Download or read book Religion and the Political Imagination written by Ira Katznelson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of secularisation became a virtually unchallenged truth of twentieth-century social science. First sketched out by Enlightenment philosophers, then transformed into an irreversible global process by nineteenth-century thinkers, the theory was given substance by the precipitate drop in religious practice across Western Europe in the 1960s. However, the re-emergence of acute conflicts at the interface between religion and politics has confounded such assumptions. It is clear that these ideas must be rethought. Yet, as this distinguished, international team of scholars reveal, not everything contained in the idea of secularisation was false. Analyses of developments since 1500 reveal a wide spectrum of historical processes: partial secularisation in some spheres has been accompanied by sacralisation in others. Utilising new approaches derived from history, philosophy, politics and anthropology, the essays collected in Religion and the Political Imagination offer new ways of thinking about the urgency of religious issues in the contemporary world.

Download or read book Nations under God written by Anna M. Grzymała-Busse and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why churches in some democratic nations wield enormous political power while churches in other democracies don't In some religious countries, churches have drafted constitutions, restricted abortion, and controlled education. In others, church influence on public policy is far weaker. Why? Nations under God argues that where religious and national identities have historically fused, churches gain enormous moral authority—and covert institutional access. These powerful churches then shape policy in backrooms and secret meetings instead of through open democratic channels such as political parties or the ballot box. Through an in-depth historical analysis of six Christian democracies that share similar religious profiles yet differ in their policy outcomes—Ireland and Italy, Poland and Croatia, and the United States and Canada—Anna Grzymała-Busse examines how churches influenced education, abortion, divorce, stem cell research, and same-sex marriage. She argues that churches gain the greatest political advantage when they appear to be above politics. Because institutional access is covert, they retain their moral authority and their reputation as defenders of the national interest and the common good. Nations under God shows how powerful church officials in Ireland, Canada, and Poland have directly written legislation, vetoed policies, and vetted high-ranking officials. It demonstrates that religiosity itself is not enough for churches to influence politics—churches in Italy and Croatia, for example, are not as influential as we might think—and that churches allied to political parties, such as in the United States, have less influence than their notoriety suggests.

Download or read book Culture Wars written by Christopher Clark and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-08-14 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across nineteenth-century Europe, the emergence of constitutional and democratic nation-states was accompanied by intense conflict between Catholics and anticlerical forces. At its peak, this conflict touched virtually every sphere of social life: schools, universities, the press, marriage and gender relations, burial rites, associational culture, the control of public space, folk memory and the symbols of nationhood. In short, these conflicts were 'culture wars', in which the values and collective practices of modern life were at stake. These 'culture wars' have generally been seen as a chapter in the history of specific nation-states. Yet it has recently become increasingly clear that the Europe of the mid- and later nineteenth century should also be seen as a common politico-cultural space. This book breaks with the conventional approach by setting developments in specific states within an all-European and comparative context, offering a fresh and revealing perspective on one of modernity's formative conflicts.

Download or read book Writing Political History Today written by Willibald Steinmetz and published by Campus Verlag. This book was released on 2013-05 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years political history has been rediscovered by historians. In this volume the contributors approach the new political history in a constructivist way, conceiving the political as a communicative space whose boundaries are constantly reconfigured through acts of verbal, visual, and sometimes violent communication. Writing Political History Today is organized into four sections, focusing on politics and the political as contested concepts; boundary disputes between the political and other spheres; the question whether violence is a means, an object, or the end of political communication; and on a future agenda for writing political history.

Download or read book Devotional Cultures of European Christianity 1790 1960 written by Henning Laugerud and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume examines the devotional life of European Christianity in the period immediately following that of the 'Enlightenment'.

Download or read book This Great Calamity The Great Irish Famine written by Christime Kinealy and published by Gill & Macmillan Ltd. This book was released on 2006-05-02 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Famine of 1845-52 was the most decisive event in the history of modern Ireland. In a country of eight million people, the Famine caused the death of approximately one million, while a similar number were forced to emigrate. The Irish population fell to just over four million by the beginning of the twentieth century. Christine Kinealy's survey is long established as the most complete, scholarly survey of the Great Famine yet produced. First published in 1994, This Great Calamity remains an exhaustive and indefatigable look into the event that defined Ireland as we know it today.

Download or read book Religion and Revolution in France 1780 1804 written by Nigel Aston and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the French Revolution has been much discussed and studied, its impact on religious life in France is rather neglected. Yet, during this brief period, religion underwent great changes that affected everyone: clergy and laypeople, men and women, Catholics, Protestants, and Jews. The 'Reigns of Terror' of the Revolution drove the Church underground, permanently altering the relationship between Church and State. In this book, Nigel Aston offers a readable guide to these tumultuous events. While the structures and beliefs of the Catholic Church are central, it does not neglect minority groups like Protestants and Jews. Among other features, the book discusses the Constitutional Church, the end of state support for Catholicism, the 'Dechristianization' campaign and the Concordat of 1801-2. Key themes discussed include the capacity of all the Churches for survival and adaptation, the role of religion in determining political allegiances during the Revolution, and the turbulence of Church-State relations. In this masterly study, based on the latest evidence, Aston sheds new light on a dynamic period in European history and its impact on the next 200 years of religious life in France.

Download or read book Proclaiming the Gospel to the Indians and the Metis written by Raymond J.A. Huel and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 1996-07 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since their arrival in Red River in 1845, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate have played an integral role in the history of Canada's North West. The Oblates followed the Hudson's Bay Company trade routes into western Canada. They believed ardently in the importance of bringing the word of Christ to natives of what - to the Oblates - was a new land. Competition with Protestant missionaries added pressure to the missionary work of the Oblates. In recent years, the Oblates have acknowledged that their converts - radically torn from traditional native worship and spirituality - made a sometimes troubled embrace of Christianity. Guided by their vision of Christian society and norms, the Oblates went on to work with the Government of Canada to provide health care and education to treaty Indians on the prairies. Their strong identity as both French and Catholic helped shape both native and non-native communities throughout Canada's North West.

Download or read book Writings on the Poor Laws written by Jeremy Bentham and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vol. 1: In the essays presented in this volume, Bentham lays down the theoretical principles from which he develops his proposals for reform of the English poor laws in response to the perceived crisis in poor relief in the mid-1790s. In "Essays on the Subject of the Poor Laws", Bentham seeks to justify the principles on which entitlement to relief should be grounded, while in "Pauper Systems Compared", he presents a sustained comparison between home relief and institutional relief. The polemical "Observations on the Poor Bill" is a lively critique of the Bill introduced into the House of Commons by William Pitt in 1796. The ideas advanced here by Bentham were a significant influence on Edwin Chadwick, and through his mediation, on the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834. The essays are based almost entirely on manuscript sources

Download or read book Ireland written by Thomas Bartlett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-03 with total page 643 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed political, social, cultural and economic history of Ireland from prehistory to the present by one of Ireland's leading historians.

Download or read book Power A Reader written by Mark Haugaard and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This annotated reader is an introductory guide to some of the most significant perspectives on the subject of power within social and political theory. Containing extracts from such leading contemporary thinkers as Giddens, Lukes, and Bourdieu, alongside recent conceptions of power from important 20th century figures including Weber, Arendt, and Foucault, this book is intended as an introductory text for students encountering the subject for the first time.

Download or read book Black 47 and Beyond written by Cormac Ó Gráda and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here Ireland's premier economic historian and one of the leading authorities on the Great Irish Famine examines the most lethal natural disaster to strike Europe in the nineteenth century. Between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the food source that we still call the Irish potato had allowed the fastest population growth in the whole of Western Europe. As vividly described in Ó Gráda's new work, the advent of the blight phytophthora infestans transformed the potato from an emblem of utility to a symbol of death by starvation. The Irish famine peaked in Black '47, but it brought misery and increased mortality to Ireland for several years. Central to Irish and British history, European demography, the world history of famines, and the story of American immigration, the Great Irish Famine is presented here from a variety of new perspectives. Moving away from the traditional narrative historical approach to the catastrophe, Ó Gráda concentrates instead on fresh insights available through interdisciplinary and comparative methods. He highlights several economic and sociological features of the famine previously neglected in the literature, such as the part played by traders and markets, by medical science, and by migration. Other topics include how the Irish climate, usually hospitable to the potato, exacerbated the failure of the crops in 1845-1847, and the controversial issue of Britain's failure to provide adequate relief to the dying Irish. Ó Gráda also examines the impact on urban Dublin of what was mainly a rural disaster and offers a critical analysis of the famine as represented in folk memory and tradition. The broad scope of this book is matched by its remarkable range of sources, published and archival. The book will be the starting point for all future research into the Irish famine.

Download or read book A History of the Scotch Poor Law written by Sir George Nicholls and published by . This book was released on 1856 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Archbishop A A Tach of St Boniface written by Raymond J.A. Huel and published by University of Alberta. This book was released on 2003-09-12 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study goes beyond the traditional "great man" approach to biography and incorporates the newer directions of social history to produce a critical study of a controversial religious figure in western Canada. A biography of Bishop A.-A. Taché is more than the story of an individual because it is the chronicle of the Catholic Church in Quebec and the Canadian North West. It is a study of how clerical elites influenced society and its evolution and an account of an attempt to transplant and nurture and idealized agricultural society of Quebec on the prairies. As a pioneer French Canadian Oblate missionary and bishop A.-A. Taché was associated with some of the most momentous events in western Canadian history: the Red River Insurrection, French Catholic colonization, the Saskatchwan Rebellion and the school and language controversies in Manitoba and the North West Territories. Taché was an authoritarian figure and this tendency was reinforced by religious and episcopal office. In practice he was a micro manager who desired to control everything. Despite his valiant efforts his vision of a sister province of Quebec in the West failed to materialize and Quebec failed to respond to his urgent pleas for immigrants and Quebec politicians undermined his efforts by suggesting that he had betrayed his native province. Taché’s career is also a chronicle of failure and frustration but he took consolation in the fact that he had not shirked his duty nor tarnished his honour. Within this context Taché’s actions are a reminder of sacred accords concluded between English and French, Catholic and Protestant in 1867 and 1870. As an administrator Taché’s forte was in managing the material assets of his diocese. On the other hand, he lacked interpersonal skills in dealing and relating with his clergy. In the final analysis Taché will always remain an enigmatic figure.

Download or read book On the Pope written by Joseph de Maistre and published by . This book was released on 2021-12-25 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the Pope (Du Pape) is the main political-philosophical work of the counter-revolutionary writer and philosopher, Joseph de Maistre. Maistre worked for 20 years on the writing of his magnum opus, a book that laid the foundation for his invention of political ultramontanism. Ultramontanism was a school of thought of the Catholic Church that promoted the doctrine of central papal supremacy in matters of governance and spirituality. Championed by Pope Pius IX, the ultramontanists attained their greatest triumph in the late 19th century with the formal proclamation of papal primacy and infallibility. On the Pope is divided into four parts. In the first part, Maistre makes the argument for his thesis that there is "no pope without the supremacy which belongs to him" and "no Catholicism without one pope." His argument in favor of papal infallibility stands out in the history of theology because he was among the earliest Catholic writers to openly discuss the doctrine. Part two reveals the key components of Maistre's political thought: His absolutist ideas about the nature of sovereignty, his unique argument for the divine origins of all forms of political sovereignty, and his rejection of social contract theories on the origin of society and sovereignty. Part three is devoted to demonstrating Maistre's argument that, above all, nations need a higher sovereign to help protect against the abuses of power, and that this sovereign should be the pope, as the savior and creator of European civilization. He argues that the only nations that have known civil liberty are those which "have remained sufficiently under the influence of the Sovereign Pontiff." Part four deals primarily with "schismatic churches." Maistre felt that the schismatic churches would inevitably fall into Protestantism, and from Protestantism through Socinianism into philosophic indifference. For "no religion can resist science, except one."

Download or read book Poor Laws Ireland written by Sir George Nicholls and published by . This book was released on 1838 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Acts of Union written by Dáire Keogh and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Act of Union united England and Ireland in 1800 under an English parliament that forbade Catholics from participating: it endured until 1922. The 14 essays of this collection consider various aspects of the Act of Union, including Catholic responses, depictions of the Act in cartoons (these are