Secular Influences Research Articles

Saying “Yes,”“No,” and “Load Me Up” to Guns in America

Debate over gun control and gun rights has energized but not explained the seesaw nature of national gun policy making. Punctuated equilibrium theory (PET) aids in understanding that process, the gun policies it produces, and the roles of the ideologically opposed coalitions that are their sources. Gun ownership remains closely related to public preferences about gun policy, and the size of the gun-owning population has begun to diminish. In this analysis, the authors find that rifle and shotgun ownership responded little to national policy changes, but handgun ownership responded to both secular and policy influences. The results are that more Americans than ever before are saying “no” to gun ownership. Fewer are saying “yes,” but those who do own guns have been saying “load me up.” PET provides a framework for analyzing these changes and for anticipating some of their implications for public administrators.

Outposts of Civilization: Race, Religion, and the Formative Years of American-Japanese Relations

Americans have never been of one mind on Japan. At various times, and on occasion simultaneously, the Japanese have been either friends or enemies, westernized Asians or oriental “others,” civilized equals or racial inferiors. Joseph M. Henning's first-rate survey of American views of Japan in the late nineteenth century makes clear that American attitudes were very complex, even contradictory, from the very beginning of the relationship. According to the evolutionary doctrines of the day, Asians were viewed as “youthful races” being awakened from their precivilized torpor. Small in stature, innocent in their sexual mores, and barbaric in their social organization, the Japanese seemed ready for the vitalizing touch of Protestant missionary influence and modern industrial forms of social organization. But while Japan proved receptive to Western secular influences in the wake of the Meiji restoration, it remained for a time officially closed to Western missionary influence. The rapid industrialization of Japan came as a shock to many missionaries who had assumed that modernization could take place only under Christian auspices. American missionaries were also challenged by secular reformers who believed that social evolution owed nothing to religious influences. For Americans with romantic sensibilities, the disappearance of the old Japan—its natural beauty and exotic traditional customs—was more curse than blessing. But to many Japanese, especially those who were hell-bent on modernization and liberation from the burden of the unequal treaties imposed by the West, this romantic anti-modernism was akin to a desire to preserve Japan as a “playground or museum.” In exporting civilization, then, Americans were also sending abroad their own internal tensions.

International migration and the change of women's position among the left‐behind in rural Bangladesh

AbstractWhile the impact of remittances upon the economic conditions of the sending communities has received much attention, the effects of international migration on women's position in society among the left‐behind have not been adequately explored. This paper examines the changes in the left‐behind women's position at the family level as a result of the migration of adult men overseas. Data came from a demographic surveillance system covering 70 villages in Bangladesh. All migrant families having at least one male member working abroad for more than six months were identified in the study villages in 1996. A comparable number of non‐migrant families were selected at random from the same villages to yield a total sample of 1030 families. In‐depth interviews were conducted with adult women of the sample families. Findings reveal that the overseas migration of adult males has a significant positive association with women's decision‐making capacity and education of girls in the migrant families. The remittances as well as the influence of secular values have reduced the practice of dowry in marriages. Multivariate analysis suggests not only that remittances have increased the financial capacity of the migrant families, but also that secular influences from overseas might have modified the position of women when the role of other socio‐economic factors is controlled. The study concludes that the overseas migration of adult men can create a context for change of the women's position in traditional communities. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Secular Eschatology: Beliefs about Afterlife

The development of the concept of afterlife was traced through examination of extinctionism, existentialism, pre-historic Shamanism, the Hebrew Torah, the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Qur'an of Islam, Eastern religious and philosophical systems regarding reincarnation, pluralistic death, and secular alternatives of positivism and humanitarianism. Beliefs about afterlife were investigated for 270 healthcare workers and 414 university students. The extinctionist view was endorsed by 13.6 percent. The predominant view of 85.1 percent was a hope for an afterlife. Belief in a specific type of afterlife was acknowledged by 53.3 percent. Belief in reincarnation was indicated by 29.5 percent. The belief system of 13.6 percent was based on traditional religious concepts modified by secular influences about eternal life and resurrection into heaven or hell, depending on our earthly deeds. An additional 10.2 percent believed that we will all obtain heaven. Detailed post-hoc analyses by gender, race, and the religious identification categories of Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, and agnostic are reported.

(Re)Constructing the Tradition of Yiddish Women's Poetry

(Re)Constructing the Tradition of Yiddish Women's Poetry Alisa Braun Kathryn Hellerstein . Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999, 543 pp. In her introduction to Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky, Kathryn Hellerstein reminds us that few women poets writing in Yiddish have been able to achieve any sustained measure of literary success. That the career of Kadya Molodowsky could span decades as well as continents confirms Molodowsky's unique status in the world of Yiddish letters and underscores the significance of this remarkable collection. Molodowsky's poetry, notable for its integration of religious and secular influences, reflects the particularities of her background. Born in 1894 in Bereza-Kartuska, White Russia, Molodowsky was educated in an atypical fashion, receiving instruction in both Hebrew and Russian subjects. Molodowsky taught and published in Odessa and Kiev before achieving early literary distinction as a poet in Warsaw. This success continued in America, where she explored a broader range of [End Page 372] artistic genres and gained further recognition for her role at the center of cultural debates. Her writing challenged oversimplified characterizations of women's verse, and the first issue of her journal Svive (which she founded in 1943) generated a flurry of response in the Yiddish press after posing the question: what is the responsibility of the artist during times of crisis? A product of Hellerstein's more than decade-long engagement with Molodowsky's verse, Paper Bridges takes a crucial step toward refashioning Molodowsky's image in light of the diverse nature of her career. In particular, the collection challenges the conception of Molodowsky as a poet for whom issues of gender were always paramount, an impression perpetuated through the practices of anthologizing and literary criticism. The inclusion of selections from eight volumes of Molodowsky's poetry encourages readers to observe the development of her career over time, to identify those recurring images whose meanings shift with context, and to experience the range of Molodowsky's poetic voice. On a broader scale, Paper Bridges can be regarded as the latest in a series of attempts to redefine the field of Yiddish poetry. Such works as Avraham Novershtern's edition of Anna Margolin's Lider (1991) and Marcia Falk's bilingual volume of Malka Heifetz-Tussman's poetry With Teeth in the Earth (1992) have critiqued existing models of the modern Yiddish canon by bringing the corpus of verse by women into the foreground and into dialogue with established poets. These collections have confronted one of the problems that continue to plague the study of Yiddish poetry by women-that of access. Hellerstein's bilingual collection of Molodowsky's poetry represents a significant addition to these efforts, providing scholars with the tools with which to develop a sustained analysis of Molodowsky's exceptional career. In choosing to title her volume of Kadya Molodowsky's selected poems Paper Bridges (Papirene brikn), Hellerstein at once evokes the images and themes central to an understanding of the poet's artistic accomplishments. The recurring image of the paper bridge recalls the legendary belief that at the time of the Messiah, the Jews will cross into Paradise on a paper bridge. But in Molodowsky's various renderings, the bridge alternately represents a means of personal salvation, collective redemption through the Zionist dream, and the pathway between life and death upon which the speaker stands as she confronts the reality of her old age. The paper bridges are also the poems, imaginative utterances that dramatize the tensions [End Page 373] between contradictory forces, between traditional definitions of Jewish womanhood and modernity's secularizing tendencies, between the poet's commitment to her art and to public demands for relevance. The poems seek reconciliation by narrowing the distance between opposing tendencies, yet the fragility connoted by "paper" suggests the tenuousness of such attempts. The poetic mode by which Molodowsky chooses to achieve such resolution is the metaphor, another "bridge" through which the poet creates identifications and associations where none existed before. Unable to dismiss the past, yet ambivalent toward prayer and other traditional forms of expression, Molodowsky returns throughout her poetry to the question of whether it is possible to find a...

Longitudinal Change in Height of Men and Women: Implications for Interpretation of the Body Mass Index: The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging

Age differences in height derived from cross-sectional studies can be the result of differential secular influences among the age cohorts. To determine the magnitude of height loss that accompanies aging, longitudinal studies are required. The authors studied 2,084 men and women aged 17-94 years enrolled from 1958 to 1993 in the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, Baltimore, Maryland. On average, men's height was measured nine times during 15 years and women's height five times during 9 years. The rate of decrease in height was greater for women than for men. For both sexes, height loss began at about age 30 years and accelerated with increasing age. Cumulative height loss from age 30 to 70 years averaged about 3 cm for men and 5 cm for women; by age 80 years, it increased to 5 cm for men and 8 cm for women. This degree of height loss would account for an "artifactual" increase in body mass index of approximately 0.7 kg/m2 for men and 1.6 kg/m2 for women by age 70 years that increases to 1.4 and 2.6 kg/m2, respectively, by age 80 years. True height loss with aging must be taken into account when height (or indexes based on height) is used in physiologic or clinical studies.

A peculiar Islam

A Peculiar Islam Russell Dyk (bio) Islam in Kazakhstan: History, Ethnicity, Society.1 By A. K. Sultangalieva, Kazakh Institute of Strategic Studies Under the Auspices of the President of Kazakhstan: Almaty, 1998. 182 pp. With the revival of academic and political interest in Central Asia, the vacuum of thought about the region, formerly contained by the firm structure of the Cold War, has been filled in recent years by a surfeit of predictions about its future. Many of these derive from historical extrapolation (the “new Silk Road” and the “new Great Game”); others from a peculiar fascination with natural resources (the “next Saudi Arabia”). All emphasize the linkage between West and East that is Central Asia’s geographical destiny. One image that is difficult to banish when considering “West” and “East” is that of the struggle between Christianity and Islam. It is the latter faith, with its mullahs, fatwas, and strict sharia, that some observers feared would surge into Central Asia as Soviet power faded, creating an Islamic revival in an area of economic interest to the West. One crucial point these predictions fail to take into account, however, is that to have a revival, there must be something to revive. In her study Islam inKazakhstan: History, Ethnicity, Society, Alma Sultangalieva makes it abundantly clear that in this former Soviet Republic, Islam is not only more of an historical peculiarity than an historical force, but also an intra-ethnic phenomenon rather than a defining societal characteristic. The main determinants of Islam in Kazakhstan are time, social structure, and geographical isolation. [End Page 282] A Peculiar Islam Islam was introduced to Kazakhstan over an eight-hundred-year period, from the eighth to the sixteenth centuries. It came not in one zealous wave but in a gradual current. Islam, therefore, never conquered other pre-existing faiths in the Kazakh steppe, such as Turkic animistic beliefs and Zoroastrianism. Instead it became synthesized with them. Moreover, the influence of Sufism, an unorthodox, mystical branch of Islam brought to the region by missionaries from Bukhara, became an important element of the local faith. Sultangalieva points out that “in contrast to a number of other Muslim regions, [the inhabitants of the Kazakh steppe] did not consider the Sufi brotherhoods as heretical....” 2 Islam in Kazakhstan was further diluted by the peculiar practice of “Genghism,” a system of belief introduced after the Mongol invasions, that placed particular emphasis on a genealogical connection with Genghis Khan. More to the point, Genghism existed alongside Islam while blatantly refuting Islam’s central tenet: there is no god besides Allah. According to Saltangalieva, something resembling a Kazakh society did not begin to coalesce until the sixteenth century. Even so, it was a society divided along geographical lines, separating the settled farmers in the southeast from the nomads in the north and west. Society was further divided by ethnicity, with the result that local identity remained more important than any other collective identity, including Islam. This, along with the gradual introduction of the faith and its fusion with pre-Islamic and Sufi beliefs, meant that Islam never manifested itself as a political force in Kazakhstan. This held true even in later periods: Islam never became a facet of opposition to Russian colonization or Soviet rule. Although in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Central Asia, and especially the Caucasus, there was a revival of Islamic consciousnesss (albeit one infused with a strong Western, secular perspective), its impact in Kazakhstan was small. 3 Indeed, it was a strong, secular influence emanating from an educated, Western-looking elite that led to the establishment of a sort of Kazakh national consciousness in this period. The Russian approach to Islam was a two-stage one. The first stage was characterized by tolerance and a certain degree of cooperation: the Islamic clergy was courted in order to smooth the process of colonization. The second stage—the Soviet period—was [End Page 283] characterized by repression: Islam was seen initially as a threat and then as an enemy of the people. With the Soviet thaw, there was a toning down of official opposition to religion and certain state-sanctioned sects were allowed to operate. 4 Interestingly...

A Concise History of Christianity in Canada ed. by Terrence Murphy and Roberto Perin

534BOOK REVIEWS homes? And what about the traditional religious communities which have been experiencing steady growth in recent years? The Legionaries of Christ and the Daughters of St. Paul would be logical choices.These drawbacks notwithstanding ,Weaver and Appleby have made a very good start.This is a detaUed and fairminded overview of conservative CathoUcism which should be of interest to anyone concerned with post-concUiarAmerican CathoUcism. John E Qulnn Salve Regina University Newport, Rhode Island Canadian A Concise History ofChristianity in Canada. Edited byTerrence Murphy and Roberto Perin. (New York: Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xU, 456. $27.95 paperback.) Since the trilogy ofA History ofthe Christian Church in Canada byWalsh, Moir, and Grant was pubUshed in the early 1970's, the speciaUzation of Canadian history has produced new and more accurate methods of gathering information and deepening our understanding of the more sensitive issues of history. Fields such as gender, Native, reUgious devotion, and popular history have opened up whole new horizons which had been hidden or forgotten. Under the editorial leadership ofTerrence Murphy and Roberto Perin, Oxford University Press has pubUshed a new history of Canadian Christianity. Its emphasis is centered on the people's beUefs and practices in an effort to move away from institutional history.The five historians mobilized to write the lengthy sections of this substantial volume are skUled methodologists in researching and writing contemporary history. For instance, the American CathoUc Historical Association m 1995 bestowed its John Gilmary Shea Award on one of the authors, Brian Clarke, for his Piety and Nationalism: Lay Voluntary Associations and the Creation of an Irish-Catholic Community in Toronto, 1850-1895. And so the other authors are equaUy weU respected and weU pubUshed in their fields. Five essays averaging seventy pages each are carefully researched and skiUfuUywritten .The authors demonstrate that five researchers writing an historical synthesis are more powerful in skills and thoroughness than Individual researchers . Each of these speciaUsts has unique insights to share into the "fundamental turning-points" of Canadian church history. Although a bibUography is not compüed at the end of the volume, the endnotes of each section provide a record of the latest research on each topic. If this is the upside of the volume, the downside is that there is a wrench as one finishes one essay and goes on to the next. By means of the preface and epUogue, Murphy works to draw the volume Into structural unity and raise questions about the future of Christianity in Canada. In the first essay,Terry Crowley treats the French colonization tul its BOOK REVIEWS535 cessation at the British Conquest in Canada in 1763. He documents the rise of seventeenth-century baroque spirituaUty with a cast of colorful characters, such as John de Brébeuf, Marguerite Bourgeoys, Marie de l'Incarnation, and Kateri Tekakwitha. He misses, however, some outstanding Native Christians such as Joseph ChUiwatenha and LouisTaondechoren. Proceeding to the eighteenth century, Crowley reveals the creeping Influence of secularism and the superficiality to which religious practices had degenerated.With a dearth ofvocations and lack of funding, one of the few bright spots on the Canadian horizon was the founding of the Grey Nuns in Montreal by Marguerite d'Youvüle. Analyzing the period after the Conquest, Gules Chaussé focuses on the alienation which developed between the Church and the Québécois between 1791 and 1840. He refers to this period as the "hibernation" of the Canadian church, a period when it sidled up to the British government aUowüig the "new lay élite" in the Legislative Assembly to lead the Canadian community. Church officials at the time faUed to show sympathy for the pUght of an oppressed people. The breach between the upper clergy and faithful was later restored by the ultramontane renewal beginning in 1840. Murphy reviews the period from the founding of Scottish and Irish communities in the Atlantic region and Upper Canada to the disestabUshment oftheAngUcan Church in 1854.The assertion of the rights of the Protestant evangeUcals, the Church of Scotland, and the Catholics brought an end to the privUeges of the AngUcan Church. These changes and the emergence ofvoluntarism, however, did not fracture the traditional harmony...

Political Liberalization in Jordan: An Analysis of the State's Relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood

Political liberalization is evidenced throughout the Middle East as new experiments in democracy have occurred in a variety of countries including Yemen, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Tunisia. The region also is experiencing a resurgence of Islamic activism fueled by rampant poverty, increasing unemployment and underemployment, as well as disillusionment with secular rule and Western cultural influence. The

The Americanization of the Jews

How did Judaism, a religion so often defined by its minority status, attain equal footing in the trinity of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism that now dominates modern American religious life? THE AMERICANIZATION OF THE JEWS seeks out the effects of this evolution on both Jews in America and an America with Jews. Although English, French, and Dutch Jewries are usually considered the principal forerunners of modern Jewry, Jews have lived as long in North America as they have in post- medieval Britain and France and only sixty years less than in Amsterdam. As one of the four especially creative Jewish communities that has helped re-shape and re-formulate modern Judaism, American Judaism is the most complex and least understood. German Jewry is recognized for its contribution to modern Jewish theology and philosophy, Russian and Polish Jewry is known for its secular influence in literature, and Israel clearly offers Judaism a new stance as a homeland. But how does one capture the interplay between America and Judaism? Immigration to America meant that much of Judaism was discarded, and much was retained. Acculturation did not always lead to assimilation: Jewishness was honed as an independent variable in the motivations of many of its American adherents- -and has remained so, even though Jewish institutions, ideologies, and even Jewish values have been reshaped by America to such an degree that many Jews of the past might not recognize as Jewish some of what constitutes American Jewishness. This collection of essays explores the paradoxes that abound in the America/Judaism relationship, focusing on such specific issues as Jews and American politics in the twentieth century, the adaptation of Jewish religious life to the American environment, the contributions and impact of the women's movement, and commentaries on the Jewish future in America.

Papal Patronage and Cultural Bureaucracy in Eighteenth-Century Rome: Clement XI and the Accademia di San Luca

1TWO EVENTS OCCURRED IN THE YEAR 1700 which forever altered the status quo in Western Europe: the death of the childless King Charles II of Spain and the election of Cardinal Gianfrancesco Albani of Urbino as Pope Clement XI. The former precipitated a twelveyear conflict, the War of the Spanish Succession, and the latter gave control of the Church to the uncompromising zelanti faction. This clique of conservative prelates was willing to sacrifice expediency and political advantage in order to uphold traditional ecclesiastical immunities and privileges that were of a retrospective rather than a progressive nature. Ironically, the war and the zelanti triumph contributed to the vitiation of the Church's secular influence, initiating a process that culminated in the humiliation of Pius VII by Napoleon. Throughout the eighteenth century, a succession of worthy pontiffs exploited, to a greater or lesser extent, the Church's remaining resources after its loss of decisive political influence. Following this trend, papal art patronage shifted away from grand new projects towards the restoration and refurbishment of existing classical and Christian monuments.1 In so doing, the Settecento Papacy, beginning with

The Cultural Context of High Fertility in sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa may offer greater resistance to fertility decline than any other world region as a result of a lineage-based traditional belief system. Traditional African religious values have sustained high fertility in 2 ways: 1stthey have acted directly to equate fertility with virtue and reproductive failure with sin and 2nd they have provided support for a system of upward flows of wealth. The African family structure generally places reproductive decision making in the hands of the husband and the economic burden for the support of children on the shoulders of the wife. Because of the weakness of the conjugal bond men tend not to realize the full burden of reproductive decisions. Thus reproductive decisions and behavior are only loosely related to the subsequent dependency burden. On the other hand there are signs of a destabilization of this high fertility system. At the individual level growing numbers of women in sub-Sahara Africa are facing economic difficulties and would like to take defensive action to limit births. At the national level there are recurrent problems with faltering economic growth and uncertain food supplies. Secular influences such as models of the family taught by the media and the schools may help make the conjugal family more dominant than homage to living ancestors. The demand for female contraceptive methods in sub-Sahara Africa is likely to grow. The pill and the IUD will probably be most employed but a demand for injectables and implants can be expected as well. However the authors predict that radical fertility declines should not be expected in sub-Saharan Africa during this century. In the absence of radical change in government attitudes toward family planning the crude birth rate is not likely to fall from its present level of 47/1000 to much less than 45/1000 by the year 2000.

Comment on ‘Cyclical and secular influences on the size distribution of personal income in the UK: some econometric tests’ by G. Weil

(1986). Comment on ‘Cyclical and secular influences on the size distribution of personal income in the UK: some econometric tests’ by G. Weil. Applied Economics: Vol. 18, No. 10, pp. 1103-1107.

Cyclical and secular influences on the size distribution of personal income in the UK: some econometric tests

(1984). Cyclical and secular influences on the size distribution of personal income in the UK: some econometric tests. Applied Economics: Vol. 16, No. 5, pp. 749-756.

La crise de la communauté musulmane de Haute-Volta. L'islam voltaïque entre réformisme et tradition, autonomie et subordination.

R. Otayek — Crisis in the Upper Volta Moslem Community: Islam between Reform and Tradition, Autonomy and Subordination. The situation of Islam in Upper Volta is ambiguous: while dominant in numbers it remains in a subordinate position in the polity. Within the contemporary context of Moslem political awakening, peaceful Voltaic Islam looks like an oddity, whose origins lie in the history of Islamization. In the Mosi kingdoms Moslems occupied a marginal position and the vectors of Islamization were extraneous. Despite their role in the royal courts, Moslems were accepted only on tolerance and the political System was free of Islamic influence. While the colonial System did not bring any deep change in this status, the disruption of traditional structures accelerated the rate of conversions. Nevertheless, due to its divisions and to its inability to cope with modernization, Voltaic Islam has been unable to produce a political elite which could have claimed leadership in the post-colonial State or put forth a social design of its own. Islam remained thus exposed to the most various ideological, religious and secular influences, which perpetuated its subordinate position. This led to the 1983 crisis in the Communaute musulmane de Haute-Volta, the most serious since the creation of this important Islamic association.

Norms for nutritional assessment of American adults by upper arm anthropometry

Extract: Age- and sex-specific percentile distributions for the mid-upper arm and arm muscle circumferences and triceps skinfold thicknesses of American adults were developed from data collected during the Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HANES) of 1971 to 1974. For both sexes, comparisons of percentiles for different age cohorts revealed marked variations related to aging. For men, both arm and arm muscle circumferences generally increased with aging until middle-age and then steadily decreased. For women, all parameters increased progressively until age was well advanced and then stabilized, or declined, with the onset of senescence. Triceps skinfold thicknesses in men showed large fluctuations but no consistent trends with advancing age. These data were compared with similar data obtained during the Health Examination Survey of 1960 to 1962. Comparisons of the 2 surveys revealed that median arm circumferences of men and women were larger in 1972 than in 1961 for every age group examined; that median skinfold thicknesses for women were as large or larger in 1972 than in 1961 except for women aged 65 to 74 years; and that median skinfold thicknesses for men were nearly identical in both surveys. The comparisons suggest that secular and age-related influences produced the variations apparent with advancing age in the percentile distributions developed from the HANES data. Secular influences, however, did not contribute to variations in distributions for the skinfold thicknesses of men. No single value for each parameter could be considered as normal for either sex. The validity of currently used sex-specific norms for nutritional assessment of adults is therefore questioned. (author/nm)

Alan of Lille as a renaissance figure

The Anticlaudianus of Alan of Lille was composed in 1183 when its author was in his sixties and when the greater part of his writing must have lain behind him. That writing, as D’Alverny has most recently demonstrated, overwhelmingly consists of treatises of theological and devotional learning. Whilst it would be oversimplification to suggest that these religious works offer little evidence germane to Alan as a renaissance figure, there is no doubt that the Anticlaudianus offers the deepest insights into the secular influences upon Alan’s modes of thought. In this paper I should like to examine the essential nature and purpose of the Anticlaudianus against the liberating twelfth-century influences which directed the author towards its composition, against the extraordinary range of secular authors which he deploys, and finally and most importantly against the attempted synthesis between secular and sacred, between the insights of classical humanism and doctrinal Christianity, which is such a feature of the intellectual thought of the century. Alan is far from being a pioneer in this direction, but his vision of the synthesis illumines the whole intellectual tradition within which he wrote.

Does the Analysis of Religious Language Rest on a Mistake?

The rival claims of religion, philosophy and science as dispensers of light have come to the fore in successive periods of history. Betwixt and between them all is the discipline known as theology, a rational study of the concept of God and attendant concepts connected with theistic belief. The dominant period of the connection between religion and philosophy in the west extends from Neo-Platonic thought to the seventeenth century. Before that for the most part philosophy tried to steer clear of ‘mysteries’, and after that philosophy made strenuous efforts to free itself from religion, and even more, from theology. Secular influences on religious language are legion. I mention only a few: governmental analogies (King, government, etc.), agricultural analogies (Shepherd, flock, sower and the seed), analogies from art (Design and Designer), historical approaches of the early Romantic movement (used by Renan and others), and influences from science (Paley's ‘watch’ metaphor, the idea of evolution as shown in the concept of ‘progressive revelation’, the ‘new theology’ of the twentieth century and so on). Recent interest in religious language is part of the last of these influences (influences from science) in so far as the desire to find some empirical moorings for various types of discourse is one of the early springs of the analytical movement. This interest is symptomatic of the trend to rethink ontological matters in terms of epistemology, a trend for which Galileo and Kepler bear a considerable responsibility. Earlier interest in religious language, it must be remembered, was deeply rooted in ontological concern. I refer to the skilled use by Catholic theologians of the method of analogia entis. The basis of this method, and it was a method of argument, was specific beliefs concerning the distinction between finite and infinite being and the relation between them.

Missionary Imperialism—The Case of Bechuanaland

This article, based on private papers as well as missionary and government records, examines the development of missionary contact with the Tswana peoples from the first settlement at Dithakong in 1816 to the establishment of a formal British Protectorate. The author seeks to analyse the nature of ‘missionary imperialism’ as a consequence not only of missionary motives and methods—still less as the accidental interest of individual missionaries—but also as the product of practical missionary experience and frustration in African circumstances.The absence of European administration from Bechuanaland for much of the nineteenth century gives a rare opportunity to study the effects of missionary activity on African life and polity, less complicated than usual by secular pressures and influences. And the lack of economic attraction in Bechuanaland allows a close examination of the incentives to empire. But it is likely that the trend apparent in missionary attitudes and work in Bechuanaland will be repeated in other areas, as for example in Ndebeleland and Malawi.The missionary role in Bechuanaland was largely determined by the organization and attitudes of Tswana society; missionary methods had to be adjusted accordingly, and eventually included an appeal to the British government to intervene and reduce resistant Tswana authority. This was in the logic of the missionaries' experience. In this light of missionary history, a new importance is found for the agitation on the British government from 1882 and the definition of the Convention of London in 1884.

On Edwards' criterion of seasonality and a non-parametric alternative.

There are a few conditions?hay fever will serve as an example?for which it has always been possible to assert, without fear of contradiction, that their pattern of occurrence was a seasonal one. However, when it is not subjectively clear that a seasonal pattern exists, considerable difficulty can be experienced. Applied to data in the form of monthly frequencies of new cases, the common x2 test with 11 degrees of freedom will not be sensitive to seasonal fluctuations of moderate amplitude unless the sample size is very large. Moreover, when this test does detect a significant amount of variation between months it will still be left to the investigator to judge whether the variation is of a seasonal character. When a prior hypothesis is available it is, of course, easy to apply a more efficient test; for example, if it has previously been suggested that a disease tends to occur more frequently from April to September then one could test whether the proportion of cases in a fresh sample that occurs within this period exceeds 0-501 (=183/365-25). In the situation more usually encountered there is no prior hypothesis, and the same limited sample of cases must be used both to support a test of the null hypothesis and to specify a likely type of seasonality. The first convenient method of dealing with this situation was devised by Edwards (1958, 1961), who proposed restricting consideration to patterns that could be tolerably well described by a simple harmonic curve. His method of analysis yields estimates of two parameters of this curve and simultaneously provides a test criterion whose dis tribution, on the null hypothesis, approximates to that of x2 with 2 degrees of freedom. The method has recently been criticized (Wehrung and Hay, 1970) on the ground that it may be sensitive to some kinds of cyclic variation that are clearly not of simple harmonic form. So far from being a fault, this seems to us to be a virtue of the method, and one that tends to weaken the case for introducing a non-parametric test like the one proposed below. That Edwards' criterion may also be sensitive to occasional, non recurrent outbreaks is a risk acknowledged by its author, and one less likely to afflict a non-parametric test. Both types of test are liable to give a false positive result if used on data that are subject to any strong secular influence, since this will suggest the presence of a 'seasonal' peak in September-October or in March-April, depending on whether the trend is rising or falling. We were first led to reconsider the performance of Edwards' criterion after having used it, perhaps in judiciously, as a screening device to pick out, from among a large number of congenital cardiac mal formations, those particular defects in which the in fluence of seasonally varying factors could be re garded as most plausible. A conspicuous feature of this attempted screening was that a much higher proportion of apparently significant results was declared when the sample of cases was small. It was at first hoped that smallness of a diagnostic subgroup (in a total series of over 10,000 affected children) might connote aetiological homogeneity, and hence a relatively good chance of detecting genuine seasonal variation, but prudence obviously required that we should examine the adequacy of the x2 approxima tion for the smaller sample sizes. Edwards' original papers did not refer to the question of requisite sample size, and the note by Smith (1961), which accompanied the second paper, only indicated that it should be 'reasonable' and 'sufficiently large'. We therefore set up a Monte Carlo experiment using pseudo-Poisson variate values in sets of 12, and carried out a thousand runs for each of seven values of the 'true' mean monthly frequency, corresponding to sample sizes from 192 down to 24. A selection from the computer output is shown in Table I, where it will be seen that there was some excess of apparently significant results at all the sample sizes considered, but that the approxi mation was very good down to sample size 96. Even for samples as small as 48 the criterion might be considered a serviceable one, though the frequency of values beyond the upper 10% and 5% point of the x2 distribution was about twice, and that of values beyond the 1 % point about three times what it 174