Local Priest Research Articles

Christian Action and Black Consciousness Community Programmes in South Africa

Many scholars have examined the relationship between Black Theology and Black Consciousness in South Africa in the late 1960s and 1970s. This article analyses another Christian link. It argues that ecumenical organisations (such as the Christian Institute and the South African Council of Churches), foreign churches, radical priests, and local parishes occupied a position in society that allowed them to give significant material support to the Black Consciousness movement, particularly the Black Community Programmes (BCP), a development organisation run by Black Consciousness activists (including Ben Khoapa and Steve Biko). Drawing upon archival and oral history sources, the article first analyses the formation of the BCP, then discusses the financial contributions of churches that enabled the BCP to survive. Finally, it demonstrates how activists gained physical space, in-roads into communities, and moral support from local priests and parishes at the grassroots level in the Eastern Cape and Natal and Transvaal provinces.

"Saying the Padre Had Grabbed Her": Rape is the Weapon, Story is the Cure

"Saying the Padre Had Grabbed Her":Rape is the Weapon, Story is the Cure Deborah A. Miranda (bio) Vicenta Gutierrez, sister of 'The Blonde' Gutierrez, when [she was] a girl went to confession one evening during Lent, and Father Real wanted her, to grab her over there in the church. And next day there was no trace of the padre there, and he was never seen again. He probably fled on horseback in the night. Some said he fled to Spain. He was a Spaniard. He grabbed the girl and screwed her. The girl went running to her house, saying the padre had grabbed her. "Art and literature and storytelling are at the epicenter of all that an individual or a nation intends to be. And someone more profound than most said that a nation which does not tell its own stories cannot be said to be a nation at all." Elizabeth Cook Lynn, "Life and Death in the Mainstream of American Indian Biography" (93). "Who is actually the author of field notes? . . . Indigenous control over knowledge gained in the field can be considerable and even determining . . . Ethnographers aspire to a Flaubertian omniscience that moves freely throughout the world of indigenous subjects. Beneath the surface, though, their texts are more unruly and discordant." James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (45, 48) Survivors might "use confession and memory as tools of intervention . . . storytelling becomes a process of historization. It does not remove women from history but enables us to see ourselves as part of history." bell hooks, Talking Back (110). The story of Vicenta Gutierrez begins long before April 1935, when Native consultant Isabel Meadows told J.P. Harrington about a young Indian woman raped at Carmel Mission by the local priest one hundred years before. In 1935, salvage ethnology was the name of the game: ethnologists and anthropologists were obsessed with preserving "traditional" knowledge like language, vocabulary, religious beliefs, creation stories, hunting and gathering techniques and resources. This field note, however, records a story illustrative of the corruption of authority and power by Europeans, and the vocal resistance of an Indian woman—not a topic at the top of anyone's salvage list. Yet Isabel Meadows, from the Monterey/Carmel Indian community, made sure that this story (among many others) found its way into the archives. Meadows knew she was a valuable resource to Harrington; he returned to her again and again, pleaded with her to work with no one else, snapped up the bits and pieces of cultural information and language [End Page 93] she fed him, always enough to keep him hooked. But in between the language lessons and Coyote stories Harrington was after, Isabel snuck in the stories she wanted to salvage: her own private project, a memorial, and a charmstone of hope for future generations. Click for larger view View full resolution From J.P. Harrington's field notes. Date: April 1935. Reel 73, page 98, side B. Consultant: Isabel Meadows. Translation/transcription: Thus, Isabel's story about Vicenta becomes a historical microcosm of rape as a primary tool of colonization, but more impressively, an example of storytelling as indigenous [End Page 94] survival strategy; Isabel's story becomes a petroglyph or hyperlink or, as poet and scholar Paula Gunn Allen once said, a "hyperglyph" which, when we touch on it, reveals layer upon layer of detail embedded in her narrative.1 As a descendent of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation of the Greater Monterey Area, and as a survivor of rape, I am drawn to Vicenta's story as one that speaks to me on many levels. So in order to understand and appreciate more fully the value of this story, and to do honor to Isabel and Vicenta, we must start at the real beginning—or ending—depending on one's perspective. The end of the world is not science fiction to California Indians. "Brought up in a school of harlots": Captive Students During Columbus' 1493 expedition, the explorer routinely gave native women to his subordinates as rewards and incentive. One such woman was captured and given to colonist and "nobleman" Michele de Cuneo as a gift slave from Columbus. Cuneo wrote in a...

Who Benefited from Tithe Revenues in Late-Renaissance Bresse?

This examination of the practical functioning of tithe collection and of who specifically benefited from tithe payments shows that structures of ecclesiastical and secular domination continued to be highly fragmented during the late Renaissance. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of episcopal visitation records and other sources from the Francophone province of Bresse reveals, among other things, that the fiscal and political impact of tithe payments was quite complex, that local priests were often not the major beneficiaries, and that tithe grants could serve as a mechanism permitting sovereigns to tax church revenues belonging to actors subject to other sovereigns.

Ethnic Identity and Cultural Catholicism in Pietro di Donato’s <i>Christ in Concrete</i>

Throughout his novel Christ in Concrete (1939), Pietro di Donato invokes and explores role of Catholicism in his Italian immigrant characters' lives. This novel focuses on Paul, son of Italian immigrants who is forced into manhood when his father is killed in a construction accident. Di Donato frames Paul's story--and narrative generally--with two events deeply symbolic of Christian suffering and redemption: secular versions of Good Friday crucifixion and Easter resurrection. While novel's form is steeped in Christian ritual, its characters also act out Catholic sacramentalism in their daily lives. Some remain devotedly reverent in their religious practice, but others demonstrate their faith through less orthodox means, in expressions that flaunt Church and clergy but arise necessarily in response to harshness of American life and labor. Di Donato's immigrants and newly formed Americans may not attend daily mass (if they attend mass at all) and may curse local priest who remains blind to their suffering, but essence of Catholicism, especially its sacramental ritual, continues to shape their new world experience. Through such ritual, in fact, di Donato's characters act out a cultural identity that combats destabilizing forces that often render them impotent and inarticulate in America. Catholicism emerges not only as cultural articulation, but also as a performance by which they simultaneously retain tradition and create new standards for coping with tragedy and disappointment. As a pragmatic response to material circumstances, Catholicism is not a fixed practice but a process that evolves according to individuals and their experiences. Through characters' relationship with Catholicism, di Donato demonstrates that Italian identity and ethnicity is, in Linda Hutcheon's terms, positional: it changes and develops according to individual histories, individual economic and social situations, and--di Donato asserts--individual religious affiliations. (1) This ethnicity is always transforming, always being created and re-created, and for this reason, Christ in Concrete--a novel considered one of most canonical Italian American texts yet still fairly unknown in multicultural literary America--deserves another look. This essay examines prominence di Donato gives Catholicism in Christ in Concrete as a cultural and performative force, a topic that has received little critical attention. Di Donato's notions of religion, Italian culture and ethnicity, and performance coalesce in complex interworking of sacred and secular that has come to characterize Italian American Catholicism. (2) Identifying correspondences between religion and ethnicity, of course, is not new. Di Donato, however, urges his readers to reconsider how we interpret these correspondences. David A. Hollinger notes that both religious and ethnic identification are deeply rooted and argues that while religious affiliations have histories like ethnic and racial affiliations, the right of exit is more widely accepted in relation to religious than to ethno-racial communities (120-21). The option to drop religious identification, Hollinger suggests, exists even when religious faith is closely tied to family, especially through influence of parents. Yet di Donato makes clear in Christ in Concrete that religious tradition is as impossible to deny as ethno-racial affiliation; Catholicism remains fully integrated in ethno-racial identity. This is not to say that di Donato or his characters unquestionably accept Church authority. But despite disappointment with institutional Church, extricating oneself from Catholicism and fervent devotion to images and ideals of its doctrine is not always possible or even desirable. Catholicism continues to define cultural practice. (3) The result is what Thomas J. Ferraro explains as cultural Catholicism, a shift in religious orientation in which Catholic ways of knowing and habits of being are developed and deployed (intentionally or not) outside official precincts and sanction of Church. …

“Many Zitas”: The Young Catholic Worker and Household Workers in Cold War Chile

This article reconstructs the origins and effects of radical Catholic activism on the expansion of household workers' associations in Chile during the Cold War. Joining the efforts of local priests affiliated with the Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC) in the 1950s, a generation of live-in household workers in Santiago and other urban centers nurtured a sizable movement for empleadas domésticas that was unique in the Americas—the JOC de Empleadas—which joined housing and vocational services with a lay Catholic movement to advance empleadas' labor rights. Impacted by both the radicalization of their religious leadership and the revolutionary politics of the period, the Catholic household workers' movement of the 1960s turned increasingly to union organizing and legislative reform to advance its agenda, pressing for greater recognition and regulation of domestic service as a matter of labor rights. Through its focus on the Catholic Church as a transnational and hegemonic actor in the mobilization of household workers, and on the changing discourse of domestic service as “labor,” this article challenges the persistent stereotype of Latin American Catholicism in relation to workers' movements prior to Vatican II.

Unearthing the past: An exploration into the people behind the development of a Victorian suburb

Victorian urbanisation created suburban communities out of fields and orchards. In one suburb, east of Oxford City, where piecemeal development occurred in a rural area from the 1840s, a network of religious orders linked to the Oxford Movement provided health and welfare services. The local priest, Father Benson, was a major benefactor and instigator of these services. As the suburb grew and the state became more involved in health and welfare service provision, the church responded accordingly. Using a local graveyard to identify some key individuals and organisations involved in the developing community, combined with an analysis of the census, provides a framework for an outline of the history of the community and the development of its service infrastructure. This gives us an insight into both east Oxford and the wider debates on church and state provision of services.

Anticlericalism, Politics, and Freemasonry in Mexico, 1920–1940

On 16 April 1938, the school teacher of the Mixtec village of San Andrés Dinicuiti reported that the Easter week procession had taken place, despite government regulations prohibiting public displays of worship. During the event, the faithful had marched through the streets shouting “Long live religion, death to bad government, death to the state governor, death to the president of the republic.” When they arrived at the local school, they yelled “Death to the masons, long live religion” before denigrating the teacher's parentage. During the 1920s and 1930s, devout Catholic peasants throughout Mexico repeatedly denounced the presumed link between government, school teachers, anticlericalism, and the masons. The popular condemnation obviously emanated in part from the ecclesiastical hierarchy's frequent anti-masonic pronouncements. The Apostolic Delegate's charge that masons were “the cause of our persecution and almost all our national misfortunes” was reiterated in countless bulletins, manifestos, and pastoral letters throughout the country. In 1934, the Bishop of Huajuapam de León, which controlled the parish of San Andrés Dinicuiti, reminded local priests that they were to refuse to accept masons and members of the government party as godparents for baptisms, confirmations, or marriages. A year later, Mexican Catholic Action argued that government policies of socialist education andagrarismowere the “impious work of anti-Christian masons.” However, despite this popular cross-class conviction, there is little historical work on the actual role of the masons in modern Mexico. By examining the archives of the Grand Lodge of Oaxaca, this article posits that Masonic lodges were key to the process of post-revolutionary state formation. As the state sought to assert control over a divided country, freemasonry's anticlericalism not only offered a model for cultural practice, masons also formed a vanguard of willing political emissaries. However, the institution's influence should not be overstressed. It was often curtailed by internecine disputes, political infighting, and an essentially conservative leadership.

Christianization of folk customs: An example of Ox'Church

This paper deals with the process of transformation of a pre-Christian custom in Zuce, a village near by Belgrade. The custom is called 'provlaka', held all until the WW II on August 29. This custom was established after the cattle pest in the village. Since WW II, however, this day is celebrated as the village St. patrons/slava day. After the village church has been built and blessed in 2002, the day became also celebrated as one of the church's slava days. Transformation of holidays assumes vanishing of some and appearance of some other segments of the given custom: 1. Until WW II the most important segment of the custom 'provlaka' was extracting wild fire and passage of people and cattle. This custom was maintained with an aim of preventive protection against epidemics. 2. A significant feature of annual celebration of calendar holidays included collective gatherings. On this day people visit relatives from other villages, attend lunch together, and gather at a particular village spot in the afternoon. 3. The beginning of the church building has allowed introduction of religious elements in celebration. In the morning, it is a time usually to attend a liturgy, while what follows represent some inherited customs like reception and eating together with relatives and friends. 4. After the village church has been built and blessed in 2002, the day became also celebrated as one of the church's slava days. This assumes presentation of the village cake maker and cake cutting in the church, accompanied by a local priest.

Osli keresztnévadásának története napjainkig

Christian-name-giving practices in the settlement of Osli changed greatly in many respects during the two and a half centuries surveyed in the present paper. Until the middle of the 1960s, the name stock was rather poor, with the exception of the period between 1845 and 1885, when popular names changed significantly and many more Christian names came into use, reducing name frequency (the period was first described by Ferenc Jáky, a 19th century local priest). After the 1970s the name stock became even more rich: this period was less characterised by the earlier application of the principle of the importance of inheriting ancestors’ names; furthermore, current nationwide fashion trends in name-giving practices also played an important role. It was the female name stock that changed more considerably: the monotonously repeating name forms of the early periods were substituted by names of less frequency. Even today, however, parents are prone to choose traditional, historical masculine names for their sons; thus boys often inherit their names. Choosing names of two (rarely three) elements could not be demonstrated before the end of the 19th century, and after two generations, by the end of the 20th century this phenomenon disappeared again.

Volksfrömmigkeit und Katholisches Milieu: Marienerscheinungen in Heede 1937-1940 im Spannungsfeld von Volksfrömmigkeit, nationalsozialistischem Regime und kirchlicher Hierarchie (review)

Volksfrommigkeit und Katholisches Milieu: Marienerscheinungen in Heede 1937-1940 im Spannungsfeld von Volksfrommigkeit, nationalsozialistischem Regime und kirchlicher Hierarchie By Maria Anna Zumholz. [Schriften des Instituts fur Geschichte und Historische Landesforschung, Band 12.] (Cloppenburg:Verlag und Druckerei Runge. 2004. Pp. 746.) In this interesting study, a slightly revised dissertation, Maria Anna Zumholz analyzes a series of Marian apparitions which occurred in Heede, a small village in the remote northwestern German Emsland region. She uses her analysis to offer a nuanced picture of the interplay between popular piety, Catholic milieu, ecclesiastical authority, and National Socialist repression. In a 200-page introduction, Zumholz provides a detailed history of the Emsland and its predominantly Catholic population. The Emsland changed hands repeatedly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, always between states with Protestant rulers. Repression of their faith, combined with government neglect of this poor rural region, led the Emslander to form a high level of suspicion of any state authority. Zumholz argues that this population was particularly prone to beliefs in supernatural occurrences and in special gifts of certain individuals.The author also provides a review of Marian apparitions in Germany and elsewhere in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She points out that, in contrast to circumstances in other countries, no Marian apparition in Germany received ecclesiastical approbation. Zumholz believes that German bishops were not only Germanically thorough and strict in their review of these events, but they also feared the condescension of the Protestant majority, which considered Marian devotion in general and apparitions in particular to be proof of Catholic backwardness. In this context, Zumholz points to David Blackbourn's study of the supposed apparitions at Marpingen, events which German bishops remembered only all too well. The Marian apparition in Heede occurred over the course of three years in a village cemetery. Four adolescent girls claimed to have seen the Mother of God appearing between two trees.They continued seeing the image, although not on a regular basis.The girls claimed to have spoken with the image, whose presence nobody else, even those present, could perceive. While the local priest soon supported the young women in their claims, the Bishop of Osnabruck as well as state authorities of the Third Reich were alarmed by the claims and even collaborated in banning pilgrimages to the cemetery. The bishop's decrees and the draconian measures taken by the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst (the intelligence branch of the SS), however, failed to stop people, even those traveling considerable distances, from coming to Heede. Zumholz uses these events to engage current debates about the formation and strength of both popular piety and the Catholic milieu. She argues convincingly that, at least in the Emsland, the milieu was deeply rooted in the community and that it had originated among the laity. …

Obituary: Dame Dr Anne McLaren

Obituary: Dame Dr Anne McLaren

The Tragic Tale of Claire Ferchaud and the Great War (review)

The Tragic Tale of Claire Ferchaud and the Great War. By Raymond Jonas. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 217. $21.95 paperback.) In March 1917, at the height of World War I, Claire Ferchaud, a peasant girl from the pious region of western France, managed to arrange a meeting with Raymond Poincare, the president of the French Third Republic. Based on a series of visions of Jesus she had experienced over the past several months, Claire asked that Poincare dedicate France to the Sacred Heart and place its image on the French tricolor, long-standing Catholic requests that needed to be fulfilled if the nation were to win in its against Germany. Ray Jonas' study provides the biographical, political, and religious contexts that explain how such an unlikely meeting could have occurred, and thereby opens up a fascinating new perspective on the war. Jonas opens with two chapters that serve as context for Claire's story. In the first he reviews some of the different visions of circulating in Europe before 1914, and suggests that Claire's sense of its meaning merits comparison with the ideas of the artists and statesmen who are generally more familiar to historians. After a brief overview of the early stages of the Jonas shifts his focus to the personal story of Claire. Extremely devout, Claire claimed to have had visions and conversations with Jesus even as a child of three. Her spiritual development encouraged by a friendly local priest, Father Audebert, whose support led her to further clerical connections. By the end of 1916 her visions of Jesus and her call for the dedication of France to the Sacred Heart had generated extensive publicity in the local press and a pilgrimage movement which bringing thousands to her small village of Loublande. An episcopal investigation chaired by Bishop Humbrecht of Poitiers interviewed Claire in December 1916, but produced no definitive ruling, and thereby encouraged the popular movement surrounding her campaign. With the help of a local politician, Claire finally reached Paris in February 1917, a stay which culminated in her interview with Poincare, who listened politely, but took no action in response to her request. In the second half of his study Jonas concentrates on a variety of initiatives coming from the French episcopacy and laity aimed at accomplishing the same goal generated by Claire's visions. As Jonas writes, Claire's campaign was merely one manifestation of a popular movement that had pursued victory from the opening weeks of the war (p. …

Producing Father Baker: Material and Visual Practices of Making a Saint

ABSTRACTSince 1986, the Catholic Our Lady of Victory parish of Lackawanna, NY, and the diocese of Buffalo have been working to secure canonization for Father Nelson H. Baker (1842–1936), a local priest known for his sanctity, charitable Institutes, and promotion of devotion to Our Lady of Victory. The parish has a rich history of material and visual items related to both Baker and Our Lady. After he died, the Institutes produced and distributed Father Baker souvenirs, individuals obtained and created their own Baker memorabilia, various Father Baker memorials were established, and one of the Institutes' publications, the Victorian magazine, actively promoted the possibility of his sainthood. This article offers a comprehensive historical record of material and visual culture related to Baker from the 1880s to the 1950s in an effort to document the changes and shifts in the way he was represented in various materials, as well as the practices of his promoters, admirers, and followers which shaped those changes. As such, this piece seeks to demonstrate that material and visual culture are subject to a similar kind of performativity as lived practices and that they are a vital and important component of lived religion.

Language and the “True Conversion” to the Holy Faith: A Document from the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, Italy

One of the central problems of Spanish missionary activity in the New World was the translation of Christian concepts into native languages. The following document, housed in Rome’s Jesuit archives (ARSI), highlights both the concern and the controversy surrounding this issue in the audiencia of New Granada (modern-day Colombia). On 25 August 1606, audiencia president Juan de Borja issued a decree requiring all members of New Granada’s clergy to provide religious instruction in the Chibcha language. The recent arrival of a small group of Jesuits had intensified a long-standing debate over how best to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith in early-colonial New Granada. Almost three decades earlier, in 1580, theoidorPedro de Zorrillo, complained to the Council of the Indies that the natives of New Granada were as ignorant (in spiritual matters) now as they had been before the conquest. This ignorance, according to Zorrillo, was the result of the recalcitrance of local priests, most of whom stubbornly refused to learn native languages. Few priests spoke Chibcha and therefore taught thedoctrinain Spanish or in some cases, Latin, which the Indians simply repeated like parrots,“como papagayos.”

Language and the “True Conversion” to the Holy Faith: A Document from the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome, Italy

One of the central problems of Spanish missionary activity in the New World was the translation of Christian concepts into native languages. The following document, housed in Rome’s Jesuit archives (ARSI), highlights both the concern and the controversy surrounding this issue in the audiencia of New Granada (modern-day Colombia). On 25 August 1606, audiencia president Juan de Borja issued a decree requiring all members of New Granada’s clergy to provide religious instruction in the Chibcha language. The recent arrival of a small group of Jesuits had intensified a long-standing debate over how best to explain the mysteries of the Christian faith in early-colonial New Granada. Almost three decades earlier, in 1580, the oidor Pedro de Zorrillo, complained to the Council of the Indies that the natives of New Granada were as ignorant (in spiritual matters) now as they had been before the conquest. This ignorance, according to Zorrillo, was the result of the recalcitrance of local priests, most of whom stubbornly refused to learn native languages. Few priests spoke Chibcha and therefore taught the doctrina in Spanish or in some cases, Latin, which the Indians simply repeated like parrots, “como papagayos.”

Between Miracle and Sickness: Louise Lateau and the Experience of Stigmata and Ecstasy

Between Miracle and Sickness:Louise Lateau and the Experience of Stigmata and Ecstasy Sofie Lachapelle (bio) When, on the last Friday of April 1868, Louise Lateau began bleeding from the left side of her chest, the eighteen-year-old girl was advised by her local priest to keep quiet and forget about the wound. But the bleeding occurred again on the following Friday, this time accompanied by wounds on her feet. The third Friday, wounds appeared on both hands. This time, Lateau could no longer hide the blood; her secret was out. From Friday, July 17, thirteen weeks after the stigmata's first appearance, she experienced a state of ecstasy in which she witnessed scenes of the Passion and shared her savior's sufferings. On Friday, September 25, she developed stigmata on her head, small cuts forming a bloody crown. These awe-inspiring feats continued for months and years. Over time, Lateau's experiences intensified; she stopped reacting to either heat or cold, she stopped sleeping, and she began to refuse any food or water other than the daily communion. In the spring of 1873, she received her final mark: a large wound on her shoulder, recalling Jesus's burden when carrying his cross to Mount Golgotha. The wounds did not affect her daily life. Miraculously, it seemed, she was able to continue her work as a seamstress, participate in household activities, and walk to church every morning—at least until 1876, when, having grown visibly weaker, she was forced to renounce her daily visit to the village church. Her health declined, but she continued to exhibit marks of the passion every Friday. From 1879 onward she remained bedridden, until her death in 1883 at the significant age of thirty-three.1 [End Page 77] Between 1868 and 1883, physicians, members of the clergy, believers, and curious visitors traveled to Bois-d'Haine, Louise Lateau's small Belgian village, to witness the famous stigmatic. Many of them wrote accounts of their observations that tell her story from various and sometimes-conflicting perspectives. This paper is mainly based on a dozen works, both first- and second-hand accounts. Because Lateau herself never wrote, and because her biographers rarely reported her words, what has been left behind is a set of rich but confusing material in which her character, her mystical experience, and her surroundings remain unstable. The central figure of all these accounts occupies an ambiguous position, and displays multifarious identities: as a person of simple intellect; as a suggestible victim, manipulated by her family and religious surroundings; as a deceitful girl, lying about the nature of her wounds and faking her ecstasies; as a hysteric belonging to a hospital ward; or as a saint to whom God had granted the ultimate gift of suffering. In this paper I attempt to situate Lateau within a complex configuration of science and religion—in the dialogue, cooperation, and antagonism between the two at the end of the nineteenth century. Her story is one in which faith and the various religious, medical, and psychiatric interests constructed a same subject. It illuminates anxieties regarding religious experiences and suggests limits to the scientific explanation. It is an example in which scientific discomfort was soon replaced by ridicule, and explanation by classification. The paper is organized into four sections, more or less chronological: in the first, I present the religious and social context and the reactions of believers and religious authorities at various clergy levels; in the second, I consider the opinions of Catholic physicians who openly professed their faith in the Church of Rome; the third section centers on the sixteen-month discussion on Lateau's case held at the Académie royale de médecine de Belgique in 1874 and 1875. In the final section I present Lateau as a hysteric in the context of nineteenth-century psychiatry. I. Gifts from God Over the last twenty years, historians have been reacting to the claim that the second half of the nineteenth century was a period of [End Page 78] secularization in Europe. While church attendance dropped and atheism, positivism, and scientism were dominant trends of the time, the nineteenth century, particularly its second half, was...

In the Storm: William Hansen and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Arkansas, 1962-1967

STUCK INSIDE A JAIL CELL IN ALBANY, GEORGIA, in July 1962, civil rights activist William Hansen was having trouble meeting with his attorney. He been arrested for participating in demonstration, but when the attorney, C. B. King, insisted on seeing his client, Dougherty County sheriff Cull Campbell became enraged. Nigger, haven't I told you to wait outside? he said. ' Campbell then picked up cane and began beating the attorney. next day the New York Times published photograph of King, his head bandaged, leaving the hospital.2 Hansen, however, met with even harsher treatment. He been thrown into cell full of whites who were by no means sympathetic to the cause of civil rights and even less sympathetic toward northern agitator like Hansen. He was savagely beaten, with his jaw shattered and several of his ribs broken. Only twenty-one years old at the time, Hansen long career as political activist ahead of him. Hansen arrived in Little Rock, Arkansas, later that year to head up new branch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), grass-roots organization that sought to harness the rising tide of black political consciousness in the South. Hansen's organizational skills earned him appointment to the post, but his interest in civil rights and his desire to fight racism dated to his childhood. Born in Cincinnati in 1939, Hansen grew up in strict working-class Catholic family. His religious upbringing helped propel him toward life as political activist. The extreme moral rigidity of American Catholicism in the pre-Vatican II days, he later recalled, had way of leading in the direction I went with regard to race and politics .... Its rigid moral doctrine, if accepted, would lead logically toward certain set of actions.3 Hansen's direct experience with African Americans also shaped his political outlook. He recalled how attending baseball games-sitting in the cheap bleacher seats at Crosley Field to see the Cincinnati Reds play-allowed positive interactions with black people: I was ten to sixteen-year-old kid who made acquaintances with many of these older black men who, seemed to me, knew everything about baseball. They took liking to [me]. I remember at first not being able to figure out why all these Cincinnatians supported the Brooklyn Dodgers over their hometown team. I finally figured out was because of Jackie Robinson. That realization told me something about the society I was being raised in. Like many people of his generation, Hansen also watched the aftermath of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, as well as the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, with rapt attention. He quickly found himself siding with civil rights activists, thinking it was dumb to be arrested for sitting in the wrong seat in bus.4 Personal relationships with blacks also played role in the development of Hansen's political consciousness. When he was seventeen years old, he became friends with Bill Mason, young black man with whom he often played basketball. This was Hansen's first friendship with someone from outside of his working-class neighborhood. Mason often invited Hansen back to his home, where Hansen found he was treated as member of Mason's family. Two years later, the Masons took Hansen in, and he lived with them for year. Their warmth offered stark contrast to how he imagined blacks and whites normally interacted with one another.5 Hansen made his first foray into the civil rights movement in the fall of 1957 while attending Xavier University in Cincinnati. He became associated with David McCarthy, local priest who become active in the cause. Along with Bill Mason, Hansen and McCarthy formed the Xavier Interracial Council. Hansen later downplayed its significance, arguing that was never more than a venue for getting to know other people.6 But the council allowed Hansen to make important contacts with other civil rights organizations such as the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE). …

Pilgrims, Priest and Local Religion in Contemporary Russia: Contested Religious Discourses

This article presents a case study of one rural sacred place in North-West Russia. It focuses on the folklore related to this particular sacred place, that is, narratives told by different groups of believers to confirm the sanctity of the shrine. These groups (pilgrims who come from urban centres, a local priest and church activists, local common people and migrants) choose different types of stories, or even genres, when they talk about the sacred. Thus, in contemporary Russian provinces one could find different styles of religiosity, or different religious cultures, which coexist and sometimes compete with each other.

TEHERAN

In this article it is argued that Tehran itself
 as well as the Iranians’ conception of
 Tehran is changing. The size of Tehran,
 the capital of Iran, has within a few
 decades risen explosively from no more
 than 300.000 inhabitants in the 1930s to
 more than 9 million people today. At the
 same time the city has experienced a
 radical demographic divide between the
 lower, warmer, poorer and more traditional
 South and the richer, more modern
 North close to the cooler mountains. The
 conception of Tehran today is that of “a
 modern part” of Iran; i.e. North Tehran.
 While everybody agrees that Tehran is
 modern, the significance of this modernity
 is vehemently debated. The technological
 and financial aspect of Tehran’s modernity
 is unanimously seen as a positive feature,
 whereas the individualistic aspect of this
 modernity to some Iranians is seen as a
 moral threat to society, while others see it
 as a liberalising and positive force in
 society. In other words Tehran has become
 the battlefield of morality where “true
 Islam” meets “modern corruption”, “true
 Iranianism” meets “Western decadence”
 etc. And nowhere is this seen more
 explicitly than in the parks of Tehran. The
 urban parks have within the last decade
 developed into semi-private spaces partly
 free of government control, neighbours’
 gossip and family restrictions. The culture
 of the private space (the home) has thus
 been moved into the public space, and at
 the same time this transformation causes
 the emergence of the modern, secularised
 urban individual, which to some extent
 demands separation of religion and state.
 This urban individual can no longer be
 controlled by the local priest and cannot
 be restricted from receiving news and
 viewpoints from outside of the national
 state-controlled media. Tehran has in this
 way become a physical and symbolical
 battlefield, where the dialectical and often
 contradicting moral consequences of
 modernity are being negotiated, restricted
 and craved.

Trinitarian Love Mysticism: Ruusbroec, Hadewijch, and the Gendered Experience of the Divine

In the early part of the fourteenth century, a parish priest in Brussels came into the possession of a manuscript containing the vernacular letters, visions, and poetry of a woman known only as “beata Hadewijch.” The priest prized the manuscript, even recommending it to his fellow conventuals decades later, and included its primary tropes of courtly love mysticism (Minnemystik) as an essential part of many of his writings on the active, interior, and contemplative ways to mystical union. This local priest turned canon regular, Jan van Ruusbroec (1292–1381), has been celebrated for centuries for his Trinitarian theology, for his speculative or essence mysticism, and for his negative theology—but Ruusbroec's reliance on Hadewijch's metaphor of courtly love has only recently become a subject of scholarly study. An examination of the parallels between Hadewijch and Ruusbroec's theology, a heavily Trinitarian theology conveyed by means of the metaphor ofMinne, not only serves to expand our comprehension of their theologies, but also provides a unique perspective on the religious experience of medieval men and women.