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 Yvain written by Chretien de Troyes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1987-09-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes is a major figure in European literature. His courtly romances fathered the Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England as well as on the continent. Yet because of the difficulty of capturing his swift-moving style in translation, English-speaking audiences are largely unfamiliar with the pleasures of reading his poems. Now, for the first time, an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet provides a translation of Chrétien’s major poem, Yvain, in verse that fully and satisfyingly captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original. Yvain is a courtly romance with a moral tenor; it is ironic and sometimes bawdy; the poetry is crisp and vivid. In addition, the psychological and the socio-historical perceptions of the poem are of profound literary and historical importance, for it evokes the emotions and the values of a flourishing, vibrant medieval past.

Download or read book The Great Cat Massacre written by Robert Darnton and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark history of France and French culture in the eighteenth-century, a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730s held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could lay their hands on, why did they find it so hilariously funny that they choked with laughter when they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the eighteenth-century version of Little Red Riding Hood did the wolf eat the child at the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpelier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions the distinguished Harvard historian Robert Darnton answers The Great Cat Massacre, a kaleidoscopic view of European culture during in what we like to call "The Age of Enlightenment." A classic of European history, it is an essential starting point for understanding Enlightenment France.

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 The City in the Ancient World written by Mason Hammond and published by . This book was released on 2013-10 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 Scaldic Poetry written by Gabriel Turville-Petre and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1976 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Gravestone and Epigram written by Christoph W. Clairmont and published by . This book was released on 1970 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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 The Tremendum written by Arthur Allen Cohen and published by Burns & Oates. This book was released on 1993 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A profound and important book... the best book on the Holocaust interpreted by a theologian of Judaism". -- Jacob Neusner

Download or read book A dialogue concerning heresies written by Thomas More and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Achilleion written by Marija Gimbutas and published by Cotsen Institute of Archaeology. This book was released on 1989 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich picture of village life in the 7th and 6th millennia BC, as seen through the excavations of an important site in Greece. Especially noteworthy is the extensive corpus ofmaterials relating to domestic cult practice (figurines and vessels). Also included are specialist studies of faunal and floral remains, lithics, and radiocarbon dates.

Download or read book Europe Since 1870 written by James Joll and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The United States in Opposition written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A majority of the world's nations believe that there are claims which can be made on individual nation's wealth that are both considerable and threatening to countries such as the United States. This attitude was demonstrated in the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1974. It may be argued that this attitude is a result of the British revolution which began in 1947 with the granting of independence to socialist India. The British revolution of the second quarter of the 20th century attracted little attention. While everyone recognized that new states were coming into existence from former European and mostly British colonies, it was not generally perceived that they came to independence with a preexisting stable ideological base which was British socialism. The spread of British socialism to the furthest reaches of the globe, with its ascent to dominance in the highest national councils everywhere, gives worldwide significance to the British revolution. Of the 87 states that have joined the United Nations since its founding, more than one-half (47) had been part of the British empire. Socialism, as it developed in Great Britain was anti-U.S. because the United States was viewed as capitalistic. The United States has not dealt with these new nations successfully because they did not recognize this ideology. At the level of world affairs, the United States has learned to deal with communism; the task is now to learn to deal with socialism. (SM)

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."