Reconciliation after Conquest: Edmund Burke’s ‘Cosmopolitanism’

SummaryAlthough ‘Burke and Irish history’ is a theme which has long been known to modern commentators, it has not necessarily been addressed sufficiently. This essay seeks to put forward a more comprehensive account of Burke's views on Irish history than has previously been offered by scholars. According to Burke, the protection of Christianity had brought flourishing science to seventh- and eighth-century Ireland. Nevertheless, the nation was plunged into a barbarous state after the invasions of the Danes and other northern tribes. Burke's sympathy with the Brehon law was possibly unique, although he was not uncritical of it. Unlike the Irish patriots, his chief concern with historical Ireland was not the origins of the Irish legislature. He was rather most interested in the religious affairs which had continued to plague the nation during history. Throughout his career, Burke considered the Irish Rebellion of 1641 to have been ‘provoked’, and continuously endeavoured to remove the penal laws imposed on the Roman Catholics after the Williamite Conquest of 1689–1691. In his view, despite the substantial increase in prosperity after 1688/9, the series of religious persecutions, as well as other oppressive policies, had still obstructed the further progress of Irish society.

Ties That Bind: Walter Rauschenbusch, Reinhold Niebuhr, and the Quest for Economic Justice

Biblical Theology Fred W. Guyette, Christopher T. Begg, Thomas Hieke, and Carol J. Dempsey OP Fred W. Guyette Erskine College and Seminary Christopher T. Begg Catholic University of America Thomas Hieke Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz Carol J. Dempsey OP University of Portland 674. [Christian Ethics and the Hebrew Bible] Julián Andrés and González Holguín, "Christian Ethics and the Hebrew Bible," The Cambridge Companion to the Hebrew Bible and Ethics, 306-19 [see #777]. There are good reasons to be suspicious of people who claim to know "exactly what the Bible says" on a certain subject—as if they owned it themselves. Something that would be much more exciting, although potentially much more troubling, too, is an encounter with Scripture itself and the mysterious questions raised by Bible stories. Genesis 22 is a good example of a story that resists any definitive interpretation. Abraham brings his cherished son Isaac to Mt. Moriah for the sole purpose of sacrificing him, according to God's command. To obey God is normally a good thing, yes? But what if we should "hear" God commanding us to do something immoral? Would we not question the wisdom of our doing so, at least? Abraham does not understand why God wants this to happen. At the last possible moment, an angel appears to Abraham and tells him to stop what he is doing. "Do not harm the boy!" But again, we do not know why. Judging by the subsequent chapters in Genesis, Isaac was traumatized by Abraham's apparent willingness to go through with the sacrifice. Sarah was traumatized, too. Their experience on Mt. Moriah was just that terrifying. As for Abraham, he does not have much to say to anyone after what happened on Mt. Moriah. Isaac becomes deeply contemplative, almost completely silent. Rather than taking the initiative to seek a bride for himself, a young woman must be found for Isaac. His marriage to Rebecca has to be arranged by others, lest Abraham and Sarah end up without descendants. And yet, the message Moses hears at the burning bush does confirm Isaac's role in salvation history as Christians understand it: "I am the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." What does this all prove? That questions might be more important than answers when it comes to reflection in Christian theology and ethics.—F.W.G. Google Scholar 675. [Protection of Strangers in the Pentateuchal Law Codes] José Antonio Bande García, "La protección hacia el extranjero en los principales códigos legales del Pentateucho," StOv 47 (2019) 247-60. The centerpiece of B.'s essay is his survey of the three major pentateuchal legal codes, i.e., the Covenant Code of Exodus 21–23; the Deuteronomic Code of Deuteronomy 12–26; and the Holiness Code of Leviticus 17–26 and their respective laws concerning Israel's dealings with foreigners with whom it comes in contact against the background of the given code's historical context. This central portion of his study is preceded by remarks on Israel's own experience of living in a land not its own and of Yhwh's accompaniment of its ancestors on their way toward the land allotted them by Yhwh as a motivation for all the pentateuchal laws enjoining respect for strangers, as well as a consideration of the Hebrew terms (zār, nokrî, and gēr) which the laws use in reference to various categories of non-Israelites. The essay concludes with a synthesis of the pentateuchal laws' message concerning the required treatment of the stranger and its ongoing relevance for contemporary Christians living in a highly mobile and globalizing world.—C.T.B. [End Page 225] Google Scholar 676. [Jewish Ethics and the Hebrew Bible] Deborah Barer, "Jewish Ethics and the Hebrew Bible," The Cambridge Companion to the Hebrew Bible and Ethics, 291-305 [see #777]. Jewish ethics are often misunderstood, especially when their scope is reduced to questions such as: "What does the Law say about that?" What halakhah teaches is less like a formulaic "answer," and more like a mode of reasoning or working through a...

This article seeks to investigate the methodology of Ismāʿīl Rājī al-Fārūqī, a contemporary Muslim scholar recognised as an authority on Islam and comparative religion, in the study of Christianity based on his masterpiece “Christian Ethics: A Historical and Systematic Analysis of its Dominant Ideas.” The goal of this article is to study al-Fārūqī’s genuine and comprehensive work through which he presents a new approach toward the understanding of Christianity, highlighting its ethical aspect. Its significance lies in defining the value of the methodology he used in the study of Christian dogma and ethics. This article uses historical, descriptive, and interpretative analytical methods throughout the entire work. This study discusses: (1) al-Fārūqī’s short biography; (2) al-Fārūqī’s work on Christianity; and (3) the interpretive analysis of al-Fārūqī’s methodology in the light of selected text from his work on “Christian Ethics.” The outcomes of this research provide new insights into the existing body of knowledge concerning Muslims’ experience in the study of other religions, which is very advantageous for contemporary scholars of comparative religion.

Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics. By Lisa Sowie Cahill. New Studies in Christian Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xiv + 314 pp. $104.99 (cloth).This thoroughgoing book carefully builds an argument that a Christian ethic of global justice must be rooted in Christology. Cahill notes that, with mixed trepidation and courage, she set out question convictions about Christ, church, and politics, while hoping for a productive critique (p. 28). As if that were not a full project, she seeks to give biblical and logical reasons for Christian commitment justice, show why action is necessarily a criterion of authentic Christian theology, and give ground for Christian hope that change in violent structures really is possible (p. 1). All in all, Global Justice, Christology and Christian Ethics successfully meets these challenges and is well worth the reader's careful attention.Foregrounding what is at stake, Cahill provides a full account of sin and evil. In discussing this reality, she begins with creation, exploring biblical narratives such as the fall and that of Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. She reads these stories carefully and critically. Finally, she turns Job. After examining Gods response Job, she notes that to be in relation God is be in relation with one another, which is the central message of the creation narrative (p. 73).The several chapters on Christology would serve well as a collegiate or graduate level primer. She begins by arguing that the biblical narratives of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection shape Christian ethics, and that his ministry provides content salvation. As a result, Cahill carefully situates Jesus of Nazareth in his historical context, noting that he was an apocalyptic prophet for the reign of God who was particularly inclusive of the poor, women, and Gentiles. Next, Cahill seeks reconcile Word and Spirit Christologies, showing their essential connection and validation in the practical Christian life (p. 132). She then shows how these theories are both compat- ible and mutually informative, which creates a picture of Jesus Christ who is both Word-incarnate and animated by the Spirit. This section also includes an analysis of the teachings of the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. Noting that Nicaea and Chalcedon accept paradox, she suggests that multiplicity is the only true answer in Christology. Her arguments for holding multiple Christologies in tension-as well as her similar argument about soteriologies-are an important contribution. …

The representational politics of European cinema and literature were effectively determinant in shaping and reflecting the values and the ideologies of the dominant parties in dealing with encounters and representing cultural difference. Conditioned by the synchronous historical and political contexts, the work of stereotyping has persisted and Continued in deploying almost the same tropes and metaphors of representation that have been in operation since the medieval ages, constructing a logic of binarization of encounters on asymmetrical grounds. This article explores the genealogy of representation of North Africans in European cinema and literature, focusing on the metamorphosis of its dominant tropes and stereotypes over centuries. It addresses the ways fictional representation of North Africans, especially Moroccans, reinforce the orientalizing discourse of power, domination, and hegemonic construction of cultural difference on stereotypical and judgmental basis. It suggests that the visual and literary representation of North Africans has constantly kept appearing, disappearing, shifting and redefining in response to the prevailing political and historical contexts that shaped encounters between Europeans and North Africans. To track the mutation of the stereotype, its intertextuality and its hierarchical structures of power, Edward Said’s colonial discourse analysis and Homi Bhabha’s conceptualization of the stereotype will be used as theoretical frameworks in this article.

School violence is a persistent international crisis, yet most analyses of the problem are very local in their focus. Many theories of school violence lack not only an international perspective but also political and historical contexts (Astor et al., 2006; Ohsako, 1997; Smith et al., 1999). This chapter argues two points. First, that theories stemming from work dating from the mid-twentieth century Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States are not always adequate in understanding school violence in a cross-national perspective in the early twenty-first century. Second, theories that account for historical and political contexts may be more valid in accounting for school violence in countries that are usually not at the forefront of theory development. In other words, though theories developed in the United Kingdom, Western Europe and the United States may have had validity in their own contexts, they do not necessarily transfer automatically to countries that have experienced vastly different histories and political situations.

Recent work in ancient art history has sought to move beyond formalist interpretations of works of art to a concern to understand ancient images in terms of a broader cultural, political, and historical context. In the study of late Republican portraiture, traditional explanations of the origins of verism in terms of antecedent influences — Hellenistic realism, Egyptian realism, ancestral imagines — have been replaced by a concern to interpret portraits as signs functioning in a determinate historical and political context which serves to explain their particular visual patterning. In this paper I argue that, whilst these new perspectives have considerably enhanced our understanding of the forms and meanings of late Republican portraits, they are still flawed by a failure to establish a clear conception of the social functions of art. I develop an account of portraits which shifts the interpretative emphasis from art as object to art as a medium of socio-cultural action. Such a shift in analytic perspective places art firmly at the centre of our understanding of ancient societies, by snowing that art is not merely a social product or a symbol of power relationships, but also serves to construct relationships of power and solidarity in a way in which other cultural forms cannot, and thereby transforms those relationships with determinate consequences.

The volunteer tourism program (VTP) is a popular form of travel for young tourists in which adventure travel is paired with short-term ‘volunteer’ placements in host communities around the countries of the global South. VTPs are now a routine mode of travel or pre-university ‘training’ for wealthy young people from across North America and Western Europe and exist outside of any historical or political context. They promise adventure travel, altruistic volunteer experiences, and an authentic experience of the other, whom the volunteer can help to transform. If not for the long history of intervention and domination that normalizes this new incarnation of the ‘civilizing mission’, the knowledge claims and authority asserted by the VTP would hardly appear so acceptable. The VTP exists in a cultural blind spot made possible by North–South relations structured on intervention and transformation of the other. This paper critically examines the promotional discourses of VTP providers and identifies the discursive strategies employed to normalize, encode, and legitimate the practice of volunteer intervention. VTP discourses legitimate volunteer intervention through representations of the host community that imagine poverty and authenticity as presenting a need for volunteers and through constructions of a volunteer identity that allows for travel outside of political and historical contexts. I suggest that the VTP can best be understood as a manifestation of continuing patterns of exploitation and domination of the global South, whereby VTP intervention discursively positions itself as ‘innocent’ of the very historical and political trends that make it possible.

When the past haunts the present: Intergroup forgiveness and historical closure in post World War II societies in Asia and in Europe

Anthropologist Brighton (Maryland) offers a historical archaeological investigation of the diaspora of Ireland, reflecting the migration of Irish immigrants to the US during a turbulent period in Irish history from the mid-1840s to the 1850s. Brighton's work is the first to offer a study through an archaeological lens connecting Irish communities spanning two continents and covering four sites: two in Ireland, specifically, in County Roscommon, and two in the US, the Five Points section of Manhattan, New York, as well as the historically Irish community in Paterson, New Jersey. There have been some recent diasporic studies on Irish migrations of the 19th century, such as Catherine Nash's Of Irish Descent: Origin Stories, Genealogy, and the Politics of Belonging (2008). However, Brighton's technique is inspired from transnational investigations of the African diaspora to the Atlantic This volume can serve as an excellent research tool for students of Ireland as well as diasporic archaeology. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All students of archaeology of the modern world. --B. C. Ryan, Syracuse University, Choice Between 1845 and 1852, a watershed event in Ireland's history--the Great Hunger--forced more than one million starved and dispossessed people, most of them poor tenant farmers, to leave their native country for the shores of the United States. Further weakened by the arduous voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, many sought refuge in the harbor cities in which they landed. Not surprisingly, Irish immigrants counted as one quarter of New York City's population during the 1850s. In Historical Archaeology of the Irish Diaspora, Stephen A. Brighton places Irish and Irish American material culture within a broad historical context, including the waves of immigration that preceded the Famine and the development of the Irish American communities that followed it. He meticulously details the archaeological research connected with excavations at two pre-Famine sites in County Roscommon, Ireland, and with several immigrant tenements located in the Five Points, Manhattan, and the Dublin section of nearby Paterson, New Jersey. Using this transnational approach to link artifacts and ceramics found in rural Ireland with those discovered in sites in the urban, northeastern United States, Brighton also employs contemporary diaspora studies to illustrate how various factions sustained a distinct homeland connection even as the Irish were first alienated from, and then gradually incorporated into, American society. With more than forty million Americans claiming Irish ancestry, fully understanding Ireland's traumatic history and its impact on the growth of the United States remains a vital task for researchers on both sides of the Atlantic. Brighton's study of lived experience follows a fascinating historical path that will aid scholars in a variety of disciplines. Stephen A. Brighton is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Maryland. His articles have appeared in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology and Historical Archaeology.

This thesis draws on findings from four case studies conducted in Kenya, East Africa, to investigate the entrepreneuring process associated with community-based tourism. This is accomplished by examining the influences of the historical, social, and political context, community needs, and the actors involved on the creation and development of community-based tourism (CBT) enterprises. The thesis is informed by a recognition that little has been written on CBT enterprise creation and development processes. Instead, the majority of CBT analyses have focused on outcomes; yet understanding how CBT enterprises are created and developed is crucial to determining not only their success, but also their importance as social institutions. Practice theory represents a suitable framework for interpreting the complex web of interactions that underlies the process of CBT enterprise establishment and functioning. Using a multiple case study approach, this thesis investigates four Kenyan CBT enterprises by drawing on in-depth interviews, supplemented by document data and participant observations. A total of 48 interview participants were drawn from across several key role-groups, including CBT founders, community members, and members of government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The combined data indicate that CBT enterprise creation in each of these four cases was driven by the need to address serious problems faced by the community, such as poverty, drought, human-wildlife conflict, and loss of access to traditional land. These findings strongly suggest that the creation and development of CBT enterprises is underpinned by a purposive process of creation. Viewed through an entrepreneuring lens, such creation can be interpreted as a form of coping and surviving within actors’ and communities’ lived environments. The process unearthed in these case studies is one of complex interaction between various actors from within and outside the communities, and the situational demands of these settings. Furthermore, it is characterised by drawing on learnable concepts such as practical wisdom, analogising and improvisation, being community-focused, built on trust, and addressing unequal power relations. This thesis contributes to CBT theory by articulating possible means by which CBT could address poverty, and enhance community agency and solidarity. It also highlights the significance of practice theorisation in understanding the processes of building local community institutions in marginal rural settings. The research reveals new possibilities of approaching CBT as a complex field involving innovative partnerships and collaborations that are able to address local issues in an agentic manner; it also shows CBT to be a means of community development by which historically and culturally embedded structural limitations to socio-economic change can be overcome in diverse peripheral localities. The findings may prove applicable beyond the field of CBT.

Infrastructural projects and socio-cultural construction of space in Gorski kotar

Reviewed by: God, Science, Sex, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics Margaret Robinson P.B. Jung and A.M. Vigen , eds. God, Science, Sex, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010. Pp. 296. Paper, US$30.00. ISBN 978-0-252-07724-1. The essays in this collection respond to recent social developments such as legally recognized same-sex marriage, passing of hate crime legislation, increasing visibility of inter-sex, transgendered, and transsexual people, and the ordination of out gays and lesbians. The aim of the book is to urge Christian ethicists to use interdisciplinary scholarship as a foundation for Christian ethics, and the essays themselves demonstrate its success. Several authors show their familiarity with the other writings in the collection and respond to them in their own work, creating a sense that the reader is witnessing a dialogue. God, Science, Sex, Gender contains fifteen essays, an introduction, and a conclusion, and is organized into three parts. The first section, “Establishing Base Points for [End Page 128] Dialogue,” sets science and religion in historical context with essays on power dynamics in the Catholic Church and the field of science. In “Medieval Attitudes toward Philosophia Naturalis in Relation to Scientia Moralis,” Francis J. Catania proposes the methodology of Albert Magnus and Thomas Aquinas as a model for present-day ethical dialogue. We could learn much, he argues, from their interdisciplinary investigation and from the tentative nature of their conclusions. He uses homosexuality as a test case and relates this approach to the essays in this same volume by Joan Roughgarden and Stephen J. Pope. The second section, “Reflecting on Human and Sexual Diversity,” brings in dialogue partners from science and the humanities. The biological chapters do a good job of framing current research on the animal kingdom and of establishing the relevance of such work for theology. While Joan Roughgarden points out that science’s search for truth is sometimes tainted by bias, and Aana Marie Vigen notes that the findings of science must be rigorously tested, for the most part the essays share an optimism about the benefits that would accrue to moral theology by better incorporating scientific knowledge. The star of the collection is Joan Roughgarden’s essay, “Evolutionary Biology and Sexual Diversity.” Roughgarden critiques Charles Darwin’s theory of sexual selection and notes the reluctance of scientists to question his hypothesis. Roughgarden offers a theory of social selection, which favours practices and social bonds that are not directly reproductive (such as homosexuality) but do enhance reproduction and survival. Her work breaks new ground in offering concrete moral deductions from the scientific data, and several writers respond to her work in their own essays. In Part 3, “Sexual Diversity and Christian Moral Theology,” the authors attempt to demonstrate how Christian ethicists might incorporate science into their work on specific moral issues. Stephen J. Pope’s article, “Social Selection and Sexual Diversity: Implications for Christian Ethics,” places Roughgarden’s social selection theory in dialogue with the sexual ethics of Pope John Paul II and Catholic feminist Margaret Farley. This article is significant in that Pope takes a step beyond dialogue, to propose concrete changes in Catholic theology and practice. This collection is at its best when it offers scientifically grounded arguments on specific moral issues, and Pope’s contribution is a good example. Patricia Beattie Jung and Joan Roughgarden’s “Gender in Heaven: The Story of the Ethiopian Eunuch In Light of Evolutionary Biology” is a solid piece of biblical exegesis done in light of historical critical research on eunuchs and current scientific research on intersex people. This article stands out as an example of how the theory behind this collection might function on concrete issues of sex and gender. In the Conclusion, “Descriptive and Normative Ways of Understanding Human Nature,” Vigen argues that Christian ethics must place greater value on human experience in its task of forming normative claims about sexuality and gender. Because we are an embodied creation, experience is not simply one theological resource among others, but is the lens through which we understand all other sources of knowledge. Individual scholars, Vigen argues, cannot wait for the use of...

Christian ethics revolves around morality that concentrates on whether an action is morally good or bad. It implies that Christian ethics which is a branch of religious ethics ensures that people’s actions are in tandem with the acceptable moral standard, thereby contributing a lot in human moral development. It becomes worrisome that despite Christian ethics, corruption is perpetrated freely in Nigeria without those concerned having requisite moral Compunction to abstain from corrupt acts. This ugly situation diminishes the role of Christian ethics in human moral development. Therefore it has become necessary to examine the factors that militate against Christian ethics in Nigeria which has made it possible for people, particularly politicians to engage in all sorts of corrupt acts. The work made use of phenomenological approach. It was descriptive and analytical. The work used primary and secondary sources. The primary source includes observation while secondary sources include books, journals, internet materials, encyclopedia and so on. Despite the fact that Nigeria is predominantly Christians, Nigeria is classified as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. There is no doubt that most of the Christians do not apply Christian ethics in their workplace due to Colonialism, Secularization, Materialism, change of moral values, irreligious attitude, Family background, Western influence, Imported religion and so on.Keywords: Christian, Ethics and Corruption