Church Hierarchy Research Articles

Klauzūros ir neturto problema Kauno bernardinių vienuolyne

The Issue of Enclosure and Poverty in the Convent of Bernardines in Kaunas The Council of Trent established that all convents had to adhere to strict enclosure. Western historiography notes that this Tridentine decree met with resistance in many countries and was only partially implemented. The article deals with the case of the Bernardine convent in Kaunas, which existed from the end of the sixteenth century until 1864. The Bernadine nuns of Kaunas followed the Rule of the Third Order of St Francis, which was adapted for the Bernardine monasteries of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and printed in 1740. It placed great emphasis on enclosure, poverty, and communality and foresaw severe physical punishment for transgressions. In practical life, however, this did not stop the development of distinctive customs in the Bernardine convent of Kaunas. Occasional visitations (1767, 1781) or the nuns’ letters to the bishop showed that the convent was in violation of enclosure and poverty and that there was no fence separating the enclosed part of the nuns’ living quarters from the folwark. The Bernadine nuns of Kaunas had their own understanding of enclosure and poverty: they interacted with the servants (even male servants), maids, residents, and pupils, who lived on the territory of the convent. In this way, the nuns were not detached from the worldly affairs, but communality was endangered. Although enclosure was observed formally and the Bernadine nuns of Kaunas did not appear in public, only they knew what went on behind the high walls of the convent. The Church hierarchy tried to change this, but the results of the reforms were only partial and temporary. The Bernardine convent of Kaunas attracted women of all backgrounds, especially the relatives of the nuns; here they found shelter from various life situations and became involved in the spiritual life of the convent. On the other hand, they often distracted and divided the community, and the funds allocated for the nuns’ needs were used for their upkeep. Keywords: Kaunas, (Bernardine) convent of the Rule of the Third Order of St Francis, enclosure, poverty.

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH OF GEORGIA AND THE ECUMENICAL MOVEMENT (BEFORE AND AFTER 1997)

The article analyzes the stance of the Orthodox Church of Georgia (OCG) towards the Ecumenical Movement before and after OCG’s departure from the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the Conference of European Churches (CEC) in 1997, and documents the controversies accompanying this development. Up until the 1990s, the hierarchy of the OCG was outstanding for its energetic ecumenical activities within the country as well as in the international arena. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the gaining of independence, religious nationalism and a hostile attitude towards religious and ethnic minorities grew stronger in Georgia. Having been tainted by a Soviet past, a mass mentality found such phenomena as pluralism, equality, religious freedom, etc, characteristic of the free world, to be foreign. A contingent of Orthodox fundamentalistsis gradually growing stronger in the OCG, which considers the defense of Orthodoxy against ‘sects’ and the ‘ruinous’ innovations of the West its holy obligation. Since the middle of the 1990s, this group intensified its agitation against ‘ecumenism’, and its pressure on the church hierarchy to keep its distance, threatening with schism in the worst case. This anti-ecumenical propaganda organized by monks is supported by a part of the married clergy, their parishes, the media, and some politicians. The OCG was eventually forced to leave the WCC and the CEC, although it inflicted church penances upon the monks leading the rebellion. Some of the anti-ecumenist monks go even further and are demanding the OCG to cease Eucharistic communion with all the Orthodox churches who are still members of ecumenical organizations. As the OCG would not satisfy this demand, the result was an actual schism of the radical anti-ecumenists and the foundation of their own ‘Truly Orthodox’ Church in Georgia.

The Mouseiad and Other Mock Epics [Myszeis

<i>The Mouseiad and Other Mock Epics</i> [Myszeis

Спор Никеи и Никомидии на Халкидонском соборе за статус митрополии: гражданский аспект

Introduction. The subject of research in this paper refers to the imperial edict, conferring the title of metropolis on the city of Nicaea in 364 AD, and the imperial rescript of the same year, confirming the rights of Nicomedia to the same title and the status of the first city of the province. The documents were presented by bishops of Nicaea and Nicomedia in the course of litigation between them at the 4th Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon (451 AD). The objectives of this work are to present the translation of these documents and substantiate its correctness in comparison with other available translations into foreign languages. Further task is to identify and highlight through commenting those realities of the Roman world, which are reflected in the analyzed documents. Methods. The work is based on the application of the historical-critical method of analysing source data of the original texts, compiled in Greek. Analysis. The article deals with the dating of the documents, the peculiarities of the terms and expressions used in them, which regard to intercity relations in Roman times, the issue of city statuses and traditional elements of the provincial ceremonies associated with the imperial cult. In this context, special attention is given to the edict for Nicaea, which is dedicated to the metropolis status of Nicaea, and deals with peculiar ceremonial issues of “coronation”, “procession”, and the office of Bithyniarch. Results. The litigation between Nicaea and Nicomedia is a clear evidence of the preservation of ancient Hellenistic and Roman traditions in the era of the Christian empire. The fact that the bishop of Nicaea at the Ecumenical Council, in justifying the ecclesiastical and administrative rights of his city, resorted to arguments drawn from the sphere of intercity relations within the framework of the traditional provincial assemblies, speaks for the connection between the institutions of provincial assemblies and church councils. The author concludes that the traditional forms of urban life, intercity relations within the province and determination of the status of cities by traditional criteria were of key importance for the position of the city in the system of the provincial church hierarchy.

Purity rules in Pentecostal Uganda

Rules concerning romantic relationships and sex—what we term ‘purity rules’—are central to Pentecostalism in Uganda. In public church arenas, the born-again variant of the rules laid down during Uganda’s ‘ABC’ response to HIV/AIDS — ‘abstain till marriage and be faithful once you marry’—are presented as clear and non-negotiable. Yet in church members’ lives, and in their conversations with each other or in small church groups, space is often created for interpretation and deliberation about the officially strict rules. In this article, we use ethnographic material from fieldwork in urban Pentecostal churches in Uganda to describe how rules work on people, and people work on rules. We describe this process of relational ‘rulework’ as taking place at the nexus of an individual’s relationship to the church, to small groups at the church, and to God. The dynamics of rulework become particularly evident at occasions where rules are transgressed, or where the nature of the rules—and thus of possible transgression—is questioned. Three central axes of rulework can be identified: first, the (claimed) transgressor’s position in church hierarchy; second, the level of publicity at which their transgression is made known to others; and third, their relationship to God. Approaching rules as objects of anthropological analysis foregrounds how what Morgan Clarke (2015) has called the ‘ruliness’ of religious traditions, and what we describe as the messiness of religious adherents’ lives, exist in parallel with each other. Where ‘ruliness’ and ‘messiness’ interact is where rulework takes place and where it can most productively be ethnographically observed. Keywords: Morality, ethics, religion, sex, transgression

Cultural Impacts of Social Movements: Feminism within the Catholic Church in Spain

This article studies the cultural impacts of social movements targeting non-state institutions. Using printed primary sources, bibliography and press clippings, the case of the feminist protest within the Catholic Church in Spain after 1975 is analysed from a comparative perspective. This research shows that cultural products (books, articles and other published texts) constitute a principal cultural outcome of the aforementioned protest. Some characteristics of the targeted institution, such as the intransigency of the Church hierarchy to feminist demands, made policy consequences impossible. Yet activists managed to produce cultural outputs and disseminate them to their movement constituency thanks to allies’ support; the use of the Spanish language as a vehicle for mobilisation; and the utilisation of activists’ locations within the Church and in society as sites from which to spread their world-views and demands.

Почему Казанская кафедра вдовствовала в 1574–1575 гг.? (штрих к истории церковного управления в России XVI века)

The article deals with the reasons of the absence of the Kazan archbishop, the head of one of the most huge dioceses in the Russian Church in the 16th century, which took the third place in the church hierarchy. It was turned out that probably because of the state of health in February of 1574 archbishop Lavrentii (1568–1574) left it. Earlier he was the abbot of the Volotskii Monastery of St. Josef. Gurii (Rugotin) (1555–1563), German (Sadyrev-Polev) (1564–1567), the Kazan archbishops were also from the Volotskii Monastery of St. Josef. It was impossible to appoint the abbot of the Volotskii Monastery of St. Josef Tikhon (Khvorostinin) (1573–1575) or another one from this monastery to this position in 1574 because of the harmful consequences of the epidemics of 1560-1570s. The Volotskii Monastery and such large monasteries like Trinity-St. Sergius Monastery, the Simonov Monastery etc. lost the significant number of experienced monks prepared for the governing of monasteries and dioceses. Because of the domination of the meritocratical principles in the selection of candidates there were no chances to do something with the lack of prepared monks in a relatively short time. That’s why the authorities in the last third of the 16th century appointed the representatives of less famous monasteries such as the Mahrishchskii Monastery, the Starickii Monastery of Assumption, the Gerasimov Boldin Monastery. In the February of 1575 the representative of the Ipat'ev Monastery in Kostroma, the archbishop of the Novospasskii Monastery Vassian was appointed the head of the Kazan diocese. However he dead in May of 1575. In July of 1575 the abbot of the Volotskii Monastery of St. Josef Tikhon (Khvorostinin) was appointed the head of the Kazan diocese. It was possible because of the personal interference o Ivan IV. He arrived at the Volotskii Monastery of St. Josef and in fact appointed Evfimii (Turkov) (who had denied to become the abbot in 1573) the successor of Tikhon. The research rests on the materials of acts, records of income and expenses, records of donations of the Volotskii Monastery of St. Josef and another monasteries.

Православное простонародное движение «канонников» и движение «курдюковцев» конца 1920-х гг. в Оренбургском округе Средневолжского края

A Christian 's need for extra-liturgical evangelical activity has always existed in the Christian Church and it msanifests itself in intracommunal interation and in service to God, in living the Gospel and in the fullness of life in Christ. Such spiritual aspirations could lead to creating new orthodox communi-ties or to church splits and secrarianism. Those movements often were a reaction to some doubtful or misunderstood activities of the church hierarchy. Various movements of laymen in the Russian Ortho-dox Church through the centuries of its history have been littke-studied and arouse genuine interest in the church environment. The srticle describes the activitiy of orthodox communities such as so-called «canonists» first discovered in the archival documents in the Buzuluk county of Samara province and in the Orenburg county of Orenburg province (since 1928 the Orenburg area of the Middle Volga region). The «canonists» were assessed ambiguously by their contemporaries. The problem is by the in-fluence of so-called «khlystovism» widespread in Russia at the turn of the 20 century. There are exam-ples of alternative communities of so-called «talkers» and «adherents of the orthodox church» and the opposite example of the religious community under the direction of hieromonk Erast (Kurdukov). Like the «canonists» they lived in apocalyptic expectations and existed in late 1920s in Orenburg and in the Orenburg county (later area). The study of laymen community phenomenon helps to adopt positive ex-perience and to avoid mistakes in the activitiy of modern religious organisations.

Harold B. Lee and Mormonism's Black Priesthood and Temple Ban

Harold B. Lee and Mormonism's Black Priesthood and Temple Ban

Joseph Fielding Smith's Evolving Views on Race: The Odyssey of a Mormon Apostle-President

Joseph Fielding Smith's Evolving Views on Race: The Odyssey of a Mormon Apostle-President

Seeking to Understand the Opposition to the Relief Society Activities of the Sesquicentennial Year

Seeking to Understand the Opposition to the Relief Society Activities of the Sesquicentennial Year

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

Drum Rhythms and Golden Scriptures: Reasons for Mormon Conversion Within Haiti's Culture of Vodou

Truth Seeker: The Life of Joseph F. Merrill, Scientist, Educator, and Apostle

Casey Paul Griffiths may be the foremost historian of the educational experience of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, including its universities, junior colleges, and Seminary and Institute program. Griffiths is knowledgeable, insightful, and balanced. His study of Joseph F. Merrill (1868–1952), a seminal player in the beginnings of the LDS education endeavor in the twentieth century, is an important contribution to LDS history generally and to LDS educational history in particular.Born before Utah statehood to a future apostle of the LDS church, Merrill straddled Utah's nineteenth- and twentieth-century cultures. After graduating from the University of Deseret in Salt Lake City, he pursued graduate studies at the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins, becoming among the first Utah-born PhD recipients. He returned to Utah in 1893 and taught physics and chemistry at the University of Utah and later headed its School of Mines (now College of Engineering). He married Annie Laura Hyde in 1898. A year after Hyde's death in 1917, he married Emily Traub, a recent convert to the LDS church.At the University of Utah, Merrill weathered several controversies, both political (he was a Democrat) and educational (notably the 1915 confrontation between faculty and the university's president). He was an early champion of LDS education and helped to found the first released-time high school LDS seminary in 1912. In 1928, the LDS church hired Merrill to head its church-wide school system. He helped to develop the first college-age institute and spearheaded a program encouraging church educators to gain advanced degrees at prestigious schools, primarily the University of Chicago. Merrill helped church education survive the beginnings of the Great Depression. In 1931, he was called as an apostle and, from 1933 to 1936, presided over the church's European missions. After a life of church service, he succumbed to a heart attack in 1952.In Griffiths's hands, Merrill emerges as one of the more liberal members of the LDS church hierarchy. This is not to say that Merrill was anywhere close to being a radical. But it seems clear that Merrill's embrace of education stood in contrast to the rigid conservatism of other more vocal and activist apostles. In fact, I cannot help but wonder how the intellectual climate and culture of Mormonism may have been affected had the ecumenism of Merrill and other like-minded LDS general authorities prevailed over the fundamentalist retrenchment initiatives of apostles Joseph Fielding Smith, J. Reuben Clark, Harold B. Lee, Bruce R. McConkie, and Boyd K. Packer. The prevailing argument in LDS church education circles today is that Smith, Clark, et al. saved the church from a left-wing turn to secular apostasy. But, having read Griffiths, I now wonder if Merrill's brand of liberalism was perhaps a better long-term strategy for securing a more intellectually savvy church membership, one less susceptible to, or at least better adept at navigating, so-called “faith crises.”I am sure I reveal more about my own biases, but I am surprised that Griffiths's fine biography was published by Brigham Young University's Religious Studies Center and the church's Deseret Book Company. Griffiths's approach seems to be too even-handed, too warts-and-all for such “official” imprimaturs. That Griffiths's study survived in-house review suggests that either I have been blinded by my own prejudices or that the BYU College of Religious Instruction (where Griffiths teaches) and the LDS church's publishing house are more supportive of a wider range of scholarship than I expected.Consider the following, for example. After the death of his first wife, Laura, by cancer, Merrill was depressed. Hoping to recover and move on, Merrill remarried sixteen months later. He soon discovered that he had acted too impetuously. In passages that seem almost too intimate to share, Griffiths quotes Merrill as lamenting: How many times have I repented! How much bitterness has come into my life? . . . The joy, the sweetness, the delight of living with a congenial companion can hardly be realized by those yoked together whose temperaments are as widely different as Millie's and mine seem to be. . . . If she could only come back to me—the mother of my children—the best wife that ever lived, the most loyal devoted, helpful companion ever given to man. . . . If only [Millie] were sympathetic, amiable! . . . I trusted too much. I took too much for granted. I hope too much. I acted hastily. . . . How long shall my miseries continue? I do not know (148).Relations between Merrill and Millie improved, but the decision of Griffiths and his publishers to quote Merrill at his most vulnerable speaks to their trust in their readers’ compassion.Griffiths's study deserves to be read by anyone interested in LDS history, Utah history, and LDS educational history. It also sets a high bar for LDS church–affiliated biographies.

"Neznesiteľná" farnosť ako spôsob perzekúcie kňaza v Hornom Uhorsku na začiatku 20. storočia: Prípad Karola Antona Medveckého v Bacúrove

The aim of the article is to present the process of persecution of Slovak Catholic priests in Upper Hungary at the beginning of the twentieth century. Hungarian bishops punished politically active priests by making them forcibly serve in the poorest parishes across all the Hungarian dioceses. It was a strategic way of Hungarianizing the Hungarian church hierarchy, which involved bullying them to morally and socially breaking non­-Hungarian priests. The article presents the priest Karol Anton Medvecký, who was in a dispute with the Bishop of Banskå Bystrica, Wolfgang Radnai. The bishop left Medvecký to work in the parish of Bacúrov for almost ten years, despite many requests for a transfer. The priest in the parish faced unsatisfactory building conditions, thefts from their parishioners, crop failure, economic shortages and isolation. In addition, Radnai did not even provide Medvecký with the position of pastor and paid him late. The bishop kept his own promise and did not transfer Medvecký to a more &#8216;bearable&#8217; parish. He only left Bacúrov after the founding of Czechoslovakia, when the bishop no longer had official power over him. After the First World War, the situation changed when Medvecký, as a ministerial secretary, personally oversaw the expulsion of Bishop Radnai from Czechoslovakia.

Institutional Betrayal, Psychoanalytic Insights on the Anglican Church’s Response to Abuse

Psychoanalysis can advance our understanding of responses from the hierarchy of mainstream religious denominations to disclosures of abuse by clergy. This paper takes analytic insights to discuss how and why the Anglican institutional church has responded so callously to disclosures of child sexual abuse within the church. Inhumane responses have led to feelings of institutional betrayal in survivor groups. The subject is explored firstly in the context of organizational and group dynamics, and, secondly, by analysing defences that underly the interaction between the person who has been abused and the member of the church hierarchy who is hearing the disclosure. Defences and deceptions have been consciously and unconsciously used within the organization that have obstructed contact with reality, and so hindered it both in fulfilling its task in responding appropriately to what has taken place, and in adapting to changing circumstances. Churches have been active agents in re-traumatising individuals. Examples to illustrate are taken from hearings on the Anglican Church by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in England, UK. The idea of organizational redemption is presented.

A juridical-canonical perspective of internal criticism in the Church: Act of service or treason?

In the last decade, we have witnessed a progressive increase in criticism of the Pope, the hierarchy, and the Roman Curia from within the Church itself. In this context of growing contestation and polarization, this paper addresses the legal-canonical admissibility of internal criticisms of the Church hierarchy. To this end, after first delimiting the concepts of criticism and hierarchy, the normative framework applicable to criticism is then described. This framework is essentially composed of canon 212 § 3 (which recognizes freedom of expression) and the canons 209 § 1, 212 § 1 and 223 § 1 (which establish the duties of communion and obedience). Then, the opportunities and dangers of internal criticism in the Church are analyzed. Finally, a series of criteria that may be useful for discerning the lawfulness of internal criticism in the Church is presented.

Smoot in New Light

The eight essays in this collection describe and interpret the US Senate's investigation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints during the Progressive Era. Nominally an investigative hearing on the election of Utah senator Reed Smoot, who was also a member of the Church's hierarchy, the four-year hearing interrogated for lawlessness the Church and its leadership, not only regarding its marital practices but also temple rites, economic holdings, and political activities. The larger history has been told by others; the contribution of this collection is to highlight and elaborate on some of the enduring questions raised by the hearings and personal detail obscured in other accounts.The book is divided into two parts: the first concerns the hearings’ public effect and the second, the actors. Konden Hansen's essay provides a theoretical frame to the essays that follow. He argues that “America's turn toward secularization began to grasp Mormonism only after” 1890 (9) and succeeded in disciplining it (as well as accepting Smoot) based on “new secular standards . . . rooted in liberal Protestant assumptions” (10) and defined by the triumph of “moral actions as opposed to theological principles” (43). Hansen credits the resolution of the Smoot hearings to Protestantism's “modernist crisis,” an internal and eventually schismatic struggle for orthodoxy, which produced twentieth-century conservative evangelicalism and evidenced the multi-determined decline of the WASP establishment.The remaining three essays in part one discuss, respectively, the Senate debate on whether to seat Smoot; the lawmaking efforts of the national anti-polygamy movements; and the attacks on polygamy after the Smoot hearings. Co-editor Michael Paulos's description of the statements, political positions, and scholarly interpretation of the Senate debate and its consequences will be very helpful to those new to this history. Byron and Kathryn Daynes trace anti-polygamy attitudes and efforts to amend the US Constitution. Although, as the authors say, there is little relation between these efforts and the Smoot hearings, their detailed charting of the fifty-five proposed amendments enables the reader to better understand and appreciate the scope and strength of the anti-polygamy protest. Largely in terms of the journalistic efforts of ex-Mormon Frank J. Cannon, or, as Joseph F. Smith liked to call him, “Furious Judas Cannon,” Ken Driggs discusses the decade-long reaction to the hearings. Each of the authors has demonstrated mastery of these topics in other publications and do not disappoint here, either in terms of their accounting for or interpretation of the hearings.Part two of the book views the hearings through the experiences of Smoot's wife Alfa May Eldredge (Allie), his secretary Carl Badger, his Church president Joseph F. Smith, and his chief interlocutor, Idaho senator Fred T. Dubois. The book also contains an appendix by Michael Quinn that identifies post-manifesto polygamist marriages performed between 1890 and 1907. The absence of Smoot's journal for the period of the hearings makes all the more welcome Kathryn Egan's description of the 1903 to 1907 correspondence between her great-grandparents. Excerpts from Allie's and Reed's letters and details about their Nauvoo-surviving and Territorial-pioneering families add an intimate and insightful personal commentary on this very public event. Paulos adds a second essay describing Joseph F. Smith's four-day testimony before the Senate investigative committee and an analysis of the scholarly treatment of its significance. His inclusion of portions of the transcript enlivens the description, and its publication here will hopefully draw to it a portion of the attention it received in its day and deserves in ours. If anyone suffered nigh unto Smoot during the hearing, it was probably his secretary Carl Badger. Gary Bergera's reprise of his Sunstone essay is a welcome addition to the book, showing Badger as an even more “modern Mormon” than his boss, his “personal agony” a litmus test for the reaction of the Church's younger generation to the hearings’ disclosures (222). John Brumbaugh closes the volume with the story of senator and former polygamy-raiding federal marshal Fred T. Dubois. A major orchestrator and would-be political beneficiary of the hearings, Senator Dubois is shown to have failed in both aims. He had to watch Smoot keep his title and himself lose it at the hands of an electorate who deemed him too obsessed with Mormonism.This is an interesting collection of essays that illuminate a very important period in Latter-day Saint history. The general reader will find much to amuse, as well as educate, and the scholar will find in it not only much of interest but also opportunities for further research. The relative brevity of these essays makes the volume of use in undergraduate courses in Latter-day Saint and US political history.

Chains of Persuasion: A Framework for Religion in Democracy

Chains of Persuasion: A Framework for Religion in Democracy

Complexion of Empire in Natchez: Race and Slavery in the Mississippi Borderlands

In this deeply researched provocative study of slavery in the Natchez district, Christian Pinnen, associate professor of history at Mississippi College, makes an important contribution to the literature on slavery in North America’s borderlands. Focusing on the Natchez District between the 1720s and 1820s, Pinnen explores the dynamics of making race in four different legal systems—the French, British, Spanish, and US. Throughout the book he puts complexion at the center of his analysis, exploring how Europeans in rival imperial systems worked out new theoretical conceptions of human phenotypes, tied the meaning of slavery and freedom to color and complexion, and by the early nineteenth century made skin type an “all-encompassing marker signifying slavery in territorial Natchez” (184). Over this century, as the region changed hands, each set of settlers had their own ideas of how race and slavery should function. Yet, rather than foregrounding the contestations between these definitions, Pinnen persuasively argues that the rise of chattel slavery in the US south built on and borrowed from the various Native and imperial actors that came before.Over seven chapters, Pinnen follows how slavery and complexion operated within each different imperial system with scrupulous detail, showing that “a uniform embrace of slavery did not lead to a uniform path to defining race or slavery” (10). The first chapter explores the interaction between three different forms of slavery: African, Native, and European (13). Examining the Natchez Revolt of 1729, Pinnen focuses on the failure of European colonizers to create a plantation economy in Natchez. The second chapter examines British colonialism in the region and identifies key developments that would later facilitate making a slave society. Focusing on the slave code disseminated from British West Florida, Pinnen shows how forms of patriarchy unique to the British imperial system, as well as emerging conceptions of race that connected it explicitly to complexion, laid a foundation for later colonizers. The next three chapters comprise the core of the book and explore Spanish colonialism in the Mississippi Valley. Tracing how forms of church hierarchy and colonial administration mediated the power enslavers had over their captives, Pinnen explores why Spanish settlers could not create a slave society on par with others in the Americas. These chapters together stand out for their originality and breadth of research. The final two chapters explore the rise of US hegemony. Pinnen shows how the return to patriarchal forms of hierarchy, and the end of institutional mediation, constrained avenues for manumission and resistance to human bondage. With the onset of cotton monoculture in the early nineteenth century, and the accretion of a century of shifting colonial definitions of race and slavery, US colonizers connected complexion and human bondage as never before in the Natchez District. The rise of US planation systems did not erase what rival empires built in the region, but promiscuously borrowed from them. The irresistible and important conclusion is that the rise of US planter hegemony was far from inevitable and can only partly be explained by looking within the borders of the United States.The research that sustains this sweeping narrative comes from repositories as diverse as the US National Archives, the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, Spain, regional repositories across the US Gulf South, and local court records from Adams County, Mississippi. In particular, Pinnen’s use of court cases allows him to recover at least some voices of enslaved people, highlighting their agency to shape the societies that sanctioned their enslavement, and, some of the time, resist their bondage and challenge the connections between race and slavery.A few key studies have bridged the large literatures on slavery in North America and imperial expansion in borderlands, but the conversation between these two massive literatures is not well developed. As a result, Complexion of Empire deserves a wide readership, and can provide a model for other scholars to continue integrating scholarly conversations that too often remain separate.

Establishing Zion in the Heat of Battle

Establishing Zion in the Heat of Battle