Roy Wilkins discusses the harm done to black children by so-called intelligence tests. These imperfect conclusions by scholars, he writes, allow politicians and society at large to perpetuate myths and lies about a race and ultimately act on their negative views. Among the crosses a black child has to bear are tests of various kinds, particularly so-called intelligence tests. These prove little, if anything, about intelligence, but the harm to a race can be measured in the use which the political system makes of them. And scholars, too, permit their imperfect conclusions to be cited by politicians and schools of thought to support some restrictive measure against a whole race. Dr. Robert L. Williams, a black psychologist on the faculty of Washington Uni versity in St. Louis, is pictured in a feature article as conducting a lone campaign against the use of tests to set limits on minorities. Dr. Williams would be the first to acknowledge that the black community. far from just becoming aware of these tests, has been inveighing against them certainly since before World War II. Dr. Williams had the experience common to thousands of black kids of passing an intelligence test, but by a margin insufficient in his counselor’s mind. His mark was an eighty-two and the counselor “advised me not to go to college, but to take up a trade because I was good with my hands.” He ignored the advice and went on to college.
Paul Robeson
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

Paul Bustill Robeson (1898-1976), actor, singer, and activist, was born in Princeton, New Jersey. Robeson appeared in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones in 1925. That same year he gave his first concert of Negro spirituals. He performed in such plays as All God’s Chillun Got Wings, Porgy and Bess, Showboat, Othello, and The Hairy Ape. After World War II he campaigned vigorously for the rights of African Americans. His activism attracted the attention of anti-Communists and he was denied a passport; his passport was not reissued until 1958. In the following article, Roy Wilkins pays tribute to the late Paul Robeson. The name “great” had been misapplied to many men, white and non-white, but there is one among the citizens of this country who eminently deserved the title “great”-Paul Robeson. Robeson was a man ahead of his time. He believed passionately in his people and, therefore, in the cause of humanity. The son of a slave who became a minister, there was no need to tell him of the exploitation of those who worked with their hands. He did not care that he could not speak their language. He knew poignantly what they suffered. He sang to them of the glory of victory over big and little wrongs. His rendition of a Negro spiritual. the battle song of slavery, needed no translation. At Rutgers, Robeson attended on scholarship, which should have been a tip off on his scholastic ability. Before he had finished his four years he won All America honors in football two years in a row, 1917 and 1918. Walter Camp, who chose him for All-American, called him “the greatest defensive end that ever trod the gridiron.” He was not only a great athlete, but he won a Phi Beta Kappa Key.
Harassment of Dr. King
Authors: Wilson Sondra Kathryn
Published: November 2023

After Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated on April 4, 1968, information released from FBI files revealed the animus toward King that was held by many FBI officials. In the following article, written in January 1977, Roy Wilkins discusses the harassment of Dr. King during his lifetime by the FBI. Little by little the story of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is emerging, and in a matter of months the world may possibly know the truth. Those who know something of the hatred of some officials of the EB.I. for the dead man may put two and two together and guess the answer to the puzzle. Why was James Earl Ray, the confessed killer, able to get out of Memphis to Canada and England with no money and no ability to get about in foreign lands? Who were the men, if any, behind him? What was the real basis of his quarrel with his attorneys? Of course the fresh inquiries into the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy are helping along the Martin Luther King matter. JFK was shot in Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963, and only about fifteen per cent of the American people believe the official version of his killing contained in the Warren Report.
The Dying and Reviving of Death
Authors: Heinz Donald
Published: November 2023

Until yesterday we died in medical Latin. A forgotten language obscured our passing. The primal scene was airbrushed by professionals who uttered words that could not be understood. Sterile gauze concealed the soul’s departure, so that we did not remark on the passing of the light. Medicine did not measure metaphysics. Death had become a biological infection. It was not to be permitted to escape control centers. Failures at living were sent to the hospital’s private places, hidden from public view and knowledge.
The Study of Calvin: Contexts and Directions
Authors: Muller Richard A
Published: November 2023

The burden of the preceding chapters has been the elucidation of the context of Calvin’s theology for the sake of providing a basis for further discussion of his teaching. The effort has taken both negative and positive directions. Stated negatively, the burden of the work has been to set aside several of the dogmatic (or antidogmatic) grids that have been placed over Calvin’s text as well as over his thought. Stated positively, it has been to set the elements of Calvin’s theology into the context of the intellectual dialogues and debates within which he worked as correlated with a fairly close textual study of his thought.
The Solace of Fierce Landscapes
Authors: Lane Belden C
Published: November 2023

In the tradition of Kathleen Norris, Terry Tempest Williams, and Thomas Merton, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes explores the impulse that has drawn seekers into the wilderness for centuries and offers eloquent testimony to the healing power of mountain silence and desert indifference. Interweaving a memoir of his mother's long struggle with Alzheimer's and cancer, meditations on his own wilderness experience, and illuminating commentary on the Christian via negativa--a mystical tradition that seeks God in the silence beyond language--Lane rejects the easy affirmations of pop spirituality for the harsher but more profound truths that wilderness can teach us. "There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokeness we find within." It is this apparent paradox that lies at the heart of this remarkable book: that inhuman landscapes should be the source of spiritual comfort. Lane shows that the very indifference of the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the "false self" that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions. Drawing upon the wisdom of St. John of the Cross, Meister Eckhardt, Simone Weil, Edward Abbey, and many other Christian and non-Christian writers, Lane also demonstrates how those of us cut off from the wilderness might "make some desert" in our lives. Written with vivid intelligence, narrative ease, and a gracefulness that is itself a comfort, The Solace of Fierce Landscapes gives us not only a description but a "performance" of an ancient and increasingly relevant spiritual tradition.
Conclusion
Authors: Lane Belden C
Published: November 2023

There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within. Moving apprehensively into the desert’s emptiness, up the mountain’s height, you discover in wild terrain a metaphor of your deepest fears. If the danger is sufficient, you experience a loss of competence, a crisis of knowing that brings you to the end of yourself, to the only true place where God is met.
Literary Memoirs
Authors: Lastarria José Victorino
Published: November 2023

The attention of contemporary historians is constantly drawn to the literary movement that took place in our country in 1842,* and they rightly consider it the earliest impetus to the portentous progress made in Chilean letters in the thirty-five years that have elapsed since that memorable date.
First Impressions of the Text: At the Level of Biography, Confusion; at the Level of the Spirit, Suggestions of Unity
Authors: Brodie Thomas L
Published: November 2023

At one level the gospel of John is extremely simple and straightforward. It gives an account of a God-man, Jesus, who walked the earth in the days of Pontius Pilate. Thus its most obvious focus, as a narrative, is on a sequence of events which occurred in the early part of the first century. It sounds at times like very direct reporting; “it gives the impression of ‘things seen’ “ (Smith, 1982, 105). And it has an extraordinarily simple vocabulary.
The Discourses at the Feast of Tents
Authors: Brodie Thomas L
Published: November 2023

The basic sequence of events is relatively simple. Jesus is in Galilee, but following a disagreement with his unbelieving brothers, he goes with them to the temple, and during the feast of Tents he teaches and reveals as never before. Though some respond positively, the dominant reactions reflect the encounter with his brothers-disbelief, harsh disagreement, and separation. The setting of this drama helps to make it remarkable. First there is the place-the temple. For Jews throughout the world this was the geographical focal point of their religion, to some degree the center of their universe. Here Jesus speaks: he enters in 7:14 and does not leave till 8:59.
The Sight-Giving and the Shepherding
Authors: Brodie Thomas L
Published: November 2023

This dramatic account tells of a man who not only received sight but who then went through various stages of advancing insight. After his eyes had been anointed (chrio, v 6), he came to see Jesus first as an ordinary person (v 11) and then as a prophet (v 17). Later, after his parents had shied away from confessing Jesus to be the Christ (christos, v 22), he went on to see Jesus as from God (v 33) and, finally, as the Son of humanity (v 37). The picture is one of steady progression.
Native American Literatures and Communitism
Authors: Weaver Jace
Published: November 2023

If you can survive in today’s society and maintain your soul self, and if you can do these things and know who you are as a person, you are a true warrior.

Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna) has written, “The following statement, ‘All existence is meaningless: is actually full of meaning; that is the irony of language. The act of stating what is, inevitably reminds us of what is not. Language forces meaning into existence. All barriers yield to language: distance, oceans, darkness, even time and death itself are easily transcended by language. We hear a story about a beloved ancestor from hundreds of years ago, but as we listen, we begin to feel an intimacy and immediacy of that long ago moment so that our beloved ancestor is very much present with us during the storytelling:’ Storytelling. At base that is what American Indian authors and poets are doing-storytelling. According to Silko, when we use language to transcend humanly insurmountable barriers, we call that transcendent use art. To the extent I will argue that it is indeed much older than that. She is nonetheless correct that “[o] ur writing is, and always has been, an attempt to beat back colonization and the stereotyping of our Nations. But the writing is not a reaction to colonialism, it is an active and new way to tell the stories we have always been told.”1 In both its continuity and its change, it speaks to and for Native peoples.
The Burden of Modernity
Authors: Alonso Carlos J
Published: November 2023

This book offers a provocative interpretation of cultural discourse in Spanish America. Alonso argues that Spanish American cultural production constituted itself through commitment to what he calls the “narrative of futurity,” that is, the uncompromising adoption of modernity. This commitment fueled a rhetorical crisis that followed the embracing of discourses regarded as “modern” in historical and economic circumstance that are themselves the negation of modernity. Through fresh readings of texts by Sarmiento, Mansilla, Quiroga, Vargos Llosa, Garcia Marquez, and others, Alonso tracks this textual dynamic in works from the nineteenth century to the present.
The Just Ruler in Shi'ite Islam
Authors: Sachedina Abdulaziz Abdulhussein
Published: November 2023

The Islamic regime that came to power after the 1978-79 Iranian revolution justified the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini, and the Shi’ite imams in general, on the basis of the doctrine that the Islamic jurist is best suited to rule with justice in an Islamic country. Arguing that this concept has no apparent parallel in Sunni Islam, this study explores its origins in the Sunni/Shi’ite schism, which took place after the death of the Prophet, and traces its evolution to the present day. Drawing on exhaustive research in the Islamic libraries of Iran and Jordan, as well as discussions with leading jurors and scholars in Iran, Sachedina presents the first in-depth analysis of an Islamic phenomenon of vital contemporary social and political significance.
Religious Communities, Secular Society, And Sexuality: One Jewish Opinion
Authors: Novak David
Published: November 2023

Since the pioneering investigations of Freud at the beginning of this century, most of the old conventions concerning human sexuality have been called into question. That has required both those who advocate that these conventions be changed and those who advocate that they remain in force to devise new arguments for their respective positions. The current debate over homosexuality, especially, has called for such new arguments because the case at hand seems so radical when made by those who advocate change and so lacking in rational persuasion when made by those who advocate tradition.
Sexual Orientation And Human Rights In American Religious Discourse: A Roman Catholic Perspective
Authors: Curren Charles E
Published: November 2023

This essay addresses the issue of sexual orientation and human rights in American religious discourse from the perspective of Roman Catholicism. This complex question has a number of different facets: the moral teaching about homosexuality, whether the teaching is proposed for all humankind and should be found convincing by those who do not share Catholic faith, the way in which religion should engage in public discourse, the relationship between morality and law, and finally the different aspects of law (the legality or illegality of homosexual acts, the rights of homosexual persons not to be discriminated against in our society, the provision of certain benefits to same-sex couples, the legal acceptance of gay marriages).
Response To James Hanigan And Charles Curren
Authors: Farley Margarant A
Published: November 2023

The presentations of James Hanigan and Charles Curran together represent the best of the possibilities for dialogue among quite different positions in the Roman Catholic tradition on the moral status of same-sex relationships. I applaud their careful and thoughtful analyses of the issues and their irenic yet forceful arguments for the positions they support. Moreover, the move that both of them make to shift a great deal of the debate from the realm of sexual ethics to political ethics is a helpful one, and it may be that strategically it is the best one if the Roman Catholic community is to come to terms with the pluralism within itself as well as the pluralism in American society on this issue. It may also be the case that for concrete persons whose lives (and not just moral and political theories) are at stake in these debates, the issues of law and public policy are now the most pressing.
The Other Side of Joy
Authors: Rubin Julius H
Published: November 2023

This is a case study of one pietist religious group, the Bruderhof. A Christian brotherhood founded on Anabaptist and evangelical pietist doctrine, they practice community of goods, seeking to emulate the vision of the Apostolic church and fulfil the ethic of brotherhood taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Rubin offers compelling accounts of the lives of Bruderhof apostates who foundered over issues of faith, and relates these crises to the central tenets of Bruderhof theology, their spirituality, and community life.
Poland
Authors: Janz Denis R
Published: November 2023

Two of the late twentieth century’s most stunning events focused international attention on Poland. First, in 1978 Karol Wojtyta was elected Pope; and second, in 1989 Poland initiated the chain-reaction collapse of”real socialism” in Eastern Europe. It is tempting to make these events into the central interpretive key to understanding the global encounter between Christianity and Marxism. It is seductive, especially for Christians, to see the outcome as a colossal victory for Christianity made possible by the inspired leadership of the Pope.1 This is the “good guys win” version of history: it wipes away all ambiguities and feeds the spirit of self-righteous Christian triumphalism. Obviously, to blithely unravel the tangled contradictions of the past in this way is to dangerously distort a highly complex reality.
China
Authors: Janz Denis R
Published: November 2023

Western Christians today may find it difficult to imagine a Catholic Church in which married priests publicly celebrate the Eucharist, bishops are democratically elected, laypeople serve in high positions of leadership, reconstruction of churches and seminaries is carried out with government funds, artificial birth control is advocated as a virtue, priests engage in manual labor, parishes are administered by women, and the bishop of Rome is largely ignored. Equally difficult to imagine is a Protestant Church in which laypeople lead, in which denominational fragmentation is a thing of the past, in which sexism has in many cases been overcome, in which theological conservatism is combined with political socialism, and in which money comes in part from the laity and in part from Church-owned and operated factories. To many Western Christians-whether Roman Catholic or Protestant-such churches are scarcely conceivable, let alone desirable. Others visualize the future of Christianity in precisely this way.
Textual Problems in M of Genesis 1-11
Authors: Hendel Ronald S
Published: November 2023

It is nothing new to suggest that M of Genesis is an imperfect text. The KettbQere system implemented by the Masoretes is a text-critical apparatus designed to improve the base text, probably reflecting some kind of collation of variant readings (see Tov 1992a: 58-63; Yeivin 1980: 52-61). The Talmud records a warning to scribes to beware graphic and auditory errors when copying biblical texts: A story about Rabbi Ishmael (ca. early second century C.E.) makes this case in more dramatic terms: “When I came to Rabbi Ishmael he said to me, ‘My son, what is your occupation?’ I said to him, ‘I am a copyist.’ He said to me, ‘My son, be careful in your work, for your work is heaven’s work; for should you omit one letter or add one letter, you will destroy the entire universe’” (B. ‘Erubin 13a). One can see that great care was taken in the transmission of the rabbinic-M text, but there remained a certain anxiety about the commission of scribal errors.
Popular Short Pilgrimages
Authors: Huber Toni
Published: November 2023

This verse, whose composition preceded the rise of popular pilgrimage to the mountain, permits something for everyone at Tsari. An elite of Tantric adepts converted the site for the practice of their esoteric style of ritual. But they, as Buddhists, also maintained a theory of the graded faculties and ritual status of personhood that took account of karmic condition and degrees of mental and physical cultivation and relative purity. Thus, they considered that all devout persons could benefit from visiting the mountain in their own ways. Advanced Tantric meditators might have been able to totally identify with the reality of the mountain as and the archetype deities in it, or at least enjoy the vision of its subtle and underlying representations as grand, divine palace, enormous crystal shrine, and so on. But the vast majority of” ordinary” (sokyewo) and “impure” (madakdro) persons whose faculties and status were held to be “lowest” (thama) experienced its manifest embodiment in the form of gross physical landscape features and substances, organic life forms and climatic systems. Not only were such persons believed to have lower grades of perceptual appreciation, ritual status, and purity, they also had to use correspondingly lower zones of space on the mountain ’s slopes, as I will show. Ordinary persons all knew some details of the alternative realities of the place and of its various representations. So, prepared with their narrative maps, they visited the site, constituting by far the largest proportion of practitioners in a ritual relationship with the mountain: peasant farmers and nomads, traders and criminals, nuns and monks, government officials, aristocrats, hunters, and so on.
Ritual and Ceremonial
Authors: Trimingham J Spencer
Published: November 2023

Liturgical development within the main stream of Islam was completed early in its history, never to be renewed within J legal religion. Subsequent growth came through the Sufis. Their organized seances were entirely separate from ritual salat, but in the course of time, when Sufism was brought to the level of the average man, the very dhikr of the divine names was so vulgarized and associated with salat as an extra personal appendage, as to become despiritualized. The Sufis’ deeper devotions, however, were maintained in other ways as a separate expression.
Comparative Religion The Founding Fathers And The Theological Legacy
Authors: Fitzgerald Timothy
Published: November 2023

It is impossible not to conclude from reading Sharpe’s reliable account of the origins of the modern study of religion in his Comparative Religion: A History (1986) that the guiding concept lying behind the thought of almost all the founding fathers, and usually quite explicitly stated, is that of a transcendent intelligent Being who gives meaning and purpose to human history. There are several qualifications to make about this generalization. Sharpe himself emphasizes throughout his book the struggles of comparative religion to establish itself against the opposition of established Christianity and its doctrines of a unique, once and for all revelation acting as the sole guarantee of salvation. He also emphasizes the tradition of objective, disinterested historical and philological scholarship. Further, he indicates the important writers in the study of religion who tended to develop humanistic and non-theological theories of religion. These theorists included pioneering sociologists and anthropologists such as E. Tylor, J. G. Frazer, and Durkheim. I would further suggest here--though I cannot argue it in detail-that both the theological and the humanistic tendencies, in individualist and holistic forms, were to varying degrees implicit in Deism and German romantic philosophy, respectively.
Editor’s Introduction
Authors: Underwood T L
Published: November 2023

The collapse of government, civil war, the execution of the king, the abolition of monarchy, and the establishment of a republic marked the period 1640-60 in English history. During these tumultuous years, the grip of the ruling elite was sufficiently loosened that radical ideas-political, social, economic, and religious-could be advocated openly and even acted out in England’s otherwise hierarchical and deferential society. Levellers, for example, urged the extension of the franchise; Diggers called for land reform and established agricultural communities on common land; and Fifth Monarchists expected the imminent return of King Jesus to rule with his saints on earth, and some were willing to take up arms to expedite that return. These two decades also witnessed the expansion of the Baptist sect and the rise of Seekers, Ranters, and Quakers. In 1652 the experiences of John Reeve and Lodowick Muggleton led to the beginning of yet another religious movement that eventually took the latter’s name and shared the radical end of the Protestant spectrum with these last four groups.
Religion in the Collapse of the American Union
Authors: Genovese Eugene D
Published: November 2023

I can fight your battles so long as you make the constitution your fortress,” Governor William L. Marcy of New York wrote John C. Calhoun. “But if you go to the Bible or make it a question of ethics, you must not expect me or any respectable member of the free states to be with you.” Marcy did not understand that the scriptural defense of slavery provided the moral foundation of the slaveholders ‘ worldview. And as for the southern slaveholders, so for their opponents. “As I view the contest,” an antislavery farmer wrote Abraham Lincoln, “it is no less than a contest for the advancement of the kingdom of Heaven or the kingdom of Satan.”
“Without Pilot or Compass”: Elite Women and Religion in the Civil War South
Authors: Faust Drew Gilpin
Published: November 2023

One of the most notable and distinctive features of the Old South, we have long been told, was its overwhelmingly Protestant and, in particular, evangelical character. From Virginia to Texas, from soon after the Revolution to the Civil War, a shared religious orientation united the vast majority of blacks and whites, rich and poor, women and men into a single culture of belief and behavior. At a time when immigration, economic development, and expansion were introducing diversity and conflict into northern life and religion, the South clung both to traditional social forms and common religious orientation.
Religion and the American Civil War in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Wilson Charles Reagan
Published: November 2023

Some three decades ago, historian David Potter wrote an article chiding historians for their failure to look at the American Civil War in comparative perspective. It was part of a broader pattern of parochialism, he observed, whereby historians in this country wrote about liberty without reference to the French Revolution and about antebellum reform without considering the ferment in Britain to end the slave trade and to aid industrial workers. Decades later, comparative history has made much progress, becoming part of a historiographical movement to look beyond American exceptionalism and place the national story in broader contexts.