Individual Believers Research Articles

Church Schisms, Church Property, and Civil Authority

When the Supreme Court decided Jones v. Wolf it required courts to use secular criteria to decide church property disputes, yet there remains considerable uncertainty about the permissible latitude of those secular principles. This stems from the Court's attempt to honor three principles that are in tension with one another: 1) autonomous church governance, which the Court sees as an aspect of the free exercise of religion, 2) the need to prevent civil courts from deciding issues of religious doctrine, an aspect of the ban on governmental establishments of religion, and 3) preservation of state autonomy to decide how best to accommodate these twin goals, an aspect of federalism. There are three principal problems with this tripartite objective. First, sometimes they conflict with each other. Second, and worse, this framework fails to take into account adequately the interest of individuals united in local congregations of religious believers freely to exercise their religious beliefs. Finally, embedded in this framework is a generally unrecognized potential violation of the establishment clause: the provision by states of special advantages to hierarchical churches that allow them unilaterally to impose trusts for their benefit upon property held by local congregations. This article seeks to expose these problems and present an approach that better protects the interest in religious freedom of local congregants while still preserving autonomy of church governance and limiting civil courts to adjudication of secular issues. When hierarchical churches divide into factions the principles of religious freedom embedded in the religion clauses compel civil courts to recognize the religious beliefs of a majority of the local congregation in deciding which faction of the divided church is entitled to the use of the local congregational property, absent some clear and wholly secular indication that the local congregation has given control of its property to the general church. The cost of this approach is a slight reduction in the discretion of states to specify decision rules for church property disputes, and a somewhat more controversial reduction in the degree of deference that civil courts should pay to internal church governance rules when churches divide into factions as a result of religious schism. When the Supreme Court decided Watson v. Jones in the late nineteenth century and adopted deference to internal church governance as a standard for resolution of church property disputes, the religion clauses did not apply to the states. While the Court couched its reliance upon internal governance as an implication flowing from the ideals of religious freedom, it did not have to examine that premise critically. When in Jones v. Wolf the Court perpetuated this principle as an option for resolution of church property disputes it may have thought that deference to internal governance rules of hierarchical churches promotes religious freedom. Sometimes it does, but not always. Civil judicial interference with a hierarchical church's control of its clergy is the paradigmatic case of impermissible interference with the free exercise of religion. By contrast, permitting a hierarchical church unilaterally to impose trusts in its favor upon property held for the benefit of local congregations either creates an establishment clause violation (if secular charitable entities are denied this state-created benefit or if there is no plausible secular purpose for this benefit) or cuts deeply into the practical reality of how individual believers gathered in local communities manifest their religious conduct. This problem is exacerbated when a hierarchical church divides amid doctrinal disagreement. At that point, courts should apply a rule of local option, permitting each congregation to decide for itself which branch of the divided church will have its fealty and its property. Only by applying such a rule can a proper balance be struck between the splintered autonomy interest of a hierarchical church and the interest in religious associational freedom of local congregations and their individual members. The reflexive reliance of courts upon internal governance rules to decide property issues amid schism has obscured the interests in religious freedom that are at stake. Adoption of the local congregational option principle leaves hierarchical churches with many avenues to secure congregational property for the benefit of the general church. First, they can avoid rupture by finding sufficient common ground in their religious doctrine to accommodate their body of believers. Second, they can insist that local congregations explicitly place their property in trust for the benefit of the general church as the price of continued affiliation with the general church. What they cannot do is create such trusts by the ipse dixit of the hierarchical church.

The reception of the Barmen Declaration in South Africa

The reception of the Barmen Declaration in South Africa

Combating “Mohammedan Indecency”: The Baptism of Muslim Slaves in Spanish Naples, 1563-1667

AbstractIn the century following the Council of Trent, ecclesiastical authorities in Naples embarked on a campaign, the largest of its kind in Italy, to convert the city's Muslim slaves to Christianity. For the Church, the conversions were not only important for the conquest of individual believers, but symbolic occasions that demonstrated on a small scale important themes of Christian ethics and anti-Islamic polemic. At the same time, the number and frequency of the conversions forced secular authorities to confront the problem of the civil status of newly baptized slaves. During the seventeenth century, one of the highest tribunals of the state heard a series of cases that pitted baptized slaves who demanded their freedom against slave owners who saw their religious identity as unimportant.

The Witch, the Zombie and the Power of Jesus: A trinity of spiritual warfare in Tanzanian Pentecostalism

The report discusses neo-Pentecostal gospel, demonology and deliverance in the context of social transformations and economic reforms in Tanzania, via a detailed case-study of a single church in Dar es Salaam—the Glory of Christ Tanzania Church—which displays the conjuncture of a global religion with elements of local ontology such as witchcraft and zombies. It is proposed that the Pentacostal-Charismatic gospel provides the interpretative frame to explain experience of social and economic affliction that is deeply gendered. Further, the deliverance practices are suggested to free the individual believer from the occult forces associated with kinship relations.

The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (review)

Reviewed by: The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England Carrie Hintz D. Bruce Hindmarsh . The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England. Oxford University Press 2005. x, 384. US $110.00 The Evangelical Conversion Narrative offers a stimulating 'biography of a genre' from its seventeenth-century origins through its decline in the nineteenth century, with emphasis on the conversion narratives of the eighteenth-century evangelical revival. Drawing on hitherto unexplored archival sources, D. Bruce Hindmarsh offers critical insight into the way that laity and clergy alike framed their spiritual lives in narrative form. The book traces the cultural changes that shaped the conversion narratives of this period, including technological and social change, [End Page 246] and the reasons why individuals turned to religious community as a means of shaping their lives. After a brief exploration of the early modern origins of the conversion narrative, Hindmarsh offers a useful exploration of the transatlantic evangelical revival in the 1730s, with an emphasis on 'how plastic religious identity had become by the mid-eighteenth century.' This chapter also argues for the social dimensions of conversion 'to stimulate parallel experience and allow the formation of a narrative community.' Much of the book is given over to a consideration of how the doctrinal, cultural, and social differences between religious groups might have shaped the kinds of narratives produced by individual believers, whether the evangelical Presbyterians of the Cambuslang revival in Scotland, moderate Calvinists within the Church of England, or Moravians. Hindmarsh's rich account covers a wide cross-section of people in the period, in large part because of his impressive work with archives and primary sources. As one example among many, he recognizes the 'special significance' of a collection of letters to Charles Wesley in the John Rylands Library, which contains 'the diverse testimony of women and men, those literate and barely literate, and persons of higher and lower ranks in society.' Hindmarsh offers powerful analysis of the interaction of self and community in the period, noting that conversion narratives were 'located at the cusp of modernity but also sharing all the assumptions of a fading Christian hegemony,' thus involving 'both creativity and discovery, both individuation and discovery.' With this expansive understanding of life narratives, it is regrettable that Hindmarsh does not draw on contemporary life-writing theorists who work on 'relational autobiography' (such as Paul John Eakins, Richard Freadman, and Nancy K. Miller), although he uses classic theorists of individualistic autobiography (such as Georges Gusdorf and James Olney) very effectively. Any scholar of the eighteenth century might productively consult this book as an alternative to secular Enlightenment models of the self. In writing the 'biography of a genre' Hindmarsh takes on a challenging task. With historical sensitivity, deep research, and engaging writing he brings to life not just the conversion narrative genre but the thousands of people who turned to it to recount their experiences. Carrie Hintz Queens College, CUNY Copyright © 2008 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Transcending Tradition: An Examination of the Manner in Which the Law Induces Change in Institutions Defined by Religion

In this paper, I want to consider how the law navigates the space lying between the concepts of faith and religion so as to effectively induce change in institutions defined by their religious expression without distorting the faith reposed by individual believers in their religious institution. In order to consider whether this is possible, we must first consider whether the seemingly twin concepts of faith and religion are so intertwined that they are inseparable, or whether they lie in different planes, with the law regulating conduct that expresses the faith, and thereby potentially affecting both concepts.In considering this problem, I would suggest that religion or religious dictates generally offer to guide the believer toward the attainment of salvation, often conceived of as adherence to religious dictates. In my view, however, reducing the concept of salvation to adherence to religious dictates would rob it of its character as a comprehensive set of beliefs and commitments held by individual believers, whatever the particular religion they follow. In essence, “salvation” lies within the individual believer and while compliance with religious dictates may be part of that process, ultimately, whether one has achieved salvation is entirely determined by the individual. “Salvation” resonates from the faith held by the individual, while religion is simply a means of expressing that faith.

The Precarious Status of Resurrection in Friedrich Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre

Abstract: The Glaubenslehre provides the context for this exploration of Schleiermacher's understanding of Christ's resurrection in relation to redemption, the nature‐system and eschatology. In spite of Schleiermacher's affirmation of the historicity of Christ's resurrection, he proceeds to empty the resurrection of redemptive significance, thereby maintaining consistency with a nature‐system that implicitly disallows miracles, and resulting in an eschatology in which the resurrection of individual believers is posited in severe tension with the consummation of the church. Thus, the weight of Schleiermacher's consistent argumentation regarding redemption, the nature‐system and eschatology suggests that there is no room for resurrection in the Glaubenslehre in relation to either Christ or individual believers.

Constructions of the Religious Self. Moravian Conversion and Transatlantic Communication

Abstract Within Pietism the concept of "conversion" played an important role in the life of the individual believer. The author studies the way Moravians spoke and wrote about conversion, and what this meant for the constitution of their personality, as well as the community. The main source form thousands of memoirs (Lebensläufe), written by individual Moravians and preserved as manuscripts in various Moravian archives; hundreds were published in Moravian periodicals. The Moravian understanding of conversion was expressly oriented against every notion of "sanctification". The author argues that conversion was both an individual as well as a communal experience. Individual Moravians were shaped by the vocabulary and framework established by previously published memoirs; on the other hand, individuals also affected the development of memoir-writing with their own, personal interpretations of religious life. For Moravians conversion was a lifelong pilgrimage on precarious terrain. The journey did not lead toward personal perfection, but, as the author explains, toward a radical acknowledgement of human imperfection.

Faith and Politics: The Rhetoric of Church–State Separation

Criticism of religiously motivated contributions to public policy debate is largely misconceived. It assumes that the mischief which constitutional separation of church and state is supposed to cure is a domination of the state by the church. This presents only one side of the story. Subservience by the church to the state should also be avoided. The law of a liberal state is legitimate to the extent that it does not conflict with the basic moral values of its citizens. Therefore, an ongoing conversation about basic values is necessary. Allowing churches and individual believers the freedom to make distinctive ‘religious’ contributions to this conversation is consistent with the separation of church and state. It is an aspect of the liberal democratic state’s obligation to listen to all perspectives on difficult moral issues. A close relationship between church and state, on the other hand, has the capacity to impede the conversation.

Every Foreign Land is Their Native Country, and Every Land of Birth is a Land of Strangers

AbstractThe author compares three models of the relation of church and state. The Hungarian king Stephen(± 1000 AD) pleads for a plural society with different cultural and ethnic traditions. Different religious traditions easily fit into this model. The model of the Roman Emperor Constantine (beginning of the 4th century) provides an intertwining of church and state. The unknown author of the epistle to Diognetus (± 200 AD) describes a church that is spread among the nations and does not identify itself with any one nation. The first and the last model are compatible while both exclude Constantine's. The difference with the modern idea of religious freedom is that this idea deals with individual believers while the model of Stephen and Diognetus speaks of a plurality of communities. That is a more solid base for human dignity because the community provides people a place to be at home.

From Sīrah to Qasīdah: Poetics and Polemics in Al-Būsīrī's Qasīdat Al-Burdah (Mantle Ode)

AbstractThis study of the celebrated 7/13th century madīh/nabawī (praise poem to the Prophet Muhammad), al-Būsīrī's Qasīdat al-Burdah (Mantle Ode), takes as its premise the supplicatory structure of the ode expounded in the author's earlier study of the poem, "From Text to Talisman" (2006). It argues that the central portions of the Burdah, Parts IV to VIII, which are derived from prose sources for the Sīrah (biography) of the Prophet, have been poetically recast in the rhetorically ornate badī' style of the High 'Abbāsid period. This accomplishes two goals: first, by expressing the Prophet's Miracles, the Night Journey and Ascension, the Miraculousness of the Qur'aeān and the Prophet's Jihād and Campaigns in the robust metalanguage identified with the period of Arab-Islamic cultural and political hegemony, the poet creates a mythic concordance between the two eras. Second, through the intricate rhetorical workings of badī' devices, the poet elicits from "historical" events in the Prophet's life cosmic and timeless connections and associations. The result is that these sections of the Burdah provide a polemic that promotes an ideology of Islamic Manifiest Destiny. This is intended to establish the eternal veracity of Muhammad's prophethood and message (Islam), and its continued efficacy for both the Community and the individual believer. Above all, these sections, which function as extensions of the madīh (praise) section of the poem, confirm the mamdū;h's ability to grant the request that the poet-supplicant makes: the Prophet's intercession (shafā'ah) on the Day of Judgment.

Alfonso Riobó Serván: El derecho de libertad religiosa en la República Checa y en la República Eslovaca

One of the most significant projects in the area of confessional law studies in both the Czech and the Slovak Republics, was published in Spain in 2005. Alfonso Riobo Servan, of the State Ecclesiastical Law Institute at the historic Universidad Complutense in Madrid, is closely acquainted with the central European environment. Since his expertise is in the local legal panorama, he possesses an extensive knowledge of the legislation as well as of the original sources. Riobo’s work comes as the climax of several years of research, resulting not only in an impressive, systematic work, but also in the overcoming of local barriers through fruitful scientific cooperation. This book provides a complex introduction to the various legal aspects of religious freedom in the Czech and Slovak Republics. Special emphasis is given to the author's view of religious liberty as a fundamental right, praising freedom as a basic value to be respected and guaranteed to churches, religious societies, and individual believers. Moreover, this approach does not consider confessional law and complex configurations between the State and churches only in the light of a formal view on legal norms, without paying due attention to their major function in the service of human rights and social life. The emphasis put on religious liberty provides for a more coherent approach that encompasses state-church relationswith respect to all relevant religious entities. The author limits himself to positive legal provisions that comply with the previously mentioned view.

Permutatio religionis – Ps. cxxxix und der Wandel der Israelitischen Religion zur Bekenntnisreligion

AbstractIn the Old Testament, religion is a matter of constant change and development. Various religious contexts have led to changing kinds of text forms. This paper sees Psalm cxxxix as an abjuration form for an individual believer. We find three sections (Ps. cxxxix 1-6; 7-12; 13-18) declaring the qualities of JHWH, whereas in the last part (vv 19-24) the praying person separates himself from those inimical to JHWH (vv 21-22). The implication is that JHWH is the only and true God who demands abjuration from nonbelievers and true confession (cf. Ps. xci with its similar thought). This type of JHWH religion is typical for the post-exilic time. Ps. cxxxix may be taken as a kind of "performance" of the "Mosaic distinction" (Jan Assmann).

A Catholic Response in Sixteenth-Century France to Reformation Theology: The Works of Pierre Doré (review)

Reviewed by Katharine Lualdi University of Southern Maine A Catholic Response in Sixteenth-Century France to Reformation Theology: The Works of Pierre Doré. By John Langlois. [Roman Catholic Studies, Volume 18.] (Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 307. $119.95.) Despite his standing as the most edited Catholic writer in France in the first half of the sixteenth century, the Dominican and Paris theologian Pierre Doré (ca. 1497-1569) remains largely in the wings of Reformation historiography. This scholarly neglect is unfortunate, John Langlois argues compellingly, considering [End Page 666] the sheer size of Doré's publishing record and its convergence with the first decades of the French Reformation. Returning Doré to the prominence he enjoyed in his own day, Langlois provides a general introduction to his literary corpus and its significance as a "grass-roots" Catholic response to Protestant theology and the challenges it posed to French Catholic unity. Langlois begins by situating Doré's works in the context of the institutional reaction to the Reformation in France, and more specifically, that of his fellow Dominicans (introduction, Chapter 1). Set against this backdrop, Doré clearly stands out in his early and unwavering commitment to fighting heresy based on a singular strategy. Rather than engaging the Reformers directly, he addressed the French laity instead, seeking to keep them within the Catholic fold through religious instruction, guidance, and inspiration. Chapter 2 reveals that this strategy found expression in more than thirty texts written by Doré in French between 1537 and 1557, ranging from a catechism to polemical treatises and devotional writings. Especially striking here is the large number of devotional works Doré wrote at the request of and for aristocratic women, most of which went on to become his top sellers (pp. 89-97; see also the book's four appendices, where Langlois neatly summarizes Doré's bibliographical output). While acknowledging this female influence on Doré's literary career, Langlois does not consider the broader implications regarding the role of women in shaping early modern French Catholicism. Given the fact that his book is the first comprehensive study of Doré, this comment is not a criticism per se; Langlois has a lot of basic ground to cover, which he does effectively. But it does point to the rich veins of analysis remaining to be tapped. As Langlois demonstrates, a determined desire to undermine the validity of Protestant theology while calling his readers to a more personal (and orthodox) relationship with Christ shaped Doré's work regardless of genre. For this reason, Langlois devotes the second part of his study to an analysis of three major themes found repeatedly in Doré's books: justification, grace, merit and free will (chapter 3); the Eucharist (chapter 4); and the virtuous life (chapter 5). Reflecting Doré's own preoccupations, the chapter on the Eucharist is the longest in the book. Because Doré believed Protestants' rejection of transubstantiation was satanic, thereby posing the greatest risk to the Church and the individual believer, he addressed the Eucharist in some fashion in almost every one of his books (pp. 167-169). To elucidate this angle of Doré's anti-Protestant strategy, Langlois examines the basic features of Doré's theological exposition and how he packaged them for his readers. Despite the strength of Langlois' textual analysis, it offers little insight into Doré's place in the growing debate in France concerning the nature of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. Noticeably absent from Langlois' bibliography is Christopher Elwood's book exploring precisely this topic (Oxford, 1999). Doré was ahead of the game, not just in recognizing the potency of the printed vernacular as a bulwark against [End Page 667] Protestantism (as Langlois contends), but also in situating the Eucharist at its core. As Elwood discusses, the 1560's saw an explosion of eucharistic treatises and related public discourse in France, which ultimately helped to reshape its political and religious landscape...

ERICA LONGFELLOW, Women and Religious Writing in Early Modern England. Pp. ix+241. Cambridge, New York, Oakleigh: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 45.00 (ISBN 0 521 83758 8).

ERICA LONGFELLOW's book makes a major contribution to the field of early modern women's writing. Like other critics, such as Danielle Clarke, who have urged a more nuanced reading of categories and subject positions in this period, Longfellow argues against notions that women who wrote were always chafing against dictates to be chaste, silent, and obedient. Longfellow also asks incisive questions about our own critical investment in certain terminology (such as public and private), urging us to be more attentive to the women and their contexts. Taking as her focus five women writers from the early to mid seventeenth century, Longfellow analyses how their use of the Biblical ‘mystical marriage metaphor’ opens up possibilities for the negotiation of gender roles. The scriptural idea that Christ's love for his spouse (the Church, or the individual believer) is like that of a husband for his wife led to confusion about the gender of the spouse and about how the earthly roles of husband and wife were meant to parallel divine love. Longfellow argues persuasively that this confusion allowed women writers to claim authority for their own religious writing.

Spenser, Donne, and the Theology of Joy

Protestant writing of the early modern era vividly evokes both joy and the threat of joylessness. For the individual soul seeking signs of its salvation, joy is a proof or "earnest" of its sanctification by the Holy Spirit. Conversely, joylessness is a sign of the spirit's absence from the life of the individual believer and the corporate church. To illustrate this dynamic of joy and joylessness, I examine selected works of German and English theology before turning to book 1 of Spenser's The Faerie Queene and John Donne's Sermons.

Molière and Modernity: Absent Mothers and Masculine Births by Larry Riggs

MLR, IOI .4, 2oo6 I115 issues raises the question of what exactly comprises 'heresy'. The term eventually came to encompass a range of positions from pertinacious contradiction of religious truth to opposition to all sorts of purely philosophical positions within theological argument. Beyond this, the fine line between orthodoxy within an institutional frame work and the highly personal mystical experience of individual believers is the subject of anumber of the essays in this volume. An acceptance ofmysticism as superior to dis cursive theology in the first part of the century, even on the part of Bossuet, gives way to a hardening of attitudes, once the dangers of a galloping individualism were more clearly discerned by aChurch anxious to put beyond question the criteria of its his torical authority as regards the origins of the Church and its founding texts. Bossuet's conversion to a harder line on mysticism was prompted by what he considered the blindness to orthodoxy of Fenelon and especially Madame Guyon, whose positions are lucidly analysed here, along with the latter's proposal of certain biblical women as exemplars of her gender. Again, language is at the centre of Le Brun's preoccupations, in particular regarding the construction and interpretation of what, in the realm of the more 'orthodox' mystics, is essentially a discourse of the ineffable. But, with Madame Guyon, particular scrutiny is applied to the latitude she brought to bear on her 'spiri tual' reading of the biblical text and the figure of Christ. It seemed inevitable that the very notion of 'devotion' inboth singular and plural forms should come under attack in the course of a century which, in spiritual terms, moved from mysticism tomoralism. More crucially still, the concept of individual salvation remained a problem, whatever the place of the believer in the institution of the Church, hence the title of the book. 'Jouissance' is a reference to exalted mystical experience, whereas 'trouble' derives from the sense of abandonment potentially experienced by all believers through the enigma of Christ's words on the cross, which require constant comment: 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' This is a good point to end on. Le Brun often leaves quotations in Latin, Greek, and German untranslated. Moreover, the assiduous reader not only has to cope with an often challenging text but even more challenging footnotes. This does not, ultimately, detract from an exceedingly important collection of essays by a scholar with a frightening religious and historical culture, which few can even hope to rival. UNIVERSITYOFMANCHESTER HENRY PHILLIPS Moliere and Modernity: Absent Mothers and Masculine Births. By LARRY RIGGS. (EMF Critiques) Charlottesville: Rookwood Press. 2005. 234 PP. $45.95. ISBN I-886365-55-5. In his revisionist study ofMoliere, Larry Riggs develops an approach sketched in his earlier book on the seventeenth-century French playwright (Moliere and Plurality: Decomposition of theClassicist Self (Bern: Peter Lang, I989)), inwhich he combines insights from post-structuralist and postmodernist theory with borrowings from the theory of performance and ecologically oriented cultural commentary. Following on from Max Vernet's suggestion thatMoliere's comedies can be read as critiques of emerging modern culture, Riggs argues thatMoliere dramatizes the dan gers inherent in the logic of modernity, notably the univocalist tendencies of 'strong' thought as reflected by the aspirations of the rigid, absolutist Subject, shown to be in capable of accommodating the existence and aspirations of the Other. For Riggs, each of the comic types ridiculed byMoliere is an archetype of a certain kind or version of modernity, whether it be Arnolphe's paranoia about women and chance, Don Juan's use of rationalism and mathematics to legitimize his own claim to autonomy, Alceste' s desire for complete knowledge and control of the others, Harpagon's use of usury and encouragement of insatiable desire in his entourage, or the femmes savantes' will to iii6 Reviews impose an abstract and ideologically determined form of knowledge. The hegemony of this 'master model' as the definition of the truly human is precisely what Moli&re denounces. Not only do the plays return these would-be absolutist characters to the world of pluralistic, dialogic communication at the end, they also return them to the fundamental reality of the body. By showing the...

The Many Faces of Evil: Theological Systems and the Problems of Evil. Revised and expanded edition. By John S. Feinberg. Pp. 544. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books (a division of Good News Publishers), 2004. isbn 1 58134 567 4. Paper $35

This book is very full and detailed; it is also rather good. The point of the main title is that Feinberg sees at least three different ‘problems of evil’. There is the logical problem: is there a logical inconsistency in someone who believes in a good, all-powerful, and all-knowing God and yet admits the existence of evil? There is the evidential problem: granted that there is no logical inconsistency in theism, does the existence or the amount of evil in the world provide evidence against its truth? And there is the religious problem, which faces any individual believer who is hit by serious evil in his or her own life—how do I cope with this? The point of the subtitle is that Feinberg is not simply giving his own answers to these questions. He is himself a Calvinist and a compatibilist; but the bulk of the book is devoted to seeing how theists who are neither of these things have tackled the problems of evil. (And, we might add, approving of many of their efforts; he believes that theists who are not compatibilists or Calvinists can indeed provide answers to the ‘problems’, even though they are not answers he could give himself.)

Social capital generated by two rural churches: the role of individual believers

Extended interviews were conducted in 2003 with eight people who had affiliation with two churches within a large village. The interviews were analysed to assess whether these individuals were contributing to the social capital of their own church-related community (bonding social capital), and whether they were contributing to the social capital of the wider community (bridging social capital). The data demonstrated a positive answer on both accounts.

‘That Most Damnable Heresie’

Smyth and Helwys are often described by theologically moderate Baptists in the USA as strident advocates for religious freedom who grounded their claims in radical notions of human rights and the ultimate autonomy of individual believers. Such a description is anachronistic. These modern, Enlightenment ideas were not part of the prevailing intellectual vernacular of early 17th-century England. This article takes a fresh look at their work in historical context.