Faithful Narrative Research Articles

Faithful Translations: New Discoveries on the German Pietist Reception of Jonathan Edwards

This essay compares two neglected German translations of Jonathan Edwards's famousFaithful Narrative(1737). Both were published in 1738 but by different circles of German Pietists—one Lutheran and centered around Halle, one Reformed and located in the Nether Rhine area. Both were more intimately woven into transatlantic evangelical communication networks than has been understood. Each version show that the news about the American awakening was received enthusiastically as an encouraging sign of God's advancing kingdom, a model for inner-churchly revivals, and an argument for the legitimacy of Pietist conventicles at home. Comparing the two translations also reveals how Edwards was appropriated in quite divergent ways and with varying attitudes by the two groups, reflecting their distinct regional, denominational and social contexts, as well as specific religious needs and dogmatic emphases. While both texts evince that German Pietism very much partook in the emergence of a transatlantic evangelical consciousness, they simultaneously show how the formation of such an ecumenical identity was complicated by persisting confessional and regional differences. Finally, the two German translations of Edwards's narrative illustrate that the meaning of these revivals as part of a larger Protestant evangelical awakening was negotiated not only among Anglo-American evangelicals but also among Continental Pietists.

Sharing One's Story and 'a Faithful Narrative of Every Event'

This article explores one of Jane Austen's narrative techniques, focusing on her characters' telling of and writing on their past. To incorporate events that characters experienced at different times or locations, she uses life stories constructed by an individual told in the first person. She relies on the characters' subjective telling of their own life stories at crucial points in the plot, rather than leaving the description to the omniscient narrator. In so doing, she provides fresh ways of reading; she enables the reader to get involved in the narrative by sharing an individual's life story and at the same time she ensures that the reader places the character's narrative at some distance. Her use of this method of stories allows her to follow and develop literary tradition. Inheriting the tradition of the letter-writing generations, she provides a new use of life-story telling and a new way of reading them.

Disaffection rising? Generations and the personal consequences of paid work in contemporary Canada

This article highlights the ‘personal consequences’ of contemporary employment relations in Canada, characterized by increasing precarity, shifting gender relations in families and in the workforce, the expansion of post-secondary education and an intensifying polarization of wealth. It connects these consequences to perceptions of intergenerational differences and conflict at and around work. Drawing on qualitative, narrative data from 52 interviews conducted between 2009 and 2011, the author proposes that younger people (or ‘generations’) are more likely to construct and be associated with narratives of disaffection about work. In contrast, what the author terms ambivalent and faithful narratives are largely associated with and constructed by workers who entered and experienced a far different world of work.

Jonathan Edwards, Affective Conversion, and the Problem of Masochism

This essay uses the work of Jonathan Edwards to trace intellectual, historical, and theoretical connections between eighteenth-century religious conversion in England and New England and later accounts of masochism's Enlightenment philosophical basis. Expanding feminist readings of revival abjection to include racial abjection, I focus on Edwards's account of religious sentiment in a “Personal Narrative” (ca. 1739), A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Works of God (1736–37), and Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England (1742). Situating these texts in their philosophical and political contexts, I then use A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746) to show how Edwards's evolving response to revivalist disruptions of hierarchy led him to describe a sentimental structure of desire similar to masochism as a defense against a modern subjectivity that would allow for masochism.

The Multi-faith Paradigm in Policy and Practice: Problems, Challenges, Directions

A significant infrastructure of multi-faith engagement grew and consolidated throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century in England, called forth, at least in part, by government policy. This arose in response to three narratives of religious faith: a policy narrative which constructs faith groups as repositories of resources; a faith narrative which is concerned with the lived experiences of faith; and a partnership narrative which reflects the growing role of faith groups in the mixed economy of welfare (see Dinham and Lowndes, 2008). It is inflected, too, by a fourth narrative located in the bundle of ‘Prevent’ policies which sought to address the risks of religious radicalisation and extremism. This article examines multi-faith policy in England, and the issues driving it, and explores its relationship to the faith-based practices which are imagined by it. It asks the question whether the multi-faith paradigm, as crystallised in the policy document ‘Face to Face and Side by Side: A Framework for Partnership in Our Multi Faith Society’ (CLG, 2008), engages with a real and lived experience or remains a policy chimera and a parallel world.

The Trouble with Grace: Reading Jonathan Edwards's Faithful Narrative

Critics have long noted but never adequately explained why Jonathan Edwards deliberately reordered the Northampton revival's chronology in his Faithful Narrative. This essay argues that by declaring that Joseph Hawley's suicide signified the withdrawal of God's Spirit, Edwards sought to protect his community from the social, cultural, and theological ramifications of that self-murder.

Attachment Predicts Adolescent Conversions at Young Life Religious Summer Camps

The correspondence hypothesis maintains that people with secure parental attachments will experience gradual religious conversions, with internal working models of childhood attachment figures forming the basis of attachment to God. The compensation hypothesis predicts that people with insecure attachments will experience sudden and dramatic conversions as they seek a relationship with God to compensate for insecure attachment relationships. In Study 1, faith narratives from 162 adolescents were analyzed; associations between parental attachment and the type of conversion reflected in the narrative support both hypotheses. In Study 2, data were prospectively collected from 240 adolescents attending religious summer camps; after camp, 138 participants reported a gradual conversion and 21 reported a sudden conversion. Participants who rated themselves securely attached to their parents before camp were more likely to report a gradual conversion, supporting the correspondence hypothesis. Precamp insecure parental attachment did not predict the subsequent incidence of a sudden religious conversion.

O M Brack Jr., ed., Tobias Smollett, Scotland's First Novelist: New Essays in Memory of Paul-Gabriel BoucéTobias Smollett, Scotland's First Novelist: New Essays in Memory of Paul-Gabriel Boucé. Edited by O M Brack Jr. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007. Pp. 320.

<i>O M Brack Jr</i>., ed., Tobias Smollett, Scotland's First Novelist: New Essays in Memory of Paul-Gabriel Boucé<i>Tobias Smollett, Scotland's First Novelist: New Essays in Memory of Paul-Gabriel Boucé</i>. Edited by O M Brack Jr. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2007. Pp. 320.

“Hear My Voice”: Rhythmic Forgiveness and Psalm 130

“Hear My Voice”:Rhythmic Forgiveness and Psalm 130 Emma Mason (bio) OUT of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD.Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope.My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.Let Israel hope in the LORD: for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.And he shall redeem Israel from all his iniquities. — Kjv Ps. 130 Psalm 130’s sorrowful cry from the deep, with its plea for an attentive, patient, and forgiving God, resembles not only the longing voice in Christina Rossetti’s Verses (1893)—for which the epigraph is verse 1 of Psalm 130—but also her devotional prose; in particular, her exegesis of Revelation, [End Page 26] The Face of the Deep: A Devotional Commentary on the Apocalypse (1892). Modern readers, so concerned with labelling and accounting for wrongdoing, find it hard to understand that what the Victorians sought in forgiveness was as much a process of expressing and confessing sin as one of absolution. This essay explores why the question of how one might voice forgiveness was so central to nineteenth-century thought and outlines why the penitential cry of Psalm 130 appealed so deeply to those concerned with such expression. After discussing why the Psalms registered as a distinctly poetic set of texts in this period, I point to the significance of Psalm 130 both in ongoing debates about the nature of atonement and as a foundation for a “poetry of forgiveness” specific to the long nineteenth century. Together with the Book of Job, Psalms was the most significant of Old Testament books for the Victorians, as much for aesthetic as theological reasons. Psalms were sung after the litany and before the sermon in most parish churches and were preferred to even the most popular of Victorian hymns (Thistlethwaite 72). As ancient spiritual poems, the Psalms’ strong metrical beat and musical history appealed to readers and worshippers. As E. Warwick Slinn argues, David’s resolve to sing his emotional experience of faith “embeds a close relation between brain and tongue, body and language, physical action and speech” (92), an embodying of poetry that speaks to both a long tradition of memorizing the Psalms and the Victorians’ propensity for internalizing verse through recitation. The Psalms also comprised a short handbook, for Christians and Jews alike, on how to approach God, while their mythological and polytheistic references encouraged scholars to rethink their content in the context of Egyptian, Babylonian, and Canaanite, as well as Davidic, cultures. The debate on how to translate, interpret, and annotate the Psalms in relation to issues of national identity, kingship, community, and belonging, as well as ecclesiological meanings of forgiveness, penitence, prophecy, and love, climaxed in the nineteenth century in part because their poetic and aesthetic value exempted them from disputes on the historical authenticity of the Bible. Several commentaries1 predominantly present the Psalms as examples of ancient lyric poetry, an idea that enthralled an educated and lay readership invested in securing its faith in affective and aesthetic experience rather than material evidence. The strong association between the Psalms and their assumed composer, David, anchored this experience for believers. While theories regarding the multiple authorship of the collection abounded in the nineteenth century, readers of the Psalms were nevertheless moved by the idea that they comprised David’s personal narrative of faith, piety, sorrow, and love, a narrative thought to look back to Adam and Moses and prophetically forward to Jesus (see Davison). The popularity of Charles Spurgeon’s The Treasury of David (1860–67) and Frederick Meyer’s David—Shepherd, Psalmist, King (1910) underscores the Victorians’ fascination with the writer of the Psalms, just as Robert Lowth’s and William Law’s writings on poetry and devotion had promoted the aesthetic [End Page 27] sound of...

Spider and Fly: Novel Excerpt August 1735, Northampton, Massachusetts

Jonathan Edwards is widely considered America's most brilliant theologian. Spider In a Tree fuses the historic and the imaginative in telling the story of his years as a preacher in eighteenth century Northampton, Massachusetts, a town Edwards made famous for piety before its people dismissed him as their minister. The novel covers the years from 1731 to 1750, and is told from multiple points of view. Spider and Fly, which is chapter four in the novel, takes place in August 1735, three months after Edwards wrote his account of the 1734-35 revivals which became A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton. At the end of this account, Edwards appended a postscript about the troubling suicide of Joseph Hawley, a respected townsperson married to Edwards's aunt. The elder Joseph Hawley had two sons—the younger named Elisha, and the elder also named Joseph—both of whom appear in this chapter; as does Sarah, wife of Jonathan; and Leah and Saul, who are enslaved in the household.

The American Hermit and the British Castaway: Voluntary Retreat and Deliberative Democracy in Early American Culture

From Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay's (1681-1759) decision to live self-sufficiently in a cave as a protest against slave labor, to African American recluses such as Robert Voorhis, the Hermit of Massachusetts (b. 1769/70), and Henry Box Brown (1815-c.1879), to iconic figures like Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), John Muir (1838-1914), Thomas Merton (1915-1968), and Edward Abbey (1927-1989), many Americans have expressed their critical voices through voluntary reclusion from society. last decade and a half of the eighteenth century, however, appears to have been an especially busy time for the American hermit. During this period, American printers published an unprecedented number of tales and anecdotes about the lives of hermits such as James Buckland's Wonderful Discovery of a Hermit.... (1786); Samuel Brake's An Account of the Wonderful Old Hermit's Death, and Burial (1787); The Hermit's Soliloquy (1788); Abraham Panther's A Surprising Account of the Discovery of a Lady.... (1788); the narrative of Amos Wilson's hermitic withdrawal as a result of his sister's trial and execution for infanticide (A Faithful Narrative of Elizabeth Wilson.... [1786] and Victim of Seduction!...... [1822]); Lavinia's The Hermitess; or, Fair Secluder (1790); Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles, Marquise de Lambert's Fair Solitary; or, Female Hermit (1790); and Peter Longueville's English Hermit (1795). (1) These seemingly ephemeral texts were reprinted numerous times in the 1790s, attesting to a sustained cultural interest in both male and female hermitic figures during the post-Revolutionary period. (2) This article examines the ways in which both the figure and practices of the American hermit are taken up as culturally resonant analogies for early American political subjectivity. first part of the article considers the popularity of the hermit in poems, almanacs, waxwork exhibits, and choral music of the 1790s to reveal a persistent fascination with the political relevance of hermitic life. article then attempts to delineate the generic parameters of what I am calling the hermit's tale, a previously unrecognized American literary genre characterized, most interestingly, by its rejection of the Robinsonade as a viable model of American political existence? Comparing American hermit tales alongside British antecedents such as Daniel Defoe's Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.... (1719) reveals how certain writers deployed the hermit to figure, on the one hand, American political and cultural independence from Britain and, on the other hand, a democratic practice grounded in studied deferral and nonpartisan deliberation. final sections of the article discuss the theological and philosophical implications of this critical stance by examining the Pennsylvania Hermit in Amos Wilson's Sweets of Solitude!.... (1822) and the hermitic Democrat in John O'Sullivan's essay Democracy (1840). study of the American hermit provides a unique lens through which post-Revolutionary American authors conceived of republican democratic practice as existing in the pause or retired moment between cultural binaries. hermit's political significance derives from his or her capacity to confront the aporetic conditions of a post-Revolutionary American national identity situated precariously at the boundary between solitude and society, public and private, Federalist and anti-Federalist, and Britishness and Americanness. GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE POLITICS OF THE AMERICAN HERMIT Perhaps the most significant indication of the young republic's interest in hermits is the persistent republication of British poems on hermitic life. From the 1750s well into the nineteenth century, Thomas Parnell's The Hermit, James Beattie's The Hermit, and Oliver Goldsmith's Edwin and Angelina (excerpted from Vicar of Wakefield) continued to be prominently published by American printers in numerous poetic anthologies of British verse, as individual texts, and as epigraphs to various nineteenth-century American novels dealing with reclusive life. …

Heroes and Hostages: The Toll of the Bad Faith Narrative

(2010). Heroes and Hostages: The Toll of the Bad Faith Narrative. a/b: Auto/Biography Studies: Vol. 25, The Work of Life Writing, pp. 231-248.

Faith Fictions: “The Word Between this World and God”1

The search for religious truth and depth in “fiction” invites a conceptualization of life and fictional narratives as faith fictions—narrative accounts of human experiences and the human condition that bridge this world and God. This article juxtaposes Mother Crocodile, Hunger, and Lost in Translation to highlight the ways in which they, not unlike the faith fictions of our sacred texts, “open before us … possible world[s] that may serve to refigure our own.” All this for a chance to imagine the theological and pedagogical implications of those two words so central to the Christian faith narrative: “Remember me.”

Reconsideration of Violence of Morals in Samganghaengsildo[三綱行實圖] -focused on faithful women's narratives-

Reconsideration of Violence of Morals in Samganghaengsildo[三綱行實圖] -focused on faithful women's narratives-

Narratives of Faith: Buddhism and Colonial Archaeology in Monsoon Asia

In this paper, largely based on archaeological data, I argue that colonial intervention in 19th - 20th century South and Southeast Asia, a region that the French scholar Paul Mus termed Monsoon Asia, not only altered our understanding of monuments, essentially religious structures, from being abodes of god to objects of artistic and aesthetic appreciation, but also redefined the nature of Indic religions. Here I focus on Buddhism. Alexander Cunningham (1814-1893), the first Director-General of the Archaeological Survey of India brought Buddhism to the forefront and established its study as a legitimate branch of scholarship in the second quarter of the 19th century. It is significant that many of Cunningham's formulations, such as his identification of places associated with the life of the Buddha, description of Buddha as a social reformer, the prominent role of the Mauryan ruler Asoka in spreading the faith and the degenerate nature of Buddhism after the 7th century AD continue to be repeated in secondary writings. In the latter part of this study I highlight the archaeology of one specific complex, the Mahabodhi temple at Bodh Gaya located on the Phalgu River, a tributary of the Ganga, 182 kilometres south of Patna, the capital of Bihar, but more significantly, the site where the Buddha attained Enlightenment. The objective is to comprehend the multi-layered narratives of religious architecture and the extent to which these were implicated in the politics of the colonial period.

Well, water, rock: holy wells, mass rocks and reconciling identity in the republic of ireland

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the significance of holy wells and mass stones in Southwest Ireland, as expressions of competing narratives of meaning, identity, faith and history. Drawing on ethnographic interviews and participant observation, this essay argues that these places and the ritual activities that regularly occur there reflect and reconstruct contemporary Irish identities. In an era of rapid cultural change, these places comprise a tangible and experiential connection to Irish heritage and tradition. As reflected in interviews, conversations and published documents, these places are viewed as simultaneously embodying indigenous pre-Christian spiritualities as well as being locations of a distinctively Catholic faith. At the same time, they are important as secluded locations where Irish Catholic parishioners held mass during the colonial era of English oppression and as locations of popular religion, in contradistinction to orthodox Roman Catholicism. As such, holy wells and mass rocks demonstrate the ability of sacred places to integrate and reconcile complex and heterogeneous identities.

An Evolving Vision of the Church

Editor's note: In memory of Monika Hellwig (1929–2005), beloved colleague and friend of the College Theology Society, Horizons is pleased to be able to publish the following talk which she presented as part of the consultation on “Faith Narratives” at the CTS convention in June 2005, only a few months before her death. Part reminiscence, part theological reflection on Vatican II, part diagnosis of the present state of the church, her reflections give witness not only to the love she had for the church but also to her lively and incisive theological intellect. We wish to thank Pierre Hegy (Adelphi University) for bringing the essay to our attention, and Dr. E. Jane Stirniman, Hellwig's literary executor, for giving us permission to publish it.

Ordinary Vessels: Disability Narrative and Representations of Faith

The lived experience of disability is increasingly prominent in autobiographical writing. Numerous collections of creative work attest to an expanding market for stories that challenge prevalent stereotypes associated with disability. At the same time, scholars have begun to call for the incorporation into disability studies of poststructuralist critical theory, attempting to extend our understanding of disability beyond both medical and social models. Recent work presents disability as a diverse and ever-changing set of bodies and experiences that eludes any sort of universalizing metanarrative. A further question concerns the convergence in life writing of theory and faith: how do disabled writers interrogate stable identity while also representing religious belief? With close attention to memoirs by Nancy Mairs and Stephen Kuusisto, this paper explores the articulation of "disability theology" by writers committed to challenging the forms of stigma that attach to bodies marked by the difference of disability, as well as bodies generally as they are denigrated by Christianity. Do disability/faith narratives push inevitably toward the resolution of holy reward? Does faith somehow require self-representation as triumphant consciousness, transcending physical failure? How are narratives of spiritual compensation, which tend to suggest that disability can only be endured with the promise of heavenly reparation, inherently problematic from the perspective of disability activism? Conversely, how might narratives that resist cultural pressure to subordinate anomalous bodies to the radiance of the soul or the proficiency of the mind broaden our awareness of the locations and meanings of disability?

Coming out stories framed as faith narratives, or stories of spiritual growth

The tension between religion and sexuality is particularly pronounced for gay and lesbian people who are often “caught in the middle” between a constitutional sexual orientation and a religious body that rejects it. This paper demonstrates how gay men can be helped in trying to integrate these deeply human and intrinsic parts of themselves, using a developmental approach first articulated by Robert Kegan. It argues that such development is often reflected later in theological language: in this case, in these men's coming out narratives, which are often framed as stories of spiritual growth.

Introduction: Tom Hanks, The Voice of Malory

In the fall of 1989 at Baylor University, D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. offered a graduate seminar on Malory's Le Morte Darthur in which I, then a masters student, was introduced to the joys of Malory, of scholarship, and of collegial discourse. In addition to being a watershed moment in my life, that seminar was propitiously offered just as my teacher's innovative publications on Malory began to emerge in print. As the contributors to this volume attest, Tom Hanks has inspired scholars across the international Arthurian community to explore Malory in fresh ways: to read Malory aloud, to interpret Malory within context, and to read Malory not only with seriousness, but also with humor. The articles in this issue honor Professor Hanks. They reflect the range of interpretive concerns that Tom has shared about Malory. Torn Hanks's career as a scholar of Malory nicely mirrors the experiential trajectory, or pilgrimage if you will, of many a Malorian: 1) Upon first exposure to Malory, the scholar initiates source study. He/she compares the writer-knight to his French and English sources.1 2) Said scholar soon dispatches with the translation model of the superior-French-romance vs. inferior-English-version.1 3) Scholar comes to value Malory's unique prose style, the text's heightened drama, suspense, and (through dialogue) characterization.3 4) Scholar addresses question of the unity of Malory's Works.4 5) Scholar begins to analyze narrative complexity, for example the problematic yet enticing fusion of chivalric and Christian ideologies. 6) The scholar who reaches this point in the quest of Le Morte Darthur faces the materiality of the text itself-Winchester or Caxton? And what of Wynkyn de Worde? 7) The intrepid scholar finally arrives at the shrine of voice, and the contextual importance of reading Malory aloud. Many who have trod this route have appreciated the critical landmarks set up by Tom Hanks. In 'A Tale of Simple Malory and the Critics,' Andrew Lynch begins this issue of ARTHURIANA by elaborating a narrative of twentieth-century Malorian criticism, one that helps elucidate the current critical climate, setting the stage for contributions Tom Hanks and others have made to the field. In his early source study on the 'Confrontation in Guinevere's Chamber/ Hanks was already spotlighting the important addition of 'God-talk' to Malory's narrative.5 A number of the articles in this issue reflect his concern with the ethical purview of Malory's textual world. Is Malory's world explicitly Christian? Does the Morte reflect an investment in religious and philosophical ideas? Is Launcelot the ultimate Christian knight or the ultimate chivalric knight? Does the Morte reach the limits of the dance played out between Christianity and chivalry in Arthurian romance? Is/are the ending(s) of the Morte societally tragic or spiritually fulfilling? Kevin Grimm faces the question of the Morte's relation to Christianity directly, arguing that Malory's text shares structural affinity with the Bible and functions as a 'Narrative of Faith.' In 'I love nat to be constrayned to love: Emotional Charity and Malory's World,' Felicia Nimue Ackerman also notes an exemplary function of Malory's text, particularly in its illustrations of the philosophical concept of emotional charity. Conversely, Janet Jesmok finds a troublesome absence of faith, or more explicitly, trust. In 'Alas! Who may truste thys world?: Absence of Trust in Malory's Tale of Balin le Sauvage,' she not only examines untrustworthy characters but also exposes the narration itself as unreliable. Dorsey Armstrong finds anxiety on the narrative plane as well. In 'The (Non-)Christian Knight in Malory: A Contradiction in Terms?,' she finds the pagan knight and the Christian knight being marginalized: both extremes pose a threat to the chivalric ideal. With 'Elaine of Ascolat's Death and theArs moriendi,' Rebecca Reynolds continues the discussion of Malory's text in relation to its Christian milieu. …