Moral Stewardship Research Articles

Flattery (Musahibi) is an Unwanted Behavior and Barrier to Institutional Good Governance: An Islamic Perspective

This research delves into the clandestine realm of flattery, known as Musahibi, penetrating deep into its secretive world to illuminate its extensive impact as a hindrance to institutional good governance through the lens of Islamic education. By deploying a multifaceted analysis, the study aims to dissect decision-making processes, unravel distorted paradigms, and challenge ethical values while fostering cultural enthusiasm within institutions. It meticulously examines the corrosive role of flattery in distorting power dynamics, undermining accountability and transparency, and diminishes the cultural enthusiasm within institutions. By integrating contemporary governance structures with Islamic legal principles, this study aims to untangle the complex internal dynamics of flattery, advocating for a transformative leadership rooted in sincerity, integrity, and moral rectitude. It supports a culture of authentic leadership through introspective research, moral stewardship, and the cultivation of shared responsibilities. Moreover, it accentuates the urgent need for robust leadership within institutional governance by providing effective strategies for ethical stewardship, fostering accountability, and promoting excellence. In conclusion, it issues a resolute call to action, urging Islamic governance structures to confront and transcend the shadows of flattery through unwavering determination and principled intervention.

The art of propaganda: marketing nationhood through visual imagery

PurposeDuring the 17th century, the Dutch Republic sought to project a positive global image centred around the principles of economic endeavour, moral stewardship and military resilience. By illustrating one way in which the country sought to communicate its international position, the paper aims to provide an early example of political diplomacy and reputation management.Design/methodology/approachPictorial narratives provide an important but often underutilised insight into our cultural, social and economic history. As works of art were considered legitimate and authoritative forms of communication, their importance can lie beyond any aesthetic accomplishment. Using established iconographic techniques, this paper deconstructs and interprets the meaning contained within a specific genre painting, The Young Mother (1658) by Gerrit Dou.FindingsRather than being devoid of meaning, The Young Mother represents a narrative purposely constructed to symbolise the cultural, religious and economic character of the United Provinces. It celebrates success through global trade, innovation and enterprise while simultaneously reminding audiences of the country’s moral and spiritual foundations. Like the patriotic allegory of De Hollandse Maag protecting the sacred space of the hortus conclusus, the painting is a secular representation of the new Loca Sancta.Originality/valueWhile acknowledging that The Young Mother has been praised for its visual qualities, this paper maintains that any broader political significance has been largely overlooked. The analysis and findings therefore offer original interpretations from which new conclusions are drawn.

A Comprehensive Study on Effective Administration of University Leadership and Limitations

University leadership means the overall state of the administrative structure of a university which many universities in Bangladesh and the world have failed to meet this demand. In this paper, the researcher goes on to show how effective authority of a university can be built and the survey further shows how important effective authority of a university. University leadership and administration is a serious characteristic as it is about the effective of the whole institution. Leading promoters encourage transformational leadership, moral stewardship, principal as an instructional leader, and principal as a communicator or community builder. Effective and capable administration of the university relies on the principal. Leadership effectiveness is more related to situational leadership style in research universities and in a global framework. Hence, training and advance in university leadership involves a systematic planning which will result to outstanding institution.

Characterizing and evaluating rival discourses of the ‘sustainable city’: Towards a politics of pragmatic adversarialism

For many, shifting economic and social contexts have created the conditions for a radical reappraisal of the orthodox image of the 'sustainable city'. However, in assessing such potentialities, there is insufficient knowledge about the way in which local actors construct, live out and are gripped by this signifier. This article responds to this deficit by exploring how key actors engaged in urban development actually interpret the challenges of the 'sustainable city'. In part, using a Q methodology study in Bristol and Grenoble, we discern and construct three distinctive discourses of the sustainable city, which we name progressive reformism, public localism, and moral stewardship. Our findings challenge previous critiques of sustainable urbanism. We observe no consistent support for mainstream conceptions of sustainable urban development, but neither do we find significant support for entrepreneurial or radical green localist discourses of the sustainable city. Instead, we identify a common indifference to the tenets of ecological modernization (and, by extension, entrepreneurialism), and a shared skepticism of local self-sufficiency. We thus argue that such discourses offer uncertain foundations upon which to construct new visions of the 'sustainable city'. In our view, this is because of the transformation of the 'sustainable city' from a relatively fixed idea into a floating signifier, coupled with the practices of local practitioners as policy bricoleurs. We conclude that efforts to develop new visions of 'sustainable cities' are best served by fostering an agonistic ethos of 'pragmatic adversarialism' amongst strategic leaders and stakeholders, which foregrounds politics and the right to difference.

Stewardship challenges abortion: A proposed means to mitigate abortion's social divisiveness.

Since 1973 the legislated constitutional right to abortion has produced a political dichotomy (anti-abortion versus pro-abortion) within the United States, even while witnessing a gradual decline in the rate of abortions. A third paradigm, moral stewardship, is advanced as an effective means to ameliorate this social divisiveness. Incorporating the concept of stewardship into deliberations of pregnancy termination would require recognition, through fact-based education programs, of the life circumstances that prompt the consideration to terminate a pregnancy. Based on collective responsibility, policies, and programs are needed to foster social justice for parents and for the offspring brought to term, without creating excessive burdens on women faced with an unwanted pregnancy. Moral stewardship is perceived as humanitarian to family and community and advantageous to society overall. It also offers a serious opportunity to reshape our society from divisiveness to inclusiveness, and to guide science policy judgment that enhances and strengthens social justice. Lay summary: Differing opinions over the ethics of human abortion have been legion since Roe v. Wade (1973). The disputes between pro- and anti-abortion factions have segregated society with few improvements in social justice. This study offers an alternative approach, one capable of social assimilation and justice for unwanted offspring and pregnant mothers bearing them. It promotes moral stewardship toward the unborn whose humanity and personhood are recognized genetically and supported philosophically by long-standing ethical principles. Stewardship incorporates all people at all levels of society based on collective responsibility, supported by government policies, yet not restricting a mother's choices for the future of her unborn offspring.

His Brothers' Keeper: John Brown, Moral Stewardship and Interracial Abolitionism

Recent biographies of abolitionist John Brown emphasise his uniqueness and cast him as an anomalous figure in the anti-slavery movement. This article, however, makes the case for Brown's representativeness by connecting his career to his formative years in north-eastern Ohio, a geographical and cultural context that shaped Brown's lifelong image of himself as an adviser and manager of wilderness communities. That self-image made Brown similar to white ‘moral stewards’ in many reform movements. Even Brown's interracial relationships, though difficult to interpret because of sparse documentary evidence, were shaped partly by the culture of moral stewardship in which Brown's career began.

Religion, Meaning, and Identity in Women's Writing

This text of Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's is published posthumously in the context of pieces dedicated to her memory. It is unclear whether she intended it for eventual publication or whether she had intended it as a lecture; nor is there decisive evidence for a date of composition. In it, she reviews the stance of feminist literary criticism toward religion and finds it to be generally negative. She regrets that feminist critics see in religion mostly a means of subordinating women to men, given that most of the writers whose work they explicate were themselves fervently religious. She then examines the feminization of religion in nineteenth-century America and the growing idea at the time of female moral stewardship. After examining the contrasting approaches taken to the process of feminization by Harriet Beecher Stowe and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Fox-Genovese then takes as her main case Augusta Jane Evans's novels Beulah and St. Elmo. She argues that feminist critics, in concentrating on questions about the marriage or independence of Evans's characters miss Evans's central concern, which was the loss and recovery of her characters' faith. The feminist critics (given their hostility to religion) misunderstand that Evans's stance was not one against female individualism, but rather (given her commitment as a Christian) a stance against the unbridled individualism of modern American society.

Education and Democracy

The well-educated individual easily acquires the skills of a specific workplace when these become necessary, Mr. Goodlad points out. To make the dozen or more years of schooling instrumental to the future needs of the workplace, however carefully predicted, is immoral and dangerous. THE PAST 15 years have witnessed the emergence of several educational improvement initiatives of national scope that have taken shape largely with the support of private philanthropy. Most have focused on schools; several, on teacher education. Since its inception, ours has assumed the close relationship of the two and has addressed their simultaneous renewal. Our initiative is driven by a research-based agenda referred to by the thousands of school and university people involved in the effort as the Agenda for Education in a Democracy. Context Three agencies have been and are engaged with the Agenda for Education in a Democracy: the Center for Educational (CER) at the University of Washington, founded in 1985; the National Network for Educational (NNER), assembled in 1986 and reconstructed in 1990-91; and the nonprofit Institute for Educational Inquiry (IEI), created in 1992. The major function of the CER has been research, that of the NNER has been implementation, and IEI has focused on leadership training. The Agenda emerged out of two decades of inquiry on educational change, schooling, and teacher education, conducted first by teams in the research division of the Institute for Development of Educational Activities, located in Los Angeles, and then at the CER in Seattle.1 The Agenda is comprehensive in its inclusion of a four-part mission; some five dozen conditions necessary for advancing this mission, which are embedded in 20 propositions referred to as postulates; and a strategy of individual and institutional renewal. (The 20th postulate was added to the original 19 in 2000 and pertains to supporting and sustaining the teaching career.) The whole is grounded in a concept of education as a moral endeavor serving both the individual and the common good through the development of those civil and civic dispositions espoused by the great religions and by lay thinkers in their pursuit of the ideal human condition. In the rhetoric of the Agenda, these attitudes and behaviors are referred to as indicators of character, both individual and collective, whether social or political. The Agenda's strategy has focused on the simultaneous renewal of schooling and teacher education for the well-being of children and young people. The mission for schools addresses this end in two parts: 1) the enculturation of the young into the freedoms and responsibilities of a democratic society and 2) their deep and broad introduction into and preparation for participation in the human conversation. For those who teach the young in schools, the mission includes education in and commitment to this conception of what our schools are for and adds two other responsibilities: 1) employing a caring pedagogy and 2) providing moral stewardship of schools. Whereas successive eras of school improvement have emphasized reform and accountability, the Agenda emphasizes renewal and responsibility. Reform and accountability connote compliance, a response that ranks low in its appeal to the human spirit. Renewal and connote limitless possibilities and disciplined commitment to moral principles. It should come as no surprise that most people who choose to work in education are motivated and challenged by an agenda of renewal but are scarcely moved by still another round of reform. We might well be surprised, however, to discover that renewal has scarcely been tried. Introspection As with those other educational improvement ventures of recent years that have challenged educators to take the high ground of responsibility for renewing themselves and their institutions, the Agenda for Education in a Democracy has been funded almost entirely by private philanthropy, supplemented by institutional budgets. …

Weaving the Web of Democracy: Confronting Conflicting Expectations for Teachers and Schools

In Teachers for Our Nation's Schools, Goodlad (1991) called for teacher education programs to develop profound democratic consciousness within education students. He argued that this awareness would help teachers understand and resolve the inevitable tensions arising when unquestioned instructional routines are examined in light of both the governance structures and processes of [a] political democracy and the requisites of humane citizenship (p. 52). Such an examination is essential, given the increasing diversity in the public schools and pluralistic society, where teachers must be prepared to make professional decisions about how to best meet the educational needs of all students. More recently, Goodlad (1996) explained that a disposition toward moral stewardship, a formative teacher ability to be honed in professional education programs (p. 113), must characterize an educational mission in a democratic setting. Most teacher education programs shy away from confronting schooling practices that work against the best learning and self-esteem interests of children and youth. Many teacher education programs socialize preservice teachers into status quo social climates of K-12 schools, a function of program faculty who collectively tend to avoid interrogation and critique (Greene, 1978, p. 56) about the political nature of schooling. This avoidance most acutely manifests itself in inadequate approaches to examining public school education from a multicultural perspective (Barreto, 1997; Grant, 1993). Teacher education programs wishing to weave democratic and multicultural perspectives throughout their programs face significant dilemmas. Arising from conflicting public and personal values and representing sizable areas of contention, these challenges can be represented by statements labeled provocative declaratives, a concept that Marie Fielder, faculty emeritus, University of California at Berkeley, introduced to us. These statements are deliberately formulated to elicit reactions to held values and beliefs of groups of people. The conversation arising from them brings forth contradictory and moral perspectives that help participants clarify unexamined assumptions driving their actions and the actions of others. Provocative declaratives do not stand independently from one another nor necessarily represent discrete points of views; therefore, such statements on a similar topic may overlap or contradict one another. The following provocative declaratives that our teacher preparation program has developed for its internal program discussions highlight issues that many teacher education programs face and with which our program daily grapples: Provocative Declarative 1: Given current teaching practices in K-12 public education and most student teaching contexts, preparing teachers to create democratic classrooms is unrealistic and professionally irresponsible. Provocative Declarative 2: It is not legitimate for a teacher education program to require its teacher candidates to adopt a specific conceptual framework or emphasis to successfully complete program requirements. Provocative Declarative 3: It is legitimate for the values embedded within teacher preparation programs to conflict with current political parameters and curricular practices of public schools. Provocative Declarative 4: In preparing future teachers for a democratic society, teacher preparation programs must not recommend for certification or licensure students who are openly racist, classist, sexist, or homophobic--regardless of the candidates' content area knowledge and skills. Provocative Declarative 5: Issues of technical proficiency in teaching along with a sound knowledge base in learning theory must ultimately take priority over other topics within the teacher education curriculum. Provocative Declarative 6: Incorporating democratic education concepts into full-time student teaching distracts from the sharpening of technical teaching skills beginning teachers require. …

The sound of one hand clapping: the case for and against anonymous giving

The paper draws on intensive interviews with 130 millionaires to explore the case for and against anonymous giving, to indicate a number of key findings about anonymous giving among the wealthy, and to describe the potential of anonymous giving to raise both the level of careand control in philanthropic relationships. The first two sections of the paper set out the case for and against anonymous giving, emphasising the instrumental and moral rationale by which the wealthy frame both sides of the issue. The third section discusses the tendencies inherent in anonymous giving toward enhancing moral stewardship and manipulation. In the conclusion, I discuss some conceptual distinctions derived from the analysis and speculate about the value of encouraging the non-wealthy to consider at least some measure of anonymous giving.

Pacifism in West Germany

PACIFISM IN WEST GERMANY Peter H. Merkl J. he current wave of pacifism in West Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe, following upon the rosy afterglow ofPresident Reagan's honeymoon in office amid the symbols of an illusory resurgence of American strength, has deeply disturbed the American public and given rise to many a misperception and misinterpretation in the media and in official quarters. The sight of an estimated 300,000 demonstrators marching in Bonn against the stationing of Pershing II and cruise missiles on the European continent suggested a groundswell of resistance to American defense policies in a key country of the anti-Soviet alliance. To many Americans, it also signified a new brand of German neutralism, anti-Americanism and, perhaps, even a preference for accommodation with the Soviet Union. Going a few steps further, an assistant secretary of defense in the new administration, Richard N. Perle,1 was widely quoted as connecting the pacifist upsurge either with "heavy-duty Soviet and indigenous Communist involvement," or with a "Protestant Angst" exploited by church leaders in order to revive flagging church attendance among the young. The allegations of Communist conspiracy behind the peace movement—to be distinguished from enthusiastic Communist approval—are less plausible in the Federal Republic with its tiny Communist parties than, say, in Italy or France. The 1. Assistant Secretary Perle also chairs the High Level Group of NATO, which includes representatives of allied defense ministries for the discussion of common concerns. Peter H. Merkl is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research and writing over the years has been concentrated on comparative politics and, particularly, West German politics. His latest books are Western European Party System Trends and Prospects (New York: Free Press, 1980) and The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton University Press, 1980). 81 82 SAIS REVIEW thesis of Protestant Angst, however, aside from the hilarious suggestion of a church conspiracy to bring wayward parishioners back to the faith, may well contain a kernel oftruth in the midst ofa barnful ofchaff.2 The phenomenon of pacifism in Germany is extraordinarily complex and resists reduction to simplistic formulae. Let us take a closer look at some of its roots and ramifications . The role of the churches and interfaith councils in sponsoring the peace movement, to- begin with, should hardly surprise anyone familiar with the activities of significant numbers of Christian and Jewish leaders in many other moral struggles there or, for that matter, in the United States, where the civil rights movement ofthe 1960s and the antiwar movement ofa decade ago come readily to mind. The German Protestant and Catholic churches, too, have frequently involved themselves in moral isues ranging from the recognition of the Oder-Neisse boundaries of Poland to atonement for the holocaust visited by Germans upon six million Jews. Sometimes the two churches, or particular opinion leaders among them, may disagree on an issue—such as abortion, which aroused Catholic priests and bishops far more than their Protestant counterparts—but both churches, rightly or wrongly, have always felt compelled to take passionate stands on issues of life and death, or of right moral conduct. Conceding moral stewardship to church leaders, on the other hand, need not imply in every case that whatever some of them may choose to condemn is intrinsically immoral or evil. Germans have long been familiar with competing ethical codes, such as the conflict between an ethic of conviction or conscience (Gesinnungsethik), as in pacifism, and an ethic of responsibility for others (Verantwortungsethik), such as may inspire a country's defense policy. When the current German pacifist movement and the Protestant churches first faced the limelight together at the gigantic Protestant Church Congress in Hamburg in mid-1981, several trends had been at work for years to culminate in their astonishing union. One has been a burgeoning Christian revival movement among West and even East German youth3 which in significant ways has paralleled the progression of American rebellious youth from the drug and anti-Vietnam generation to the various manifestations of Jesus movements and neo-orthodox revivalism. Another has been the willingness of both churches, but especially the Protestants, to let the young people...

Humanitarianism in the Preindustrial City: The New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, 1817-1823

THE course of American humanitarianism in the early nineteenth century was strongly influenced by the forces of social transformation which swept the nation after 1815.1 The disturbing and unwholesome results of heavy immigration, rapid urbanization, and industrialization particularly affected the rising seaport cities. In New York City reformers sought to remove the social ills associated with these changes, improve the quality of urban life, and restore order to an increasingly chaotic society. Voluntary associations were formed for every imaginable humanitarian purpose: to assist widows and orphans, immigrants and Negroes, debtors and prisoners, aged females and young prostitutes; to supply the poor with food, fuel, medicine, employment, and religion; to promote morality, temperance, thrift, and industrious habits; to educate poor children in free schools, Sunday schools, and charity schools; to reform gamblers, drinkers, criminals, juvenile delinquents, and ungodly sailors; and to purge the lower classes of their supposed vices. Although the spirit of Christian benevolence and the rationalism of the Enlightenment continued to motivate New Yorkers as it had in an earlier period, the demand for social control of a rapidly growing population and an ideology of moral stewardship increasingly compromised humanitarian fervor. In its attitudes, assumptions, and activities the New York Society for the Prevention of Pauperism (S.P.P.) typified philanthropic reform in the preindustrial city.2 Mr. Mohl is assistant professor of history in Florida Atlantic University. The author acknowledges the financial assistance of the Samuel Fels Fund, the American Philosophical Society, and the Indiana University Foundation.

Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865, by Clifford S. Griffin. 332 pp. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1960. $6.00

Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865, by Clifford S. Griffin. 332 pp. New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1960. $6.00

Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-1865

Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-1865

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Andrew Johnson and Reconsrtruction. By Eric L. Mckitrick.Atlas of Western civilization, Second Revised Edition. By Frederic van der Meer, translated by T. A. Birrell.Francisco de los Cobos: Secretary of the Emperor Charles V. By Hayward Keniston.The Swiss Press and Foreign Affairs in World War II. By Frederick H. Hartmann.The Vice‐Admiralty Courts and the American Revolution. By Carl Ubbelohde.General John Glover and his Marblehead Mariners. By George athan Billias.George Washington and the French Revolution. By Louis Martin Sears.An Errand of Mercy. The Evangelical United Front. 1790–1837. By Charles I. Foster.Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800‐1865. By Clifford S. Griffin.The Mormon Conflict, 1850–1859. By Norman FurnissLincoln's Manager: David Davis. By Willard L. King.The Idea of continental Union: Agitation for the Annexation of Canada to the United States, 1849–1893. By Donald F. WarnerRepublican Ascendancy, 1921–1933. By John D. Hicks.Americans At War: The Development of the American Military System. By t. Harry Williams.

Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800- 1865.

Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800- 1865.

Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800-1865

Journal Article Their Brothers' Keepers: Moral Stewardship in the United States, 1800–1865. By Clifford S. Griffin. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960. xvi + 332 pp. Notes, essay on sources, and index. $6.00.) Get access Conrad Wright Conrad Wright Harvard Divinity School Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 47, Issue 2, September 1960, Pages 320–322, https://doi.org/10.2307/1891725 Published: 01 September 1960