Good Christian Research Articles

Incarcerated Bodies: Interactions and Emotional Dynamics in an Early Victorian Prison

Incarcerated Bodies:Interactions and Emotional Dynamics in an Early Victorian Prison Helen Rogers (bio) Admitted to Great Yarmouth House of Correction, three boys were quick to make their presence felt and, within forty-eight hours, were dispatched to the solitary cells "for fighting and making use of obscene language" ("Gaol Keeper's Journal" 30 Dec. 1839). As they served their thirty-day sentences with two other lads, the prison visitor Sarah Martin (1791–1843) laboured to convert them from "naughty and wicked boys" into good Christian children (Martin, "Everyday Book" 13–14 Jan. 1840). After twenty years' voluntary teaching in the jail, Martin knew that male juveniles were the least susceptible to reclamation and most likely to reoffend (Rogers, "Kindness and Reciprocity" 733). For throwing their weight around and asserting their place in the inmate pecking order—shouting and singing, climbing the walls [End Page 20] to communicate with other prisoners, dawdling and behaving insolently at locking up times, and fighting each other—boys were disciplined far more than other classes of inmates (Rogers, "Making Their Mark"). Using the jail admissions register and disciplinary log, parish and census records, and Sarah Martin's surviving prison journals, my research explores the dynamics between inmates and their encounters with criminal justice and Christian philanthropy. How might these encounters challenge our conceptions of the workings and experiences of nineteenth-century correction? Since Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish (1975), scholarship has focused on the discursive production of the incarcerated body. We know about the inmate's body as object of abstract knowledge: how it was viewed, measured, and dissected. We have interrogated panoptical techniques for transforming the delinquent body into a "docile body": "He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication" (Foucault 200). Reconstructing individual and group reactions through record-linkage, however, reveals inmates as active bodies. The five boys, ranging from eleven to fifteen years old, were housed on a ward where they had lessons with Sarah Martin. None were in school and, between casual labouring jobs, they were used to having time on their hands. Four had been arrested in pairs, as rogues and vagabonds suspected of thieving; the only boy in employment was sentenced for being absent from his apprenticeship ("Gaol Register" 28 Dec. 1839, 2 Jan. 1840). They were typical of the "artful dodgers" (Shore) who troubled Victorians precisely because they were bodies out of place—on the streets and unsupervised—a nuisance not just to the authorities but to small traders, employers, and even parents who turned them over to the magistrates. They defied categorization, too: were they adults or children; innocent or hardened; vulnerable or dangerous? These ambivalences run through Martin's "observations" on the characters of young offenders, as individuals and as a class: The greatest number of these boys are better fed than when out of prison; the cleanliness they are obliged to observe and regular hours for sleep, if annoying … soon promote comfort; so that, in the absence of occupation of a deterring kind, these boys may well be always full of spirits, just like school boys on a play-ground. (Martin, Sarah Martin 107) Yet, in her anxious comments on the five boys, the teacher's character evaluations were more rounded, noting their "idle and dishonest habits," "sly" and "open" demeanor, their "temper" yet "kindliness" and "diligence" ("Successive Names"). Examining her immediate personal responses to them alerts us to the ways in which discursive ideals, no matter how forcibly expressed, may have been modified in practice. The boys were "poor" and "neglected," Martin believed, only one having "careful" parents ("Successive Names"). [End Page 21] Her compassion and fears show in her repeated use of the words "young boys" and "little boys" ("Everyday Book" 6 Jan. 1840, passim). These testify to her growing fondness for them: "A month for them is short indeed. I shall be sorry to resign them" ("Everyday Book" 12 Jan. 1840). Consecutively reading Martin's accounts of the boys' lessons illuminates the changing emotional dynamics between teacher and scholars. Initially, they were reluctant learners. When asked why they had not memorized their lines, they retorted that they were...

Religious Education Between Aspirations and Reality

The events of 1989 caught the Church on the wrong foot in what its didactic mission was concerned. On the one hand, the religious education was carried out along the lines of a scholastic method, on the other hand, the introduction of the subject Religion, first in primary and secondary schools, then in high schools, did not receive the best response from the decision-makers in the Church institution. Due to the lack of expertise, the curriculum was not drafted with clear, precise and necessary objectives. Even today, it seems to be incapable of establishing and reaching the main aim of Religion – that of making the students good Christians. The scholastic method has been preserved, the aspect of gaining knowledge is emphasised, whereas a better approach should, rather, aim at developing the skills and the character of a good Christian.

Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England: Theology and Society in an Age of Faith. By Helen Foxhall Forbes. Studies in Early Medieval Britain. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2013. xvi + 394 pp. $95.16 hardcover.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Heaven and Earth in Anglo-Saxon England: Theology and Society in an of Faith . By Helen Foxhall Forbes . Studies in Early Medieval Britain. Burlington, Vt. : Ashgate , 2013. xvi + 394 pp. $95.16 hardcover.Book Reviews and NotesAnglo-Saxon England, from the eighth to the eleventh centuries, had a thriving ecclesiastical culture, as evidenced by the number of surviving documents containing homilies, hagiography, prayers, and religious poetry, as well as canon laws, penitentials, liturgical and pastoral works. It was indeed an Age of Faith. But did Christianity mean to ordinary people in their day-to-day lives? What was their understanding of Christian doctrine? How did they practice their beliefs? And, perhaps most importantly, Helen Foxhall Forbes asks, what did it mean to be a Christian (or to be a good Christian) in the changing social contexts of Anglo-Saxon England? (1).In this impressive study, Foxhall Forbes explores these questions through an analysis of theological texts (not all of which represent the official doctrines of the church, such as they were) alongside charters, wills, and laws in order to uncover the theological ideas which affected society's values regarding person, property, justice and mercy. Foxhall Forbes also spreads her net more widely, to include examinations of place-names, archaeology, and art; the evidence provided by topography and material culture affords further insight into the extent to which Christian ideas, beliefs and values permeated the lives of the Anglo-Saxons and how they practiced their religion.Foxhall Forbes admits that the evidence is fragmented; no lay person from this period left behind any personal statement of belief or practice. Nevertheless, by drawing together the fragments from a variety of sources, she demonstrates how they contribute to sketching out the theological and cultural landscape of Anglo-Saxon England. In chapter 1, I Believe in One God, she lays out the problems with dealing with the available evidence, problems compounded by the fact that most of the written evidence was produced by the very people who were involved in Christian learning and theological debate. The archaeological evidence, from burial sites in churchyards, and evidence of images in churches and manuscripts were likewise influenced. Foxhall Forbes questions past models of viewing faith in Anglo-Saxon, especially that of pagan and Christian syncretism, and finds them wanting. Instead, she turns her attention to the education of priests and of the laity in the fundamentals of Christianity. If religious paintings in churches were a means of teaching the laity, how were they interpreted by the parish priests? And how often did people actually attend church to receive such instruction? Foxhall Forbes offers a well-grounded argument that knowledge of Christian doctrine and dogma was not consistent in either clergy or laity, and that belief in magic and magical creatures (like elves and monsters) is not evidence of survivals of paganism.In chapter 2, Creator of All Things, Visible and Invisible, Foxhall Forbes takes up the issue of belief in spirits, the protection of angels and the assaults by demons, as well as the understanding of baptism, sickness, and the state of the soul at death in this context. …

From Prison to Scaffold: Confraternities of Comforters in Early Modern Italy

Since medieval times, religious associations of laymen (and sometimes also of women), which were bound by a corporative tie and dedicated to ritual pious practices, were very common all around Europe and mainly in urban contexts. Each of these confraternities had its own areas of interests and there were also those which took care of prisoners in jail and sometimes specialized in supporting prisoners sentenced to death. In this case, the members of the confraternity had to prepare the condemned for a good Christian death and then bury their bodies.Here I will refer specifically to a Milan confraternity of comforters entitled “School of St. John the Baptist beheaded at the ruined houses” (Scuola di san Giovanni Decollato alle case rotte). I will take this as an example of a very ancient association of this kind and I will concentrate on its role during Counter Reformation, a particularly interesting period.

Paradise Regained and the Restoration Church of England: Pieties in Dialogue

Paradise Regained and the Restoration Church of England:Pieties in Dialogue Edmund Christie White Piety manuals were bestseller material in Restoration England. The vast appetite for such books in the decades following the return of the Stuart monarchy in 1660 is exemplified by the case of The Practice of Christian Graces; or, The Whole Duty of Man. Published anonymously in 1657 and heavily influenced by previous popular manuals written by Henry Hammond (Practicall Catechisme, 1644/45) and Jeremy Taylor (Holy Living, 1650), it is estimated that The Whole Duty of Man “enjoyed the greatest number of editions [of all contemporary piety manuals] between 1660 and 1711, perhaps forty-five in all, again probably enough copies (135,000) for every tenth family.”1 On top of this there were three well-received sequels: The Gentleman’s Calling (1662), The Causes of the Decay of Christian Piety (1667), and The Government of the Tongue (1667). These books presented practical guidance in an easily comprehensible style on how to live a life of devotion, and they were structured to promote methodical, repeated reading. The Whole Duty of Man was carefully divided into 17 partitions: “One whereof being read every Lords Day the Whole may be read over [End Page 273] Thrice in the Year.”2 It is little wonder that such books were valued so highly as gifts for confirmation candidates, the young, and the deserving poor.3 Despite their apparently innocuous, pious content, such manuals were not politically inert. They were written and endorsed by senior clergymen in the restored Church of England; it has been proven almost beyond doubt that the author of The Whole Duty of Man was the clergyman Richard Allestree, an active royalist during the 1640s and 1650s, who was elevated to the position of Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford in 1663.4 More controversial publications written by Conformist clergy argued explicitly that the piety espoused in The Whole Duty of Man ought to be emulated in thanksgiving for the miraculous return of the Stuart monarchy and episcopal government in 1660. Words from a sermon delivered to the congregation of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on the Sunday following the coronation of Charles II suggest the preacher’s indebtedness to such manuals and the ideals of “holy living” that inspired them: “For the whole Duty of a Christian doth consist in two things; first (by way of privation) in casting off the works of Darkness, in denying ungodliness and worldly lusts; next (by way of Acquisition) in putting on the armour of light; Living soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. Tit. 2. 12.”5 As another passage in this sermon makes clear, pious living was to be central to the new political settlement, which would consist of the king and his bishops (“untill our Bishops receive their Right, though we are glad to have our King, we may rationally fear we shall not hold him”), working in harmony to correct the deleterious effects of the previous rebellion and “tyranny.”6 In arguments such as this, “religious and political duty … became indistinguishable (just as religious dissent became indistinguishable from sedition): good Christians are loyal subjects.”7 The ideological concerns of the piety manuals themselves, however, are harder to pin down. They do consider loyalty to the magistrate to be crucially important, but not solely so: it was only one part of the “holy living” phenomenon, and to focus on it reduces such works to the status of mere Conformist propaganda. [End Page 274] Indeed, the number of popular Nonconformist imitations of these ostensibly Anglican piety manuals is testimony to the breadth and depth of their reception in Restoration England.8 Paradise Regained also participates in this context of politicized piety, exploring the concept in both form and thought.9 In the poem, Jesus acts in accordance with a notion of pious living that is bound up with his burgeoning awareness of his messianic vocation. Milton’s Jesus declares the cessation of all oracles with the statement that God has sent “his spirit of truth henceforth to dwell / In pious hearts, an inward oracle / To all truth requisite for men to know.”10...

“There's No Remaking Reality”: Roth and the Embodied Human Condition in <em>Everyman</em>

INTRODUCTION: SALVATION AND THE HUMAN CONDITIONYou're on Earth, there's no cure for that!-Beckett 37The title of Roth's Everyman refers to fifteenth-century morality play of same name. Commenting on play, Roth has stated the theme is always salvation [...]. The moral was always 'Work hard get into Heaven.' 'Be a good Christian or go to hell' (Krasnik 28). Despite Roth's tongue-in-cheek terseness, his comment accords with following, more measured critical response to play:Despite its several severe warnings, Everyman is essentially reassuring in its estimation of man's chances for salvation. [. . .] The universe of Everyman in general is one thoroughly under control of a benevolent deity who sees to it that normal, repentant sinner has more than a fair chance to save himself [...]. (Kaula 10-11)Importantly, Roth's caustic summation of play hints that his version of Everyman will deviate from thematic motif of Christian salvation. Thus, although Roth's unnamed protagonist (from here on called Everyman) is a strident atheist,1 it is desolate poignancy of Roth's prose that best intimates that Everyman's world lacks any religious consolation. This pathos is brought into sharp relief in novel's opening pages, during Everyman's sparsely attended funeral, in which dazed bewilderment of his ex-wife (Phoebe), abject recruitment duties which are forced upon his daughter (Nancy), opaque, spasmodic rage of his estranged son (Lonny), form a nexus of human relations which attest to sadness, irresolution messiness of human existence:When asked by Nancy if she wanted to say anything, Phoebe shook her head but then went ahead to speak in a soft voice, her speech faintly slurred. It's just so hard to believe, I keep thinking of him swimming bay-that's all. I just keep seeing him swimming bay. [. . .] Nancy [. . .] placed phone calls to those who'd showed up so that mourners wouldn't consist of just her mother, herself, his brother sister-in-law. (1-2)Lonny [. . .] stepped up to grave first. But once he'd taken a clod of dirt in hand, his entire body began to tremble quake, it looked as though he were on edge of violently regurgitating. He was overcome with a feeling for his father that wasn't antagonism but that his antagonism denied him means to release. (13)In Everyman, human lives seem to end pitifully, inspiring neither comfort nor resolution for bereaved. Indeed, psychological ambience of whole novel suggests that people have an implicit awareness that they are stranded in a world without a metaphysical horizon-a world, in other words, that is paradigmatically separated from salvation God (the dilapidated Jewish cemetery in which funeral takes place arguably symbolizes decay of this religious sentiment [1]). Unsurprisingly, then, after Everyman's funeral, reader is given yet another distinct impression of an irresolute anticlimactic world, in which even most significant events end with a bang but a whimper (The Hollow Men 5.98 82): That was end. No special point had been made. [. . .] In a matter of minutes, everybody had walked away-wearily tearfully walked away from our species' least favorite activity-and he [Everyman] was left behind (14-15). With wry humor concision, phrase and he was left behind confirms how Roth's atheism is also aligned with a materialistic emphasis upon human body. In Roth's universe, funerals do not end with souls being whisked up to heaven: they instead end with bodies that define our subjectivity being left in isolation to rot underground. The funeral scene in Everyman thus intensifies continues Roth's materialistic reading of religious rites2 by focusing on locus of materiality that, in Roth's view, is constitutive of human subjectivity-the body.3DEATH IN THE BODY: ROTH'S OBJECTION TO A KEATSIAN UNDERSTANDING OF DEATHSo far I've explored how Roth's novel is critical of Christian cosmology expressed in medieval play Everyman. …

Att söka kungligt tillstånd för giftermål: äktenskapsansökningar från besläktade personer under svenskt 1700-tal

To Ask for the King’s Permission to Marriage: Applications for Marriage between Relatives in Eighteenth Century Sweden. In early modern Western society regulations against incestuous relationships were primarily justified by religion, and kinship by blood and kinship by marriage were treated equally. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Swedish law was among the strictest in these matters, and violations were often punished by execution. Simultaneously, it was possible to ask the king’s permission for a dispensation for marriage between more distant relatives. During the second half of the eighteenth century the number of dispensation applications rose significantly, implying a turning point in attitudes. This article investigates arguments in dispensation applications and subsequent responses from decision holders. The aim is to illustrate how parallel values in society, apart from those of religion, affected the way different relationships were perceived. The study shows that applicants used a range of arguments in persuading authorities that their relationships should be allowed. However, even though authorities took an interest in whether or not applicants were good Christians, and whether or not relationships were honourable (not carnal), there was one decisive factor for granting or denying the applications. If the applicants’ family positions crossed different generations (e.g. man/uncle’s widow) it was considered that the “natural parental respect” would be jeopardised and, irrespective of the applicants’ ages, the application was denied.

The fantastic black panther in the writing of Charles G. D. Roberts : Forging Canadian national identity from primeval nature

Charles G.D. Roberts’ 1892/1896 short story ‘Lou’s Clarionet’ focuses on the potential attack by a black panther, a shadowy creature that is at once dangerous and comforting, real and fantastic, disturbing and uncertain. As the rector of the parish guides his sleigh along the road on a snowy Christmas eve, he is shadowed by a panther, which attempts to leap onto the sleigh, bringing the dark forces of the primeval (and prime evil) forest against the good Christian priest. Similar episodes are present in many of Roberts’ animal stories, including those focusing specifically on the black panther such as ‘Watchers of the Campfire’ (1905). By analysing Roberts’ use of the menacing, somewhat fantastical presence of the panther in the woods, this paper argues that the fantastic (and dark supernatural) was given a place in the construction of Canadian wilderness and identity alongside the more familiar romantic images of benign nature. Is the panther real or imagined ? The anthropomorphizing of wild animals through Roberts’ writing, part of a genre of Canadian writing that included the work of Edward Thompson Seton and others, ensured the mystique of the Canadian wilderness, making it at once familiar and fantastic and creating an important and destabilising dichotomy in the construction of a sense of Canadian identity. Roberts’ writing, with menacing panther and other animals carrying out Roberts’ interpretation of their instinctive actions, foreshadows similar characterizations found in the later work of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien but sets these animal characterizations (both fantastic and realist) within a discourse of national identity construction and the tension between colonial and metropolitan world views.

The Patterns of Corruption in Christian Churches of Cameroon: The Case of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon

Cameroon’s post-independence era has so far been marked by an upsurge in the number of Christian churches. This proliferation of Catholic, Protestant, and Pentecostal churches is probably the product of the heightened desire for spirituality. These churches, according to public opinion, are expected to be epicenters of good moral values and Christian behavior. Unfortunately, this has not always been the case. The present article seeks to point out that the establishment and growth of some indigenous denominations has been impacted by corruption. The Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC) is a case in point. This article draws extensively from archival and oral sources and seeks to examine the causes and manifestations of corruption in the PCC. It also examines the effects of corruption on the Church and provides some recommendations to address this. The article concludes that Church elections, Church property, Church management, and integrity in leadership are crucial issues within the PCC around which corruption rotates. Hence, it suggests a multidimensional anti-corruption approach as the way out.

The Christian Life: In Addition to Augustine and Aquinas

AbstractThe paper offers an alternative to the prevailing “discipleship” model of the Christian life that requires self-transformation, considerable effort and self-sacrifice, and tends to make negative judgements against those who fail to live according to the model. The model is illustrated by the example of Thomas Aquinas. A second, complementary model is drawn from the role of the crowds, who followed Jesus in the Gospels. With the help of Karl Barth's account of vocation, the second model makes it possible for the church to consider those who, for certain reasons, do not live in accord with the discipleship model to be considered good Christians, rather than unsatisfactory ones.

Konfrontacja ascetyki Hieronima ze Strydonu i Pelagiusza z Brytanii na podstawie wybranych dzieł

Jerome’s meeting with Pelagius could be chance for them, but unfortunately – missed this chance. Saint Jerome shaped by idea of the West theology, but deeply fascinated by East. While Pelagius – too far in his vision of human nature optimistic had strayed into. He became disillusioned with this many people together and instead of typing the current orthodoxy, always will be associated with the heterodoxy. A way of looking at the world and the life environment have an impact on the asceticism Jerome and Pelagius. Jerome’s asceticism was based on the allegorical reading and meditation of the Holy Scriptures, while Pelagius represented the moralistic approach to Bible and Christian life. Jerome postulated the way of Christian pilgrimage to God, where faithful tackling weaknesses by the grace of God and ascetic practice. The good Christian by Jerome should imitate Christ, by honest work, prayer and ascetic practice, consequently – the choice of monastic life. Pelagius the purpose of life – proclaim the glory of God, understood as performing good deeds and practical morality. He wasn’t a Christian understanding of prayer, in exchange for that – he put great emphasis on the obligation to give away all the goods, as a fundamental human ethical excellence. Pelagius postulated already in earthly the community a believer with God, but conditioned by moral perfection.

A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition by Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane (review)

Reviewed by: A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition by Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane Holly J. Grieco Keywords Medieval Christianity, Heresy, Inquisition, Law, Magic, Witchcraft Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane. A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2011. Pp. 319 The subject of medieval heresy and inquisition has enjoyed a renaissance of sorts among scholars during the last decade or so. Scholarly treatment has moved well beyond the oftentimes-confessional approach to heresy and inquisition taken by their earliest investigators. More recent researchers have returned again and again to grapple with the documentary sources and attempt to understand their complexities. After such an expansion of the body of literature related to medieval heresy and inquisition, it is only fitting that among the most recent contributions is Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane’s superb survey of the subject, A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition.As a study that will engage both researchers and students with its intelligent and engaging synthesis of recent scholarship, Deane’s work represents a much-needed and welcome addition to the English-language literature on the subject. And because Deane tries to situate accusations of magic and witchcraft sensitively within the broader context of developments in late medieval heresy, there is much in her work to interest readers of this journal. In the book’s introduction, Deane enumerates some of the challenges of writing such a work. These challenges include defining heresy and questioning the sources. They also include linguistic challenges and the difficulty of navigating the variety of scholarly perspectives on heresy and inquisition. Deane addresses these four challenges in subsequent chapters in ways that make these concerns integral to her discussion. As an example of her technique, at the beginning of the first chapter, “Good Christians, Heresy, and the Apostolic Model,” Deane presents the report of Eberwin, prior of an [End Page 199] abbey near Cologne, to none other than Bernard of Clairvaux. In his report, the prior discussed a group of locals whose religious beliefs had become a matter of concern in the wider community (p. 25). Here, Deane provides the reader with a lesson on perspective: how should a researcher of heresy and inquisition approach such a document, and how might she best understand the beliefs and practices Eberwin attributed to the so-called heretics? Should Eberwin be taken at his word? Are the qualities he ascribed to the supposed heretics ones that necessarily divide them from other Christians, or, in fact, do they reveal some of the things they have in common? Here and throughout the book, Deane models the careful, analytic reading required for interpreting such texts, while alerting the reader to the multiple perspectives in play. Certainly, for some readers, the challenges of studying medieval heresy and inquisition will be tied to the challenge of studying the Middle Ages as a period very different from our own. Deane highlights some of these differences in a brief introduction to the history of Western Europe between 500 and 1500 CE (pp. 8–17). Periodically throughout the work, Deane highlights these differences by beginning with a contemporary, twenty-first-century perspective, then gently demonstrating how medieval people might have approached or understood the same scenario in very different ways. Each chapter is situated within its particular context—or contexts. For example, such attention to contextualization and change over time allows Deane to distinguish changes in the understanding of magic and witchcraft from the High through the Late Middle Ages. Rejecting (as have many scholars before her) a distinction between so-called “elite” and “popular” magic, Deane favors Richard Kieckhefer’s understanding of a common tradition that lay beneath most medieval magical practices. A learned tradition of magic did develop in medieval Europe between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, and this new tradition, along with the position of Jews within medieval Christian society and the later association of magic with Satan, influenced later medieval understandings of witchcraft and magic. Such attention to context allows Deane to provide a nuanced assessment of each topic she treats in the book. In addition to her clear and engaging prose, a number of other features render Deane’s book accessible to a wide range of readers...

You don't have to go to church to be a good Christian: the implicit religion of the cathedral carol service congregation

The notion that you don't have to go to church to be a good Christian is accepted as an indicator of the form of implicit religiosity espoused by those who (in Bailey's analysis) say that they “believe in Christianity.” The present paper builds on the findings of a recently published survey of rural Anglican churchgoers celebrating harvest which suggested that de-institutionalised implicit religion may be superseding commitment to conventional explicit religious attendance. The responses of 1081 people who attended Christmas carol services in two English cathedrals in 2009 and 2010 are analysed. The findings of the previous paper that implicit religiosity is more prevalent among younger people and among those who attend church less frequently are replicated. Evidence is also found that women are more inclined to this view than men and that those who have a loose historical connection through baptism are more likely to endorse it than those with either no historical connections or stronger ones. Suggestions are made for further research.

Victoriano Roncero LópezDe bufones y pícaros: La risa en la novela picarescaDe bufones y pícaros: La risa en la novela picaresca. Victoriano Roncero López. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2010. Pp. 325.

<i>Victoriano Roncero López</i>De bufones y pícaros: La risa en la novela picaresca<i>De bufones y pícaros: La risa en la novela picaresca</i>. Victoriano Roncero López. Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2010. Pp. 325.

Social Structure and Early Childhood Learning Enhancement

This is a qualitative research study using participatory action research. The study aims to: (1) study the roles of social institutions involved with early childhood learning enhancement; (2) study the relationship of social structure and development of the learning process; (3) promote learning guidelines in early childhood that are in accord with social structure. The sample group of 78 persons consisted of organizational representatives and parents. The research findings revealed that most people in the community engaged in agriculture but had an urban way of life; they often moved around, hardly lived together as a family, were Roman Catholic, had children who had learned to become good Christians through religious rituals, had schools than supported learning at kindergarten level, had storytelling and story reading activities, and had a sub-district health promotion hospital. The tasks in enhancing learning were to educate, promote playing activities, tell stories and read books to children in families and organizations, and hold forums to enhance learning in families. Learning enhancement in families had two characteristics: (1) learning enhancement according to way of life; and (2) learning enhancement according to way of life together with supplementary activities. With regard to the relationship with social structure, it was found that the organizations worked in accordance with their main tasks, that work integration was rare, and that organizations and parents only related through roles and duties. After learning enhancement was carried out, it was found that parents and related organizations became alert, understood their roles and adjusted these to facilitate child learning. They continuously participated in the child learning enhancement process, and relationships in families was improved.

Incomparable Introduction

Incomparable Introduction David Armstrong (bio) Machiavelli: A Life Beyond Ideology. Paul Oppenheimer. Continuum. http://www.continuumbooks.com. 368 pages; cloth, $29.95; eBook, $33.87. Paul Oppenheimer, a leading American poet, is also a broad-based scholar of European intellectual history. His new book on Machiavelli's life and thought will not disappoint readers of his fine earlier studies, Rubens: A Portrait (2002), and Evil and the Demonic: A Study of Monstrous Behavior (1996). There are many books and an enormous secondary literature, which Oppenheimer has studied with profit, on Machiavelli's life and works. What's special about this one? It's for the same new generation of readers that needs a vision "beyond ideology" from its writers as well—meaning "without invisible but intrusive moral judgments on characters' or subjects' moral behavior by an author who is assumed to be their moral superior merely because it's now centuries later and s/he and the readers of today share the moral superiority of modernity as a matter of course." It's for the kind of reader who can appreciate Simon Schama's 1992 redoing of the famous Parkman murder of 1849, Dead Certainties, or Hilary Mantel's unprejudiced look into the mind and motives of such an "amoral" Renaissance man as Thomas Cromwell, until now a stage villain of the Henry VIII saga in Wolf Hall (2009) and Bring out the Bodies (2012). Such readers will also thoroughly enjoy the way in which Paul Oppenheimer looks without the ideology of simple moral judgments both into Machiavelli's life—into events full of terror or comedy or both that he witnessed, into the texture of the world he saw and felt—to give us an equally non-ideological judgment of his writings and his thought. Of course, "beyond ideology" means also that Machiavelli himself was beyond simple moral judgments because of the shaping influences of his life and times, and that his readers also should be. Isaiah Berlin's famous essay in The New York Review of Books, "The Question of Machiavelli" (1971), reviews over "a score" (as Berlin says) of interpretations that have been given for the flat contradiction between the republican "ideology" of the Discourses (1531) and the willingness to contemplate the realities of a tyrant's self-interest in The Prince (1532). Is The Prince a satire on tyrants or a veiled cautionary tale on how to deal with them? That's been the solution of those who wanted a Machiavelli with moral "integrity." So perhaps Machiavelli was an anguished humanist, even a good Christian, lamenting the evil of a world in which such rulers were necessary? Or perhaps he was a great Italian patriot whose visions of another Cesare Borgia, who this time would succeed in uniting his country against its enemies, led him to unchain such a figure of all ordinary restraints? Hilary Mantel's Cromwell and Wolsey are not without similar motives in their indulgence of the vices of Henry VIII as ruler. Berlin came to the conclusion that Machiavelli was instead (though not literally on the Devil's side, a popular explanation in his own day) one of the greatest and most unsettling opponents of the long-assumed Western "ideology" of moral monism, the idea that there is discovery either by philosophy or religion of some one morality and shape essential to the good life, and by which all a human beings' actions can be judged. Machiavelli "caused men to become aware of the necessity of making agonizing choices between incompatible alternatives...in public and private life...by relegating much uncriticized traditional morality to the realm of utopia." And, as Berlin makes clear, Machiavelli did not himself feel much personal anguish about these conclusions, any more than Hilary Mantel's Cromwell (who has already—in the 1530s—read "Machiavel," since he follows current Italian literature on both chess and politics by unpublished manuscripts) or the more enlightened characters in the Game of Thrones series (1996-2011). Oppenheimer's Machiavelli is exactly Berlin's but presented with the vision of a poet capable of set pieces of vivid recreation in prose reminding one of Gibbon's, and certainly comparable to Schama's or...

ON HELPING ONE'S NEIGHBOR

ABSTRACTFew people doubt that severe poverty is a pressing moral issue. But what sorts of obligations, if any, do affluent people have toward the severely poor? If one accepts the idea that one has some obligations to the severely poor there still remains disagreement about the magnitude of this obligation and when it obtains. I consider Peter Singer's influential “shallow pond” argument, which holds that affluent people have greater obligations toward the severely poor than ordinary moral judgments suggest. Critics hold that Singer's view is excessively demanding and therefore untenable. I thus turn to the parable of the Good Samaritan and Christian accounts of neighbor‐love to help attenuate this criticism. Drawing from Christian conversations on neighbor‐love, I attempt to demonstrate that accepting an obligation to assist does not necessarily result in one abandoning one's special relations, abnegating self‐regard, or no longer pursuing other non‐moral strivings.

Spirituality as “good Christian citizenship” in the pastoral epistles?

Dibelius, in his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, suggested that they represented a way-of-being in the world resulting from the delay of the parousia. As such they advocate a form of spirituality which can best be described as “good Christian citizenship”. This paper, drawing on both Taylor’s understanding of the “social imaginary” and Waaijman’s understanding of spirituality, examines Dibelius’ contention by revisiting the concept of eusebeia (godliness/piety), which is prevalent in the Pastorals, in the light of the lived experience of pagans, Jews and Christians in first-century Ephesus.

Bonas Femnas and the Consolamen

My recently completed doctoral dissertation examines gender relations in the communities of the Lauragais in the thirteenth century that adhered to heresy. I focus here on the ways that the socially constructed gender identities of women and men influenced their involvement with the amicx de Dieu, or friends of God, also known as the Good Christians. I hope to show the extent to which women who embraced heretical thoughts and practices were still considered by society as less worthy than men to receive the gesture of respect known as the melhoramen. Despite often being drawn from the nobility, most women who underwent the consolamen and became bonas femnas still failed to transcend the gender boundaries of their day. Despite long held beliefs that women were empowered beyond the traditional gender boundaries when they adhered to heretical beliefs and practices, and further to studies that have proven that women did not embrace the heretical lifestyle as extensively as was previously thought, I will examine here the reasons for this subjugation of the religious rights of women who embraced heresy.

A history of medieval heresy and inquisition

Introduction: The Contours of Authority in Medieval Christendom Chapter 1: Good Christians, Heresy, and the Apostolic Model Chapter 2: Poverty, Preaching, and the Poor of Lyon Chapter 3: Lawyer Popes, Mendicant Preachers, and New Inquisitorial Procedures Chapter 4: Spiritual Franciscans, the Poverty Controversy, and the Apocalypse Chapter 5: Mysticism, Lay Religious Women, and the Problem of Spiritual Authority Chapter 6: Medieval Magic, Demonology, and Witchcraft Chapter 7: Wyclif, the Word of God, and Inquisition in England Chapter 8: Reform, Revolution, and the Lay Chalice in Bohemia Epilogue