Church People Research Articles

The Catholic Diocese: A Transversalized Institution

The Catholic Church is built, on the one hand, upon a hierarchical structure and vertical relationships, with stratified duties, centered around an organizational culture which is based on strict obedience to institutional directives and which has a monopoly on the administration of the goods and resources concerning salvation. On the other hand, since the Second Vatican Council, the Church has proposed to incorporate lay people into God's Kingdom, a development which represents an opening to the active participation of diverse groups and a redistribution of access to the goods of salvation. Analysts may take a position one way or the other regarding their definition of the Church, and some even state the existence of a dominant church and a people's church. In contrast to both these perspectives, this paper looks at a methodological and theoretical model for studying diversity within Catholic unity. The model is based on the concept of the 'transversalized institution' as it is applied to the way in which Guadalajara's diocese functions.

Book Review: Priests in a People's Church

Book Review: Priests in a People's Church

The Nationality Question in the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, 1918-1939 by Mikko s> Ketola (review)

356 SEER, 8o, 2, 2002 Russian revolution. At the same time the author would have benefited here from studying earlier works analysing constitutional issues raised by BrestLitovsk ,notably by H-E. Volkmann (Diedeutsche Baltikumpolitik zwischen BrestLitovsk undCompiegne, Cologne-Vienna, I970) or BernhardMann (DieBaltischen Ldnder in derdeutschen Kriegszielpublizistik I9I4-I9I8, Ttibingen, I965). These and other key texts in German do not appearin the bibliography. In general,however, thisentertainingbook isveryfarfroma drydescription of events and aspiresto convey the moods, impressionsand atmospherewhich assailedthe occupying forces. It does this well, if there is too much repetition. As far as the author is concerned, the overridingexperience for troops in the East was one of alienation induced by sensations of being in a remote, strange and hostile environment. 'There, with widened eyes, the German soldier faced vistas of strange lands, unknown peoples and new horizons' (p. 2). Fairenough, but it is sometimes difficultto realize that the author is in fact also consideringa partof Europewhich generationsof travellershad long recognized as 'European' in every sense of the word. How profound and widespreadcould the 'alienation'of the soldiersenmasse have been? The book raisessome interestingideas about what the Ober Ostexperience meant for subsequent generations of Germans, but it is difficultto resist the feeling that Liuleviciuspushes a ratherinterestingcase fractionallytoo farfor comfort, as when he concludes that the 'lessons' of the Eastern Front 'were eventuallytaken up by the Nazi movement and fusedwith the vile energies of their anti-Semitism,to produce a terriblenew plan for the East' (p. 279). Like many historians of such 'continuity' in German foreign policy, he gives insufficient attention to the not insignificant opposition within the Reich to what was going on in LandOber Ost,particularlyafter I9I7. BalticResearch Unit JOHN HIDEN University ofBradford Ketola, Mikko. TheNationality Question intheEstonian Evangelical Lutheran Church, I9 18-I939. Publications of theFinnishSocietyof ChurchHistory,I83. Finnish Society of Church History, Helsinki, 2000. 36I pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendices. Bibliography.Index. Price unknown. MIKKo KETOLA'S impressive study of Church history usefully illuminates many aspects of the wider nationality question in inter-war Estonia. Whilst the Estonian Republic of I9I8-40 has acquired a reputation for tolerance towards its non-titular national groups, the former Baltic German elite nevertheless remained the object of widespread distrust and bitterness. As Ketola describes in his introduction, the Lutheran Church had been commonly portrayedas a 'Master'sChurch' duringthe period of the Estonian 'national awakening'. Indeed, although the German minority made up only I.5 per cent of the population of newly independent Estonia, 52 per cent of the Lutheranclergywere ethnicallyGerman in I9I8. In the second partof the book, Ketola details how nationally-minded Estonians (notablyJakob Kukk, Bishop from I919) gained control of the Church leadership and sought to realize their vision of a 'Free People's (read nationally Estonian) Church' REVIEWS 357 during I9I8-24. As part of his largely balanced account of the EstonianGerman disputes engendered by this policy, Ketola devotes the third part of the work to the struggleover Tallinn's LutheranCathedral, which was taken away from its existing German parishby the state and handed over for use by Bishop Kukk in I925. The other major strand of the study relates to the progressiveEstonianizationof the Theology facultyat the University of Tartu and the subsequent founding of the private German-language Luther Academy (part four),which evoked fierce hostilityfrom Estonian nationalists duringthe early I930s. The Baltic Germansremained for the most partreluctantto breakwith the Church leadership and form their own ecclesiastical organization, citing the argumentthat this would weaken the position of Lutheranismwithin Estonia. Whilst they were able to establish their own national deanery (headed by Konrad von zur Mtihlen) from I921, they failed to realize demands for the kind of far-reachingculturalautonomy granted to minorities by the state. In Ketola's view, the Germanleaders'opposition to the new churchorderlargely stemmed from their innate conservatismand consequent inabilityto come to termswith the lossof theirformerhegemony. Notwithstandingthisdissatisfaction , however, the church leadership was apparently less than successful in advancingits 'Estonianizing'agenda duringthe 1920S. Germansstillmade up 4I per cent of the clergy in i929, whilst Estonian parishescontinued to elect German pastors during the I930s. The older generation of Estonian churchmen, moreover, remained suspicious of the doctrinal liberalism promoted by the church leadership, and proved willing to align...

A History of the English Parish: The Culture of Religion from Augustine to Victoria

List of illustrations Abbreviations Part I. The Origins of the Parochial System: 1. Church and parish 2. Rectors and vicars 3. The bounds of the parish 4. The urban parish Part II. The Functions of the Parish: 5. The parish and its servants 6. The economics of the parish 7. The community and the parish 8. The parish and the church courts 9. The parish and popular culture Part III: The Parish and its Church: 10. The parish: its church and churchyard 11. The fabric of the church: the priest's church 12. The people's church Postscript.

"Yet Will I Leave a Remnant": Modernization, Out-Migration, and the Rural Churches of Cleveland County, Arkansas, in the 1940s

MANY, BUT NOT ALL, OF THE SOCIETAL CHANGES that accompanied the modernization of the South's deeply entrenched cotton-based agricultural system in the mid-twentieth century have been well-documented. Diversification and mechanization of farms coupled with World War II-related employment opportunities resulted in a depopulation of the southern countryside. Farmers were convinced that the only way to survive in a rapidly changing world was to abandon their agrarian culture. Even in the most remote areas, rural modernization-the exchange of totally self-sufficient farming for wage-earning labor and the acceptance of technological advances to improve homes, farms, and transportation-had a lasting effect upon politics, education, and economics. Because of evangelical Protestantism's historically vital role in the lives of southerners, each ripple of change that surfaced in the region must also have taken its toll on the region's churches. Yet the nature of that effect has not been adequately explored. The experience of southeast Arkansas's Cleveland County and its rural white congregations presents an opportunity for much-needed study of the rural church's reaction to southern modernization, as well as of the impact of change on an often overlooked group-the small farmers of the Gulf Coastal Plain, that land of rolling fields nestled between the fertile delta and the highlands. Resident churchgoers' adaptation to change reveals that, despite potentially devastating circumstances, religion was redefined and new traditions created to bring the church into the modem world and to establish its role as a preserver of local heritage. Sunday, May 21, 1950, was a happy occasion at Prosperity Methodist Church in the rural community of Pansy in Cleveland County. The typically small congregation swelled as families came together in observance of Day. When the church hour arrived, the congregants recited the Apostles' Creed, then turned to the poem Faith of Our Mothers in their carefully typed worship programs. As they sang the words to the familiar tune of the hymn Faith of Our Fathers, the assembly promised mothers to be true til death and urged on the maternal instinct to the home and save the church. The baptisms of several infants were followed by Blessed Assurance, the offering, and, finally, Brother Claude Stone's Mother's Day Message. The service ended with a prayer for the blessing of the church which, throughout its years of activity ... had its proverbial `Ups and Downs,' but by prayer, faith, determination, and calm assurance [would] be known as `The Church with the Bright Future. Considering the changes that had occurred in the congregation, the community, the county, the state, and the entire South over the previous decade, the people in this small church could easily have expressed a spirit of defeat. They had watched the county population drop from 12,570 in 1940 to just 8,956 in 1950, and saw five hundred farms with five hundred families disappear.2 Neglected cotton fields became pine thickets as the federal arsenal at Pine Bluff and its irresistible wages lured away small farmers who had struggled in vain to make something of the marginal land. Gone were the spirited tent revivals and emotional mourners' benches where souls came to repent and be saved. Gone, too, were many of the congregation. Yet there was no sign of dampened spirits on Day 1950. In spite of the devastating effects the 1940s had on small churches, Prosperity survived, and it was not alone among white congregations in Cleveland County. Area churches faced a challenge similar to what historian Paul Harvey has called the movement from folk south to new south, and many were determined to keep up with the changing times.3 When poor soil quality and desertion of farms threatened the local agrarian culture, churches adapted new methods to serve evolving spiritual needs. As roads improved and methods of travel opened up their Protestant world to secular entertainment, congregations countered by devising their own distractions to draw people back to the fold. …

Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970.

In the 1960s, the mainstream Protestant churches responded to an urgent need by becoming deeply involved with the national black community in its struggle for racial justice. The National Council of Churches (NCC), as the principal ecumenical organization of the national Protestant religious establishment, initiated an active new role by establishing a Commission on Religion and Race in 1963. Focusing primarily on the efforts of the NCC, this is the first study by an historian to examine the relationship of the predominantly white, mainstream Protestant Churches to the Civil Rights movement. Drawing on hitherto little-used and unknown archival resources and extensive interviews with participants, Findlay documents the churches' committed involvement in the March on Washington in 1963, the massive lobbying effort to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, their powerful support of the struggle to end legal segregation in Mississippi, and their efforts to respond to the Black Manifesto and the rise of black militancy before and during 1969. Findlay chronicles initial successes, then growing frustration as the events of the 1960s unfolded and the national liberal coalition, of which the churches were a part, disintegrated. While never losing sight of the central, indispensable role of the African-American community, Findlay's study for the first time makes clear the highly significant contribution made by liberal religious groups in the turbulent, exciting, moving, and historic decade of the 1960s.

Children of Wrath: New School Calvinism and Antebellum Reform

Children of Wrath: New School Calvinism and Antebellum Reform. By Leo P. Hirrel. (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press,1998. Pp. x, 248. Illustrations. $39.95.) Restless Visionaries: The Social Roots of Antebellum Reform in Alabama and Michigan. By John W. Quist. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1998. Pp. xi, 562. Tables. $29.95.) We know more about the ideological extremes in antebellum America that threatened to pull the country apart than about social and political middle ground, where efforts to foster social and political cohesion occurred. But that is beginning to change. These two monographs on and reform join a growing body of new scholarship on political moderation that examines its religious content and considers its moral ambiguity. Leo P. Hirrel and John W. Quist have written case studies of Protestant benevolence and moral reform that explore interactions of and republicanism, not in the new nation where we have been accustomed to looking, but during the antebellum generation; not in Protestant proselytizing and theology but in voluntary Christian benevolence. Hirrel focuses on Congregationalist followers of Nathaniel William Taylor and on New School Presbyterians, both liberal Calvinists whose optimistic view of human destiny and middle class paternalism predisposed them to equate the building of the Kingdom of God with succoring the poor and attacking evils of ignorance and alcohol. In an ambitious regional comparative study, Quist compares Protestant churches in Washtenaw County, Michigan, and Tuscaloosa County, Alabama. Together, the two books triangulate Protestant America: Hirrel on the urban Northeast and Quist on the Upper Middle West and Lower South. Throughout the nation, benevolent reformers sought to tame the rogue energies of a sinful society by massive dissemination of printed material and by diligent recruitment of church people into benevolent organizations. Hirrel mines the Congregationalist Quarterly Christian Spectator for evidence of both print media moralizing and organization building. It is impossible in the very nature of things that our civil and political institutions can long survive our public morals, the Spectator editorialized; it is . . . impossible that our public morals can flourish, or be preserved, without religion (84). Hirrel effectively makes the connection between the religious print media and social order, for example in Sabbatarian politics: Does not the gift of prophecy . . . foretell that if the Holy Sabbath cannot be sustained in these happy, exalted States, our free institutions will fail and our fair and glorious civil fabric, the hope of other nations, will sink into ruin with the republics of ancient days (84). Quist reveals the ways in which Congregationalists used Michigan newspapers to infuse society with antislavery and temperance advocacy and mobilize reform activists. He also notes how Baptists in Alabama-including some slaveholders-advocated temperance as a means of constructing a sober society in which white males could exercise a moderating influence on all social relationships. In the Northeast, Christian moral reformers had their own denominational periodicals whereas in the Lower South and Upper Midwest, reformers used local newspapers as vehicles for indoctrination and mobilization of a professional, church-going elite by their better educated social equals. Quist's rich empirical findings are especially illuminating and, in places, dramatic. An Alabama newspaper, The Independent Monitor (the title itself suggestive of the moral and social roles of the press), carried an 1843 account of a well publicized and carefully organized temperance lecture in Tuscaloosa. The article was written by one of the organizers of the event and featured an impromptu address, following the main lecture, in which Felix Grundy McConnell confessed his own too free indulgence in the use of ardent spirits with overwhelming effect and pathos. …

The Trial of Bishop King (Read v Bishop of Lincoln)

The trial of Bishop Edward King (1829–1910) and the judgment which issued from it proved a landmark in the history of the Victorian Church of England. The judgment was also a turning point in the history of the Catholic Revival, and the bitter series of ritual disputes to which it gave rise. Edward Norman categorised the trial as ‘One of the most important, as well as one of the most extraordinary episodes in the religious history of the nineteenth century.’ R. W. Church, Dean of St Paul's, hailed the judgment as ‘The most courageous thing that has come out of Lambeth for the last 200 years.’ Others, inevitably, given the passions roused by the ritualist controversy, took a more jaundiced view; but few serious Church people were indifferent to the result.

Why aren't more church people interested in the environment?

Why aren't more church people interested in the environment?

Lending a Hand to Labor: James Myers and the Federal Council of Churches, 1926–1947

On 31 September 1929, James Myers, the industrial secretary of the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), arrived in Marion, North Carolina, to investigate the causes for the continuing industrial unrest that had swept across the southern textile industry since the spring. Shortly after Myers's arrival, as the textile workers attempted to picket the plant, sheriff's deputies fired into the crowd, killing six strikers and wounding twenty-five others. Myers's eulogy for the slain workers admonished the mill owners for the harsh working conditions and low wages, but mostly for their opposition to their workers' right to organize. He also scolded clergymen who argued that industrial conflict was “not the Church's business.” Over the ensuing months, Myers set an example of Christian involvement in labor unrest. He investigated the strike's impact on the community, he met with the governor, and he offered to help mediate the conflict. Dismayed by the suffering that he had uncovered, Myers also organized a relief campaign among church people on behalf of the families of the striking workers. Reflecting on Myers's efforts, the Christian Century declared that Myers stood “almost alone as representative of any active concern in the churches” in the midst of “appalling industrial warfare.” Otherwise, “the forces of organized religion would have to confess to an amazing indifference when confronted by the most acute industrial conflict of the year.”

Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (review)

BOOK REVIEWS3O5 commonwealth." Instead we are told that For most Southerners the war represented "an assertion ofracial and economic prerogatives." Ifthe affinity school of thought is going to provide a better understanding, then this begs the other half of the question: why did the North fight? Now its back to the garden to differentiate the roots. John M. Ysursa San Diego State University Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America. By Richard J. Cawardine. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Pp. 512. $25.00 paper.) Nineteenth-century America seemed a pious hope in the best sense. That only makes it all the stranger that an earlier generation of historians, in studying politics from the backrooms to the polling-booths, halted cautiously at the church door. Yet as Richard Cawardine's excellent study shows, we cannot understand how the parties broke and reconfigured in the antebellum period, norhow the war itself came, without seeing the fervor unleashed in the Second Great Awakening. Cawardine's study may well preach to the converted. Recent scholars have known well the connection between religious and political loyalties, and the moral dimension of the breakup of the Jacksonian party system has become a commonplace. But no book has made the thorough examination thatEvangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America, nor used such a wide array of religious tracts, sermons, and ecclesiasticaljournals. Where most scholars have looked at religion from a party perspective, Cawardine sets forth politics from a religious perspective. In doing so, he places it closer to the center of political debate than anyone has done before. Each party tried to get right with the godly. Evangelicals, as Cawardine makes clear, could findjustification for every position, from slavery's Scriptural blessedness to its incarnate evil to its presence as one of those wrongs better acquiesced in than removed at the cost of disunion. Still, one side always seemed to have the stronger battalions. While partisans roared for 'Tippecanoe" and guzzled hard cider in front of ersatz log cabins, ministers assured their parishioners of the candidate's credentials as an abstainer and warned how Democracy meant free thinking, blasphemy, and subservience to the Pope. Whiggery could never escape the nativism, temperance, and anti-Catholicism that its evangelical legions gave it. In the end, those forces helped weaken the party on the state level, while the moral case against slavery brought its disruption and complete destruction nationally. Laws against activity on the Sabbath and liquor-dealing any time shaped the secondAmerican party system and became a component in the third. At the same time, Southern evangelicals found in their faith a new backing for an aggressive proslavery position. By 1 860 evangelicalism, Northern and Southern, had made the differences between slave and free states 3?6CIVIL WAR HISTORY virtually irresoluble, and turned the conflict that followed into something of a holy war. Cawardine makes a good case, but certain cautions to readers too hasty to read the caveats in his measured prose are in order. To show that evangelical Protestants reacted to events does not show how far they actually influenced them. Limitations are built into the sources that this book uses—as there are to any sources. Not a bit surprisingly, religious magazines and ministers, when they dealt with the secular world, brought religion into it. That does not necessarily show that when their parishioners responded to events, they put the moral dimension foremost. Something more than we see here is needed to show that the church people were themselves driving forces in public debate. A good case in point would be the i860 campaign. Clearly, all parties were glad to have backing in the pulpit, and Republicans went out of their way to earn their nickname, "the party of moral ideas." But looking at their campaign as a whole, the hosts of virtue look somewhat less prominent than they would seem from readng Cawardine's chapter 9. A party deep-dyed in piety could have chosen praying Salmon Chase; it chose Lincoln, a non-churchgoer. But that hardly mattered to the delegates in Chicago. Assembling a majority in the North, Republicanism had to appeal to self-interest, fear, patriotism, and to the skeptical and secular Americans. Fierce...

Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice, 1818-45 (review)

3?6CIVIL WAR HISTORY virtually irresoluble, and turned the conflict that followed into something of a holy war. Cawardine makes a good case, but certain cautions to readers too hasty to read the caveats in his measured prose are in order. To show that evangelical Protestants reacted to events does not show how far they actually influenced them. Limitations are built into the sources that this book uses—as there are to any sources. Not a bit surprisingly, religious magazines and ministers, when they dealt with the secular world, brought religion into it. That does not necessarily show that when their parishioners responded to events, they put the moral dimension foremost. Something more than we see here is needed to show that the church people were themselves driving forces in public debate. A good case in point would be the i860 campaign. Clearly, all parties were glad to have backing in the pulpit, and Republicans went out of their way to earn their nickname, "the party of moral ideas." But looking at their campaign as a whole, the hosts of virtue look somewhat less prominent than they would seem from readng Cawardine's chapter 9. A party deep-dyed in piety could have chosen praying Salmon Chase; it chose Lincoln, a non-churchgoer. But that hardly mattered to the delegates in Chicago. Assembling a majority in the North, Republicanism had to appeal to self-interest, fear, patriotism, and to the skeptical and secular Americans. Fierce Protestantism would scare off groups that the party could not do without. So it was in other years. Whigs could always try to earn churchgoers' blessing for their nominees by appropriate political packaging. But it seemed rather an afterthought. They tended to choose people who would need pretty diligent justifying, infidels and the heroes of wars that many Northern evangelicals deplored . Any evangelical could tell the managers that one with God was in the majority; the managers might admit it, but as they knew, many a martyr burned at the stake while the votes were still being counted. Mark Wahlgren Summers University of Kentucky Frederick Douglass: Freedom 's Voice, 1818-45. By Gregory R Lampe. (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 350. $45.00, cloth; $22.95, paper.) Frederick Douglass: Freedom's Voice, 1818-45 represents an interesting and valuable contribution to understanding the career of this important historical figure. Gregory P. Lampe reexamines prevalent notions about Douglass's early years as abolitionist orator, specifically, that Douglass had enjoyed little training as a public speaker before becoming a full-time abolitionist activist in the early 1 840s and that during the first years of his career he displayed little if any independence from the white abolitionists who sponsored him. Lampe shows BOOK REVIEWS3O7 that Douglass was better prepared for an oratorical career and a more autonomous figure in his early years as full-time abolitionist than previous biographers have acknowledged. Lampe comes to these conclusions by emphasizing those elements in Douglass's background that helped prepare him for a career as a public speaker and by probing to an unprecedented extent newspaper accounts and other sources that document Douglass's activities between 1839 and 1845 (the years during which he came into prominence). In fact, the author is quite critical of other Douglass scholars, such as John W. Blassingame, Benjamin Quarles, Raymond Gerald Fulkerson, and William S. McFeely, accusing them of committing numerous "errors and omissions when documenting Douglass's oratorical activities during this period" (xi). Frederick Douglass himselfdoes not escape criticism in this regard. Lampe indicates that throughout his career, Douglass, with a sense of false modesty, downplayed his preparation as a public speaker. In other words, while acknowledging Frederick Douglass's considerable oratorical gifts, Lampe demonstrates that they did not spring forth spontaneously in the early 1 840s. Instead, he shows the importance of oral culture in the slave community and how it sensitized the young Douglass to the power of the spoken word. Lampe then moves on to Douglass's years as a youth in Baltimore. In this urban setting, Douglass became literate and by accident discovered Caleb Bingham's Columbian Orator, a prescriptive book on public speaking. Literacy...

Christianity in the Arab World

As Prince Charles commented in his opening words, "Jordan has long been conspicuousas a land of tolerance and peaceful coexistence between people of different faiths,"a coexistence increasingly abused by extremists of all three faiths included in the phraseAhl al Kitiib (People of the Book). Prince Hassan 's original intent in writing this book wasto brief Muslim Arabs on the nature of Christianity and Christian religious institutions.His major focus is on the historical development of the Eastern Christian traditions in theMuslim Arab milieu and the standing of Christians in Arab society today. ft is his intentionto provide Muslim Arabs with accurate and concise information about the Christianswho historically have lived in their midst. The text was first published in English andArabic by the Royal Institute for Inter-faith studies in Amman, Jordan. and should be classifiedunder both historical and theological sections. It is in wide demand in the Westbecause of the paucity of easily accessible relevant information.The Arab Christian tradition goes back to Christianity's very earliest days, antedatingIslam by those six centuries that witnessed the growth of Christian Trinitarian theology,the spread of the Church, and the division of that Church into different communions.Some of these historical communions have survived in the Arab world and bear titles thatusually are greeted with complete ignorance on the part of Christian tourists encounteringChristianity in Arab lands for the first time.As an overall picture of the historical development of Christian doctrine, this bookpresents the main features and arguments with exceptional clarity and a highly admirabledepth of understanding of extremely confusing issues. A more clear, precise, concisegestalt picture of the subject does not exist, so far as I know. The reader can follow thereasons for the various theological developments, the schisms that arose, and the passionswith which various positions and views were defended.The text is academic, excellent at history and explanation, and displays a sensitiveawareness of words and concepts that require careful definition. The Prince has presentedthe world of religious scholars and the issues that were so important to them that theywere (and remain) willing to sacrifice everything, even life. It does not show the world ofactual church people who regard themselves as the body of the living Christ, the devotedfollowers who strive to live good, prayerful lives pleasing to God by imitating the way ofJesus to the best of their ability. This is not a criticism, but I felt the book would have beenimproved with a short section on Christian spirituality to counter all the nitpicking andskullduggery that went on in the theological realm ...

Driving on Zion Church Road

Hubert was sitting in his rocker on the porch, his face hidden in the evening shadows. I went on past him, turned on the lights, and started cooking supper. I cut two slabs of ham, slapped them into the sizzling skillet, and sifted flour into the bread bowl. There on the counter were the new jars of corn. I picked one up and held it to the light. Every kernel as golden as sunrise. Perfect. Driving on Zion Church Road Clusters of church people gather on steps beneath clouds puckering like fat blue judges. Their gossip and the wind build: the stomping of a farmer's muddy boots. My left hand skates air currents, shepherding a stream of dust and bugs. A pink welt rises on my thigh as the windows flash a thousand things that pass too fast to see. It is only this: simple landscape of black, tires tired and heated at the threads sustaining the motion of moving ahead into anywhere and rolling over oneself. Sheets of rain flap questions in the space above the horizon, the color of cream in coffee unstirred. Some saint said God is in the movement of the water. Maybe these thick robes of weather are promising salvation. —Andy Young 40 ...

READINESS FOR RESPONSIBILITY

have spent too much time thinking, purposing that if only we weigh every possibility in advance, everything will somehow happen automatically. We have learnt a bit too late in day that action springs not from thought but from a readiness for responsibility. So wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison.(1) The themes developed in this symposium resonate with major concerns of world as we approach new millennium. The most valuable contribution may be that we have been motivated for beyond our own setting and have been enabled to ask questions related to in a fresh way. Perhaps pertinent question is not is or how can be done in a new way in new century. For is not just problem out there - it is also us: we are also problem of God's mission. Who will be mission-doers of approaching epoch? Are present actors fit enough? churches will have energy for endeavour of Christian in 21st century? Who is emerging and who is fading away? While these issues directly touch identity that is envisioned by Dutch churches and bodies in their current and ongoing efforts towards unity, they are hardly avoidable for other local and national churches, or for international bodies such as World Council of Churches. Having taken prayer on board as the heartbeat of mission, symposium went beyond thought to readiness for responsibility for transformation. In written form, these papers provide food for readiness in four courses: 1) Motivation for 2) Subject-matter and method of missiology 3) Church and Mission-doers 4) God's and God of mission. Motivation for Mission With popular awareness about millennium and consciousness about situation of globalization running strong both inside and outside church, many churches are taking opportunity to review their activity and thinking, and to ask in new context: What does Lord require of us...? (Micah 6:8), and what does larger community expect from us? The sponsoring bodies assumed this responsibility as they organized this symposium on occasion of 200th anniversary of their work. Not a few contributors, listeners and speakers will forget all-day event of November 1997. We can imagine expectancy of more than 600 church people when they left home, heading for St Laurens Church in Rotterdam from all over Netherlands. Many would look forward to seeing acquaintances, and to meeting and listening to people from overseas regions their church relates to. Some would have had insights that they were eager to test or share. In effect, programme was organized to take account of this expectancy. After opening prayers, participants went to workshops centred on each region. Two speakers covered theme of in past and present. There was time for clarification and discussion between speakers and between speakers and audience, and then same process happened concerning future. This was followed by plenary discussion, a cultural performance and symposium statement. Closing prayers ended gathering. Among other things, participants were reminded of suffering of particular categories of people; they were upset to hear about analysis of spiritual situation in Western Europe and hopeful for possibilities of contacts with other churches. |n other words, feelings and will of participants were touched, their readiness for responsibility heightened. Such motivational gain was possible owing, largely, to guest speakers of workshops and writers of preparatory booklet, Agenda 2000: Zending op het kruispunt van twee eeuwen.(2) In previous symposia, European missionaries would speak for people of their mission fields; this time they spoke for themselves. …

The People's Church

Review of The People's Church: Bishop Samuel Ruiz of Mexico and Why He Matters by Gary MacEoin.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich by Doris L. Bergen

BOOK REVIEWS499 ways denied that he had any influence over Hitler; on the other hand, he always claimed that his presence in the government was intended to moderate Hitler. Did he really think that he was serving the Fatherland and not the Nazis? If so, it is a good indication of how far German conservatism had degenerated. Rolfs makes this very clear. On at least two occasions Papen thought that he was reinterpreting the work of Bismarck, which is ludicrous. Rolfs obviously believes that Papen's anxieties about his church were authentic and that he negotiated the 1933 Concordat with the Vatican with the best of intentions. Papen's life had a few redeeming features. His most courageous act, it should be noted, was publicly to protest against Nazi abuses of power in June, 1934. While in Ankara he and the papal nuncio, Angelo Roncalli, facilitated the passage to Palestine of thirteen hundred Jewish children who otherwise would have been sent to concentration camps. However, the most important thing to remember about Papen was summarized by the Chief Counsel for the United States at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson:"Franz von Papen, pious agent of an infidel regime, held the stirrup while Hitler vaulted into the saddle, lubricating the Austrian annexation, and devoting his diplomatic cunning to the service of the Nazi objectives abroad" (p. 437). It is unfortunate that such a thorough piece of scholarship contains so many minor errors. Most are probably typographical.The first sentence of the book says that William //was proclaimed Kaiser in 1781. A few pages later Papen is concerned with German "nationalists" in Mexico, when the author certainly means nationals. Rolfs quotes someone who described Papen as "being a Catholic in wolf's clothing. . . ." Surely, it was the other way around. Most troubling is that the pages cited in the index do not always correspond with the pages in the text. The University Press of America should encourage a more careful proof reading of its books. David Owen Kieft University ofMinnesota Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich. By Doris L. Bergen. (Chapel Hill.The University ofNorth Carolina Press. 1996. Pp. xy 341. $39.95 hardcover; $16.95 paperback.) In post-World War I Germany there were a good number of groups within the Protestant Land Churches "preaching religious renewal along nationalist, völkisch lines" (p. 5).Among the strongest of these movements was one in the Land Church ofThuringia led by two young pastors, Siegfried Leffler and Julius Leutheuser. Other groups joined, and their movement came to be called German Christians, a name often held to have been suggested by Hitler.The church elections which took place in 1933, shortly after Hitier came to power, gave the German Christians a golden opportunity to gain control of many congregations and other church offices. People who had never bothered to vote in church 500BOOK REVIEWS elections went to the polls, and the German Christians won two-thirds of the votes.The German Christians did not withdraw from the established churches, and which church party would control the churches became an important aspect of the Kirchenkampf. The German Christians sought to promote a synthesis of the church and the National Socialist movement.To this end they tried to "dejudaize" the church. It was maintained that Jesus was not of Jewish heritage. Jewish phrases were deleted from the OldTestament, which was often set aside. New hymnals were brought out, and the author has quite a bit to say about German Christians and church music. The volume is organized on a topical basis with eleven chapters.The titles of some of the chapters will give an idea of the way the material is presented. There are chapters on "The Anti-Jewish Church"; "The Antidoctrinal Church"; "Non-Aryans in the People's Church"; and "Catholics, Protestants and Dreams of Confessional Union." The German Christians wanted one National Church, which obviously would have to include Catholics.The Catholics, however,were not ready for such a recruitment, and the author has little to report on attempts to achieve a German Christian/Catholic rapprochement. While the German Christians were a vital part of the church conflict during the Hitler...

A Monograph Both Inspiring and Frustrating

religionists are listened to, learned from, and appreciated. Likewise, by using only one student (himself something ofan anomaly) as an example of AMERC "products," McCauley has again failed to utilize effective methodology. Interviews with other students would have revealed that they too are a diverse and complex group, some of whom understand the realities of mountain religion, while others do not. Thus Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History, is itself something of an anomaly and dilemma for scholars of American religion. It is a helpful resource for understanding a rich tradition and a fine study of a much neglected and misunderstood expression of American religious life. Yet this valuable resource is flawed by the author's decision to move from the historical to the polemical without applying a rigorous academic method to every aspect of the work. —Bill J. Leonard A Monograph Both Inspiring and Frustrating Deborah McCauley's Appalachian Mountain Religion is an impressively comprehensive examination of distinctly Appalachian Christianity. What is most striking is her success in enabling mountain church people to speak for themselves and in helping her readers to get inside the minds and hearts of a religious group that is often caricatured. Her critique of American Protestantism's arrogant attitude toward mountain Christians is often incisive. However, in her zeal to defend Appalachian religion, she often paints its practitioners and apparent detractors with disturbingly broad strokes. The resulting monograph is one that is alternately inspiring and frustrating. McCauley's greatest achievement is her thoroughly nuanced portrayal of the different traditions that have given mountain religion its distinctive character. She makes a compelling case that groups as diverse as Old Regular Baptists and independent Holiness/Pentecostal Christians have far more in common than is generally recognized, that mountain religiosity has its roots in an irreducibly varied web of historic religious traditions, and that this religiosity contrasts sharply with that of the Protestantism that came to dominate American life and thought by the middle of the nineteenth century. It is a measure of her achievement that she presents this shared religiosity without violating the particularities of the different traditions, groups, and individuals she studies. McCauley makes a strong case that mountain religion is a uniquely vital bearer of the "plain folk, camp meeting" religion that so crucially shaped American Protestantism in its formative stages and that this religion stands in stark contrast to the denominationalism that later came 49 to characterize mainline Protestants. She repeatedly argues that Protestant denominations now meet themselves in Appalachia as they once were at their best before giving in to the hierarchical, rationalistic, and Arminian ("do-it-yourself) ethos that came to describe America after the mid-nineteenth century. Among other things, she sees considerable virtue in how mountain churches nurture community through sacramental worship, corporate conversion experiences, an emphasis upon spontaneity and the heart in worship, preaching that is anecdotal and not doctrinal, the centrality of love as a treasured virtue, minimal organizational and doctrinal structure, democratic self-governance, and the absence of a paid caste of preachers. As readers will quickly gather, she contrasts these virtues with what she sees as the individualistic and hierarchical character of mainline American Protestantism. McCauley is at her best when she carefully traces the lineage of contemporary mountain religious practices to their antecedents. Her thesis, developed from Schmidt's and Westerkamp's research, that the protracted meetings of the Second Great Awakening have precedents in Scots-Irish sacramental meetings and conventicles is riveting. The same is true of her contention that mountain Holiness/Pentecostal religion is not simply the descendent of the Wesleyan holiness movement but that it has been powerfully shaped by Baptist influences. (Saying any Appalachian church tradition has been unaffected by Baptist traditions is like saying that Protestant church life in Boston has been unaffected by Roman Catholicism!) McCauley's critique of American Protestantism's attitude toward Appalachian mountain religion is more problematic. She offers plenty of examples of arrogant stereotyping by mainline missionaries, who often feel compelled to try to save Appalachians from themselves and their supposedly primitive religiosity. Most Appalachians are all too familiar with such caricatures by writers such as William Byrd in the eighteenth century and Jack Weller...

Religion and Pluralism

The fact of a religiously plural world is one that is readily acknowledged by believers and non-believers alike. For religious believers, however, this fact poses a set of problems. Religions, at least most of the world's great religions, seem to present conflicting visions of the truth and competing accounts of the way to salvation. Faced with differing accounts of God in Judaism, Buddhism, Islam or Hinduism, what, for example can the Christian claim for the truth of Christian beliefs about God? John Hick, reflecting on the phenomenological similarity of worship in some of the great religious traditions, asks ‘whether people in church, synagogue, mosque, gurdwara and temple are worshipping different Gods or are worshipping the same God?’ (Hick and Hebblethwaite, 1980, p. 177). He rejects two possible answers to this question: that there exist many Gods, or that one religion, for example Christianity, worships the true God while all other religions worship false gods, which exist only in their imaginations.

Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970. James F. Findlay, Jr.

Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970. James F. Findlay, Jr.