Secular Phenomenon Research Articles

Defending the city

In ‘Defending the City’ George Pattison seeks to defend the modern city against the charge — made, for example, by Graham Ward — that it is a merely secular phenomenon. Instead, he argues that, in its essence, it is multi‐dimensional and pluralistic, representing a range of diverse possibilities, creative as well as destructive. Also, the modern city is shown to anticipate the essential features of the postmodern city. The argument is illustrated by references to Pugin's critique of architectural eclecticism, to Dostoevsky's invocation of the fantastical reality of St. Petersburg, to Kierkegaard and to Murnau's film Sunrise. It is claimed that the best Christian response to the city is to defend, not to subvert, its pluralism.

Starving for salvation: the spiritual dimensions of eating problems among American girls and women

In recent years, eating disorders among American girls and women have become a subject of national concern. Conventional explanations of eating problems are usually framed in the language of psychology, medicine, feminism, or sociology. Although they differ in theory and approach, these interpretations are linked by one common assumption-that female preoccupation with food and body is an essentially secular phenomenon. In Starving for Salvation, Michelle Lelwica challenges traditional theories by introducing and exploring the spiritual dimensions of anorexia, bulimia, and related problems. Drawing on a range of sources that include previously published interviews with sufferers of eating disorders, Lelwica claims that girls and women starve, binge, and purge their bodies as a means of coping with the pain and injustice of their daily lives. She provides an incisive analysis of contemporary American culture, arguing that our dominant social values and religious legacies produce feelings of emptiness and dissatisfaction in girls and women. Trapped in a society that ignores and denies their spiritual needs, girls and women construct a network of symbols, beliefs, and rituals around food and their bodies. Lelwica draws a parallel between the patriarchal legacy of Christianity, which associates women with sin and bodily cravings, and the cultural preference for a thin female body. According to Lelwica, these complimentary forces form a popular salvation myth that encourages girls and women to fixate on their bodies and engage in disordered eating patterns. While this myth provides a sense of meaning and purpose in the face of uncertainty and injustice, Lelwica demonstrates that such rigid and unhealthy devotion to the body only deepens the spiritual void that women long to fill. Although Lelwica presents many disturbing facts about the origins of eating disorders, she also suggests positive ways that our society can nourish the creative and spiritual needs of girls and women. The first step, however, is to acknowledge that female preoccupation with thinness and food signifies a strong desire for fulfillment. Until we recognize and contest the religious legacies and cultural values that perpetuate eating disorders, many women will continue to turn to the most accessible symbolic and ritual resources available to them-food and their bodies-in an attempt to satiate their profound spiritual hunger.

Homosexuality and Totalitarianism

ABSTRACT Since the dissolution of Communism left the Right with no unifying enemy, some conservatives may be turning to the gay world as the new “evil empire.” This article explores the ideology that underpins the recent upsurge of gay-baiting. Its central thesis is that in identifying the homosexual as the demonic “other” the cultural Right is offering us another form of ersatz Christianity masquerading as tradition but actually infected with the virus of modernity. The paper classifies homophobia as an essentially secular phenomenon, reminiscent of other ideologies which have arisen as a substitute for religion.

From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (review)

Reviewed by: From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance Mark Vessey N. G. Wilson . From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Pp. xi + 200. $49.95 The subtitle of Nigel Wilson's new book could be thought misleading, did he not immediately qualify the work as a sequel to his Scholars of Byzantium (London: Duckworth, 1983), which "described the preservation of the classical heritage and the use made of it by the intellectuals of Byzantium" (ix). For Wilson, "Greek studies" means primarily "classical scholarship" applied to Greek texts. As the earlier book excluded early Christian writings unless they happened to bear on the literary curriculum or attract the attention of a classicizing writer like Michael Psellos, so this one treats only obiter of Greek patristic studies in the Italian Renaissance. As we should expect, Wilson draws special attention to Leonardo Bruni's pioneering translation (c.1403) of Basil's protreptic Ad iuvenes, emphasizing both the continuing power of that text as a sanction for the predominantly pagan literary curriculum of Christian Byzantium and its new-found utility in the West "as a weapon in controversy with opponents brought up in a less liberal tradition" (14). There is brief mention of the important patristic translations of the Camaldolese monk Ambrogio Traversari (1386-1439), already the subject of a major study by Charles L. Stinger, and some discussion of the activity of Cardinal Bessarion as a textual critic in the tradition of Jerome. Valla is remembered for his version of Basil's Nineteenth Homily as well as his work on the Greek New Testament. Evidence that Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) was concerned with the question of the authenticity of the works attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite serves to remind us that "for all his humanistic interests [sic!] both he and his successors up to and including Sixtus IV (1471-84) attached importance to [the patristic] part of the Greek heritage" (80). The suggestion that humanist and Christian ideals were somehow at odds with each other, consistent with the older view of Italian [End Page 509] humanism as a basically secular phenomenon, surfaces again in Wilson's commentary on Aldus Manutius' record as a publisher of Greek texts. Noting that a 1501 volume contained poems of Prudentius with the hymns of John Damascene "and some lesser authors," he protests that "[w]hen so much remained to be done for the central areas of Greek literature the choice of such texts can only be characterised as eccentric" (142, emphasis added). Since Aldus presumably knew his market, the charge of eccentricity must recoil on the historian who knows better than he did where to place the center of Greek literature. Another problem is raised by the statement that Marcus Musurus' edition (also for the Aldine Press) of selected orations of Gregory of Nazianzus revived a Byzantine pattern of study, those texts having "made little impact" in Italy, where "other patristic literature had greater claims on scholars' attention" (155). So it may be. But the point is hard to grant when neither the claims of patristic literature nor the scholarly attention accorded it have been any part of the foregoing account. Wilson draws his book to a close in 1515. That was the year in which Raffaele Maffei of Volterra (1451-1522), formerly the translator of Homer, Xenophon and Procopius, published his Latin version of the works of Basil the Great, the basis of all subsequent Latin editions of the Opera omnia (see now Iréna Backus, Lectures humanistes de Basile de Césarée: Traductions latines (1439-1618) [Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1990], 15-27). Maffei's role in the adaptation of humanist ideals to the Roman ecclesiastical and theological milieu has been skilfully documented by the late John F. D'Amico (Renaissance Humanism in Papal Rome [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983], Ch. 9). His name does not appear in From Byzantium to Italy. Readers interested in the textual tradition of the Church Fathers will once again be grateful to Nigel Wilson for supplying, conveniently and elegantly, so much of the philological, curricular and bibliographical context of their subject. They should beware...

Labour Shortage in Hong Kong: Causes, Consequences and Policies*

This paper addresses the issue of labour shortage in Hong Kong. Labour shortage is a secular phenomenon caused mainly by a stagnation in the growth of the labour force. The major long‐term factors that explain this stagnation are a decline in fertility, a fall in the labour participation rate, a reduced intake of immigrants and a rising outflow of emigrants. Labour imposes a capacity constraint on the growth of the economy. This paper considers policies which may alleviate the supply constraint on the economy, including reducing emigration, importing labour and increasing immigration intake. These policies, which would lead to a faster expansion of the labour force, are evaluated and compared.

Planning in the age of sustainability

The vital role of land‐use planning in the quest for sustainability has been recognised only very recently. Yet real confusion still exists on what ‘sustainability’ means and whether or not it refers principally to sustainable development. This paper traces the origins of the concept in the destructive power of population growth and the expansion of economic activity since the mid‐eighteenth century, a secular phenomenon which has led to the rise of the environmentalist movements, particularly since the mid‐1960s. It is argued that the key mother‐concept is that of a sustainable society. Within that context a number of reasons are given for the protagonistic role of planning in achieving sustainability. A sustainability principle is proposed comprising five fields of action for land‐use planning and the paper concludes by arguing that planning has entered a new age in the responsibilities which confront it.

Trends and cycles in Colombia's real GDP and fiscal deficit

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first is methodological. We review the Beveridge-Nelson technique for decomposing economic time series, and illustrate its usefulness for examining the cyclical and secular movements in real GDP in Colombia. Second, we examine government expenditures and revenues in order to assess the extent to which the sharp increase in the fiscal deficit in the early 1980s should be viewed as a cyclical rather than a secular phenomenon.

Of Covenants Ancient and New: The Influence of Secular Law on Biblical Religion

Professor Harold Berman has described the relationship between law and religion as an interaction, stating: “The principal affirmation is that law and religion are two different but interrelated aspects of social experience—in all societies, but especially in Western society, and still more especially in American society today. Despite the tensions between them, one cannot flourish without the other.” Berman illustrates his thesis largely by demonstrating that much of Western legal thought and many institutions find their source and origin in medieval European Christian civilization. In another essay I have suggested that biblical religion has influenced many of the legal concepts and human values protected in the American constitution. In this essay I wish to suggest that the secular phenomena of ancient Near Eastern law played a significant role in the shaping of biblical religion. This is done principally by a review of the literature on the central biblical category of covenant. I also wish to suggest that American constitutional law continues to influence religious concepts and institutions today.

Secular anthropometric changes in a sample of Italian adults

Anthropometric traits of adults from Bologna (Italy), measured several times over a century, were evaluated for evidence of a secular trend. In addition to a considerable increase in the stature, weight and chest girth, increases were observed also in the biacromial and bicristal breadths and, to a small degree, in the sitting height. Regarding the head, a de-brachycephalization process, caused mainly by the decrease in the maximum head breadth, was noticed. The secular trend phenomena are discussed with respect to genetic, environmental and demographic factors.

Between Belief and Unbelief

The uniqueness of this book lies in its dynamic analysis of belief and unbelief as closely related in terms of the functions they perform in psychic life. Dr. Pruyser is a clinical psychologist, Harry March Pfeiffer Professor at the Menninger Foundation, one of the coauthors of The Vital Balance ( I ), and author of A Dynamic Psychology ofReligion (2). Dr. Pruysen undertook this book to deal with “the contemponary phenomena of secularization, disaffiliation from religion and religious institutions, disbelief, and unbelief” (p. xii), which he had not analyzed in his previous writings. The discussion focuses as much on belief as on unbelief, however, because Pruysen sees an increase in interest in transcendental experiences, charismatic movements, and folk religion in recent years as well as a more long-term process of secularization and decline in beliefand commitment. The thesis of the book is that both belief and unbelief are to be understood in terms of man’s pursuit of happiness. This punsuit is seen in dialectical relation with tension. Pruyser states, “The life worth living and examining is a life lived in tension, . . . tensions are a perennial feature of the human condition” (p. xvii). This tension is demanding on the mind as well as on the feelings. Pnuyser’s position on this subject has kinship with Freud’s pleasure-reality principles, especially if more attention is given the ego. However, the range of fields of knowledge from which Pruyser draws is greater than Freud used. Pruyser also analyzes the dynamics of unbelief as well as belief as rigorously as Freud discussed the latter. Although beliefs of a religious kind, along with corresponding unbeliefs, are central to this book, Pruyser also considers other kinds of belief and unbelief. Among the topics specifically analyzed are alienation, dependency, autonomy, mystery, options, Providence, fantasy, and the various meanings of reality. Object relations theory is used to suggest that both beliefs and unbeliefs may be either love objects or hate objects. Since he has worked in a psychiatric setting for a quarter century, Pruyser’s judgment that many psychiatrists and their colleagues feel uncomfortable in assessing the religious beliefs of their patients suggests the special value of this book for mental health professionals. There is no better way to feel more at home in any kind of appraisal than to understand the dynamics behind outward appearance. Despite his compressed but readable discussion of ontological bases of belief or unbelief, Pruysen has no quarrel with the need to take a nonphilosophical view of the world in clinical practice. However, he implies that even psychiatrists may permit clinical pragmatic necessity to produce what is widespread throughout our society, namely, a view of reality that is too dull and too flat. The author’s style has admirable clarity, but the depth and complexity of his analyses are such that even speed-reading psychiatrists are likely to have to slow down. The process is very much worth the effort. Even as a theologian who has also studied psychiatry and psychology for many years, I found that this book often revealed gems of insight that had not occurred to me. I have only two criticisms of this work, and they may be mattens of choice. The first is Pruyser’s decision not to use a developmental schema to deal with his topic. Although he justifies his approach very well, more attention to developmental stages would have increased the book’s value for clinicians. The seeond critique is not of the way some topics are analyzed, but of the way the questions are asked. I would differ, for example, on the way the question of Providence is posed. However, any such critiques may simply be differences in perspective between a psychologist knowledgeable about reli-